Order, peace elusive in Iraqi city of Samarra

[ECH1969]

The gunfight by the Tigris River was over. It was time to retrieve the bodies. Staff Sgt. Cortez Powell looked at the shredded jaw of a dead man whom he'd shot in the face when insurgents ambushed an American patrol in a blind of reeds. Powell's M4 assault rifle had jammed, so he'd grabbed the pump-action shotgun that he kept slung over his shoulders and pulled the trigger.

Five other soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division scrambled down, pulled two of the insurgents' bodies from the reeds and dragged them through the mud. "Strap those motherf-----s to the hood like a deer," said Staff Sgt. James Robinson, 25, of Hughes, Ark. Many of the American troops who patrol the city say they don't see much hope for Samarra. Some officers privately worry that the city will fall to insurgents as American troops withdraw.

Last month, 33 police recruits from Samarra were killed when gunmen ambushed their bus and shot them in the head, execution-style. Most Iraqis assumed that Sunni insurgents had killed the men as a warning to anyone else who might be considering joining the security forces. But Brannon, the Bravo Company commander, suspects that the killings were an inside job by police officials vying for control of which tribes supply recruits.

The Iraqi soldiers in the area are no better, Brannon said. U.S. military officials suspect that many of them, including a company commander, are on the insurgents' payrolls. Iraqi soldiers were removed from the city's checkpoints last month after intelligence reports said that the most wanted terrorist in the country, al-Qaida ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, gave Iraqi soldiers $7,000 after they let him enter the city to broker an arms deal.

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