It was June of 2003, and our Battalion -3/7- had taken control of the holy city of Karbala from the 82nd Airborne. All government employees began returning to work. The police department headquarters was vacant. The prior chief was a Ba’ath party Colonel who was too scared to come to his office. The HQ was in the middle of our sector, where the two holy shrines of Al Hussein and Al Abass are located. The people there were Shia, so they liked and welcomed us with open arms. Nobody was shooting at us.
Shortly after occupying a municipal soccer stadium, my commanding officer, Captain Richard Gannon, tasked me with going down to the police station and starting patrols from there. The hope was that the existing officers would return to work. There was a fleet of police vehicles in the parking lot with no gas.
So I occupied that building with my platoon, Lima Weapons, and found myself sitting behind the chief’s desk as the de facto police chief. Several weeks later, I was able to put together and lead the first joint Marine-Iraqi security patrol in the Division, but that’s another story.
We put a map on the wall of the chief’s office, set up a radio, and began conducting foot patrols. I would use 7 tons to drop patrols off in different parts of the city. We actually started catching criminals and putting them in jail. They would be sent to Baghdad for trial, then to prison.
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We would have all kinds of things happen on those patrols, no contact with the enemy. Iran was lurking in the shadows, and eventually they would get more involved.
So one of the patrols comes back…and it’s led by a very talented, intelligent, and highly aggressive Staff Sergeant. He brought an 8-year-old girl to the office. He then goes on to tell me that they had caught or someone informed them that an older Iraqi man had raped this young girl. The girl stood there with her head down, and I just felt terrible. The Staff Sergeant then tells me they’ve got the pedophile locked up in jail. I didn’t feel comfortable asking the girl anything, so I told my linguist to tell her she was safe with us. I believe my Corpsman suggested we get her to the city hospital, have her examined, and get her to her parents.
The Staff Sergeant took some Marines and headed to the hospital. While they were gone, I had the Marines bring the perpetrator into my office. He came up looking sickly and dejected, and I asked if he raped the girl through my linguist. He nodded and admitted he had done it. He was a disgusting animal, and I had the Marines take him back down into the jail. I’m sure things got rough for him down there.
The Staff Sergeant returns to my office, and he’s considered one of the toughest Marines in the company, by the way. A black belt instructor for the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program. Extremely violent and lethal. He comes up to me and tells me that they had caught doctors who had examined her and confirmed she had been raped. They were also going to contact her parents to pick her up. We had her name and contact info for the investigation.
I had a few Marines in the office, and the motivated staff sergeant asked if he could talk to me privately. I said sure and asked the Marines to go outside and give us a minute. Once the door closes, he gets really close to me and starts talking in a very low tone, not whispering, but talking so no one else can hear him. This guy is a real killer. He says to me, “Sir…hear me out…let me take a fire team and we’ll take that piece of shit out by the date palm groves outside the city…” His eyes were wide open, and he had a look in his eyes that he was absolutely ready to kill someone.
I was somewhat stunned, and I looked into his eyes and asked a rhetorical question, “Who are you going to take out there, Staff Sergeant?” He tells me he’s going to take a fireteam out there with a Humvee. I said, “What are you going to do?” and he replied, “Cap his motherfucking ass. There was a long silence as I looked into his eyes. He says, “Sir, no one will know.” He was right; no one would know. I was on the verge of giving him the go-ahead on murdering that pedophile outside of town. No one would know. I continued to stare into his eyes…
What would you do?
