"No, you can't go in there," said Poteet.
"Why? Why?" Abdul Mutalib pleaded, nearly crying.
"Because you'll die," Poteet said.
Iraqi soldiers prayed Friday at a memorial at Camp Paliwoda for the U.S. service members killed the previous Sunday in a Humvee accident.
(Ramin Talaie For The Washington Post)
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"No, I'm strong. I'm strong," Abdul Mutalib replied.
Abdul Mutalib, 34, a short, wiry man with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and pale eyes, was in the Iraqi military before the war. But before the U.S. invasion, he said, he traded his AK-47 assault rifle for civilian clothes and went home.
During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, he said, "I saw what American power is like. I didn't want to face it again."
Asked why he now felt so strongly about helping the Americans, Abdul Mutalib said through an interpreter: "These people come 10,000 miles to help my country. They've left their families, their children. When we get hurt, they help treat us and take us to hospitals. If we can give them something back, just a little, we can show our thanks."
Abdul Mutalib asked what the Iraqis could do to help recover the bodies. Poteet and Lt. Col. Jody L. Petery, the battalion commander, weren't certain.
The U.S. military was bringing in aircraft equipped with technology to detect metal in the water and "Navy SEALs with God knows how many millions of dollars worth of equipment," said Petery. "The Iraqis' solution was to go out and make a giant coat rack. And that's what worked."
While the SEALs combed the canal, the Iraqis went to a Balad auto repair shop and built their own piece of dredging equipment.
The tool they created looked like a 20-foot length of rusted bed frame, with 11 curved pieces of rebar hastily welded to it. Abdul Mutalib said the tool took about an hour to make and cost 60,000 Iraqi dinars, or about $40.
The Iraqi soldiers, all of whom grew up in Balad, said they had used similar tools as civilians. During the scorching Iraqi summers, they said, families swim in the canal and people sometimes drown in the deceptive current. The makeshift dredging devices are used to recover the bodies.
The Iraqis returned to the canal in the early afternoon and began working both sides of the canal in 10-man teams. They lowered the tool into the water with ropes, dredged, pulled up the tool, then dredged some more.
Plastic bags, car parts and pieces of clothing stuck to the dredging tool, but as the afternoon wore on none of the three Americans had been found. The Navy SEALs rushed back to base to warm themselves and refill their oxygen tanks. Abdul Mutalib had stripped to his long underwear; he refused to put down the tool, even when the Iraqis changed shifts.
It was about 4 p.m. when Gooding's body was found. Cpl. Nabeel Abdullah, 36, a veteran of ousted president Saddam Hussein's army, jumped into the water, wrapped himself around Gooding's leg and rode the dredging device to the embankment.
About 15 minutes later the Iraqis found Lake. This time Abdul Mutalib jumped in to secure the body. He jumped in again when the dredging tool recovered Rangel.
The Iraqis gathered atop the canal, smoking and shivering in the gathering darkness. The Americans helped cover the Iraqis with blankets and embraced them. A U.S. military truck pulled up with food for the rescuers. The Iraqis hadn't eaten all day. The U.S. soldiers lined up at the truck, heaping their plates with food. Instead of feeding themselves, they fanned out, distributing the plates to the Iraqis.
