[...] On 29 June, American and Iraqi soldiers were again fighting side-by-side as soldiers from Charley Company 1-12 CAV--led by Captain Clayton Combs--and Iraqi soldiers from the 5th IA, closed in on a village on the outskirts of Baqubah. The village had the apparent misfortune of being located near a main road--about 3.5 miles from FOB Warhorse--that al Qaeda liked to bomb. Al Qaeda had taken over the village. As Iraqi and American soldiers moved in, they came under light contact; but the bombs planted in the roads (and maybe in the houses) were the real threat.

The firefight progressed. American missiles were fired. The enemy might have been trying to bait Iraqi and American soldiers into ambush, but it did not work. The village was riddled with bombs, some of them large enough to destroy a tank. One by one, experts destroyed the bombs, leaving small and large craters in the unpaved roads.

The village was abandoned. All the people were gone. But where?

... I told the Iraqi commander, Captain Baker, that it was important that Americans see this; he took me around the graves and showed more than I wanted to see. He said the people had been murdered by al Qaeda. I made video of him speaking, and of the horrible scene. The heat and stench were crushingly oppressive and broken only by the sounds of shovels as Iraqi soldiers kept digging.

... There were bodies of men, women and children. Al Qaeda slaughters families everywhere: as these graves were being unearthed, more bombs were found in London.

... Stashed in shallow graves. The stench felt like punches in the stomach.

... Hot, hard work and as it progressed, the stench got worse and worse. An Iraqi soldier carefully sprinkled water on the corpses.

... Iraqi soldiers were barely talking. All had grim looks and everybody seemed to want to be a million miles away.

... al Qaeda had cut the heads off the children. Had al Qaeda murdered the children in front of their parents? Maybe it had been the other way around: maybe they had murdered the parents in front of the children. Maybe they had forced the father to dig the graves of his children.

... we stood around the stinking graves of people who had gotten a close-up view of al Qaeda-style justice. The villagers' bodies were rotting in the heat before us.

... The blade of the shovel struck more fingers, and the Iraqi soldiers stopped and pointed to the fingers so I could film them. But I had seen enough and pulled back into the palm groves.

Cross posted from Hyscience