Fobbit (29 page)

20

GOODING

C
hance Gooding had never seen anyone smoke a cigarette with as much intensity as Major Flip Filipovich. He went through one cigarette after another with no pause between pinching off the smoked-to-the-filter Marlboro and the lighter-flick ignition of a fresh one. If he could have shoved cigarettes in both nostrils and smoked from there, he probably would.

Chance stifled a cough and fanned his hand in front of his face. “Jesus, sir.” The deputy public affairs officer was putting out so much smoke, enveloping them in a cloud, that even some of the Headquarters’ most veteran smokers were getting edgy watching his chimney act as they all squeezed into the designated smoking hut (a regulatory fifty feet from the outer wall of the palace). Once a concrete bunker—complete with machine-gun slits—during the Golden Age of Saddam, the hut was the only place the truly stressed and/or addicted could go for relief during their ten-hour shifts. It was also the best place to vent and rage against “the Man” or “the System” or, most commonly, “the Fuckwads at the Pentagon.” On any given day at any given hour, the hut was filled with noxious smoke and even worse attitudes.

Gooding was out here only because Major Filipovich had promised to tell the story about the time he left a CNN reporter stranded in Bosnia because she was taking too long to primp her hair and makeup for the camera. Now that Filipovich was finished with that tale, which had been embellished with plenty of asides about “goddamn prima donnas,” Gooding was trapped in the smoking hut.

He fanned away the major’s exhaled breath again and said, “Sir, you’re killing me here.”

“I’ll tell you what’s killing us,” Flip snapped back, stabbing the air between them with Mr. Marlboro. “What’s killing us is the fact that Corps PAO can’t hear anything anymore because their ears are clogged with shit—”

“—because their heads are so far up their asses,” Gooding finished. “I know, sir, I know. You’ve mentioned it once or twice already in the last half hour.”

“
Fuck
!” Filipovich spat a shred of tobacco off the tip of his tongue. “They have no clue what it’s like out there. But
I
know.
I’ve
been outside the wire every week.
I
could tell them a thing or three, the clueless fucks.” His eyes were moving back and forth in a stutter, unsure where to land.

It’s true, Major Filipovich had nothing but contempt for the system for which he worked and he took advantage of every opportunity to play the nonconformist, grumbling through clenched teeth in a nonstop patter of “fuckthisshit” or “goddamnticketpunchers” or “justyouwaitandsee, justyoufuckingwaitandsee,” though on the exterior he did his best to maintain his military demeanor around superior officers who were responsible for his annual evaluations (occasionally, he’d even manage to plaster a team-player look on his face for Harkleroad, the fat fuck). Life for him was a constant balancing act between disrespect and career preservation.

Harkleroad wasn’t the only object of Filipovich’s contempt; there were plenty of other candidates populating this palace at any given time, most of them near the top of the food chain. The closer one got to the top of the funnel, the more befuddled, out of touch, and certifiably insane one became. Senior officers lived and worked in the highest reaches of the exosphere where the lack of oxygen clearly strangled their brains, leading to the kind of tunnel vision that turned whole armies left when they should have gone right, made them flounder in the Waterloo mud and underestimate the forces of Wellington and Blücher. These oxygen-starved officers running the show from the palace had no fucking clue about what was unraveling outside the FOB checkpoints, Filipovich grumbled to Gooding.

“Case in point: the latest turd to drop from Corps’ ass, the infamous ‘How to Suck the Egg’ e-mail.”

Staff Sergeant Gooding groaned.
Here we go again.

“You know, Harkleroad made sure I read the e-mail before shift change last night,” Filipovich said. “He even printed out a hard copy and literally made me sign off on it. I wanted to write my name in blood—you know, kind of a take-this-e-mail-and-shove-it gesture—but I couldn’t find anything sharper than a paper clip on my desk.”

“Tell me about it, sir,” Gooding said. “I talked to Butch over in Second Brigade Public Affairs and he was pretty jacked up about it, too. They had to practically tie him in a chair after he got done reading it. Total freak-out on his part. He said they made
him
sign a copy, too—like it was, as he put it, ‘the fucking Mayflower Compact.’ Butch would have signed it with quote one finger dipped in feces unquote if the brigade commander hadn’t been hanging around his cubicle at the time.”

The e-mail in question had pinged into the in-boxes of all Division PAOs operating in the Iraqi Theater of Operations two days ago and had filtered downward in no time. To wit:

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

23 JULY 2005 1923hrs

Subject: Increased Emphasis on Joint Operational Successes

Gentlemen,

All wars, but this war in particular, are carried out on ever-shifting ground. Here in Iraq, we have a very visible reminder of this axiom with the sand that crumbles beneath our very boots. A metaphor of granular consequences, if you will. As the battle progresses, our forces must adapt to changes in operational focus, upticks and downticks in OPTEMPO, new battle strategies, and unpredictable shifts in the mood of the local population. Each Local National is a grain of sand beneath our boots—we never know which way he’ll
SHIFT
away from us.

To date, U.S. forces and our allies have done a remarkable job in keeping up with this undulating landscape. When first we came to this theater of operations, we were conquerors—the hammer striking the anvil of evil, beating the Ba’athist swords into ploughshares. We toppled a despicable regime and secured the country’s borders. Over time, our emphasis
SHIFTED
to the role of humanitarian peacekeeping as we strived to rebuild what had been torn down by three decades of unquestionable tyranny. We became the pillar of Iraqi society and the People looked to us with trust and hope. In time, a criminal element started filtering into the country and wreaked havoc with roadside bombs and assassinations, and our mission once again
SHIFTED
to being Protectors and Shields, Iraq’s first line of defense against the infidels who glory in the quick, showy slaughter of dozens at one time. This is the role we have been playing—and quite efficiently, I might add—but as you know it is time once again to
SHIFT
the focus. Recognizing that, like a weak-legged infant taking his first steps, Iraq must begin to stand on its own and defend itself against foreign-based terror, we must now start to step back and let the Iraqi people walk across the floor. Heretofore, we have been focused only in part on training these raw fledgling recruits, and only occasionally accompanying the IA and ISF on
their
patrols through
their
neighborhoods so
their
families can witness firsthand how Iraq protects its own. Word has filtered down from on high that this must now be our primary focus. Though we will still conduct our own patrols and will remain ever-vigilant to guard against domestic and foreign terror, if a few bombs go off and a few lives are regrettably sacrificed while we’re at the firing range showing a toothless forty-five-year-old man how to shoot an M16 . . . well then, so be it. This is coming from on high, you understand, and not just from me (though I share in the firm belief that, yes, we must begin the slow, messy, painful process of withdrawal while ensuring we leave behind a nation that can protect itself against intruders).

All this is preamble to what I really want to say to you today. As we
SHIFT
our operational focus, so must we
SHIFT
the tone of our press releases and statements to the media.

I have been increasingly concerned about the number of stories coming across my desk that focus primarily on U.S. forces while all but ignoring the tremendous work our Iraqi brethren have been carrying out in the name of New Democracy. The ratio of soft feature stories has begun to greatly outbalance the hard news stories coming from our Divisions and their Brigades. We here at Corps Headquarters call them “Day in the Life” fluff stories: “A Day in the Life of a Motor Pool Mechanic,” “A Day in the Life of a Computer Technician,” “A Day in the Life of a Tuba Player in the Combat Zone.” You get the idea.

The most troubling aspect of the U.S.-centric stories I’m seeing is the tone of negativity and pessimism that is starting to creep in around the edges. Your young soldier-journalists are NOT exercising discretion in their choice of words. I will give you a typical example, one that was brought to my attention earlier this week in a story written by an enterprising young scribe from a certain Brigade that will remain nameless. He opened his story thusly:

One thing every U.S. soldier assigned to Iraq wants to hear is “The Iraqi Security Forces are sufficiently trained and tested to take control of the future of Iraq.” Any soldier who hears this knows the next order will be a redeployment order, one sending him home until his country calls for him again.

Well, I’ve got good news and bad news. The bad news is that our Army will still be here until the mission is complete. The good news is that every day the ISF gets closer to being able to take over.

Gentlemen, I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: there is “sad news,” there is “tragic news,” but there is NO “bad news” coming out of Iraq. This negative slant is uncalled for and has no place in what is being released from our office. Furthermore, there shall be no mention of timetables or any indication of U.S. soldiers impatient to leave this country before they’ve fully erected the pillars of freedom.

A trend I’ve noticed: these stories rarely if ever touch on the most important components of the current mission: Recruit, Rebuild, Restore. That is the standard we at Corps have set and, frankly, your stories are, for the most part, not meeting that standard.

Now, I am not going to tell you How to Suck the Egg—I have never been one who gives instructions on Egg Sucking—BUT it needs to be a very lopsided ratio on the hard news side, emphasizing the triumphant moments of our work over here (and, more to the point, Triumphant Iraqi Moments).

Remember, the focus is now on joint operational success. Multi-Corps Iraq wants to raise the level of Iraqi trust in
THEIR
Army and ISF. Seek the successes, ferret out the positive, corral the optimistic. Your focus must now be on the current mission—Operation National Unity—and you must highlight our success in finding IEDs before they go off, ferreting out weapons caches, and detaining terrorists. Our Army journalists should always be showing how terrorists have failed in their efforts to derail the democratic process.
That’s
the sort of thing I want to see coming across my desk, effective immediately. Recruit, Rebuild, Restore, gentlemen.

As we like to say around Corps Headquarters here:
Put an Iraqi face on it!

Regards,

Harold Gunderson, Brigadier General, U.S. Army

Chief, Public Affairs Division

Multi-Allied-Forces-Iraq

As e-mails go, it was pretty long-winded, filled with as many multiple orgasms as a whore in her first day on the job.

Major Filipovich snorted smoke. “My first instinct was tear that e-mail into little pieces and eat it. But I turned it into a dartboard instead.”

Gooding nodded. “I folded mine into a paper airplane.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that it’s complete and utter bullshit.” Flip popped another cigarette between his lips. “What they’re essentially saying is, they don’t want us to report what’s really happening out there if it doesn’t lend itself to a ‘happy’ story.”

“Operation Smiley Face.”

“Fuck, yeah.” Filipovich flicked his lighter several times before the cigarette caught fire. “Get this: one of my buddies in Third Brigade was telling me about how his men discovered a weapons cache in Al-Qadisiyyah. They also found some Beanie Babies with hand grenades stuffed inside them. Can you believe that? Fucking grenades in fucking stuffed animals that some kid’s gonna cuddle up with in bed at night. Well, word filters upstream and what does the I Fucking A do? They issue a plea for Corps to cease and desist the Beanie Baby program—which, as you and I know, is our most successful PR campaign, putting happiness in the hands of deprived children. Operation Smiley Face to the max. Then, what’s more, IA orders their soldiers to confiscate all stuffed animals and soccer balls. It hasn’t happened yet, but I can just see the IA going door to door and, at gunpoint, forcing Hajji Jr. to give up his Mr. Cuddles.”