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uncooperative in answering questions the next day. He was arrested on charges of conspiracy and withholding information. Ra’ad protested that many people had heard of a possible attack. His enemies were setting him up so they would get the American contracts. Call the 3rd ID back in Texas, he said; their commanders would vouch for him. His entreaties were to no avail, and he was sent to prison.
    The following night, despite threats from the insurgents, a thousand people turned out to elect representatives to the Anbar Provincial Council. Safe inside the Government Center, the sheikhs condemned the killings and threatened tribal revenge. In previous attacks insurgents had assassinated translators and contractors who picked up the garbage at the 82nd base. This was the first attack against fellow townsmen who had refused to cooperate with the Americans.
    Drinkwine hoped the sheikhs would retaliate. After a few days he concluded they would mutter and fulminate but not take up arms. The sheikhs had been cowed. The traditional system of tribal retaliation no longer protected anyone in the city. As the American-mounted patrols had daily rolled past the mosques and suburbs, the roots of the rebellion had grown stronger.
    While Gen Abizaid’s principle was to “take American hands off the controls,” if that happened in Fallujah, the insurgents would grab the controls. BrigGen Kimmitt, the deputy director for operations at JTF headquarters in Baghdad, acknowledged this point when asked to comment on the fight at the police station. “The fact remains,” he said, “that places like Fallujah are not ready for local control.”
    Working together, the jihadists and the former soldiers had killed the policemen they had grown up with, eaten with, and prayed with. No longer was it enough in Fallujah to be a local who minded his own business and was careful in his dealings with the Americans.
    The twenty-three deaths by small-arms fire were the highest number in any firefight in the Iraqi war. The size of the attack and the exuberance with which neighbors killed neighbors showed a depth of military opposition not previously encountered by the 82nd. The cultural system of clans encouraged submissiveness to a few alpha males; the attack signaled the rise of a new group of alphas. Fallujah had lurched into a new phase of warfare.
    Reaction to the police slayings focused on arrests and investigations of traitors rather than an assessment of the event’s significance. The CIA had only a few agents at the 82nd base camp, and there was no functioning intelligence service inside the Iraqi government. Janabi was not redlined for special attention by Task Force 6-26, and the two fundamentalist cells implicated in the attack received no further attention.
    The Valentine’s Day Massacre was a watershed event, underplayed because the American forces were in a period of transition. Drinkwine’s battalion was preparing to pull out of Fallujah and return to the States, leaving a city where the outcome was in doubt.
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    The destruction of the police station brought Fallujah to the front pages of American newspapers for a few days. The city’s notoriety, however, was soon eclipsed by massive car bombings across Iraq. On March 3, 143 Shiites on religious holiday in Karbala were blown to bits; most likely it was the work of Zarqawi, as he tried to provoke a civil war between the Shiites and the Sunnis. The following week 192 people were killed in Spain when al Qaeda terrorists blew up a train. Five days later Spain elected a prime minister who pledged to pull all Spanish troops out of Iraq.
    Despite these setbacks Drinkwine saw some signs of hope. Due to the intelligence task forces, he was having success with raids. LtCol Suleiman had emerged as a determined leader, unafraid of his fellow Baathists. In the Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago in 1929, mobsters posing as police had gunned down seven other criminals; a revolted citizenry then