In mid-May, 2007, days before I arrived, the Iraqi Army and Police had conducted a “Combined Medical Exercise” in the village of Falahat, wherein Iraqi doctors saw about 200 villagers. About two days after that, the Iraqi Police opened a police station at the Falahat train station. That was just about the same time I was driving out to stay with a small team of Marines who were assigned as “MiTT 8″. (Military Training Team 8.) MiTTs are familiar territory for me; this is a vintage Special Forces concept used the world ’round. Marines and Soldiers are far outnumbered by Iraqi forces in many areas around Iraq. Many people have protested this, saying the teams could be kidnapped or killed. This is true. But this is war, and it’s a chance we need to take. In fact, some Soldiers had just been kidnapped and were missing in action in another province. (They had been taken in combat, not as part of a MiTT.) The men of MiTT 8 are living along with their Iraqi protégées in filthy shipping containers on a highway. Several months ago they were attacked by a car bomb. But at about 0900, while I was traveling to their location with Marines in a Humvee (with sparkling glass) some Falahat villagers went to the new police station to report the presence of a culprit they knew to emplace bombs on the road. It happened that quickly.

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