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No matter how many times they played it over afterward, the soldiers all agreed that the farmers had it coming. Even with razor wire across the road, four Bradley fighting vehicles, and 12 soldiers leveling M-16s and M-4s, their dump truck kept rolling toward the checkpoint. Even with Sergeant George Lewis waving it down. Even with a first, then a second warning shot.
So when the truck was maybe 100 feet away and still approaching, Red Platoon opened up. Six or seven men shot a continuous M-16 volley of warning shots into the air for three or four seconds, then some fired at the truck, and Lewis launched a .203 grenade at the right front tire. "Now they got the message," said Sergeant Robert Jones. The truck stopped, the driver slammed into reverse and, attempting a wild U-turn, careered into a ditch. The doors on both sides popped open, and three men leaped out and sprinted away.
Charlie Rock Company's First Sergeant William Mitchell and Red Platoon gingerly approached the cab. Out of that hail of fire, a single shot had shattered the bottom of the windshield, and another had passed through the passenger window. The engine was still running. A soldier rounded the open door and jumped back. "We got a KIA," he shouted, meaning killed in action. "How do you know he's KIA?" Mitchell asked. "Well, look at him," said the soldier.
The Iraqi man was lying across the cab with his feet hanging out the passenger-side door, his head snapped back, a diamond-shaped entry wound just below his right eye; the fourth finger on his right hand had been shot off, and there was a large patch of blood under his right arm. Judging from the empty truck and the bundles of onions and garlic in the nearby fields, the soldiers figured he was a farmer collecting vegetables to sell in Karbala, the Shi'ite city on the horizon that the checkpoint was meant to seal off.
Private First Class Damon Young, a good-looking 25-year-old from Idaho, said he was sure it was his round that hit the windshield. "That was me then," he said. "I probably killed him." Lewis asked, to no one in particular, "Why do they make you do that? They don't want to f___ing listen, goddammit." Young paused. "It's just stupid to have to shoot people who are not armed," he said. "This language barrier really sucks."
America promises freedom for the Iraqi people, but the price so far has been a regrettable number of civilian casualties--the best guess is 600 dead and 4,500 injured--and a rapidly expanding gulf of mistrust between civilians and U.S. forces on the ground. Language is just the first problem--there's not a single frontline soldier outside the special forces who speaks Arabic. "You try signing 'I give you freedom and democracy within the paramount parameters of my own security,'" sighed a lieutenant at a checkpoint last week.