The Outpost An Untold Story Of American Valor Part 26

In the wake of the attack, Markert was eager to learn the truth. He didn't expect the same professionalism from Afghan troops that he demanded from his own men and women, but this latest ANA battalion was without question inferior to its predecessors. Days later, a rescue mission dubbed Operation King's Ransom brought more than a hundred U.S. Special Forces soldiers and elite Afghan commandos into the Hel Gal Valley. Coalition forces broadcast a radio message demanding the release of the ANA hostages, who were ultimately freed. At first, the soldiers appeared to be in suspiciously good condition, but then closer examination by physician's a.s.sistants and medics revealed some serious wounds. Only after six days of interrogation were the ANA troops finally returned to their brigade. Spiszer and Markert eventually concluded that the POWs had not in fact been part of a conspiracy to attack Bari Alai. The insurgents had merely gotten some breaks, the investigation indicated, and taken a lucky shot that blew up a bunker and ignited a fire.

A couple more breaks had been given to them by Afghan security forces. An eight-man Afghan National Police post protecting one of the approaches to Bari Alai was abandoned just a few days prior to the attack. There was also supposed to be a full platoon of twenty-eight ANA troops at the Bari Alai outpost, but the company commander had repositioned a dozen of his soldiers at the bottom of the mountain the night before the raid, in preparation for a troop swap. He'd done it because it would make things easier for him and his men.

As Markert often said, "If you're doing something in war because it's easier, you're probably doing the wrong thing."

Had the eleven Afghan troops who were captured surrendered too quickly? In all likelihood, Markert felt, the answer was yes-these were not good soldiers. Indeed, the members of this new battalion of ANA troops in Nuristan and Kunar were quickly becoming notorious But their actions in this case were evidence of incompetence, not of treachery.

This was of little comfort.

In late May 2009, Colonel George and Lieutenant Colonel Brown of 3-61 Cav were preparing to ship out to Forward Operating Base Fenty at Jalalabad and Forward Operating Base Bostick at Naray, respectively. From those locations, they hoped to shut down Combat Outpost Keating, Observation Post Fritsche, and Camp Lowell in Nuristan Province, as well as Observation Posts Mace and Hatchet in Kunar Province. The troops from these outposts would be sent to other areas of the country that, in George's view, would better support the overall campaign. Forward Operating Base Bostick would thereby become the northernmost U.S. base in northeastern Afghanistan.

Their visit to Nuristan and Kunar the previous December had reinforced the commanders' resolve to pull out of the region. George and Brown believed that Blackfoot Troop had, for the most part, lost its connection to the local population. The officers of 6-4 Cav seemed to them to have little direct knowledge of most of the projects they'd been funding, nor did they have the freedom of maneuver to a.s.sess those projects. "In short," Brown wrote to Kolenda after his visit, "6-4 did not appear to be conducting COIN at all."66 (This was not, of course, how Pecha and his lieutenants saw things.) (This was not, of course, how Pecha and his lieutenants saw things.) The colonel whom Randy George would be replacing, Spiszer, had described Blackfoot Troop as the "cork in the bottle," the roadblock that prevented HIG or the Taliban from traveling from Pakistan through Nuristan to the Waygal and Pech Valleys and possibly beyond. But Brown just didn't see the enemy that way. The insurgents weren't lined up on some Maginot Line, he felt certain; warfare in Afghanistan was much more complex than that. The term "cork in the bottle" a.s.sumed that the enemy had only one route in or out, whereas evidence suggested that many insurgents were simply walking around around the few isolated American outposts in the area. When George arrived at Forward Operating Base Fenty, he was pleasantly surprised to find Spiszer amenable to his realignment plan. Getting supplies up to Nuristan was difficult, Spiszer confided, and imposed an increasing burden on helicopter and other a.s.sets-resources that could be better used elsewhere. The troops up there didn't seem to be getting much of anywhere with the locals anyway, and critically, there had been no progress made on securing and building up the road. It was all too deadly to do on foot, and too wasteful by air. Spiszer was on board. Lieutenant Colonel Markert's staff had in fact already twice proposed closing Combat Outpost Keating, but both times the determination had been made-with input from the brigade level-that Blackfoot Troop wouldn't be able to commandeer the eighty Chinook trips it would take to remove all the soldiers and gear. On their second try, the 6-4 Cav planners were told that their troops could either go home on time or close Combat Outpost Keating, but not both: there weren't enough aircraft in the area. the few isolated American outposts in the area. When George arrived at Forward Operating Base Fenty, he was pleasantly surprised to find Spiszer amenable to his realignment plan. Getting supplies up to Nuristan was difficult, Spiszer confided, and imposed an increasing burden on helicopter and other a.s.sets-resources that could be better used elsewhere. The troops up there didn't seem to be getting much of anywhere with the locals anyway, and critically, there had been no progress made on securing and building up the road. It was all too deadly to do on foot, and too wasteful by air. Spiszer was on board. Lieutenant Colonel Markert's staff had in fact already twice proposed closing Combat Outpost Keating, but both times the determination had been made-with input from the brigade level-that Blackfoot Troop wouldn't be able to commandeer the eighty Chinook trips it would take to remove all the soldiers and gear. On their second try, the 6-4 Cav planners were told that their troops could either go home on time or close Combat Outpost Keating, but not both: there weren't enough aircraft in the area.

Spiszer's brigade had already learned some hard lessons about how to close down a base. Combat Outpost Lybert had been built only in 2006, near the Pakistan border, but it didn't have a particularly good view of the mountain pa.s.s that it had been set up to watch over. The troops were needed elsewhere, and the local Afghan Border Police battalion had no interest in a.s.suming control of COP Lybert, so Spiszer ordered that it be shut down. Before the troops could move out, however, word of their pending exit spread throughout the nearby villages. Half of the Afghan Security Guards who worked at the camp up and quit. The locals were suddenly far more eager to accommodate the enemy fighters-letting them use their homes, for example, to launch attacks on the camp. After all, in a few weeks, the Americans wouldn't be there any longer, but the insurgents surely would. Combat Outpost Lybert went from being tranquil to being a target. One of the enemy bullets killed Private Second Cla.s.s Michael Murdock, twenty-two years old and from Chocowinity, North Carolina. When the U.S. troops at last pulled out of Camp Lybert, the insurgents claimed to have driven them out. It wasn't true, but propaganda needn't be. Pat Lybert's mom saw YouTube videos of insurgents victoriously parading through the camp named after her late son, and it ripped her apart inside.

Spiszer told the incoming commander of Regional Command East, Major General Curtis Scaparrotti, as well as the ISAF commander, that he believed George's proposal to shut down Keating and Lowell was a good one. He thought the generals seemed receptive to the idea.

CHAPTER 25

Pericles in Kamdesh

Under the cover of complete darkness, the men of 3-61 Cav's 1st Platoon arrived at Camp Keating. Led by Lieutenant Andrew "Bundy" Bundermann, this company would be the last one stationed at the outpost.

By May 2009, choppers were refusing to venture out to Combat Outpost Keating in anything but the blackest night. It was a surreal experience for these soldiers who were new to the region to be flown from Forward Operating Base Bostick over the mountains and deep into the valleys. The pilots could just see the faint outlines of peaks, but everything else was just ink. And then suddenly they were landing, and Bundermann could hear the rushing rapids of the Landay-Sin.

Soldiers from Blackfoot Troop were excited to greet the new arrivals. The handoff meant they could go home.

Bundermann and the others were ushered across the bridge and into the outpost. Ma.s.sive, jagged silhouettes stretching up to the sky surrounded them. This is bizarre, the lieutenant thought. At daybreak, Safulko briefed him and showed him around the place. Bundermann wasn't happy about the location, about its complete and utter vulnerability. The others came in here to set up this PRT and then left, he thought, and now we're stuck holding this bag of s.h.i.t.

In the barracks that morning, Safulko kept looking at one of the new guys, 3-61 Cav Sergeant Josh Kirk. He knew him from somewhere. Safulko racked his brain trying to figure out where their paths might have crossed.

"Have I met you before?" Kirk asked him.

"I was thinking the exact same thing," Safulko said, somewhat relieved. "Were you in a different unit before this one?"

It turned out that Kirk had been Captain Nathan Springer's gunner in 1-91 Cav. In 2007, after Tom Bostick was killed, when 1-91 Cav was still beating back that ambush, he and Springer were stuck on a road near Bazgal and couldn't make it to Saret Koleh; they could only listen to it all unfold on the radio. Now, Safulko and Kirk realized that at the end of Kirk's last deployment, as 6-4 was transferring into Afghanistan, he had helped guide Safulko and his men around Checkpoint Delta at the Pakistan border. Kirk was back in Afghanistan pretty quickly, Safulko noted: he'd been ent.i.tled under Army "stabilization" rules to have twelve months at home. He had returned to Afghanistan before he was required to. "I wasn't going to let my soldiers come here without me," Kirk, a team leader, explained.

Kirk's return to Nuristan made Safulko think, later, of something said by the ancient Athenian general Pericles, in his funeral oration for the war dead:

Usually decision is the fruit of ignorance, hesitation of reflection. But the palm of courage will surely be adjudged most justly to those, who best know the difference between hardship and pleasure and yet are never tempted to shrink from danger.67

Sometimes courage is rooted in ignorance, as when men who don't know what they're about to face rise to the occasion. Joshua Kirk had ample knowledge about how dangerous it was in Nuristan, and yet he had hurried back. The palm of courage.

The arrival of their replacements made the soldiers of Blackfoot Troop even more eager to get home. Sergeant Shane Scherer was chief among them; he was scheduled to get married in about a month.

Dusk came earlier in the valley than in places outside the mountains' muscular shadows. Scherer and some others were milling about outside the communications shack, waiting for Specialist James Witherington to finish his phone call home so they, too, could alert their loved ones to their pending return. Scherer had just finished working out at the camp gym and was in a T-shirt and shorts, casually holding his rifle. He was a big, athletic guy who'd joined the Army two years before, sick of his suit-and-tie job as a parking supervisor for the San Diego convention center.

Specialist Andrew Miller hopped in the Humvee right near them for guard duty. Miller was one of the shorter men at the outpost; the other guys called him Combat Wombat. Dinner had just concluded, and Safulko walked by. He spotted Scherer on a bench, patiently awaiting his turn to use the phone so he could call his fiancee, who was in Texas setting up their apartment.

"Those of you leaving soon, I'd lay low," Safulko said to the group waiting for the phone.

"I'm only going to be out here a minute," Scherer replied. "I'm just calling home."

Scherer understood Safulko's concern. His first reaction upon his arrival at Camp Keating had been disbelief. He, too, had been incredulous that the Army could have established a base at the bottom of a ravine. He'd also felt a nagging worry that there weren't nearly enough troops there, that if a serious enough a.s.sault was ever mounted against Camp Keating, the troops wouldn't be able to fend off the enemy before air support arrived. Scherer had asked about it and was told that the guys from the 10th Mountain Division had been there before them, and nothing bad had happened to them them. The way the military was set up, Scherer figured, once you got an answer, you weren't supposed to keep pushing. And after a while, he got used to being in the fishbowl.

Safulko turned to head back to the barracks. He'd taken three steps when he heard an explosion and the harsh, shredding sound of a B10 recoilless rifle round tearing through Miller's Humvee.

The B10 is an immense piece of machinery, an obsolete Soviet-era weapon usually carried on the back of a truck. The ordnance from a B10 was designed to destroy tanks; in this case, it sliced through Miller's Humvee like a cold knife through warm b.u.t.ter, just missing his legs, exploding on the ground near the men who were waiting for the phone, spraying molten copper everywhere. Everyone nearby was knocked down, and a number of troops were hit by the shrapnel-from Miller in the turret of the Humvee to Safulko on the ground to Witherington in the comms shed-but no one was hurt more seriously than Scherer, in the back of whose head a hunk of that hot copper landed and stuck, penetrating into his brain right behind his right ear. His right arm was nearly severed.

The physician's a.s.sistant for the incoming 3-61 Cav, Captain Chris Cordova, was in the aid station, chatting with one of his medics, Staff Sergeant Shane Courville, and the outgoing docs, Lieutenant Colonel Rob Burnett (who had replaced Brewer some months before) and George Shreffler. Cordova and Courville had been at the outpost for scarcely half a day. The explosion was followed by PKM machine-gun fire. Don Couch and First Sergeant Howard Johnson carried Scherer into the aid station; Couch was gripping tightly above Scherer's arm to try to stanch the bleeding. Scherer was conscious and kept trying to curl up into the fetal position.

Cordova examined the sergeant's head wound first. He had an inch-deep hole in the back of his skull.

"What happened to me?" Scherer said. "My head f.u.c.king hurts."

After examining all of Scherer's other injuries, Cordova decided he needed to focus on stopping the bleeding from his head. Wounds in other parts of the body can be treated with pressure and tourniquets, but-as Cordova knew-that can't be done with vessels right outside the brain. The physician's a.s.sistant grabbed some combat gauze, put it over the hole, and prayed to G.o.d the clotting agent would make the bleeding stop. Thankfully, it did.

Cordova now needed to check Scherer's neurological status. The pupil in his right eye was dilated; pressure from inside his skull was building up and preventing the eye from functioning properly. His breathing was fast and shallow. He had significant brain trauma and, to judge from the fact that the muscles in his arms were locking up, significant neurological damage as well.

Cordova was told that the medevac was going to take at least forty-five minutes to get to them.

This is going to be a long year, he thought.

BOOK THREE

Enemy in the Wire: The End of Combat Outpost Keating

ROLL CALL

International Security a.s.sistance Force (ISAF) MayOctober 2009.

At International Security a.s.sistance Force (ISAF) Headquarters, Kabul: General Stanley McChrystal, Commander, ISAF At Jalalabad Airfield, Nangarhar Province: Colonel Randy George, Task Force Mountain Warrior / 4th Brigade Combat Team (BCT), 4th Infantry Division At Forward Operating Base Naray, Kunar Province: Lieutenant Colonel Brad Brown, Squadron Commander, 3-61 Cavalry Squadron ("3-61 Cav"), 4th BCT, 4th Infantry Division At Combat Outpost Keating and Observation Post Fritsche, Nuristan Province: Black Knight Troop, 3-61 Cav, 4th BCT, 4th Infantry Division Captain Melvin Porter, outgoing Commander Captain Stoney Portis, incoming Commander Lieutenant Robert Hull, Executive Officer First Sergeant Ronald Burton Captain Chris Cordova, outpost medical officer Red Platoon Lieutenant Andrew Bundermann, Leader Sergeant Justin Gallegos, Team Leader Sergeant Josh Hardt, Team Leader Sergeant Josh Kirk, Team Leader Sergeant Brad Larson, Team Leader Staff Sergeant Clint Romesha, Senior Scout Specialist Stephan Mace, scout Specialist Zach Koppes, scout Specialist Tom Rasmussen, scout Private First Cla.s.s Chris Jones, scout White Platoon Lieutenant Jordan Bellamy, Leader Specialist Keith Stickney, mortarman Blue Platoon, "The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds"

Lieutenant Ben Salentine, Leader Sergeant First Cla.s.s Jonathan Hill Staff Sergeant Kirk Birchfield Sergeant John Francis, Team Leader Sergeant Eric Harder, Team Leader Specialist Ty Carter, scout Specialist Ed Faulkner, Jr., scout Specialist Chris Griffin, scout Specialist Michael Scusa, scout Mortar Section Sergeant First Cla.s.s John Stephen Breeding, Jr.

Specialist Dan Rodriguez, mortarman Private First Cla.s.s Kevin Thomson, mortarman Latvian Trainers First Sergeant Janis Lakis Corporal Martins Dabolins

CHAPTER 26

The General's Competing Considerations

The Greek philosopher Herac.l.i.tus once wrote, "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river, and he is not the same man."

Sergeant Joshua Kirk was stepping again into Nuristan, and it was clear that neither the U.S. Army nor the local populace was the same. Kirk-strapping and strong, with a booming voice and an intimidating self-confidence-had been in Nuristan from 2007 through 2008, when 1-91 Cav was making progress with the locals, particularly in Kamdesh District. Stationed in Kamdesh District once again in 2009, he wrote to friends from his earlier deployment that this was a different world. The security situation had deteriorated significantly since 2007, and the leaders of Bravo Troop from 3-61 Cav-also called Black Knight Troop-did almost no counterinsurgency work, he said. They held only a few shuras, and except for local security patrols, the troops seldom strayed outside the wire. Maybe once or twice a week, the entire troop would stay awake all night to manage the resupply flights from Forward Operating Base Bostick, with one platoon securing the Camp Keating landing zone and the other standing guard and grabbing the supplies. (The third platoon, Blue Platoon-whose men called themselves the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds-was up at Observation Post Fritsche.) Occasionally, a platoon would head into the local hamlet of Urmul or go out on a short patrol around OP Fritsche, but the commander of Combat Outpost Keating, Captain Melvin Porter, told his men that there weren't enough of them to safely explore the surrounding area, so patrols generally inspected only historical ambush points. The thirty-seven-year-old Porter struck many of the departing leaders of Blackfoot Troop as being burnt out. He'd already done two tours in Iraq and had seen a fair share of action and death while there. Even back in the States, Porter had seemed spent, at least to his immediate chain of command and those who served under him. Before the unit deployed to Afghanistan, as his lieutenants were running field exercises to prepare for missions, Porter had appeared irritated when they expressed a desire for him to lead them, to give them orders. The three platoon leaders-Lieutenant Andrew Bundermann, twenty-four, of Red Platoon, Lieutenant Jordan Bellamy, twenty-five, of White Platoon, and Ben Salentine, twenty-seven, of Blue Platoon-were so concerned about Porter's ability to command that they resolved to stick together and confide any worries they might have to one another. If Porter wouldn't lead the men of 3-61 Cav, then, if push came to shove, one-or all-of them would.

Lieutenant Colonel Brad Brown was also concerned. That Porter didn't seem to get along with his lieutenants-not an uncommon complaint-didn't bother him; the issue was that the captain just didn't appear to be mentally up for another tour as a commander in a war zone. Porter had been considered a good commander in Iraq, but to Brown he now seemed, well, tired. But when Brown brought up the subject with his boss, Colonel Randy George, they realized they didn't have a lot of options: they were already short-staffed when it came to troop commanders, and replacing an even weaker captain in their battalion was a higher priority. There were two captains who could have replaced Porter, but one had a foot injury and was physically limited, while the other was not confident in his tactical ability to take over the position. Brown and George decided that they would send Porter to Afghanistan to command Combat Outpost Keating, and then replace him after ninety days with an up-and-comer named Stoney Portis. Porter had had a good track record in Iraq; Brown knew he was exhausted-they were all exhausted-but he had faith that the captain could keep it together for three months.

Brown had a number of discussions with Porter himself about this plan. This wasn't unusual; company-level commands were routinely changed during deployments, particularly once they pa.s.sed the two-year mark in that demanding job. Porter had mixed feelings-he was reluctant to give up command, even though he was worn out and ready to move on to another challenge. But orders were orders-though these were ones that Brown would ultimately regret having given.

There was no question that the enemy had been growing more effective: 2008 was the most dangerous year in Afghanistan since the war began, with the frequency of attacks up by as much as 60 percent in some areas. Confronted by this threat, ISAF commander General David McKiernan hadn't demonstrated either the nimbleness or the creativity they needed, in the view of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, and Central Command's General David Petraeus.

As Gates saw it, if the U.S. government was going to surge forces in Afghanistan and ask more young men and women to put their lives on the line, the least he could do was put the very best leadership in charge. And with McKiernan continuing as ISAF commander, Gates didn't feel he could look a soldier's anxious mother in the eye and tell her he'd done just that. The best men he had, Gates thought, were Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal and Major General David Rodriguez, who were both now at the Pentagon after having served abroad.

While McKiernan, Gates thought, was old-school Army, a throwback to the first Gulf War, McChrystal was a more innovative, progressive "New Army" type. Like Petraeus, he was regarded as a "thinking man's soldier," someone who had the flexibility to use all the tools at his disposal, including development and diplomacy. The need for such efforts went well beyond the borders of Afghanistan: media and political dynamics were critical in a long war, as were strong relationships with policymakers in Washington, D.C.

On May 6, 2009, Gates arrived in Afghanistan. He had many public tasks to accomplish, among them visiting surgical facilities on the front lines in Helmand Province and hearing firsthand from troops about the impact of the mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles he'd sent there to help curtail American deaths and injuries caused by IEDs.

Gates also had one private mission: to ask General McKiernan to retire early. But McKiernan wouldn't do it. "You're going to have to fire me," he said. So Gates did.

On May 11, back at the Pentagon, Gates spoke at a hastily convened press conference, talking about President Obama's decision to draw down the war in Iraq and instead focus on Afghanistan, where, the defense secretary declared, "we must do better." Gates insisted that McKiernan had done nothing wrong; it was just that "a fresh approach, a fresh look in the context of the new strategy, probably was in our best interest." Added Mullen, "I just didn't think that we could wait until 2010"-when McKiernan's rotation was scheduled to end-to make the change. Gates said he would recommend to President Obama that McKiernan be replaced by McChrystal, the former commander of Joint Special Operations Command and currently serving as director of the Joint Staff-the three-star officer who a.s.sists the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In addition to having supervised some highly successful commando special operations in Iraq-including the capture of Saddam Hussein and the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq-McChrystal was considered by some of his colleagues to be a shrewd and canny political operator. Some of his contemporaries thought he was manipulative, and some officers from conventional forces viewed him as being typical of the "unaccountable" Special Forces ilk, not used to playing nice with other branches of the military, accustomed solely to getting his own way. Others saw him as brilliant. The president deferred to Gates.

President Obama had already ordered twenty-one thousand more troops to Afghanistan, fulfilling a campaign promise and bringing the total number of U.S. troops in that country to sixty-eight thousand. On June 2, during his Senate confirmation hearings, McChrystal suggested in his prepared remarks that President Obama might need to send even more. He was then asked by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina if he would feel "constrained at all" about asking for even more troops if he thought them necessary.

"Sir, I'm not on the job yet, so I-you know, I'm speculating on that," McChrystal said. "Yesterday, in a meeting, Admiral Mullen said that if I was confirmed to ask for what I need-almost quote, unquote. He looked me in the eye said that. So, I believe that if I have a requirement, I can look Mullen in the eye and tell him that's what I need."

"Do you think that's true of the administration also?" Graham inquired.

"Sir, I don't know," McChrystal replied. At the White House, the general's comments were perceived as an announcement to the world that he didn't know whether the president would support him if he needed more troops-and even a suggestion that the commander in chief might not want him to speak candidly about what he thought was necessary to succeed in Afghanistan. Senior White House officials believed that McChrystal-and, they a.s.sumed, the Pentagon-were trying to roll them, putting the president in an untenable situation wherein he would have no defensible way to refuse the military when it publicly requested more troops.

McChrystal would later say that his remarks were not aimed at the White House in any way, that he had intended merely to convey that he was trying to stay in his own lane and answer only to his chain of command-in this case, Gates and Mullen.

The broader view from the Pentagon was more complex. From the beginning, generals thought, President Bush had not provided sufficient troops to do the job effectively in Afghanistan. As a result, Americans were dying, and the mission wasn't succeeding. As to the new president, the generals had been infuriated by a series of leaks, seemingly coming from Vice President Biden's office since March 2009, suggesting that the United States should actually start withdrawing withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, abandoning the counterinsurgency program and pursuing a strategy that was being called CT-plus-consisting of a smaller counterterrorism force focused primarily on taking out bad guys, with some training of Afghan security forces but otherwise not much of an emphasis on nation building. Right or wrong, the generals considered the proposals that were being fed to reporters ill informed and counterproductive. In particular, this notion that their troops could conduct counterterrorist strikes against the enemy without enough troops on the ground to win the support of the Afghan people, and thus help gather intelligence, stirred deep ire. So, yes, the generals were willing to put a little pressure on the suits in D.C. troops from Afghanistan, abandoning the counterinsurgency program and pursuing a strategy that was being called CT-plus-consisting of a smaller counterterrorism force focused primarily on taking out bad guys, with some training of Afghan security forces but otherwise not much of an emphasis on nation building. Right or wrong, the generals considered the proposals that were being fed to reporters ill informed and counterproductive. In particular, this notion that their troops could conduct counterterrorist strikes against the enemy without enough troops on the ground to win the support of the Afghan people, and thus help gather intelligence, stirred deep ire. So, yes, the generals were willing to put a little pressure on the suits in D.C.

Such behavior was predictable to senior officials inside the White House-it was common to the Pentagon/White House dynamic-but that didn't mean they were happy about it. President Obama's national security adviser, James Jones, called Gates to make it clear that the generals ought to back off. Jones, a retired Marine Corps general, had been brought in to the administration in part to serve as a liaison between the White House and the Pentagon. Gates a.s.sured him that the generals weren't trying to jam the president in any way; they were just being candid, he said.

On June 8, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell announced that Secretary Gates had asked McChrystal, should he be confirmed (as he indeed would be, on June 30), to "go over to Afghanistan to undertake a sixty-day review of the situation on the ground there," and to report on "what changes in the strategy should be made, and particularly from a personnel standpoint, from a manpower standpoint."

This review, too, became something of a controversy. McChrystal saw himself as approaching the task modestly. He would later insist that he hadn't gone in to Afghanistan thinking that more troops were needed; he said he was in fact initially inclined to believe that what was necessary was a new strategy and more talented officers, not more bodies. He attempted deference: to try to understand his brief, he scrutinized the president's campaign pledges and the remarks he had made upon sending in the new surge of troops. He knew there was concern in the White House over the direction of U.S. policy in Afghanistan, but he didn't think there was absolute clarity as to the president's concerns versus his goals.

In Kabul, on June 15, McChrystal was interviewed by the Washington Post Washington Post's Greg Jaffe, and he described in detail the broad a.s.sessment of the war that he was about to begin, suggesting that he wanted to focus troops on Afghan population centers and pull them from more remote areas such as the Korangal Valley. The general's informal sixty-day survey was rapidly morphing into something more significant-and more public. Besides doing boots-on-the-ground research, McChrystal invited a number of think-tank folks, such as the conservative Fred Kagan, one of Petraeus's advisers on the Iraq surge, to offer him advice; Kagan began publicly pushing for additional troops to be sent to Afghanistan.

The McChrystal report was much antic.i.p.ated and, when it was completed, made a momentous impression-which came as something of a surprise to the general himself, he would later say. A number of other a.s.sessments had already been done-by Central Command, by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and by the White House-and McChrystal's had started out as an informal evaluation of the situation. McChrystal didn't think it was the Washington Post Washington Post story or even the Pentagon-versusWhite House angle that created the hype so much as it was the way events just happened to play out: as he arrived in Kabul, the United States' position in the war was deteriorating rapidly, so his report came to be seen as something of an emergency prescription for the illness. story or even the Pentagon-versusWhite House angle that created the hype so much as it was the way events just happened to play out: as he arrived in Kabul, the United States' position in the war was deteriorating rapidly, so his report came to be seen as something of an emergency prescription for the illness.

Storm clouds began forming when Jaffe's colleague Bob Woodward, traveling with Jones in Afghanistan, reported on the front page of their newspaper that a conflict was brewing over troop levels, with the Pentagon pushing for more and the White House pushing back. An issue that President Obama thought he had temporarily put to rest with twenty-one thousand new troops and a completed a.s.sessment-finished weeks earlier by a team that included one of America's foremost experts on Al Qaeda-now seemed anything but settled. From the White House's point of view, McChrystal had managed to place himself in a position where he would be telling the president what he needed, and the world would see how this new, untested president would respond. While the sniping and suspicions and rhetorical missives fired within the newsprint of the Washington Post Washington Post might have seemed, to the men of 3-61 Cav, to be taking place in another dimension altogether, all of these machinations would have a tremendous impact on them. might have seemed, to the men of 3-61 Cav, to be taking place in another dimension altogether, all of these machinations would have a tremendous impact on them.

In early 2009, as Colonel George and Lieutenant Colonel Brown prepared to deploy to Afghanistan, they refined their plan to close Camp Keating and the other small outposts. Brown was committed to counterinsurgency, which he viewed as a process of creating a series of security bubbles at the local level-connecting Afghans in hamlets and villages to their government through security and economic opportunity-and then expanding those individual bubbles until they merged with others. But the security bubbles at Combat Outposts Keating and Lowell were isolated, and they were not expanding. George and Brown were convinced, in fact, that the various security bubbles in Nuristan were never going to "spread" and link up-there just weren't enough forces to make that happen, and the mountainous land in between was too easy for the enemy to control. Most of the communities in Nuristan Province were separated from one another and from the provincial and national governments by chasms of instability and Taliban violence.

Brown believed there were areas in the region where counterinsurgency was working-from Naray north to Barikot, for example. With more troops-the ones from the remote outposts they wanted to close-they could link the NarayBarikot security bubble to other security bubbles in the south of Kunar Province. His and George's realignment plan was all about this kind of focus: the idea was to stop spending scarce resources on things that weren't working and start reinforcing success.

Brown and George worried in particular about Combat Outpost Lowell, which they thought most vulnerable. Observation Post Mace, located near Gawardesh and manned by only twenty-four U.S. troops who shared s.p.a.ce with a dubious crew of ANA soldiers, was next on their list of concerns. Combat Outpost Keating ranked third.

So they would pull out. But how? And when? George pushed his staff to think hard about what the enemy would do if the United States did pull out. What groundwork would the Americans have to lay beforehand? What would be the most appropriate timeline for leaving? The team concluded that the withdrawal wouldn't greatly increase the overall flow of men and materials over the Pakistan border into Afghanistan, since the U.S. presence wasn't affecting that very much anyway. A withdrawal would have a moderate impact on the estimated two thousand residents of Kamdesh Village, some of whom-most likely those who had been working with the Americans-would relocate farther south to be closer to the remaining U.S. troops, at great expense to themselves. They antic.i.p.ated there might be a slight increase in the number of attacks against Forward Operating Base Bostick and a nearby CIA camp.

The whole team was aware that from the highest general to the lowliest private, members of the military were extremely reluctant to see any base that troops had fought for, that men had died for, shut down. Indeed, to some it was tantamount to surrender, and all the more so when the base bore the name of one of their brothers: Ben Keating, Jacob Lowell, Ryan Fritsche. But the doctrine of counterinsurgency made it fairly clear to George, Brown, and their team that there was no longer any good reason for Americans to be at those bases. No need for more fallen heroes, more names to honor.

The team presented a preliminary proposal to their commanders in February 2009, at division headquarters at Fort Bragg. George, along with other aides, met with Major General Curtis Scaparrotti and Brigadier General William Mayville, Jr., and laid down the framework for their realignment plans. To many attendees, Scaparrotti seemed lukewarm, but Mayville-the deputy commanding general for operations-was wholly in favor.

They agreed that they would try to close Camp Keating by July 6 or 7, 2009. The exit-or exfil, in military lingo, short for "exfiltration"would by necessity be by air: forty full helicopter loads over several weeks, rotated in and out, one after another, until everyone and everything was gone. Weapons, ammunition, batteries, fuel-these would go in the last six to ten loads.

Yet while Mayville continued to send George and his team positive feedback, as did others, the official go-ahead was never given. George could do nothing without the signoff of the commanding general of ISAF. The firing of McKiernan and subsequent appointment of McChrystal would make getting that approval more complicated.

Sergeant First Cla.s.s John Breeding, thirty-eight, from Amarillo, Texas, had been in the Army for twenty-one years and had witnessed terrible things in that time-all of them in the previous five years. In September 2004, he'd been in Ramadi, Iraq, for only three days when the Humvee he was in was blown up by an IED. Three pieces of shrapnel went through his calf, though luckily none of them hit bone. He was laid up for eight weeks, at the end of which, with his wounds bandaged up and gauze in the holes, he took his antibiotics and painkillers and went back to work. Then, in March 2005, during a clearance operation outside Ramadi, one of his company's scout trucks got hit by an IED that had been planted underground. All four guys on the truck were killed.68 A soldier in Breeding's unit later found one of the victim's heads in a nearby pond. A soldier in Breeding's unit later found one of the victim's heads in a nearby pond.

You couldn't train for that kind of thing, and you couldn't know how you'd handle it until you lived it, Breeding believed. The more carnage he witnessed, the more he felt himself becoming numb to it all.

Breeding was the platoon sergeant for Black Knight Troop's mortar team, and like everyone else in the company, he had been flown to Combat Outpost Keating in darkest night. At first light the next morning, he opened the barracks door and couldn't believe what he was seeing: there was nothing but high ground surrounding the base. Being at the bottom of a fishbowl meant the guns would be less effective-instead of being able to reach a distance of 7,800 yards, they'd fire only up to about 5,500 yards. Whoever was in charge of putting the base here is the dumbest officer in the world, Breeding thought. And lo and behold, within ten minutes of his walking up to the mortar pit, the men of Black Knight Troop were engaged in their first enemy contact.

That was May 27. Throughout that summer, some weeks they'd been attacked once or twice, other weeks every day, and sometimes even twice daily. To be sure, the attacks were all fairly minor ones: Breeding suspected that the enemy was probing, seeing how the Americans would react.

His team had a concrete bunker in the mortar pit with two bunk beds, and that was where they lived, a tight group made up of Breeding, Private First Cla.s.s Kevin Thomson, and Specialist Daniel Rodriguez. Breeding also had four more men and 120- and 60-millimeter mortars up the mountain at Observation Post Fritsche.

Breeding had served with Rodriguez in Iraq and considered him to be an outstanding soldier. He didn't know much about Thomson, just that he seemed like a nice kid from Nevada, a hard worker who hadn't had an easy life. A substantial six foot four, Thomson had been overweight when he first tried to enlist; the recruiter told him he had to lose a hundred pounds before the Army would take him. So that was what Thomson did, running and panting until he weighed just under two hundred pounds-determined to make something of himself, to prove himself to the ne'er-do-well father who had abandoned him when he was a child, a local policeman who'd impregnated three women in town virtually simultaneously.