The temperature had reached about 115 degrees that day in August 2007. I was a relatively young American soldier sitting in the backyard of a Sunni tribal leader, also known as a sheik, in a western Iraqi town called Ramadi. Since 2003 this sheik and his followers had been hard at work trying to kill […]
![](https://sites.utexas.edu/bainesreport/files/2013/10/FSA_rebels_cleaning_their_AK47s.jpg)