The doctors rolled LTC Kurilla and the terrorist into OR and our surgeons operated on both at the same time. The terrorist turned out to be one Khalid Jasim Nohe, who had first been captured by US forces (2-8 FA) on 21 December, the same day a large bomb exploded in the dining facility on this base and killed 22 people.
That December day, Khalid Jasim Nohe and two compatriots tried to evade US soldiers from 2-8 FA, but the soldiers managed to stop the fleeing car. Then one of the suspects tried to wrestle a weapon from a soldier before all three were detained. They were armed with a sniper rifle, an AK, pistols, a silencer, explosives and other weapons, and had in their possession photographs of US bases, including a map of this base.
That was in December.
About two weeks ago, word came that Nohe’s case had been dismissed by a judge on 7 August. The Coalition was livid. According to American officers, solid cases are continually dismissed without apparent cause. Whatever the reason, the result was that less than two weeks after his release from Abu Ghraib, Nohe was back in Mosul shooting at American soldiers.
LTC Kurilla repeatedly told me of–and I repeatedly wrote about–terrorists who get released only to cause more trouble. Kurilla talked about it almost daily. Apparently, the vigor of his protests had made him an opponent of some in the Army’s Detention Facilities chain of command, but had otherwise not changed the policy. And now Kurilla lay shot and in surgery in the same operating room with one of the catch-and-release-terrorists he and other soldiers had been warning everyone about.

Later, Yon and the company chaplain and two surgeons discussed the ethics of war and why they were fighting.

Over lunch with Chaplain Wilson and our two battalion surgeons, Major Brown and Captain Warr, there was much discussion about the “ethics” of war, and contention about why we afford top-notch medical treatment to terrorists. The treatment terrorists get here is better and more expensive than what many Americans or Europeans can get.
“That’s the difference between the terrorists and us,” Chaplain Wilson kept saying. “Don’t you understand? That’s the difference.”

I encourage everyone to read and link to Yon’s blog. Also, readers who enjoy his work and want to support Michael’s mission in Iraq, can make a contribution using the following PayPal link.

Donations can also be sent to:
Michael Yon
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Most of the focus on the war effort is now two-fold: force protection and training the Iraqis to run their own country after decades of not knowing how. Let’s not forget that it took nearly a decade of ruinous economics and struggle for the US to emerge as a coherent entity after the Revolution: in the MTV generation, we apparently don’t think that amount of time to create a country is good enough. The US forces are actively engaged every day in training Iraqi military leaders and soldiers, recruiting and training police officers and security personnel and putting together a government that does not know itself what it wants to be or how it wants to organize. It takes time, money and the sacrifice of good men (and women) who gut it out, suck it up, make sacrifices both personal and professional in support of what the nation and the nation’s leaders have asked us in the military to accomplish.

This is a point that seems to have been mostly ignored by people who are in favour of a quick pullout. It’s dangerous to believe you have the power to jump start a nation’s government after decades of tyranny and oppression. It’s more dangerous to believe that the process will be quick. And it’s a fallacy to ignore the need for sacrifice, which is why the oft-repeated anti-war strain “No blood for oil” rang so falsely. It set up a strawman that deliberately denied the more obvious and noble purpose of troop involvement and sacrifice in favour of an easy slogan to marshall the opposition into a unified front, regardless of the content and validity of their arguments.
James also notes that the Iraqi people are themselves ultimately responsible for learning how to recreate a democratic government (before the Baathists coups, Iraq was a more free and liberal country than it is now), but that it will take action and dedication, as well as national will for any real change to be effected. This is a sentiment I first read in Steven Vincent’s In the Red Zone, and it strikes me as even more salient the further into the “occupation” we continue.
It remains to be seen what the outcome of Iraq will be. I have hope that men and women like my brother and the SEALs and the many troops stationed and fighting there can make the kind of difference that is needed.

“It’s just like prison, but I got a gun. You can get out of Leavenworth. You can’t get out of dead.” –Sgt. Brian Bublitz

It seems that Afghanistan is a hard place to live, much less be stationed. I trust our presence there is bringing a better way of life for the people there.