They called it the “Death Star” because according to one source who worked inside it, “you could just reach out with a finger and eliminate” somebody.
On the walls were television screens, known by the special forces boys as “Kill TV”, where footage from image-intensifier cameras of the enemy being blown up by air strikes, or being gunned down by undercover hit teams was shown.
This place was “the Machine”, a state-of-the-art military command centre hidden away in an airbase in Balad, a desolate stretch of land north of Baghdad.
It was created by Major General Stanley McChrystal, the chief of United States Special Forces, the most secretive force in the American military.
Here, in the permanently darkened communications cockpit, dozens of US and British (SAS) personnel would gather around as nightly raids took place against al Qaeda and their insurgent allies.
Sometimes McChrystal would lead the raids himself, his squad of elite undercover combat troops, known as Delta Force, being told at the last minute that the commander was coming along for the ride.
No one was quite sure what the Pentagon policy was on two star generals going on such dangerous missions, but then very few people in the US Department of Defence, and even fewer outside it in Washington, were even aware of these shadowy operations going on in Iraq.
This was the secret and violent world which shaped Stanley McChrystal, who three days ago was sacked from his job as commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan.
The irony, as his colleagues were pointing out yesterday, was that his spectacular downfall was not due to some illicit military action, but because of a magazine article his aides had arranged in order to publicise his most recent high-profile public career.
Nevertheless, the seeds of what was to bring him down may have been planted at his time running “black ops” [operations], the head of a close-knit team answerable to very few, where decisions were made about life and death on a daily basis.
The autonomy was not just military.
McChrystal and his men would go into the badlands – at that time most of Iraq – to make deals with local tribal leaders, pay out money, organise allies and informants. There was no question of practical civilian oversight as no diplomat, American or British, would venture into these areas.
Thus McChrystal and the group around him, many of whom would follow him to Kabul, would have little to do with US or British civilian leaders.
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