By late April, we had probably conducted at least 20 missions in and around Baghdad looking for WMDs and HVTs. Obviously, we never found any WMDs, but we did find a lot of weapons caches, bunkers, Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) safehouses, and torture chambers. I remember one IIS safehouse in particular. A kind Iraqi gentleman – whose front door we had just blown off, whose family we had just terrorized, and whose entire house we had just ransacked at 3 o’clock in the morning looking for “WMDs” – was more than gracious to show us.

We hit his house right at 3am. The first guy through the door after the lock was blown off with a 12-gauge shotgun had entered the pitch-black residence ready to smoke someone. I followed directly behind the hulking Ranger screaming in Arabic for everyone to get down on the ground or else they would be shot. The squad of Rangers pouring through the door had almost trampled a new-born baby and two small children to death – they were laying with some female members of the family on the living room floor near the front door. The men of course, were all sleeping in the back room together.

Within seconds, everyone except the children and the mother of the new-born were zip-tied. It was pure chaos from the second the door was blown and kicked in. Not only was it difficult to see, but the women and children were all screaming, the dudes in the back starting whining like a bunch of bitches, and the Rangers were yelling commands back and forth while I was screaming at the Iraqis to shut the fuck up. After everyone was brought into the front room and some small oil lamps were lit so we could stop shining flashlights in people’s faces, I began interrogating the men and asking where the WMDs were.

You might ask yourself, “Why were you searching a two-bedroom apartment at 3 o’clock in the morning with a family and small children for WMDs?” Well, that’s a good fucking question. I guess you might also ask why we ever invaded Iraq and perhaps you’ll get the same answer. It was all bullshit, as we now know. Allegedly, a human source named “Curveball” who the Germans had debriefed and classified as a habitual fabricator of intelligence information was relied upon as the vanguard of our intelligence, “proving” the Iraqis had WMDs.