U.S. Army Specialst Robenson Jean Searches Iraqi after IED Attack
U.S Army Specialst Robenson Jean searches an Iraqi taxi driver, who had been sitting in his cab reading the Koran, after an IED was detonated against Florida Army National Guardsmen patrolling River Road, in Ar Ramadi, Iraq. The soldiers believed someone at the local hospital (seen in the background of this image), which offered a line of sight to the improvised explosive device, had triggered the explosion. No one was injured in the attack.
Capt. Joseph T. Lyon, company commander for the troops who’d been targeted, ordered an immediate raid on the hospital. The soldiers never discovered who’d triggered the bomb, but Lyon, in retaliation, stationed snipers on the roof of the hospital at night, for the next week or so (to watch for Iraqis planting IEDs on River Road, which ran alongside Sadaam Hospital). The Iraqis, of course, knew the snipers were there, given that the soldiers had to pass the hospital’s registration desk to ride the elevator up to the roof.
Consequently, the strategy failed (except in the sense that Lyon demonstrated he could post soldiers on the roof if he wished). Random searches of vehicles along River Road netted one surprising ‘culprit’: the Ar Ramadi chief of police was caught driving with three assault rifles in his car.
The only clear line of sight is from the rear façade of Sadaam Hospital, which the Humvee had just passed when the earth erupted. At least 100 windows face River Road, and everyone imagines that the shooter is watching us from one of them. As a body, we move on the hospital.
We crowd into the lobby, rifles leveled, demanding entry. The doctors are incensed. Lyon arrives, explains to the administrator that the shooter had to be watching River Road from a room inside the hospital or on the roof; therefore the soldiers will conduct a search. The doctors argue they do not want the hospital searched, they are busy treating patients. Lyon counters that the shooter must be found. He calls for reinforcements. Outside, Johns is scowling at two Iraqi Policemen, who are laughing to themselves in the parking lot. When they see the look on his face, they fall silent, put their hands in their pockets and walk to the road, trying to look useful and concerned. Around the parking lot, soldiers shake down cab drivers and hospital visitors, searching for the detonator. — From Night of a Thousand Stars and Other Portraits of Iraq