Making enemies.

I'm in Al Qaim, in the Anbar province of western Iraq, by the Syrian border. The men of the 1st Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, occupy what they have named the Wild West. Lieutenant Colonel Gregg Reilly is the SCO, or squadron commander, of Tiger Base. A relaxed Californian, he is comfortable answering tough questions but gets tense for the first time when asked why the United States is in Iraq. He removes his legs from the desk and places an elbow on the table as he leans his forehead in his palm. "We're here for the right reasons, to enable this region of the world to progress," he says. "And America has always had to be there to stand up for me basic human rights of people. The reputation of the United States is on the line."

Most of Reilly's troops echo his sentiments, but not all the men are thrilled to be in Iraq. When asked how long he had been there, one enlisted twenty-one-year-old snaps, "Way too long. When we first got here it felt like we were doing something good. Now it feels like a waste."

"If we find weapons of mass destruction it was worth it," says another twenty-one-year-old. "But if we don't and we're just here because Bush wanted to finish what his daddy started, then a lot of boys died for nothing, and that's fucked up."

Staff Sergeant Joseph Alfeiri expresses sympathy for the Iraqis. "I wonder how I would feel if someone was breaking down my door," he says. "Or if it was my grandfather who didn't understand instructions at a checkpoint and panicked and was shot by the foreign force."

Sergeant Scott Blow, a twenty-seven-year-old from Denver, worries about security. "Nobody knows who the enemy is here until they shoot at you," he says. "Any time you kick down a door, you don't know what to expect."

On June 7, one of Reilly's soldiers, Sergeant Michael Dooley, was standing at a checkpoint when a car approached containing three men. Two of them called out that their friend was injured and needed attention. When Dooley approached the vehicle to assist, the men shot him in the face, killing him immediately.

In early October, Reilly decides he has enough "actionable intelligence" to pursue those who are attacking his soldiers every day. "We have the most concrete set of targetable data in Iraq," Reilly says of the operation code-named Tiger Strike. "We have built this over many months with multiple sources." He has two organizational charts on his wall. One chart is for Al Qaeda cells, including safe houses, financiers, and fighters. The other chart is for the resistance led by three former generals from the elite Republican Guard who coordinated cells of suppliers, trainers, financiers, and trigger pullers. Altogether, there are sixty-two names on the wanted list.

On the wall beside the charts are large satellite images of the towns with the targeted houses marked and numbered. Reilly plans to raid a minimum of twenty-nine locations, taking out the "nervous system of the area and the guys who actually do the shooting," he says, slapping the satellite images on the wall. "Everything I have here will be there: two cavalry troops, fourteen tanks, twenty-three Bradleys, fifteen gun trucks, 100 dismounts, a total of 300 soldiers." He also plans to use all his human resources, including a long range surveillance team which would leave early and observe the targets in hiding; a paramilitary officer from the OGA, or "Other Government Agency," as the CIA is euphemistically known in Iraq; and a team of special forces. In case he needs to, he can call upon an Orion spy plane and an unmanned aerial vehicle, as well as the listening capacities of several different intelligence agencies. The plan is to target the leaders, homes, and the Al Qaeda safe houses first. This would be a "dynamic operation," he says, meaning they would not be knocking on doors.

By 0100 on October 5, soldiers move M1 A2 tanks, Bradley Armored Personnel Carriers, large trucks with mounted guns, and unarmored Humvees into position. The mood among the several hundred men is like that of athletes before a big game. They joke, psyche themselves up, and receive final reminders by their team leaders, like coaches, to focus, to keep their eyes on the ball.

One after another, the vehicles in the convoy rumble out the gate of Tiger X-Ray, as the base is called, round the bend, and pass the electrical station, stopping at the test-fire range. "The hardest part of the mission is going in there and pulling some father away from his kids," says Captain Justin Brown, commander of Apache Troop, whose half of Tiger Strike is called Operation Decapitation. "Yeah, it sucks," his driver, Sergeant Bentley, avers. "But," continues Brown, "if it's going to let my men get home safe to see their kids, I'll do it." They resume discussing football. Brown, a Texan, is a Cowboys fan.

Apache's teams drive in black light, guided by the night-vision goggles worn by the driver. After half an hour of navigating in the dark, the convoy approaches the first house and the vehicles go into white light, illuminating the target area as a tank breaks the stone wall. "Fuck, yeah!" cheers Bentley. "Hi, honey, I'm home!" The team charges over the rubble, breaks through the door with a sledgehammer, and drags several men out. The team marches the barefoot detainees, dazed from their slumber, over rocks and hard ground. A soldier shoves forward one short, middle-aged man limping with painful difficulty. The soldier says, "You'll fucking learn how to walk." In response to questions, each male gives his name. None match the names on the list.

The soldiers ask a prisoner where the military officer lives. "Down the road," he points. "Show us!" say the soldiers, pushing the prisoner ahead so he stumbles across the rocky street. He is terrified that he would be seen as an informer in the neighborhood. He stops at the house, but the soldiers run ahead. "No, no, it's here," yells a sergeant, and they run back, breaking through the gate and bursting into the house. It is a large villa, with grapevines covering the driveway. Soldiers order the women and children to sit in the garden and give them a card that explains in Arabic what is going on. Squadron members shove the men to the ground on the driveway and ask their names. It is the first high-value target. A son of one man begs the soldiers, "Take me for ten years but leave my father!" The soldiers take both father and son, as the other children scream, "Daddy, Daddy!"

House after house meets the same fate. Some homes have only women in them. The 3rd Armored Cavalry ransacks the houses, breaks into closets, overturns mattresses, and throws clothes out of drawers. In one house, the CIA commando and soldiers seem to miss the smiling face in the large picture pasted to" the suspect's bedroom dresser. It is Uday, Saddam's notorious son, dressed in tribal clothes.

In a big compound of several houses, the soldiers take all the men, even the ones not on the list. A sergeant explains that the others will be held for questioning to see if they have any useful information. The men cry out that they have children still inside. In several houses, soldiers tenderly carry out babies that had been left sleeping in their cribs. When a house search is complete, or at the "Home Run" stage (the different stages are divided into 1st, 2nd, 3rd, Home Run, and Grand Slam, meaning ready to move on), soldiers relax and joke, breaking their own tension and seeming to ignore the trembling and shocked women and children crouched together on the lawns behind them.

Prisoners with duct tape on their eyes and hands cuffed behind them with plastic "zip ties" sit in the back of the truck for hours without water. They move their heads toward sounds, disoriented and frightened, trying to understand what is happening around them. Any time a prisoner moves or twitches a soldier bellows at him. By daylight the whole town could see a large truck full of prisoners.

From the list of thirty-four names, Apache Troop brings in sixteen positively identified men, along with another fifty-four men who are neighbors, relatives, or just happened to be around. By 0830, Apache is done and starts driving back to base. As the main element departs, the psychological operations vehicle blasts AC/DC rock music through neighborhood streets. Neighbors awakened by the noise huddle outside and watch the convoy. One little girl stands before her father with her arms outstretched and legs wide, guarding him from the soldiers.

The prisoners spend the night on a large dirt field in a square of concertina wire, beneath immense spotlights and next to loud generators. They sleep on the ground, guarded by soldiers. One noncommissioned officer expresses surprise. "Did they just arrest every man they found?" he asks, wondering if "we just made another 300 people hate us."

Three days after the operation, a dozen prisoners march in a circle outside the detention center, surrounded by barbed wire. They are shouting "USA, USA!" over and over again. "They were talking when we told them not to, so we made them talk something we liked to hear," says one of the soldiers with a grin. Another gestures with his hands, letting the prisoners know they have to raise their voices. A first sergeant quips that the ones who are not guilty "will be guilty next time."

American forces have detained 7,000 Iraqis, according to a major from the judge advocate general's office. Many stay in prisons indefinitely. The military holds some "security detainees" for six months pending a review to determine if they are still a security risk. A lieutenant colonel involved in the process adds that there is no judicial procedure for the thousands of detainees.

One person the Apache Troop picks up a few days before the big raid is named Ayoub. Soldiers break through his door early in the morning, and when Ayoub does not immediately respond to their orders, they shoot him with a nonlethal ordnance, little pellets exploding like gunshot from the weapon's grenade launcher. Ayoub's blood covers the floor of the house. The soldiers drag him into a room and interrogate him forcefully while others push his family back against a garden's fence. Ayoub's flail mother, covered in a shawl, with traditional tribal tattoos marking her face, pleads with the immense soldier to spare her son's life, protesting his innocence. She takes the soldier's hand and kisses it repeatedly while on her knees. He pushes her to the grass, along with Ayoub's four girls and two boys, all small, and his wife. They squat barefoot, screaming, their eyes wide open.

Apache Troop brings Ayoub out and pushes him onto the truck. He gestures to his family to remain still. He sits frozen, staring numbly ahead as the soldiers ignore him. The medic looks at Ayoub's injured hand and chuckles to his friends, "It ain't my hand." The truck blasts country music on the way back to the base. Ayoub goes to the detainment center.

Several hours later, Apache Troop intercepts a call from Ayoub. "Oh, shit," says the captain. "It was the wrong Ayoub." However, in order to avoid the risk that the other Ayoub would learn Apache is after him, they do not release the father of six who has the misfortune of sharing a name with the suspect. The night after his arrest, soldiers escort Ayoub to call his family to tell them he is fine, bur that he would not be home for a while.

Apache sends the tapes of the other Ayoub's conversations for analysis. In them, he speaks of proceeding to the "next level," and obtaining land mines and other weapons. This alarms the army's intelligence officers. The meaning of the intercepted conversation confounds them until somebody realizes Ayoub is not a terrorist intent on obtaining weapons. This Ayoub is a kid, who had been on the phone with a friend, discussing a video game he was playing.

Nir Rosen is a freelance writer living in Iraq. He wrote "Baghdad out of Order" for our September issue.