would have a kind of a courtyard around it with maybe a eight-foot tall clay-brick wall and there'd be a gate. Well, what they would do is they would take the Abrams tank and they would run over that wall and cave it in, create a breach, back out and then the Bradley Fighting Vehicle would go in, let out the dismounted infantry. The dismounted infantry would go into a very quick clear of the house and all to grab anyone of military age. This is kind of destructive and the first target we went to, we went through the breaching procedures: run over the wall, going into the house. When we went in and we ran over the wall, the patrol leader from the third ACR said, 'oh, this is the wrong house.' So then, we back out after we've caved in their wall, basically, with a tank, and then we go hit another house. He goes, 'oh, this is the wrong house, too.' This was going on all over because there are multiple raids across the city going on and I just remember coming out and saying, 'you know, I've got a theory about why attacks have gone up three hundred percent since you got here.'

Barry: Ian proposes an alternative to the 3rd ACR plan: just park the Abrams tank outside and secure the perimeter of the house, making sure no one gets on or off the property. Then, Ian's team will go in on foot, raid the house and, if it's a mistake, at least you haven't destroyed anything. Ian wins this argument, but that's not the end of the dispute.

Ian: the tank commander gave the order during the mission brief that anyone who ran off the objective was to be shot and I said 'no, that's, we shouldn't have that as a criteria because you don't know why they're running off or they're not armed. You just got to run him down. Give me a good reason why we would shoot him,' and we had a verbal altercation and eventually he actually won.

Barry: luckily, no one ended up running on or off the objectives as they carried out their raids. This key moment of conflict between Ian and the 3rd ACR commander would reappear.

Ian: The 3rd ACR in particular struck me as a unit that was just not ready for counterinsurgency at all. They were ready to meet the Soviet Union in the Fulda Gap basically, is what they were ready to do.

Barry: so I had to look this one up; the Fulda Gap was a strategically important path connecting eastern and western Europe. Okay, back to Ian.

Ian: and that their whole culture, mentality, the way they thought, was about destroying as much as you can as fast as possible. The concept of trying to minimize damage and be precise just wasn't really in their mindset.

Barry: the way Ian saw it, you're already uncertain if you have the right target, so why not take on more risk yourself and minimize risk of harmed innocent people? Even if you got the right target, why would you need to exert more violence than you need to accomplish your goals?

Ian: it's really frustrating; it was frustrating on so many levels. On one level, it was frustrating because you'd see the harm that it caused and it was unnecessary, and I use 'unnecessary' in a pretty loose way; it was negligent. It was negligent, was the way I would put it. So that was frustrating. The other thing that was frustrating was commanders would make it sound like we were doing a great job and accomplishing great things. If you were at the speech by my battalion commander when we left you'd thought we'd saved the world. The truth was that area was a mess when we left.