Things Fall Apart

The air changed early on the morning of Feb. 22, 2006. That day a gang of saboteurs, presumably Sunni, destroyed one of the holiest shrines of Shiite Islam, the gold-domed Askariya Mosque in Samarra. The restraint that Shiites had demonstrated in the face of insurgent attacks quickly evaporated. Over the coming months, more and more corpses turned up in the alleys and vacant lots of Baghdad, many of them bound and bearing marks of torture. Families fled mixed neighborhoods for the safety of sectarian enclaves—or left the country entirely. Roughly 10,000 civilians were killed in the capital in the year's last four months alone.

Worse, the death squads were known to have infiltrated Iraq's uniformed security forces, especially the police. The Pentagon's exit plans depended on training and arming those Iraqi troops. But how could America dare to leave behind a covert army of ethnic cleansers whose members were trained and equipped by the U.S. military?

Marine Pfc. Rex Page
Feb. 24, Fallujah

Hey guys,

How are things going at home? Warm here, like in the 80s. And they're talking about a civil war here now, with the bombings of the [Samarra] mosque. People are flocking to the city. We had to shut down one of the entry points to the city this morning because too many people were trying to come in.

Page, 21, was standing watch on a rooftop in Fallujah on the night of June 28 when he was killed by a sniper. He was promoted posthumously to lance corporal.