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Wednesday, December 03, 2003

Ariyah 
One day, as I was completing a routine transfer of a couple of truckloads of detainees to the MPs and intelligence debriefers at Al Asad, the intelligence chief told me they had been holding some people they wanted to release, but didn’t have anyway to get them back home. Could I give them a ride back to Ar Ramadi and drop them off downtown?

“Sure!”

So we completed the transfer, and I sent my guys back out to the main post for lunch, while I stayed behind and got ready to sign for the four detainees we were going to release, plus their personal property.

One of the guys they brought out was a slight man, about 45 years of age, hobbling on a cane. He was wearing only a pair of sandals and a dirty grey dishdash, a popular, light robe-like garment that buttons in the front and extends down to knee level.

His right calf was mangled and withered, and flopped around when he walked like it was tied to his knee by a string.

When he came into the room, the Army linguist attached to the intelligence unit there told him there was no evidence against him, we didn’t believe he was a threat, and he was going to be released—he was going home. The man broke down sobbing, and fell into the linguist’s arms and embraced him. He embraced everyone in the room, laughing and sobbing at the same time.

As I gathered in bits and pieces, he had been imprisoned and tortured by Saddam Hussein’s secret police some years ago. It was they who had destroyed his knee. They had made him stretch his leg out between two blocks, and then they smashed it with a sledgehammer. He had thought prison was prison was prison, and assumed that Americans would treat him the same way as Saddam did. So when he found out he was to be released again, it overwhelmed him.

I signed for him and his wallet, as well as for three other men, and asked through the interpreter where in Ar Ramadi they wanted to be dropped off. The police station downtown was fine, so we instructed them that when we got there, we’d cut the plastic cuffs one at a time, and they were to simply walk away from the trucks and they were free. When the trucks and crews came back from their lunch break, we loaded everyone up and rolled.

An hour and a half later, we pulled in front of the police station. I pushed an M249 machine gunner out front, and another to the rear of the convoy for security, and then we lowered the tailgate on the truck and released them, one at a time.

The man on the cane was last. We helped him off the truck, I handed him his wallet, and told him one of the very few Arabic words I know: “Ariyah!” “Freedom!”

“Thank you, America! Yes, Ariyah! Good friend! Friend! Bush good! Thank you, friend! America friend!”

He was all smiles as he embraced me, the guard, and the truck driver, we wished him salaam aleichem, and he stepped out into the road, hailed a taxi, waved to us, got in, and sped away.


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