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...rules were endangering the troops. The General immediately flew down to Zhari and walked a patrol with that soldier's platoon. "It was a good experience," McChrystal told me later. "I explained to them why we needed the rules. And I've been making it my practice to go out on patrol with other units ever since...
...plus for us," Ellis says. "After they were released, we continued to treat them with antibiotics, painkillers and new bandages. When people saw how well we were treating them, they were grateful. The motorcycle driver's brother started helping us with some good information. But we had to go through an intense legal inquiry about the shooting...
There is a caveat to McChrystal's rules of engagement. A soldier is always permitted to use his or her discretion in a matter of self-defense. But the overall impact of the rules has been a hunkering down, a decidedly less aggressive attitude about going after the enemy, from the air or from the ground. "Day by day, we're watching the Taliban put in IEDs, creeping up toward the town," Ellis says. "I'm losing two inches of Senjaray every day." The effect on morale has been brutal. "Maybe half the guys in Dog Company spent their last...
Still, Ellis was confident the operation would go forward. This was just a bureaucratic glitch. Everyone thought so. On April 3, I spoke with Ellis' immediate superior, Lieut. Colonel Reik Anderson, commander of the 1/12, and with the Canadian in charge of Joint Task Force Kandahar, Brigadier General Daniel Menard, who was furious about the delay. "We're going to have a letter signed by the district and provincial governors, insisting that we go ahead," Menard told me, then proceeded to talk like a general. "This is essential. It would be the first nonkinetic breach of Taliban control...
...next afternoon, Ellis received word from battalion: there would be another delay, ostensibly of five days, but Ellis knew it would be longer than that. The Canadian bomb-disposal unit couldn't wait around. It had to go on to other projects. "This is becoming a joke," said one of the troopers who escorted me out of Combat Outpost Senjaray the following day. "It ain't gonna happen...