A US tank commander tells Lara Marlowe, in Baghdad, why he has little respect for the Iraqi people
Ever since the US Secretary of Defence announced last week that he might extend the tour of duty of US soldiers in Iraq, military press officers have insisted that nothing was official.
So yesterday I struck up a conversation with Staff Sgt Sean Fox (35) in front of the Palestine Hotel.
"I got my extension three days ago," Sgt Fox said. On a US base in Germany, his wife found out two days before he did, through a "Family Readiness Group".
Although the Pentagon has still made no formal announcement, virtually all of the 25,000-strong First Armoured Division have been ordered to stay for another four months, after spending a full year here.
Sgt Fox felt "mad" at the prospect. "But I understand," he said. "The shit's getting pretty hot and heavy right now. They can't take out the guys that know the streets and leave our replacements out there flapping."
The outbreak of fighting across Iraq a week ago was so sudden that some of the departing US troops were already in Kuwait, waiting for their flights to Germany, when they were ordered to turn around.
US forces were originally meant to stay only six months in Iraq, so this is the second time they've been extended.
The first five months of Sgt Fox's deployment in Baghdad were relatively peaceful. Then he witnessed the car-bombing of the Baghdad Hotel - the CIA's headquarters here - on October 19th. Six guards from the paramilitary Iraqi FPS, trained by the Americans, shot the car-bomber before he reached his target. They were killed, but the hotel was saved.
The following month, Sgt Fox's unit was called to the Adhamiya neighbourhood, the main stronghold of Saddam Hussein supporters in Baghdad.
"It was a pro-Saddam rally. They were throwing rocks at us. We turned our tanks around and turned the exhaust on. It comes out at 975 degrees; they all ran away," he recalls.
But in early December the tanks were called back to Adhamiya. This time, the protesters were throwing hand grenades and firing rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). "We shot 7.62 mm and 50 calibre heavy machineguns," he recalls. "We killed about 15 of them. There were a lot of wounded."
Sgt Fox fought in the 1991 Gulf War. "My tank killed tanks, but I didn't see any bodies before."
So how did it feel to see the dead around him in Adhamiya?
"You don't feel bad at all, because they were shooting at us," he says. He keeps a videotape of the battle, which he promised to show to Sgt Reginald Parham, the soldier from the First Cavalry Division who is set to replace him as tank commander.
Adhamiya is still a trouble spot. "We're making main gun runs every day now," Sgt Fox said, meaning that the M1 Abrams tanks are firing 120 mm artillery shells. "We're going down every day and settling the people," he explained.
The sergeant has been a tank commander for seven years and feels invulnerable inside the Abrams.
"They don't have anything that could penetrate it. We've been hit with RPGs- it's just a jolt. They're not very good."
Sgt Fox has painted the name blitzkrieg, the Nazi term for military attacks in the second World War, on the tank's gun barrel.
"It's a good name, powerful. It means lightning war," he says.
Sgt Fox, who says he will vote for George Bush next November, has a low opinion of the Iraqis he came to save a year ago.
"My impression of Iraqis is that they're ungrateful. They're biting the hand that feeds them. They smile at you, and they shoot you in the back. I don't trust one of them," he says.