In Iran, millions of protesters have taken to the streets to protest the repressive religious regime that has ruled the country for more than four decades. The response of the government, led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been swift and brutal, with thousands of protesters reportedly killed. All over the world, onlookers are cheering the courage of the Iranian people who are risking their lives to fight for their freedom. In a video posted on X, Reza Pahlavi, the son of the shah who led the country for 38 years until he was ousted by the current regime in 1979, vowed, “We will completely bring the Islamic Republic and its worn-out, fragile apparatus of repression to its knees.” In a Tuesday post on Truth Social, President Donald Trump encouraged the Iranian people to “KEEP PROTESTING—TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!” But for some Christians, the Iranian protests are more than just a popular uprising; they are the fulfillment of ancient Biblical prophecies that foretell the second coming of the Messiah. Last June, shortly after the United States bombed Iran, I wrote about the US evangelicals who were cheering that move: > Broadly speaking—though there are certainly exceptions—many of the most ardent > supporters of Trump’s decision to bomb Iran identify as Christian Zionists, a > group that believes that Israel and the Jewish people will play a key role in > bringing about the second coming of the Messiah. As Christians, they are > called to hasten this scenario, says Matthew Taylor, a senior scholar at the > Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore and author > of The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening > Our Democracy. “The mission, so to speak, is to get the Jews back to Israel > and to establish themselves within Israel,” he says. “Then you fulfill the > preconditions, or one of the preconditions, for the second coming.” The dark side of this theology, Taylor added, is that in this version of the end times, once the Messiah comes, the Jews will either convert to Christianity or perish. Ben Lorber, a senior research associate with the far-right monitoring group Political Research Associates, explained via email this week that for Christian Zionists, Iran is “an embodiment of the satanic force of fundamentalist Islam, arrayed in a ‘clash of civilizations’ against the Judeo-Christian West, represented by America and Israel.” The uprising, therefore, is a good thing—but not only because of liberation from an oppressive regime. “An apocalyptic war between these players is often seen as a precondition and sure sign of the End Times,” and by extension, the second coming. Christian Zionists agree on those broad strokes, but they’re a little fuzzier on the details—there is some disagreement as to exactly what part of the Bible predicts the current geopolitical situation. Some believe that God is using President Trump to protect Israel from Iran. As I wrote in June:   > Hours before news of the bombing broke, Lance Wallnau, an influential > [charismatic Christian] leader with robust ties to the Trump > administration—last year, he hosted a Pennsylvania campaign event for JD > Vance—warned his 129,000 followers on X, “Satan would love to crush Israel, > humiliate the United States, destroy President Trump’s hope of recovery for > America, and plunge the world into war.” But then he reassured them: “That’s > not going to happen. Why? I was reminded again just a few moments ago what the > Lord told me about Donald Trump in 2015.” He explained that he had received a > message from God that Trump was a “modern-day Cyrus,” an Old Testament Persian > king whom God used to free the Jews, his chosen people. In a video posted two > days after the bombing, Wallnau concluded that the prophecy was coming true. > “Jesus is coming back, and I believe this is all part of him setting the stage > for his return,” he said. For other evangelicals, current events echo the Old Testament book of Daniel, in which Michael, Israel’s guardian angel, battles a demon named the Prince of Persia. After a long period of suffering and much turmoil, God ultimately wins. Others see yet another Bible story playing out—but with the same outcome. Last week, the Christian Zionist news site Israel365 News ran a story laying out the details of the prophecy. This particular prophecy can be found in the book of Jeremiah, in which God promises to wipe out the brutal military forces in the Iranian city of Elam before restoring order there. Israel365’s article focuses on Marziyeh Amirizadeh, an Iranian Christian who fled to the United States when she was imprisoned and sentenced to death for her conversion. In it, she describes a 2009 dream she had when she was in prison. “God said that He is giving a chance to these people to repent, and if they do not, He will destroy them all,” she explains. And now, with the protests, “God’s justice against the evil rulers of Iran has already started, and he will destroy them all to restore his kingdom through Jesus.” “The Bible can open the eyes of Iranians to the truth,” she adds. “Therefore, inviting Iranians to Christianity is very important because the majority of Iranians have turned their back on Islam and do not want to be Muslims anymore.” > “Inviting Iranians to Christianity is very important because the majority of > Iranians have turned their back on Islam and do not want to be Muslims > anymore.” Her remarks refer to widespread claims that Muslims in Iran are converting to Islam in droves. In an article last year, for example, the Christian Broadcasting Network reported that “millions” of Iranian Muslims had recently converted to Christianity and that most of the country’s mosques had closed as a result. The claims of the extent of the conversions are impossible to verify—there is scant hard evidence of a dramatic uptick in them. Practicing Christianity is illegal in Iran, and converts can face the death penalty. But believers remain convinced that the uprising is part of a cosmic plan. Sean Feucht, a Christian nationalist musician who organizes prayer rallies at state capital buildings, told his 205,000 followers on X last week, “While they build mosques across Texas, they are burning them down in Iran!” He added a lion emoji, which some evangelical Christians use to symbolize Jesus. In a blog post on Tuesday, Colorado evangelist Dutch Sheets, a key figure in the campaign to overturn the 2020 election and the lead-up to January 6, offered a prayer asking God to free the Iranian people “from Iran’s tyrannical government and the evil principality that controls it,” adding a plea for “an earth-shaking revival.”  Tim Ballard, who has been accused of sexual misconduct and is the leader of an anti-trafficking group, posted to his 166,000 followers earlier this month, “Jesus is also making a move in Iran.” Over the last few days, Trad West, an anonymous account on X with 430,000 followers, has repeatedly posted “Iran will be Christian.” As the protests wear on, the government’s retaliation is intensifying. With information on the crackdown tightly controlled by the regime, and strictly curtailed citizen access to the internet, the precise death toll so far is unclear. According to reporting from CBS, the UK government estimates that 2,000 protesters have been killed, while some activists believe the total could be as much as 10 times that figure.      “Revolution is inevitable in Iran,” Feucht, the Christian musician, said in another tweet. “It’s prophecy, and it is going to happen.”

The US attack on Venezuela relies on the same deception that justified the war in Iraq: the idea of self-financing wars with oil. President Trump said Saturday that the US will run Venezuela following the capture of Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. “It won’t cost us anything because the money coming out of the ground is very substantial,” he said at a Saturday press conference at Mar-a-Lago following news of the US attack. But we’ve been down this road before. “There’s a lot of money to pay for this. It doesn’t have to be US taxpayer money,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz claimed about Iraq in March 2003, the same month as the US invasion. “We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.” He said oil revenues could bring $50-100 billion over the first years of the invasion. That wasn’t the case, and just like what would happen in Iraq, the military campaign in Venezuela is likely to have steep costs. On Saturday, General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described the operation to capture Maduro and Flores using more than 150 aircraft from 20 different bases. Members of law enforcement were involved in the extraction force, and according to Trump, ran through scenarios in a replica building of Maduro’s safe house. At the Saturday press conference, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the raid lasted less than 30 minutes—a smooth process following months of planning and preparation.  But, according to what a senior Venezuelan official told the New York Times, at least 80 people, including civilians and military personnel, were killed. The Times also reported that about half a dozen US soldiers were injured. Photos show massive damage from bombings in Venezuela’s capital of Caracas. Removing Maduro from power could have been achieved by taking what then-vice president, and now-acting president Delcy Rodríguez and other senior Venezuelan government officials offered to the US as a “more acceptable” version to Maduro’s administration last year. According to an October 2025 report by the Miami Herald, Rodríguez would lead a peaceful transition by “preserving political stability without dismantling the ruling apparatus.” The Trump administration rejected the proposal and continued to carry out deadly strikes on alleged drug boats, killing at least 115 people.  Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that the US continues to “reserve the right to take strikes against drug boats.” He also suggested that Cuba could be the Trump administration’s next target. Previously, US war planners vastly underestimated the cost of fixing Iraq’s oil infrastructure to fund its invasion and occupation. Linda Bilmes, a public policy professor at Harvard University, wrote in a 2013 research paper investigating the financial costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that one of the most significant challenges for future US national security policy “will not originate from any external threat” but “simply coping with the legacy of the conflicts we have already fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Prior to the US invasion of Iraq, Bush’s economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, said that it may cost $100-200 billion. He was fired. Lindsey was wrong, but in the opposite way than Bush anticipated—a more accurate number is around $2 trillion.  In her research, Bilmes pointed to long-term costs like medical care and disability compensation for service members, veterans, and their families, as well as debt servicing of borrowed funds.  Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said on Sunday that the Senate will vote on whether to formally block Trump’s military campaign in Venezuela when Congress returns to session this week. But we are already paying dearly for the damage done.

In the final years of his life, Dick Cheney earned praise for breaking with his beloved Republican Party and defying Donald Trump, warning that Trump was a “threat to the republic.” That was commendable—and something of a counter to the efforts he made during his vice presidency to increase the power of the commander in chief and lay the foundation for the imperial presidency that Trump now seeks to establish. But Cheney, who died at the age of 84 on Monday, never addressed the worst transgression of his decades in politics and government: his deployment of lies to grease the way to the Iraq invasion that led to the deaths of more than 4,400 US soldiers and 200,000 or so Iraqi civilians. There’s been much debate in the past two decades over whether Cheney and President George W. Bush, in the aftermath of the horrific 9/11 attack, lied to the public when they asserted that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had built up an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, was in league with Al Qaeda, and, thus, posed an imminent threat to the United States. Their defenders have long insisted that they merely relied on and conveyed bad intelligence produced by the intelligence community. But that case doesn’t hold up. As Michael Isikoff and I showed in our 2006 book, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, Bush and Cheney repeatedly made false public statements about Saddam and the danger he presented that were unsupported by intelligence, and they routinely ignored the intelligence that raised questions about Saddam’s WMDs and his ties to Al Qaeada—which each turned out to be nonexistent. Cheney instructed his lieutenants within the national security establishment to cherry-pick bits of intelligence—often unconfirmed or contradicted—that supported the claims he and Bush were spewing. For instance, he cited Saddam’s possession of certain aluminum tubes as compelling evidence the Iraqi tyrant was enriching uranium for nuclear weapons—even though government scientists disputed this conclusion. Whenever the question of Bush and Cheney’s selling of the war arises, their loyalists try to pin the blame on the CIA and others for the missing WMDs debacle. Langley, perhaps too eager to give Bush and Cheney what they craved, did, to a large extent, screw up the job. But Cheney was the guy who set that all in motion. When assessing Cheney’s dishonesty, it’s only necessary to start at the beginning. In the summer of 2002, as the first anniversary of 9/11 approached, the Bush-Cheney White House launched a campaign to persuade the American public that a war against Saddam was necessary. At the time, that was not a consensus view on Capitol Hill or among Americans. In fact, in mid-August, Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-La.) called Cheney and told him that he believed public opinion was not yet with Bush and Cheney and that he himself didn’t believe the “predicate” for war had been established. “Don’t worry,” Cheney told Lott, according to Lott’s memoir. “We’re about to fix all that.” A short time later, on August 26, 2002, Cheney delivered a speech at a national convention of Veterans of Foreign Wars in Nashville, Tennessee, which was loaded with hair-raising rhetoric. “The Iraqi regime,” he declared, “has in fact been very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents.” He proclaimed, “We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons… Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon.” He professed that nuclear weapons inspections would be pointless. He cut to the chase: “There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” No doubt. The veep said, no doubt. But he was lying. There was plenty of doubt. Sitting on the stage for that speech was General Anthony Zinni, a former commander in chief of US Central Command who at the time was a special envoy to the Middle East. He later recalled, > It was a shock. It was a total shock. I couldn’t believe the vice president > was saying this, you know? In doing work with the CIA on Iraq WMD, through all > the briefings I heard at Langley, I never saw one piece of credible evidence > that there was an ongoing program. And that’s when I began to believe they’re > getting serious about this. They wanna go into Iraq. Over the previous year and a half, top national security officials had repeatedly stated publicly and testified to Congress that Iraq was not a serious WMD threat to the United States. In March 2002, Vice Admiral Thomas Wilson, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Iraq was not among the five most pressing “near-term” security concerns for the United States that he listed. Wilson noted that UN sanctions and the American military presence in the region had succeeded in “restraining Saddam’s ambitions” and his military had been “significantly degraded.” He told the senators that Saddam might have “residual” amounts of weapons of mass destruction but no growing arsenal. He made no reference to any nuclear program or any ties Saddam might have to al Qaeda. In his VFW speech, Cheney stated with no ambiguity that Saddam had assembled oodles of WMDs to use against the United States. The US government had no clear evidence of that. The iffy intelligence that Bush and Cheney would later cite was still to come. But this speech makes clear Cheney’s intent. He was willing to exaggerate and dissemble to get his war. He aimed to scare and bamboozle the American public with lies. Cheney, who had been defense secretary for President George H.W. Bush during the first Gulf War, was hell-bent on launching this invasion to finish off Saddam. And like his boss, W., he did little to prepare for what would happen after US troops stormed into Iraq and toppled the Saddam. That was as big a transgression as the false sales pitch for the war. From the get-go, this was an enterprise of recklessness and deceit. Cheney, as has been widely noted since his death was announced, had a remarkable career. He was a White House chief of staff (the youngest ever), a congressman, a Cabinet member, and a vice president, as well as the CEO of Halliburton. He did much to affect the world. (He encouraged the United States to engage in torture.) But the Iraq war was his most consequential action. It caused death, suffering, and loss for so many and created instability in the region that resonates to this day. It was a colossal miscalculation, one of the worse in US history. But more than that, it was one big lie. It was Dick Cheney’s lie.

In November 2005, a group of US Marines killed 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq. The case against them became one of the most high-profile war crimes prosecutions in US history—but then it fell apart. Only one Marine went to trial for the killings, and all he received was a slap on the wrist. Even his own defense attorney found the outcome shocking.  “It’s meaningless,” said attorney Haytham Faraj. “The government decided not to hold anybody accountable. I mean, I don’t know, I don’t know how else to put it.” Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. The Haditha massacre, as it came to be known, is the subject of the third season of The New Yorker’s In the Dark podcast and this week’s episode of Reveal. Reporter Madeleine Baran and her team spent four years looking into what happened at Haditha and why no one was held accountable. They also uncovered a previously unreported killing that happened that same day, a 25th victim whose story had never before been told.  This is an update of an episode that originally aired in March 2025.

It’s been just over 20 years since the Battle of Fallujah, a bloody campaign in a destructive Iraq War that we now know was based on a lie. There were no weapons of mass destruction. But back then, in the wake of 9/11, the battlefield was filled with young men and women who bought the like, and believed in serving and defending the country against terrorism. At first, for Marines trained to fight, their deployment during the “hearts and minds” portion of the US campaign was simply “boring.” Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. But then they received marching orders for a fight that would prove long and intense. “Going to Fallujah was the most horrific experience of our lives,” recalls Mike Ergo, a team leader for the US Marines Alpha Company, 1st Battalion. Yet paradoxically, “it was also, for myself, the most alive I’ve ever felt.” This week on Reveal, we’ve partnered with the nonprofit newsroom The War Horse to join Ergo’s unit as they reunite and try to make sense of what they did and what was done to them. Together, they remember Bradley Faircloth, the 20-year-old lance corporal from their unit who lost his life, and unpack the mental and emotional battles that continue for them today.  In this intimate portrayal, we learn about Faircloth’s upbringing and character, and hear from his comrades about what it was like to be barely adults, yet tasked with clearing insurgents from a city, building to building, in the bloodiest battle of the Iraq War. A situation where you could be shot at from virtually any angle, and it was hard to know who, exactly, was trying to kill you. The episode also takes us back home, exploring the travails the Marines faced upon returning to the United States, the knowledge they were recruited on false premises, and the complex feelings they still carry today, 20 years later. This episode originally aired in January 2025.

It’s been two decades since the Battle of Fallujah, the bloodiest battle of the global war on terror, during the Iraq War—a disaster we now know was based on a lie. At the time, however, in the aftermath of 9/11, the battlefield was filled with troops who believed they were serving and defending their country against terrorism. “Going to Fallujah was the most horrific experience of our lives,” said Mike Ergo, a team leader with the U.S. Marines Alpha Company, 1st Battalion. “And it was also, for myself, the most alive I’ve ever felt.” This week on a searing new episode of Reveal, the team partners with the nonprofit newsroom The War Horse to join Ergo’s unit as they reunite and reflect on what they did—and what was done to them. Together, they remember Bradley Faircloth, a 20-year-old lance corporal from their unit who lost his life, and unpack the mental and emotional battles they continue to face today. Listen here: Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. For more, don’t miss, “My Platoon’s Fight to Survive—and Heal From—the Bloodiest Battle of the Iraq War“, Thomas J. Brennan’s firsthand account of the Battle of Fallujah and its lasting moral injury and trauma, published by The War Horse and Mother Jones, in November 2024. Video FALLUJAH—MY PLATOON’S FIGHT THROUGH THE BLOODIEST BATTLE OF THE IRAQ WAR https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dd05RORpfA

A caution to readers: This story is an unvarnished, unsanitized firsthand account of the Second Battle of Fallujah that includes descriptions and photos that are candidly disturbing. In telling this story, I promised my fellow Marines that I would not sugarcoat our experience. This story is published in collaboration with The War Horse. Narrow metal cages sit empty in a dark, damp corner of the execution room. Bloody handprints mark the windowless mud walls. Human feces are piled in the corner. The air smells of urine and death. Nearby stands a makeshift altar. Dried blood stains the dirt beside an empty camera tripod. The floor feels tacky with every step. A Quran rests on a lectern. Knives and medical supplies are strewn about the ground. The black flag of Al Qaeda hangs on the wall. Some of us step outside. Others argue over whether the bloody handprints belong to the victim or the executioner. Some guess how many heads had rolled across the floor, or whether the executioner used the straight-edge or the serrated knife. Did they prefer efficiency or pain? The dark humor dulls our reality and makes the scene more palatable. It’s 2004, roughly 10 days before our families back home will celebrate Thanksgiving. As our squad of Marines resumes our patrol through Fallujah, Iraq, some of us pledge to kill ourselves—and each other—before we will ever be caged by the jihadis. Every conversation circles back to the cages and the killing. A few Marines struggle to eat dinner. Country Captain Chicken looks even less appetizing. The thought of being trapped in a cage keeps me awake. For the next month, combat strips away our humanity as we patrol street by street. Combat brings out the absolute best and worst in us. Most laugh about the death. The ones who break down are sent back to the base. Others photograph corpses and detainees. A few volunteer to kill the dogs feasting on human remains. With every firefight, we drift further from the values we once held dear and the men we once were. Fathers and sons. Blue-collar workers and college graduates. And even the pompous son of a billionaire. All changed forever by war. Video FALLUJAH—MY PLATOON’S FIGHT THROUGH THE BLOODIEST BATTLE OF THE IRAQ WAR https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dd05RORpfA After five weeks in Fallujah, it seems like many of us have lost our way and are not fazed by the depravity surrounding us. Some of us laugh at a kitten crawling out of the chest cavity of a corpse, and after one of my rockets transforms a human being into a bloody shadow on a wall. Most of us celebrate the crumpled bodies, mangled by the rockets and bombs. Some photograph the corpses bursting like combat pinatas after bloating under the desert sun. We cheer as a bulldozer buries enemy fighters alive. The dozer is bulletproof. We aren’t. And we’ve all rationalized that they are going to die anyway. Then, one night shortly after Thanksgiving, we are awakened by the sound of a Marine from another battalion beating a cat to death against a wall. He releases its lifeless body from the empty green sack, and it falls from our second-story window onto the street below. The animal was making too much noise, he says. He then lays down beside us. We all go back to sleep. The Marines of 3rd Platoon, Alpha Company, during their deployment to Iraq in 2004Courtesy Thomas J. Brennan Alpha Company at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Virginia, on August 15, 2024Matt Eich It’s been 20 years now—half our lifetimes—since we fought in the bloodiest battle of the global war on terrorism. President George W. Bush had just won reelection, despite concerns over the Iraq War and the lies that led us there. It had been 18 months since he had declared “an end of major combat operations” in Iraq. But the insurgency was growing stronger. Militants boobytrapped roadways with explosives and beheaded Iraqi collaborators in kill rooms—like the one we discovered—executions that were filmed to send a message both to the Iraqi citizens and foreign invaders. But nothing symbolized the disdain for our presence in Iraq more than the March 2004 execution of four US contractors from Blackwater who were beaten, lit aflame, dragged behind vehicles, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah. At the time, I was an 18-year-old Marine fresh out of boot camp who didn’t know any of that story. But seven months later, here I was, in November 2004, as one of nearly 13,000 American, British, and Iraqi forces ordered to fight Operation Phantom Fury, a 46-day battle during the US occupation of Iraq and the heaviest urban combat Americans had seen since the 1968 Battle of Huế City during the Vietnam War. The battle demonstrated that what we thought a year ago were pockets of resistance was, in fact, a full-blown insurgency. More than 4,000 enemy fighters armed with rockets, machine guns, and explosive devices fought from trenches, tunnels, and booby-trapped homes. By the end of the battle, about 110 members of coalition forces were killed and more than 600 were wounded. Roughly 2,000 enemy fighters died, and 1,500 were captured. An estimated 700 civilians were killed, and by the end of the battle, nearly half of the city lay in ruins. It marked a new phase in a war that was quickly spiraling out of control and would ultimately cost US taxpayers more than $728 billion and lead to the deaths of more than 4,500 coalition troops and more than 32,000 others wounded. In total, at least 200,000 Iraqi civilians were killed. For 20 years, the men and women ordered to fight in Fallujah—and other battles of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—have lived with those traumas, and despite our collective successes as we continued serving or returned to civilian life, many of us still ended up in a box. The moral injury. The drugs. Alcohol. Suicide. Divorce. Cancers from the poisons we were exposed to. The list goes on and on. From left, Capt. Aaron Cunningham, Cpl. Mike Ergo, and 2nd Lt. Doug Bahrns visit the grave of 1st Lt. Daniel Malcom Jr. at Arlington National Cemetery.Madison Brennan For the last two decades, I have avoided reading the books that were written about our battle. I haven’t watched the documentaries or revisited the news stories. I distanced myself from the reunions and the young men who were once my close friends. As I write this, I have tears in my eyes. I’m afraid of what this journey will do to me and what the reaction will be. But the further I travel in life beyond the house-to-house fighting, the more I wonder how my body—and my mind—survived it, and whether I still will. Everyone back home expected us to be killers and diplomats at the same time. We succeeded on the former and failed tragically on the latter. If I were a resident of Fallujah who returned home to the destruction after our battle, I would commit my life to killing Americans. We didn’t just destroy the enemy, we thrived at it. And many of us grew to enjoy it. Yet we obliterated parts of ourselves along the way. We defecated in people’s bathtubs to avoid being shot in the street. My rockets broke prayer beads and incinerated Qurans. Grenades blew apart heirlooms. We destroyed wedding photos as we knocked over dressers and flipped mattresses during our searches. Across the city, Marines set homes ablaze. We littered neighborhoods with white phosphorus, unexploded ordnance, and burn pit ash. We blew up childhood bedrooms, schools, and mosques. The destruction was a tactical necessity. But it was also fun. A rifleman fires his rifle at the enemy during the Second Battle of Fallujah.Courtesy Robert Day The body of a dead enemy fighter on a sidewalk in FallujahThomas J. Brennan Two decades on, I now carry a heavier pack: the guilt that I could have done less. And more. For 20 years, I’ve wished I had fired a rocket into an enemy stronghold instead of letting Lance Cpl. Bradley Faircloth kick in that door. And for 20 years, I haven’t stopped thinking about the time we were ordered to stand down and not shoot a group of enemy fighters using women and children as human shields. The jihadis scurried down an alleyway. Our collective wish list of do-overs is neverending. But the list of selfless and heroic acts we witnessed in Fallujah is also endless. Before Fallujah, I thought I understood war. Bullets and blood. Bodies and bandages. Some live. Some die. Oohrah. But what combat teaches you is that your circle shrinks to the handful of people who are there with you. Nobody and nothing else matters. Not the flag. Not our families or fellow Americans back home. Not a fictional hunt for weapons of mass destruction. Not the Iraqi people. And surely not the politicians who sent us to war. We were ordered to fight and did whatever we had to do to survive. This is our story.   April 2004: The “Hopeless Boots” of Camp Matilda   For two days leading up to the battle, Marines from Alpha Company watched as bombs and artillery were fired into Fallujah.Photograph courtesy of Robert Day. Marines are wounded. I rush to pick up the handset of the radio and begin calling in a casualty evacuation. Location. Callsign. Number of patients. I can’t remember what to do or say next. I’m caving under the pressure. “You’re a piece of shit, and you’re going to get everyone killed,” screams my squad leader, Sgt. Billy Leo, a 27-year-old from the Bronx. > “You’re a piece of shit, and you’re going to get everyone killed.” I’m 6,000 miles from the battlefield, and I’m making a great first impression. It’s 2004 and I’ve just graduated from the School of Infantry, and this is my first training exercise as one of 3rd Platoon’s newest “boots,” the most junior Marines in the Corps. I’m an infantry assaultman specializing in demolitions and rockets, and I’m assigned to Alpha Company, one of four infantry units within 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. In Alpha Company, a section of Marines specialized in demolitions and rockets used for dynamic breaching. Courtesy Thomas J. Brennan In fewer than 90 days, we will be patrolling the streets of Iraq together for seven months. I quickly learn—and Sgt. Leo reinforces—that I am not ready for combat and that I haven’t earned his trust. The rest of my week is a blur of standing guard, filling sandbags, exercises in the treeline, and whatever other “fuck fuck games” could be played to teach me—and my fellow “hopeless” boots—a meaningful lesson: Lives depend on proficiency, attention to detail, and an instant willingness to follow orders. When we wrap up our two weeks in the field, we’re shipped off to an abandoned Air Force housing complex near San Diego known as Camp Matilda—a wasteland of asbestos and lead-based paints, broken glass, and rusted metal. For weeks, we practice setting up vehicle checkpoints, searching detainees, and rehearsing infantry tactics we’ll soon use in Iraq. At night, I lay on the floor of an abandoned home and stare at exposed insulation in the ceiling as I fall asleep. After two months with my Marines, I travel back to the Boston area for 30 days of pre-deployment leave back at my childhood home, where my friends from high school tell me I’m crazy if I go to Iraq. They’re supportive of my service, but my enlistment has always confused them, and they can’t fathom trusting strangers with their lives. I tell them that Sgt. Leo is one of the big reasons why I do. Sgt. Billy Leo, a squad leader from the Bronx, leads Marines in 3rd Platoon during Operation Phantom Fury.Cpl. Trevor Gift He’s a towering force with a contempt for arrogant leaders and is fiercely loyal to us. I barely know him, but I trust him. He’s bar-battered and constantly goes toe-to-toe with higher-ups to defend us from their flawed strategies and pointless games. Only he fucks with us. Deep down, we know Sgt. Leo just wants to bring us all home. Back in North Carolina, we lay our uniforms on the ground in the quad at the center of our barracks. Marines with canisters of chemicals walk back and forth and mist our clothing. The chemicals are to protect us from malaria and last the entire deployment, they say. Wash your uniforms twice, and they are safe to wear, they say. The next day, and nearly every day until we deploy, we start our mornings on that same grass. Pushups. Situps. Grappling matches. Then we put on our chemical-laced uniforms and lay out our gear over and over. We clean our rifles and rooms. Then we clean our rifles some more. After work in the barracks, we drink. A lot. It’s big boy rules. Underage? Doesn’t matter. Want to throw a fridge off the third story? It better be your fridge. Want to see who can smash more beer bottles on their head? Doc better not have to stitch you up. Marines funnel hard liquor from the third story. Some hire sex workers or seek out happy endings at massage parlors. Others tell tales of past sexual conquests. Arrington brags about the size of his dick, eager to show anyone who doesn’t believe the lore. Drunkards wrestle and fight. Our “give a fuck” is broken, and all of the boots will clean up the mess before our morning formation. We are going to war.   October 2004: “A Whole Can of Whoop Butt”   Photograph by Cpl. Trevor Gift. thewarhorsenews · Marine Corps Leaders Discuss Planning Second Battle of Fallujah | Operation Phantom Fury By the end of our first month in Iraq, the monotony of the beggars, the tan landscape, and our mission to “win hearts and minds” are killing our motivation and making us complacent. Diplomacy is the Army’s job, not the Marines’. For our first three months in Iraq, we aimlessly patrol Rawah, Hadithah, Anah, and other small villages. At Iraqi police stations, we barter copies of Playboy and Hustler for fresh meals of chicken and rice. In each city, we are itching for a gunfight, but all we do is kill time. The only thing we are fighting is boredom. None of us has lost our combat virginity. In late October, we’re told we’re getting a change of scenery and to pack only the gear we can carry. We are being relocated to Camp Fallujah. We do as we’re told. We’re unaware of the intense fighting elsewhere in the country and that Fallujah is an insurgent hotbed where jihadis film executions. A few days later, we strap our packs to the sides of 7-ton trucks and ride into the darkness. What seems like an endless string of military vehicles stretches to the horizon in either direction. I chain-smoke Marlboros as I stare at the stars and fall asleep to the hum of knobby tires against the asphalt. As the Corps prepared for the battle, reinforcements were brought in from across the US military.Thomas J. Brennan A young child stands near her home in Fallujah. Courtesy Thomas J. Brennan When we get to Camp Fallujah, we all know something big is about to happen. Thousands of Marines from across multiple battalions are crammed onto the base. We repetitiously review maps, practice casualty evacuation drills and clearing rooms, and go to a makeshift rifle range to verify the sight settings on our weapons. Our leaders know a tough fight is ahead of us, and their plan is shrouded by the fog of war and the uncertainty of violence. A few days before the battle begins, our battalion is standing in a semicircle when an enemy mortar round slams into the ground beside our formation and doesn’t explode. I think about how lucky we were that the round was a dud. Dozens of us are standing in the kill radius. We erupt with a mix of cheers, laughter, and screams. Our battalion goes silent as Sgt. Major Carlton Kent, a 47-year-old from Tennessee and the senior enlisted Marine for the upcoming battle, steps in front of us and looks out across a sea of desert camouflage. Some of us sit. Others kneel. Some stand. Sgt. Major Carlton Kent stands among headstones in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Eliot Dudik “I’m gonna tell you one thing. It is an honor for me to be able to serve with each and every one of you hard chargers,” he says. “I mean, I look out here, and it’s no difference than when we took the damn war over in Korea, we took it during World War II, we raised the flag at Iwo Jima—it’s no difference.” > “It’s no difference than when we took the damn war over in Korea, we took it > during World War II, we raised the flag at Iwo Jima—it’s no difference.” “Y’all are in the process of making history, and I am very proud of you, and I have no doubt you are gonna go in there and do what you always have done—kick some butt.” We walk back to our building and await a briefing from our platoon commander, 2nd Lt. Douglas Bahrns, a 23-year-old who studied English at Virginia Military Institute. As Bahrns walks into the room, Sgt. Leo tells us to sit down and shut up. Bahrns stands in front of us. Grains of sand float through motionless air as beams of light creep through sandbagged windows. Young men sit mesmerized by the words echoing off walls scarred by years of war. 2nd Lt. Doug “Dougie Fresh” Bahrns, 3rd Platoon Commander, Alpha Company, at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia on August 16, 2024.Matt Eich Through the desert confetti, Lt. Bahrns shifts between confidence and trepidation as he explains the details of our mission to clear Fallujah of enemy fighters and what should happen when—not if—we are wounded. He tells us that inside the city, we will face roadblocks, sniper positions, boobytraps, and more than 300 well-constructed fighting positions that make up a three-ring defensive posture. He explains that civilians have fled the city, and our psychological operations teams have manipulated insurgents into preparing for an attack from the south. Instead, blocking forces will first surround the southern side of the city, and then our platoon will be at the center of a six-battalion, house-to-house battle. Lt. Bahrns pauses often, gazing into the darkness above our heads. The reality of our mission is becoming clear. We know that Bahrns, like Leo, wants to bring us all home. We all know that won’t happen.   November 7, 2004: “The Infidels Are Here”   thewarhorsenews · Marines Recall Bombarding Fallujah With White Phosphorous | Operation Phantom Fury The screams of thousands of US Marines roar into the distance as tracer rounds dance across the night sky, through a barrage of air-burst white phosphorus and thousand-pound bombs. For hours, we watch as munitions explode. Some of us ooh and ahh. Others pace anxiously. As the night passes, we fall asleep to the sounds of warthogs and gunships. I cuddle with Phil Barker and Doc Frasier to stay warm. Operation Phantom Fury is beginning. Task Force Wolfpack is the first unit to breach the city’s perimeter, and as they begin taking sporadic fire, a voice in Arabic echoes from the loudspeakers of a nearby mosque. “Citizens of Fallujah, stand up. The infidels are here. Kill them, kill them all.” > “Citizens of Fallujah, stand up. The infidels are here. Kill them, kill them > all.” For two days, as the first Marines push into the city, I check and recheck my gear, cinching my rockets tighter and tighter against the 20-pound satchels of C-4 inside my pack, and wait to storm Fallujah. I wonder if the combat will be over before we reach the outskirts of the city. I draw smiley faces on my grenades and write, “One free ticket to Allah” on an explosive. I snap a photograph that captures my misguided hatred. We play grab ass and Spades, and I make dozens of donut and det-linear charges that will soon make doors disappear. Marines from Alpha Company engage enemy fighters from a rooftop in Fallujah.Cpl. Trevor Gift, USMC Lance. Cpl. Bradley Faircloth poses with munitions before Operation Phantom Fury.Courtesy Michael Meadows But mostly, with each explosion or machine gun burst we hear, we wonder what it will be like inside the city. Who will be the first to die? Shortly after 3 a.m. on November 10—the Marine Corps’ birthday—we strap on our gear and load into the tracked vehicles that will be either our chariots into battle or a metal mass grave. The diesel engines roar to life as the metal ramp closes behind us. The earth crunches beneath us as we begin our drive toward the city. We are jostled back and forth as we crash through rubble and debris. There are explosions and gunfire in the distance. Black exhaust seeps into the troop compartment. As the seconds pass, our 20-minute drive feels like hours. I envision scenes from the Normandy landing during World War II, where machine guns ripped through the men crammed inside the Higgins boats as the ramps lowered. I close my eyes and wait for a rocket to tear through the side of our vehicle, transforming us into a stew of melted fat and charred flesh. I feel trapped and helpless. I want out. “One minute,” shouts the vehicle commander. Some of us go silent. Others hype themselves up. “Let’s kill some hajjis,” someone yells. We respond with a series of guttural screams. Yut. Err. Kill. But as the ramp lowers, the slow creak of the metal door is all we hear. There is near-complete silence as we run to our assigned sectors of Fallujah’s government complex. No gunfire. No explosions. No death. For the next few hours, I sit in a dilapidated office chair, recessed in the shadows of a second-story room of the government complex. As the sun continues to rise, the buildings to our south erupt with gunfire. I notice a man with an AK-47 poke his head around a corner. I shoulder my rifle as he creeps around a mud wall and slowly begins to close the 200 meters between us. The clear tip of my front sight traces the center of his chest. Fear builds inside me. It is the first time my training will be tested. On November 10, 2004, the Marine Corps’ birthday, many Marines in Alpha Company experienced combat for the first time.Cpl. Trevor Gift I pull the trigger of my M16. The weapon’s recoil nudges my shoulder, and he crumbles to the ground. The aroma of gunpowder fills the room. I fire two more rounds into his motionless body and stare in amazement as he lies lifeless. I peer through another Marine’s rifle scope to get a closer look. It will take years for my smile to fade. I watch the sun continue to rise across the city’s skyline as loudspeakers blare the Marines’ Hymn through the streets. Happy Marine Corps’ birthday, I think. Moments later, machine gunfire and rockets begin peppering our position, and I’m ordered to the rooftop with my rocket launcher. I sprint across the roof and hunker behind a small mud wall to shield myself from the bullets whizzing by. As I lift my head, I take in the full Fallujah skyline for the first time. Buildings stretch from horizon to horizon—a sea of tan dotted with minarets and smoldering fires. I watch as Capt. Aaron Cunningham, the maestro of our frontline symphony, stands calmly as bullets skip across the rooftop around him. We’re surrounded by the enemy. Then the moment we’ve feared most finally arrives. The first Marine is killed. Lt. Daniel Thomas Malcom Jr. is dead—shot in the back while calling in artillery. Jordan Holtschulte, a Navy corpsman from a nearby platoon, tried his best to save him. 1st Lt. Daniel T. Malcom, Jr. was killed on November 10, 2004—the Marine Corps’ birthday.Courtesy Doug Bahrns News about Malcom’s death spreads across our unit within minutes and stops me in my tracks. Before Fallujah, I’d spent four months in convoys as his driver. During our time together, I grew to respect his humility and intellect. We spoke about his sister and his favorite books—I’m ashamed to say I have since forgotten those names. I never got to tell him how much I admired him or ask him about the burden he carried leading our band of enlisted misfits. I think about how he loved to play chess, which to him was yet another way he could train his mind to defeat an opponent. If life were a brilliancy—a deeply strategic chess combination—he made his with brevity, winning a chess game in 25 moves, his age when he was killed. His corpse is carried to a nearby vehicle and driven away.   November 10, 2004: Crossing Fran   Phase Line Fran was a multilane highway Marines sprinted across on Nov. 10, 2004. Thomas J. Brennan thewarhorsenews · Alpha Company Describes Their Assault On Fallujah | Operation Phantom Fury Javelin missiles shriek through the sky. Machine gunners fire from the rooftops. Artillery thumps in the distance moments before a thunderstorm of steel rain pours around us. Our squad is crammed into a room at the south side of the government complex, waiting to sprint across Route Fran, the multilane highway that separates us from our 3-mile, house-to-house battle through the city. Looking back, Route Fran was a final buffer from the real carnage and a life-altering demarcation point for all of us. Once we crossed over, life would be different. The change would be forever. “One minute,” someone yells. My heart is racing. I’m scared. The time passes in an instant. Yut. Err. Kill. Lance. Cpl. Michael Briscoe patrols a street in Fallujah with a rocket slung across his back. Thomas J. Brennan Sgt. Leo takes off across the road, and we sprint behind him. I hop over the center median and rush toward the sidewalk. Electrical wires dangle from street poles. Rubble is scattered about. A thick black smoke dances in the air. We peer through shattered windows and broken doors as we pass by shops and offices damaged by the airstrikes and rockets. As we rush down the first alley, second-story windows erupt with gunfire. We’re pinned down. Some Marines break off to clear nearby houses. Cpl. Robert Day, a 24-year-old from Mobile, Alabama, sprints to the roof with his machine gun and a team of snipers in tow. Bullets whiz and ricochet around him, peppering him with chunks of brick and mortar. Day presses his shoulder into his machine gun as a fighter with a backpack full of rockets sprints down a street. Cpl. Robert “Day Ball” Day, Machine Gunner, Alpha Company, near the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Virginia, on August 17, 2024Matt Eich Search. Traverse. Fire. Repeat. Simultaneously, the rest of our platoon maneuvers down the street, returning fire and bounding from position to position. “Get those rockets up here!” Sgt. Leo screams, from the front of our patrol. He’s standing beside a compound wall and is unfazed by the firestorm surrounding us. He’s calm amid the chaos. I prop my launcher on my thigh as my team leader, Michael Briscoe, inserts a high-explosive rocket. Together, we sprint to the middle of the street. I prop the weapon on my shoulder and press my face against the launch tube to look through the scope. Bullets are hitting all around us as Briscoe turns around to make sure no Marines are standing behind us. Lance. Cpl. Michael Briscoe and Lance Cpl. Phil Barker prepare to enter a home during Operation Phantom Fury. Dozens of them are. But there’s no time for protocol. He slaps my shoulder and screams in my ear, “Backblast area all secure! Rocket!” Ten pounds disappear from my shoulder in an instant, and the second story of the house is destroyed. The gunfire stops. For a moment. The enemy takes pot-shots over and around walls as we move from one home to another. We find a network of blown-out walls, allowing fighters to maneuver from house to house. Mattresses are boobytrapped with grenades and cutouts for people to hide inside. We find tripwires and machine gun bunkers reinforced with sandbags. Sgt. Leo often takes point alongside Lance Cpl. Bradley Faircloth, clearing almost every home we go into. He lobs grenade after grenade over compound walls and has me blow open door after door with explosive charges. Across the street, Gary Koehler gets shot in his leg, and Matthew “Doo Doo” Brown is shot in the buttocks like Forrest Gump. Then Brian Passolt takes a machine gun burst to the stomach. Back home, the three of them aren’t yet old enough to buy a six-pack of beer. They’re stacked into the back of a vehicle like a cord of wood and disappear into the distance. A Marine from 3rd Platoon sleeps on the floor in between missions. Courtesy Robert Day By nightfall, we’re still clearing our first street inside the city and occupying a house for the night. Some sleep in beds, others on pillows and piles of clothes. I am relegated to the rooftop with the boots and sleep beneath a blanket of stars between hour-long shifts of guard duty. The next morning, we wake up before sunrise and continue our weeks-long journey south. Eat. Sleep. Shoot. Shit. Repeat. For days, the firefights are constant as we clear house after house. Machine gunners fire from the hip as we rush down streets. I fire dozens of rockets and we use so many grenades that we run out. I begin to prime sticks of C4 for us to throw instead. The blasts break prayer beads and tear Qurans. In the moment, destroying heirlooms and wedding photos during searches and defecating in bathtubs to avoid being exposed to enemy fire outside feel necessary. But they’re some of the things that bother me most 20 years later. At one point, an officer specializing in chemical weapons identification tells us that we’ve discovered drums of chemical weapons known as “blood agents” and that we should vacate the premises. We do as we’re told. We also discover a torture chamber. Decades later, I still have nightmares where I’m trapped in that small metal cage. One morning, our patrol stops at the edge of an open field. We’re ordered to run across, and one by one, we sprint hundreds of meters toward a cluster of three-story homes. One hundred pounds of rockets and explosives press into my flak jacket as I rush across the uneven ground, dodging ankle rollers, barbed wire, and mounds of dirt. During the Second Battle of Fallujah, Marines sprinted hundreds of yards across open terrain, avoiding not only mud, but a barrage of enemy fire.Courtesy Robert Day Puffs of dirt jump from the ground as bullets snap and whiz around us as our boots suck into the wet earth. The charging handle of my rocket launcher digs into my thigh with every step. My gasps for air drown out the noises around me. Somehow, we all make it. We climb the stairs of the building, and the squad man’s defensive positions on every floor. The Marines on the roof take cover behind a short wall and begin to return fire as enemy fighters take pot-shots from nearby windows and scurry through alleyways. Our lieutenant quickly realizes we’re at a tactical disadvantage. We’ve been holding our position for too long, and the enemy has surrounded us on three sides. Shell casings pile up at our fighting positions as enemy tracer rounds penetrate the wall and dance across the rooftop until they fizzle out. Talking machine guns play a game of insurgent whack-a-mole. I watch fixed-wing aircraft drop bombs in the distance. Mike Ergo, a 21-year-old from Walnut Creek, California, who joined the Corps to play the saxophone, is on the roof smoking a cigarette and scanning for enemy fighters when he hears a whoosh as a volley of rockets slams into the front of our building. The blast briefly knocks him unconscious. Cpl. Mike “Vince Money” Ergo, Team Leader, 3rd Platoon, Alpha Company, at Arlington National Cemetery on August 16, 2024Matt Eich As Ergo pulls himself off the ground, he sees the wall beside him is destroyed. He hears gunfire and tastes explosive residue. “I’m hit,” Sgt. Leo screams from nearby, as the wall explodes around him. He clutches his leg. A deep purple bruise quickly spreads across his hip and thigh. Then Sgt. Nathan Fox, a 21-year-old from Berryville, Virginia, takes shrapnel in the shoulder. Ergo and another Marine rush to drag them from the roof. I watch as our wounded are carried downstairs. Leo objects the entire time. He’ll walk it off, he jokes. Our lieutenant worries Leo’s femur is broken and forces him to leave, assuring him he’ll return soon. For the first time, we see fear in Leo’s eyes. As the firefight continues, our wounded are driven to the hospital. Morale crumbles. There’s an obvious void as we continue to push through the city. Sgt. Leo was more of a security blanket than we’d realized.   November 20, 2004: Stray Dogs and Instant Mashed Potatoes   Munitions explode in the distance as the Marines of 3rd Platoon fight from a high-rise building.Cpl. Trevor Gift thewarhorsenews · Third Platoon Recounts Fierce House-To-House Urban Combat | Operation Phantom Fury We are on an afternoon patrol when I see a Marine from another battalion diddy bopping with a gnawed femur and pelvis resting over his shoulder as though he were a combat bindle stiff. “Look at how small his dick is,” he jokes as he tosses the remains on the ground. I wind my disposable camera and snap a photograph of him bent over, smiling beside the bloody genitals. When I look at the photo now, the Marine stares back at me from underneath his kevlar helmet. His face is full of joy. At the time, I was happy, too. Two decades later, I feel contempt toward our indignity. We’ve been inside Fallujah for weeks and have embraced the kill-or-be-killed reality surrounding us. When we see Marines from mortuary affairs begin collecting enemy remains for intelligence gathering at The Potato Factory—the section of the government center where enemy bodies are being collected—I watch from a distance as limbs deglove and meat sloughs from bones. The aroma of bloated, rotting corpses and firefights has become our norm. We’re absent of emotion and humanity. Numb. Four members of Alpha Company patrol a street in Fallujah during Operation Phantom Fury.Courtesy Robert Day Service members specializing in mortuary affairs remove the corpse of an enemy fighter. Cpl. Trevor Gift A Marine stands by an open window during Operation Phantom Fury. Cpl. Trevor Gift But now Marines across Fallujah are ordered to go on patrol and kill the animals roaming the streets. Dogs are sick from eating the decomposing bodies, and we’re told the executions are to prevent the spread of disease. Killing animals is a line I won’t cross. Hearing their helpless yelps and screeches is unbearable. But watching them run toward us for help once they’re wounded is torturous. A few days later, we begin taking fire from a second-story building and quickly surround it. The enemy is trapped inside. A rocket is fired. Machine gunners sprinkle ammunition through windows and doorways. Others hurl grenades. The jihadis on the other side do the same. I scream degrading comments about Islam, devoid of the shame that will metastasize. Our interpreter—an Iraqi citizen from a village outside of Baghdad—yells for the fighters to put down their weapons and come out with their hands up. They refuse. We try to convince them with another volley of grenades, gunfire, and slurs about Islam. Then a Marine runs over to the driver of a nearby D9—a 54-ton bulldozer—and asks them to demolish the house so we won’t have to go inside. The ground shakes as the driver positions the vehicle a few feet from the building. Rocks crumble under the tracks as the blade lowers and the vehicle inches forward. During the assault on Fallujah, Marines used armored transport vehicles to move munitions and evacuate casualties. Cpl. Trevor Gift Marines use a bulldozer to kill enemy fighters who refused to surrender. Thomas J. Brennan The walls fold in, and the second story buckles as the driver works his way around the structure. We watch as the home is slowly compressed into a pile of twisted rebar, broken cinder blocks, and tattered belongings. We cheer. I notice that our interpreter does not. The insurgents go silent. But 20 years later, I still hear them scream. We continue our patrol back to base. It’s time for chow.    November 25, 2004: “Corpsman Up! CORPSMAN!”   A squad of Marines patrols the streets of Fallujah in November 2004.Cpl. Trevor Gift thewarhorsenews · "Dead Before He Hit The Ground"—Remembering A Marine Killed In Action | Operation Phantom Fury Later that week, the streets are quiet. We move between houses and narrow alleyways, expecting to come under attack for hours. Nothing. As we are turning back to base, a shot rings out. Then another. Sniper. I’m a few doors down and want to fire a rocket into the building, but Marines are ordered to storm the compound instead. Two Marines from our platoon, Bradley Faircloth and Michael Meadows, push through the gate and clear the courtyard. They notice the windows are covered with blankets and that the front door is unlocked. As they step into the living room, there’s a stairway to their left and two rooms in front of them. One door is open. The other closed. Faircloth leads Meadows down the hallway—he’ll go left. Meadows goes right. As they walk toward the doors, a machine gun erupts with a 20-round burst. Faircloth moans as he collapses to the floor. Meadows sprints through the open door and calls for reinforcements. Ryan Stulman and their squad leader, Evan Matthews, rush inside to clear the house, but the enemy fighters escape. Cpl. Michael “Boomhauer” Meadows, Team Leader, 3rd Platoon, Alpha Company, at the US Marine Corps Memorial (Iwo Jima Memorial) on August 16, 2024Matt Eich The three Marines grab Faircloth by his limbs and scream for a corpsman as they carry him outside. Faircloth’s head bobs up and down with every step. His lips are blue. His eyes are open. Corpsman up! Corpsman! CORPSMAN! They set his body down in the courtyard, and our corpsman Reinaldo “Doc” Aponte begins his assessment. Airway. Breathing. Circulation. Doc reaches to check for a pulse, and his fingers slip inside a wound on Faircloth’s wrist. No pulse. He tears open Faircloth’s flak jacket and sees gunshot wounds to his flank. There’s very little blood. No rise and fall of his chest. Doc intertwines his fingers and centers his palm on Faircloth’s sternum. Ribs and cartilage break with each two-inch-deep chest compression. But Faircloth’s injuries are too extensive. There’s nothing Doc can do to save his patient. Doc has to be pulled off of Faircloth’s body. Tears stream down his face as he is embraced by the Marines around him. Doc is 21 years old. Our platoon is scattered, and many of us don’t yet know Faircloth is dead. The firefight continues. HM3 Reinaldo “Doc” Aponte, Corpsman, 3rd Platoon, Alpha Company, at the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial in Arlington, Virginia, on August 15, 2024Matt Eich Sgt. Anthony “Meritorious Marty” Martinez, Squad Leader, 3rd Platoon, Alpha Company near the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Virginia, on August 17, 2024Matt Eich Sgt. Anthony Martinez is on a nearby rooftop and shoots two fighters scurrying to a nearby building. Lt. Bahrns does the same. Robert Day pulls the trigger of his machine gun and fires at the house. Then I see two insurgents sprint down an alleyway into a compound. Squirters. I shoulder my rocket launcher and fire in their direction. Three walls of the building collapse, and the house folds outward. I run with three other Marines toward the collapsed structure and find two bodies lying outside, blown clear by the blast. I stare at the figures. One is mangled and missing both legs. Blood pools beside his torso. Then I hear someone yell out that a Marine has been killed storming the compound. My eyes sting from sweat and tears of frustration. Weeks of heavy combat have put me on edge. Friends have died; others have been wounded, some multiple times. Now the enemy fighters lay dead on the ground in front of me. I think to myself that if I had fired my rocket into the building, a Marine might still be alive. Lance Cpl. Bradley Faircloth rests on a flight of stairs inside a home in Fallujah. Courtesy Michael Meadows We’re told it’s Lance Cpl. Bradley “The Barbarian” Faircloth, a 20-year-old from Mobile, Alabama. He’s a Sgt. Leo in the making and widely regarded as the best boot in the platoon. We watch from a distance as the body bag is zipped closed and loaded into the back of a vehicle. Many of us cry as we continue our patrol back to base. When we return, there’s silence as we eat our vacuum-sealed meals of preservatives and congealed fats. Meadows wishes he’d thrown a grenade and killed the men who shot Faircloth. Matthews wonders if his squad will ever trust him again. Bahrns believes he let down Brad’s family back home. Cpl. Evan “Matty” Matthews, Squad Leader, 3rd Platoon, Alpha Company at the US Marine Corps Memorial (Iwo Jima Memorial) in Arlington, Virginia on August 16, 2024Matt Eich Doc is inconsolable and believes he failed us by not saving Faircloth. That he’s lost our trust. And that by losing Faircloth, he’s lost us all. All of us know there will be a memorial service when we get home and are scared about what it will be like to look Bradley’s mother in her eyes. As the days go on, we reminisce about Faircloth and the Thanksgiving dinner we shared with him the day before he was killed. Our loss of motivation is palpable. We want to go home. But we still have two months left on our deployment. Over the next few weeks, Leo nominates roughly half of our squad for valorous awards. The Corps’ bureaucracy mows most of them down. The next month, our battalion commander Lt. Col. Gareth Brandl begins making his rounds to talk to Marines across the battlespace. We take out the trash and shave our faces. We blouse our boots and put on our cleanest uniforms. It’s our turn for the dog and pony show. When he arrives, we stand neatly in a formation as he speaks for what seems like an hour—stories of our bravery and sacrifice and how we upheld the Corps’ legacy. Yut. Err. Kill. One sentence lingers in our minds. Prepare for your next mission.   “On Behalf of a Grateful Nation”   Arlington National CemeteryMatt Eich thewarhorsenews · A Platoon Reflects on the Psychological Toll of War | Operation Phantom Fury Widows and other Gold Star family members sit in the front rows of a silent theater. It’s the spring of 2005, and we’ve been home for a few weeks. Our entire battalion is crammed into the base field house at Camp Lejeune. Dozens of portraits are displayed on the floor, each paired with a rifle, dog tags, and boots. I stare at the photographs. They stare back. They’re all dead. For months, we’ve struggled with our battle, but we’ve remained isolated from the families who received the dreaded knock on the door to mark the start of their holiday season. We weren’t there for their three-volley-gun salute, or when they were handed a folded flag “on behalf of a grateful nation.” Now, seated in the bleachers, we are too far away to comfort them. Doc can’t bear to watch Kathleen Faircloth walk across the floor. He sneaks outside and cries in the cab of his truck. Kathleen Faircloth, Gold Star Mother, Alpha Company, at the US Marine Corps Memorial (Iwo Jima Memorial) in Arlington, Virginia on August 16, 2024. Kathleen’s son Bradley was killed on November 26, 2004, in Fallujah, Iraq. Twenty years later, she describes the Marines who served alongside Bradley as her sons and has attended their weddings, met their children, and developed lifelong friendships. Kathleen lives in Alabama with her five dogs, Mercy, Gracious, Joyful, Goodness, and Tinkerbell.Matt Eich I sit quietly and recall my times at the School of Infantry with Demarkus Brown, who loved to tell stories about his mother. I think back to my conversations with Lt. Malcom about his sister. I remember my late-night conversations with Travis Desiato about being proud Massholes. I think about how much I want to apologize to Kathleen Faircloth, but I can’t face her. One by one, the families are ushered across the floor, and one by one, they stand by the photographs of their loved ones. Some pray. Others hug. Most of them cry. Children with no fathers. Parents who lost sons. Families destroyed. Friends we’ll never see again. All torn apart by combat thousands of miles away during a war that America ignored. As each family walks back to their seats, the steady rhythm of their footsteps is a reminder of how we failed to bring their loved ones home. The sound of taps fills the building. I stare straight forward and try not to let anyone see me crying. It’s a feeling I’ll get used to. LEGACY OF A LONG WAR More Iraq coverage from the Mother Jones archives. * Am I a Torturer? * The Lie Factory * How the Iraq War Launched the Modern Era of Political BS * The Boy Scout of Baghdad * The Iraq Invasion 20 Years Later: It Was Indeed a Big Lie That Launched the Catastrophic War Twenty years ago, I thought the Corps gave me exactly what I asked for, and I’m still struggling to understand the meaning of it all. When I enlisted in 2003, I was a rebellious teenager who lacked discipline and a sense of purpose. Despite my mother’s objections, I wanted to be a Marine infantryman. When I got to recruit training at Parris Island, the Corps handed me my first rifle and taught me that blood makes the grass grow. In Fallujah, we destroyed our enemy through fire and maneuver—exactly what we were trained to do. The rules of engagement justified the death and destruction. But today, I no longer can. When we came home, we settled into the monotony of grocery shopping, changing diapers, and paying utility bills, all while we faced a rampant stigma disincentivizing mental health care. Dozens of Marines across our battalion self-medicated with drugs and alcohol. Those who were caught were publicly shamed and booted from the Corps. Lance Cpl. Thomas “Baby Huey” Brennan, Assaultman, Alpha Company at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Virginia, on August 17, 2024Matt Eich I eventually tried to kill myself. The fog of war may have been in Fallujah, but it still drifts in and out of our lives, often at the most inopportune, unexpected times. Like the time my daughter and I were playing with dolls on the floor and their cold, lifeless eyes reminded me of a dead body. Or when the scent of jet fuel at the airport made me imagine running alongside a tank, smiling with my friends. Or when AC/DC’s “Hells Bells” came over the speakers as my wife and I waited in line to ride a roller coaster. My mind drifted to crossing Route Fran, and memories of Malcom and Faircloth. I stared straight forward and tried not to let anyone see me crying. The feeling I’m now used to. Thomas Brennan and his daughter Madison pose with Sgt. Major Carlton Kent at an exhibit honoring Maria Daume, the Corps’ first enlisted infantrywoman.Courtesy Thomas J. Brennan And now, after two decades spent trying to forget what we saw and did in Fallujah, I decided it was time to confront it. I reached out to Marines I hadn’t spoken to since the battle, and with them by my side—just like they were 20 years ago—I wrote this story. In August, I organized a five-day reunion in DC that brought our squad back together. We cried. We laughed. And we remembered. But the most healing part of our time together was that Faircloth’s mother, Kathleen, traveled from Alabama to join us and lead us into the new Fallujah exhibit at the National Museum of the Marine Corps. Together, we listened to her read the last letter Bradley wrote home. And not only were we able to look Kathleen in the eye but she told us something that will never leave me. We are all her sons. Alpha Co. at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Virginia, on August 15, 2024Matt Eich Like millions of Americans, I volunteered to serve during a time of war and knew I might experience combat. We trusted the Pentagon officials leading us and the promise that we’d be cared for once we returned home. We believed the global war on terror was justified and that by fighting it, our children wouldn’t face the same enemy. We believed Americans cared about the war we fought on their behalf. We should have known better. After 20 years, what haunts me most about Fallujah isn’t just the killing or how we did it, whether it was a bullet, a blast, or a bulldozer. It’s knowing that some of the hope we destroyed in Fallujah was our own. The hope that time will make the memories fade away. The hope that I’ll forgive myself. And the hope that it was all worth it in the end. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you or someone you care about may be at risk of suicide, contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988, or go to 988lifeline.org. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE PEOPLE WHO MADE THIS PROJECT POSSIBLE Author Thomas J. Brennan Photography Matt Eich Justin Gellerson Cpl. Trevor Gift Madison Brennan Video TJ Cooney Sunjae Smith Shane Yeager Claude Robinson John Napolitano Greg Corombos (AVC) Dan Taksas (AVC) Peter Trahan (AVC) Vallen King (AVC) Rich McFadden (AVC) Nick Schifrin (PBS Newshour) Paul Wood (BBC Embedded Footage) Robbie Wright (BBC Embedded Footage) Audio Elena Boffetta Jim O’Grady (Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting) Engagement Lydia Williams Keller (Soundview Creative) Hrisanthi Kroi Pickett Fact-Check Jess Rohan Copy Edits Mitchell Hansen-Dewar Editors Mike Frankel Dan Schulman (Mother Jones) Music Licensing Jonathan Leahy, Aperature Music (In-Kind Advisory Support) Phil Collins via Concord Publishing and Warner Music Group (Gratis) Lynyrd Skynyrd via UME and UMPG (Gratis) AC/DC via Sony and Sony Music Publishing (Gratis) Partners Mother Jones PBS NewsHour The Center for Investigative Reporting The American Veterans Center Location Support Lt. Col. Matthew Hilton, USMC Communications Directorate, New York Col. John Caldwell, Communications Directorate, Headquarters USMC The National Museum of the Marine Corps Office of the Secretary of Defense The United States Marine Corps Mental Health           Dr. Pamela Wall Jodi Salamino Legal Review BakerHostetler James Chadwick (Mother Jones) Four Retired Marine Judge Advocates Financial Support Semper Fi Fund Anne Lebleu Fred Smith Mike Zak Compass Coffee The Reva and David Logan Foundation The Heinz Endowments