"Yeah, we do," Cate agreed.
"You lose your mind if you take this stuff too seriously," Rutigliano said.
Rutigliano said he thought the Stryker Brigade had defeated local insurgents, but he predicted they'd be back. "It doesn't matter how many we kill, they'll always keep coming back," he said. "They've all got cousins, brothers. They have an endless supply."
The Stryker stopped in a parched field in Tolelhar. The rear ramp dropped and the soldiers bolted from the vehicle into the blinding afternoon, crouching and sweeping their black M-4 assault rifles across the barren landscape.
The men fanned out and headed for buildings on the other side of the field. A half-dozen soldiers punched through the door of a two-room mud house. Nineteen women and children huddled together in the shade of the courtyard while the soldiers searched for weapons.
Two soldiers came to a large cabinet containing scattered clothes, small teacups, a small Winnie the Pooh doll and a large stack of blankets. The men poked their guns into the blankets on the top shelf and they began to fall. The soldiers scoured the jumble, then left.
Outside the house, other soldiers had seven men lined up facing the mud wall surrounding the house. Two of the detainees massaged prayer beads as the soldiers fitted them with plastic flexible handcuffs and blindfolds. Some wore trousers, others white gowns.
"You have the right to remain silent," one soldier told an uncomprehending detainee in English. "Anything you say will result in a punch in the face."
Most of the detainees appeared to be in their twenties or thirties; one appeared to be at least 70. The soldiers photographed the detainees' identification documents and then the detainees' faces. An interpreter, whom the soldiers called "Terp," wrote down the names on the back of a piece of cardboard torn from a pack of mixed fruit. The names were then compared with a "Black List" -- a computer printout of suspected terrorists.
"Bad guys, bad guys," said one soldier, watching the detainees as they were processed.
"Or maybe just some guys without a home," Beaty said.
The detainees, now numbering 10, were marched single file across the field. Soldiers from five other Strykers had rounded up 83 other men. They were seated on baked earth coated with straw, their hands behind their backs.
One man gave his name as Mustafa Abdul Rahman, 55. He said he was from Tall Afar and had left to escape the fighting.
"They said on the loudspeaker for us to leave the city," he said through an interpreter. During the fighting last week, the Tall Afar police chief had asked residents to leave for their safety.
