Black Hearts Part 11

EVEN BEFORE THE broad-scale troop increases in early 2007 known as the surge, there was an awareness among military planners that one U.S. battalion in the Triangle of Death was not enough. Although the 1-502nd had trained two Iraqi battalions (one in Lutufiyah and one in Mahmudiyah) to the point that they could operate with substantial autonomy, when the 2nd Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division (the 2-10th) arrived in the area in August and September of 2006 to relieve the 101st Airborneas Second Brigade, they dispatched two battalions to occupy the same s.p.a.ce that First Strike had held down on its own.

The 10th Mountain Division arrived, as units usually do, with a certain arrogance. In an October 2006 interview with Stars and Stripes, brigade commander Colonel Mike Kershaw downplayed the mythic stature that the Triangle had taken on, saying it was anot the worst place Iave ever been in the war on terror.a He likewise claimed that the rape-murders of March 12, 2006, hardly came up in his discussions with the locals. One of his officers affirmed, aI ask, but they donat want to talk about it. Theyare just not dwelling on that.a Perhaps no one wanted to discuss the crime with the U.S. Army. But locals were, in fact, dwelling on the desecration and humiliation, and insurgent groups continued to extract as much propaganda value from the atrocity as possible. In November 2006, for example, the Islamic Army in Iraq (IAI) broadcast a video unveiling a homemade rocket it named aThe Abeer,a which it said had a range of 12.4 miles and carried 44 pounds of explosives.

With an extra battalion in the Triangle, the 2-10th could do things First Strike had only dreamt of. In late October, for example, the 10th Mountain took over the Yusufiyah Power Plant in a ma.s.sive (though largely unopposed) attack and turned it into a large American base. Likewise, the unit started building permanent patrol bases in Rushdi Mullah, along Route Malibu, and at other locations that the 1-502nd, with 700 to 1,000 fewer men, had barely been able to patrol, let alone occupy for extended periods of time.

As the 2-10th was settling in during the fall of 2006, however, Washington was finally coming to terms with the fact that America was losing the war. During the winter of 2005-2006, for example, there had been about 500 attacks a week on U.S. and allied forces. By late summer 2006, there were almost 800 every week. Roadside bombs were at an all-time high, and 1,000 civilians were dying in Baghdad alone every month.

In late 2006, a small coterie of exasperated civilian and military planners had broken through to President George W. Bush with a new message: The current strategy was doomed. Drastic steps had to be taken. Too much emphasis, they said, had been placed on killing enemies and handing over power to Iraqi troops, most of whom were not prepared to operate independently. Right now, they a.s.serted, Iraq needed more, not fewer, U.S. troops and the Americans needed to pay more attention to the paramount imperative of keeping the Iraqi population safe. An insurgency needs the peopleas support to thrive, and a secure, confident populace is more likely to quash an insurgency than nurture it.

In November 2006, Bush fired Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and in January he replaced General George Casey, the top general in Iraq, with General David Petraeus. As part of the new strategy, Petraeus was authorized to deploy an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to augment the 130,000 already in the country, and he ordered strict adherence to the doctrines contained in U.S. Army Field Manual 3-24: Counterinsurgency, the new handbook he had just finished editing. The counterinsurgency dicta contained in the book, many of which are intentionally paradoxical, were communicated down to the lowest private: aSometimes, the more you protect your force, the less secure you may be;a aSometimes, the more force is used, the less effective it is;a and aSometimes, doing nothing is the best reaction.a Despite the fresh approach, the situation on the ground got worse before it got better, and violence increased steadily through the first half of 2007. As Thomas E. Ricks chronicled in The Gamble, aThe period from mid-2006 to mid-2007 would prove to be the bloodiest twelve months that Americans had seen thus far in the war, with 1,105 killed.a Despite the extra troops and the optimism with which the 2-10th Mountain arrived, they had their share of setbacks during this b.l.o.o.d.y year as well. Ultimately, the brigade lost sixty-nine men and suffered the most infamous soldier abduction since the Alamo incident. Before dawn on May 12, a group of up to twenty insurgents attacked a 10th Mountain convoy on Route Malibua"less than five miles from the Alamo ambush site. After at least one IED detonated and after a barrage of small-arms and grenade fire, four American soldiers and one Iraqi soldier were dead, and three Americans were missing.

As thousands of U.S. forces scoured the area, the Al Qaedaa"affiliated Islamic State of Iraq released a communiqu over the Internet, taunting, aSearching for your soldiers will lead to nothing but exhaustion and headaches. You should remember what you have done to our sister Abeer in the same area.a On May 23, Private First Cla.s.s Joseph Anzack was found dead, floating in the Euphrates about a mile from the attack site, but the remains of the two others, Sergeant Alex Jimenez and Private First Cla.s.s Byron Fouty, were not recovered for more than a year.

While a devastating and demoralizing event, this abduction proved to be a coda for one of the waras darkest periods, not a harbinger of more to come. Beginning in the summer of 2007, the weekly violence tallies across much of the country started to drop. And they kept dropping. And dropping, and dropping. Within a few months, violence had dipped to levels not seen since early 2006. No doubt the increased American troop presence helped, but so dramatic and persistent a decline could not be attributed to 30,000 extra U.S. soldiers alone.

In fact, several other factors were at play. First was the grim reality that after four years of constant sectarian conflict and low-grade civil war, the country had, effectively, been ethnically cleansed. Entire towns and regions had been re-sorted and segregated into religiously h.o.m.ogeneous enclaves. The demographics of Mahmudiyah, for example, had been changing dramatically from a mixed city to a Shiaite bastion even while the 1-502nd was there, and although Sunnis managed to carve out select strongholds for themselves, the years-long process of murder and migration was finally hitting its stasis.

Second, what would become known as the aSons of Iraqa programs began taking hold nationwide. They started during the fall of 2006 in Anbar, when, with the blessing and financial support of local U.S. commanders, a grouping of twenty-five tribes formed the Anbar Salvation Council to fight off Al Qaeda. The success of that gra.s.sroots project inspired American senior commanders to nurture and promote similar ones across the country. Seeing the Sunnisa increasing schism with Al Qaeda as an opportunity to bring disaffected tribes back into the fold, the United States began paying Sunni tribes (and some Shiaite tribes) $300 per man, per month, to run checkpoints, scout for IEDs, and otherwise accept responsibility for the safety of their own neighborhoods. Cynics said this amounted to little more than the Army paying its enemies not to fight. Most commanders needed little prodding to agree that this was true, but they recited more counterinsurgency koans to a.s.sert that the payoffs were, if anything, long overdue rather than misguided. aThe best weapons do not shoot,a they would say, or, another favorite: aMoney is ammunition.a At the programas peak, there were more than 100,000 such Sons of Iraq on the American payroll, and they had a profoundly positive impact on safety.

The third factor contributing to the dramatic drop in violence was Muqtada al-Sadras relative withdrawal from constant, violent confrontation. Ever since 2004, he had been an unpredictable irritant to the United States. For years he declared unilateral cease-fires and then canceled them; head go quiet or even disappear for months, only to return with more fiery speeches and rabble-rousing. He could never seem to decide if he wanted to be a revolutionary or a part of the mainstream political process. With significant exceptionsa"such as the Shiaite uprising in March 2008 that came to be known among American soldiers as aMarch Madnessaa"al-Sadr seemed to settle on a long-term policy of avoiding rather than provoking violence. Some commentators insisted that al-Sadr was merely biding his time until the United States withdrew from Iraq entirely to make a full-scale violent bid. Others maintained that al-Sadr had simply missed his window of opportunity and he and his movement were suffering from a long, steady, and permanent erosion of power and prestige. Either way, his relative dormancy has kept Iraqi and American body counts far lower than they might have been.

The decreases in violence continued well into 2008. In November 2007, the 101st Airborne Divisionas 187th Infantry Regiment relieved the 2-10th Mountain Division. Upon their arrival in South Baghdad, the 187th was astonished at how much safer the area was than what they had expected. The operations officer from one 187th battalion told me that while planning for the deployment at Fort Campbell, head antic.i.p.ated that his unit would live the entire year aoff the hook,a meaning they would travel absolutely everywhere by helicopter. But, he said, the 187th soon discovered to their delight they could drive virtually everywhere they wanted with impunity.

When I arrived to embed with the 187th in May 2008, I, too, was bewildered by how non-deadly the aTriangle of Deatha had become. Rides down Sportster or Fat Boy were not terror-inducing tempts of fate. They were routine, and routinely uneventful. The Sons of Iraq were in full swing here, and there were tribal checkpoints on almost every piece of road in the region. Some roads, such as Sportster, seemed to have a checkpoint every quarter mile or so. The AK-47-toting men manning the gates and moving the pylons waved the Americans through with wide smiles.

There were dangers, of course, big ones, and nighttime raids on suspected insurgents were a frequent occurrence. But the soldiers of the 187th clearly did not fear that every day might be their last. They were in excellent spirits. Their biggest complaint was boredom. Commanders often told me that combating complacency was their primary soldier-management problem. Considering the alternatives, they added, it was a very good problem to have.

Daytime foot patrols were breezy, casual affairs. Entire squads or platoons would head out into Mahmudiyah or Yusufiyah amid streets filled with people and markets offering a hodgepodge of modest but colorful wares. Junior officers spent a lot of time meeting and negotiating with local sheikhs about what materials they needed to improve their own security.

aYou need a tower?a one U.S. officer asked a Sons of Iraq leader. aHEs...o...b..skets? Sandbags? If this lieutenant over here doesnat get you the sandbags you need within a week,a the American said, pointing to one of his own men, ayou can shoot him.a Laughs all around.

The soldiers were fully aware that their new allies were former insurgents who had, until very recently, attempted to kill them or their predecessors, yet they remained surprisingly nonchalant and resigned, saying if thatas what the mission now required, if thatas what will get us home faster, then so be it.

The dtente was working. The captain whose company occupied FOB Yusufiyah (and who was, in fact, a good friend of Captain John Goodwin) told me in June 2008 that his company had not suffered a serious IED in months and that no one in his company had fired a weapon, or been fired at, in more than six weeks.

When I asked the men about their staffing situation, they had few complaints. When I questioned a group of them if they ever went on three-, four-, or five-person patrols (as Bravo, 1-502nd, often had), they looked at me like I was insane and delivered a mini-lecture on the Armyas philosophy of troop maneuver.

aWe never go anywhere with less than a squad,a one staff sergeant told me, as if I was the dumbest civilian on the planet.

aIf you are running around with three or four people,a chimed in a lieutenant, athen you got a leadership problem somewhere.a The men of the 187th were extremely respectful of the hardships that previous units had suffered. Once, I was standing atop several stories of scaffolding that still surrounds the five-story turbine hall of the Yusufiyah Power Plant, which was now called COP (Coalition Outpost) Dragon. The views of the Euphrates and the surrounding countryside were majestic. One of the battalionas senior officers used the opportunity to offer poetic praise about those who had come before.

aIf peace is a structure,a he said, athen maybe we topped it off, installed the roof, and here we are, enjoying the view. And the 10th Mountain put in the beams and built most of the floors. But donat let anyone tell you that the 502nd didnat clear the brush and lay the foundation. If it werenat for them, we wouldnat be here now.a As we were standing atop the power plant, the 502nd was actually less than twenty miles away. During the same deployment cycle in which the 187th was in South Baghdad, the Black Heart Brigade was in Baghdad proper, in a largely Shiaite neighborhood of the city called Kadhimiyah. They had experienced a spike in violence during the March Madness uprising, but otherwise this tour had been far, far quieter than their previous rotation. aIt took a while to adjust, to realize that your life isnat always in danger,a one unidentified Bravo sergeant who had been on the 2005a"2006 deployment told a reporter from the Long War Journal, a blog about terrorism and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, when speaking about the difference he saw in 2007a"2008.

While the fast, drastic reduction in violence that occurred in Iraq in late 2007 was a tremendous milestone and achievement, there is a tendency among the military and American politicians to triumphantly overstate the gains. The mere absence of rampant murder does not produce a stable, healthy society on its own, and Iraq was and is a very long way from being a free, fair, prosperous, and democratic civil society.

During my visit to the area, sectarian resentments were festering and tribal harmony remained a long way off. Though slowly sputtering back to life, the economy was still barely functioning. Public services remained woefully inadequate or nonexistent. Sewage flowed into the street and the hum of generators to supplement the pitiful electric service was ever present. Courts, government offices, and schools were underfunded and understaffed, if they were open at all.

With the multipart.i.te cease-fire hardening into the norm, however, and violence at four-year lows across the nation, the United States began in late 2008 dismantling much of the surge it had begun less than two years before. With attacks down over 80 percent in Babil province (where much of the Triangle of Death is located), U.S. forces handed full responsibility for the territory back to the Iraqis in October 2008. By January 2009, there were only one-third the U.S. troops in the Triangle than had been there a year before.

In June 2009, the United States further withdrew across Iraq, retrenching to large bases and largely staying out of day-to-day security operations except in a few restive areas. For some months before, the United States had likewise begun scaling back on the Sons of Iraq initiative, a move that has not, as many predicted, resulted in a wholesale return among former insurgents to their murderous ways. There are still bombings in Iraq, sometimes very lethal ones, but they remain, for now, fairly isolated incidents.

While Iraq may never become the model of Middle Eastern democracy and capitalism that the Bush administration envisioned, the current consensus among military chiefs as well as politicians and planners of every political affiliation is that the situation there is stable enough to allow the United States to withdraw completely without considering it a defeat. With the war in Afghanistan deteriorating rapidly and taking on a renewed urgency with the Obama administration, the United States remains on schedule to remove all American troops from Iraq by the end of 2011.

For some, however, the war will never be over.

Although there was virtually zero usable forensic evidence from the March 12, 2006, rape-murder crime scene (the AK-47 was never recovered, attempts to tie trace sample evidence from the scene to the DNA of the coconspirators were inconclusive, and the Janabi family forbade investigators from exhuming the victims to search for more clues), the Armyas cases against James Barker and Paul Cortez were particularly strong. The two menas confessions and the confessions of others so thoroughly implicated them both that their defense teams concluded that saving them from execution was the overwhelming priority. Both soldiers offered to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit rape and murder and other charges, as well as to cooperate with all subsequent trials, in exchange for a term of years if the Army agreed not to pursue the death penalty. The Army accepted, and it sentenced Barker and Cortez to 90 years and 100 years, respectively, at Fort Leavenworthas Disciplinary Barracks, the militaryas only maximum-security prison.

During his one-day court-martial in November 2006, Barker told the court, aI have tried so many times to understand how I was able to do something so mean, so horrible. I simply have no answer when I think of why. When I think about my last deployment to Iraq, I see only darkness in my heart. Though I was never killed, I can see that part of me had died.a Both Barker and Cortez will be eligible for parole after 10 years, and every year after that.

In March 2007, Bryan Howard pleaded guilty to conspiracy to obstruct justice and to being an accessory after the fact. He was sentenced to 27 months in prison at Fort Leavenworth. With time reduction for good behavior and time already served, he was discharged from the Army and released on parole after 17 months. Today, he is working for his fatheras heavy machinery rigging business in Huffman, Texas.

Because of gaps and inconsistencies in many of the soldiersa confessions and all the partic.i.p.antsa ongoing revisions regarding the events of March 12, 2006, there remained some doubt about what, exactly, Jesse Spielman knew about what the others were planning that day and when he knew it. Contesting the bulk of the charges against him, including all felony charges, Spielmanas lawyers claimed that he did not know where the rogue patrol was going on March 12 and that he did not know what was going to happen once it arrived at the Janabi residence. The attorneys contended that no one explained anything about the murderous mission to Spielman, and that once at the house, he was too surprised and scared to do anything about it. A military panel did not believe these claims of innocence, found him guilty of all charges, and sentenced him to life in prison (though his sentence was later reduced to 90 years). He too will be eligible for parole after 10 years, and every year after that.

Because Steven Green had been discharged from the Army in May 2006, his case proved to be a much more complicated undertaking that took nearly three years to bring to conclusion. As the Army began investigating Barker, Spielman, and Cortez, military prosecutors realized they had no jurisdiction over Green and notified the U.S. Attorneysa Office that a suspected rapist and murderer was at large in the United States. The FBI arrested Green in July 2006 as the Justice Department declared it planned to prosecute him under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA) of 2000 in the Federal District Court of Western Kentucky, the court district closest to Fort Campbell, Greenas last permanent residence in the United States.

The Justice Department was operating in uncharted territory. There is surprisingly little precedent on how to handle charges against a soldier accused of committing a crime on active duty overseas but who had returned to the United States, been discharged, and was living as a civilian before the crime was discovered. In fact, only one other former service member, ex-Marine sergeant Jose Luis Nazario, had been tried under MEJA. Accused of killing unarmed detainees in Fallujah in 2004, he was acquitted for lack of evidence by a civilian jury in August 2008. Unlike with the Nazario case, however, the Justice Department announced it was pursuing the death penalty against Green, making him the first former service member ever to face the possibility of execution in a civilian court for his conduct during war.

Public defenders Scott Wendelsdorf and Pat Bouldin brought on Darren Wolff, a former Marine lawyer now in private practice. As had Cortezas and Barkeras lawyers, Greenas team concluded that the confession evidence was so strong that simply keeping their client alive would be a victory. In two motions to dismiss the case, they contested the const.i.tutionality and jurisdiction of MEJA, arguing that the law was not designed for cases like Greenas and should not be applied to him. Indeed, MEJA was written to close a loophole that had enabled military contractors as well as spouses and dependents of service members to escape punishment for crimes committed abroad. Republican senator Jeff Sessions from Alabama, who introduced MEJA to Congress, confirmed the law was intended to have a somewhat narrow focus. Said Sessions, aI donat think any of us at the time the legislation pa.s.sed were contemplating that a potential criminal act that occurred while a person was on active duty in combat would be tried in a civilian court.a Regardless, Thomas Russell, chief judge of the Western Kentucky District Court, rejected Greenas lawyersa challenges to MEJA, and the case proceeded.

Greenas defense team twice offered to have Green plead guilty if the government would take the death penalty off the table, and twice the Justice Department declined. To this day, Wolff maintains that Justiceas push for death was a politically motivated appeas.e.m.e.nt to the Iraqi government and Iraqi public opinion. Noting that the Iraqi minister of human rights attended the first day of Greenas trial, and that Barker and Cortez never had to face the death penalty, Wolff said, aWhen it became obvious that this case was not about fairness or equity,a Justiceas rejection of Greenas pleas was aabout appeasing the overseas communities who have been calling for Mr. Greenas execution.a The defense attorneys also tried several times to have Green reinducted into the Army and tried by court-martial. In letters to Fort Campbellas staff judge advocate, the secretary of the army, and the secretary of defense, they argued that a military court was the only appropriate venue for this case, but they also knew that the posta"World War II Army was much less likely to execute a criminal than civilian courts were. (The last soldier put to death was Private John Bennett, for rape, in 1961.) The Army declined the offer to take Green back.

After ruling out an insanity defense, Wendelsdorf, Bouldin, and Wolff decided that their best hope before the jury was to emphasize what Bouldin called during the trialas April 2009 opening statements athe context of the crimea: the horrible conditions that Bravo labored under, Greenas abysmal upbringing, the leadership failures that plagued every level of the 1-502nd, and the clear, repeated warning signs of Greenas murderous obsessions that his superiors routinely ignored.

During several dramatic and contentious weeks of testimony in a Paducah, Kentucky, courtroom, the defense ran, to the best of its ability, a trial within a trial against the Armyas negligence in allowing the atrocity to happen, while prosecutors, countering repeatedly that there was only one man on trial, focused on the heinousness and inexcusability of Greenas behavior.

Brought to Kentucky by the Justice Department, several members of the Janabi family, including Abu Muhammad, the childrenas paternal grandmother, and sons Ahmed and Muhammad, testified during the trial, movingly describing the innocence of their kin and the barbarity that had been visited upon them.

The jury of nine women and three men found Green guilty of all counts of conspiracy, rape, and murder, but they hung, six against six, on the issue of whether to sentence him to death. A jury unable to reach unanimity on the question of execution triggered an automatic sentence of life in prison without parole. In a comprehensive posttrial questionnaire, many of the jurors demonstrated sympathy for many of the mitigating factors the defense had introduced, and half of the twelve agreed with the statement aThis case should have been tried in the military justice system.a One week after the trial, the Janabis were allowed to address the court and Green during a preliminary sentencing hearing in Louisville. Though the session lasted only a few hours, it was an electric, raucous, and dramatic event as they voiced their displeasure that Green would not be executed. When given the chance to address Green directly, one of the sons, Muhammad, glared menacingly at the man who had killed four of his family members but declined to say anything to him.

Hajia, the childrenas grandmother, wailed and shouted, as a court interpreter translated, aThis man has no mercy in his heart, he does not have honor, and yet you let him breathe air until he dies naturally? He is a stigma on the United States. He is a stigma on the whole world. He is a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and a criminal and a dog!a Ululating and keening, she abruptly left the witness stand and attempted to approach Green at the defense table. aShow him to me!a she shouted. aShow him to me, I want to see him!a A couple of federal marshals attempted to block her path and grab her by the arms, but she would not be deterred. Ultimately, she had to be wrestled to the floor by nearly a dozen court officials, who then virtually carried her, still screaming, back to the gallery.

The motheras cousin, Abu Muhammad, spoke last, praising his slain family members and criticizing the juryas reluctance to execute Green. He concluded by turning to Green and saying, aAbeer will follow you and chase you in your nightmares. May G.o.d d.a.m.n you.a Atrocities are committed in every war. They are a seemingly ineradicable by-product of the barbaric yet quintessentially human inst.i.tution of organized, leader-mandated, group-on-group killing. But why do some fighting men give in to the final inhumanity of combata"raping and murdering the innocenta"while others who experience the same loss, suffer the same hardship and feel the same hatred resist the temptation to defile the defenseless, abandon their honor, debase themselves, and shame their kin and country? Why did Achilles desecrate Hectoras corpse when some other Greek and Trojan heroes maintained their dignity and their integrity in the waning days of the Iliad ? Homer himself offers no satisfying answers. Since then, historians, psychologists, generals, and judges have investigated the causes of uncountable war crimes by fallen fighters far less august than Achilles with the same unsatisfying results. Why are some men mentally equipped to handle the harrowing rigors of war at its worst yet others are unable to endure? Why did James Barker, Paul Cortez, Steven Green, and Jesse Spielman do what they did on March 12, 2006? In their trials, neither Barker, Cortez, nor Spielman could articulate an answer to that seemingly simple, straightforward question.

aI have been in jail for five months, and I ask myself that every day,a Cortez told the prosecutor when asked why he even went to the Janabi house. aI still donat have no answer.a And do such men feel any remorse? Barker, Cortez, and Spielman have all said that they do, apologizing in court to the Janabis and Iraq in general as well as to their own families, their comrades in arms, the Army, and America for both the wanton destruction they inflicted and the disgrace they brought on themselves and so many others. Of course, only they know how sincere their words of contrition really were.

At the end of his preliminary sentencing hearing, after the Janabis had spoken, Green was given the opportunity to make a statement himself. Since he had not taken the stand during his own trial or testified at any of the other coconspiratorsa courts-martial, this was the first public statement he had ever made.

Reading from a sheet of paper, Green emphasized, aWhat I am about to say is completely my own. No one told me what to say. No one wrote this for me. Not my lawyers, not the government, not anybody.a He addressed the family, saying, aI am truly sorry for what I did in Iraq and I am sorry for the pain my actions, and the actions of my codefendants, have caused you and your family. I imagine it is a pain that I cannot fully comprehend or appreciate. I helped to destroy a family and end the lives of four fellow human beings, and I wish that I could take that back, but I cannot. As inadequate as this apology is, it is all I can give you. I know you wish I was dead, and I do not hold that against you. If I was in your place, I am convinced beyond any doubt that I would feel the same waya. I know that if I live one more year or fifty more years that they will be years that Fakhriah, Qa.s.sim, Abeer, and Hadeel wonat have. And even though I did not learn their names until long after their deaths, they are never far from my mind. But in the end, whether in one year or fifty, I will die. And when I die I will be in G.o.das hands, in the Kingdom of G.o.d, where there will be justice, and whatever I deserve, I will get. On the day of judgment, G.o.d will repay everyone according to his works, and affliction and distress will come upon every human being who does evil. I know that I have done evil, and I fear that the wrath of the Lord will come upon me on that day. But, I hope that you and your family at least can find some comfort in G.o.das justice.a Steven Green is currently serving five consecutive life sentences with no possibility of parole.

POSTSCRIPT.

Chaz Allen: Allen is a squad leader in the 75th Cavalry Regiment, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

James Barker: Barker is serving a 90-year prison sentence at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He will be eligible for parole in 2016.

Phil Blaisdell: Blaisdell deployed to Iraq as Platoon Sergeant of the 1-502ndas Scout Platoon in the fall of 2007. Promoted to First Sergeant in December 2007, he finished his tour as the First Sergeant of a 2-502nd company in Haswah, Iraq (just south of Lutufiyah). He is currently a company First Sergeant at the U.S. Army Airborne School at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Jared Bordwell: Promoted to Major in March 2008, Bordwell deployed to Iraq with a Ranger battalion from October 2008 to February 2009. He is currently attending the Command and General Staff College (CGSC) at Fort Leavenworth.

Paul Cortez: Cortez is serving a 100-year prison sentence at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth. He will be eligible for parole in 2016.

John Diem: Diem worked on the 1-502ndas headquarters staff during the battalionas deployment to Baghdad in 2007a"2008. Promoted to Staff Sergeant in December 2008, he is today a squad leader in the 1-502ndas Bravo Company at Fort Campbell.

Bill Dougherty: Promoted to Major in March 2008, Dougherty attended CGSC in 2009. He is currently working toward a masteras degree in military studies at the School for Advanced Military Studies, also at Fort Leavenworth.

Todd Ebel: Ebel commanded Task Force Ramadi, a 140-member task force from all four branches of the military that provided a variety of support services to coalition forces in Anbar province in 2008. He is now director of the School for Command Preparation at CGSC.

Anthony Edwards: In 2008 and 2009, Edwards was Brigade Command Sergeant Major for the 205th Infantry Brigade at Camp Atterbury, Indiana, a National Guard and Army Reserve training center.

Jeff Fenlason: Fenlason is the 101st Airborne Divisionas Small Arms Master Gunner, a position he has held since January 2007, including a deployment to Afghanistan from March 2008 to January 2009. He was promoted to Master Sergeant in January 2009.

Rob Gallagher: Promoted to First Sergeant in June 2009, Gallagher is a company First Sergeant in the 101st Airborne Divisionas 506th Infantry Regiment at Fort Campbell.

Jeremy Gebhardt: Gebhardt has deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan on multiple occasions since 2007. Promoted to Master Sergeant in 2008, he is an operational specialist in the Asymmetric Warfare Group, a unit that identifies critical threats and enemy vulnerabilities through first-hand observation.

John Goodwin: Goodwin is currently a battalion operations officer at Fort Carson, Colorado.

Steven Green: Green is serving five consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole at the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Justin Habash: Honorably discharged from the Army as a Captain in June 2007, Habash is working toward a Ph.D. in philosophy at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Bryan Howard: Sentenced to 27 months in prison in March 2007, Howard was released on parole after 17 months for good behavior and the time he had spent in pretrial confinement. Today he works as a heavy machinery rigger in Huffman, Texas.