Casualties of victory

On May 1, President Bush congratulated the armed forces on the "triumph" in Iraq. But that's no consolation to the family of Micheal Dooley, who was killed in Iraq on June 8.

By Stephanie Booth

Jul 22, 2003 | When Sgt. Micheal Dooley, 23, shipped out from Fort Carson, Colo., to Iraq on April 11, his wife, Christine, began taking the phone to bed with her. Around 3 a.m. every Monday, Micheal would call without fail. The connection could be frustrating -- a few seconds delay followed every sentence, and sometimes there were so many soldiers waiting in line to call home that Micheal could only talk for five minutes -- but still, Christine lived for those calls. They were her only connection to her new husband. She wanted to know everything about what Micheal's unit, the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, was doing and seeing in Iraq, but he always managed to steer the conversation back to Christine, who is due to give birth to their first child -- a son -- in October. Was she having morning sickness? Was her belly growing? Did she feel tired? He told Christine that he kissed photos of her and their baby's ultrasound every night before he went to sleep.

On Sunday, June 8, Christine took the phone to bed with her as usual, but it never rang. Instead of her weekly conversation with Micheal, Christine had vivid dreams of him instead. She dreamt of the things he would do when he returned home: renovating the deck on the house they'd recently bought, taking their two dogs -- a cocker spaniel and a boxer -- to a nearby dog park, painting their baby's room. "Normal life things," she says. The dreams were peaceful, the sleep the best Christine had had in weeks. So much so that when there was a knock on the front door just past noon the next day, Christine was still in bed. She felt sick to her stomach, and slowly got dressed. When Christine opened the door, an Army major informed her that her husband was dead. "I didn't feel anything, I was just numb," she says. "Part of me was hoping that it was a joke. I knew it wasn't, but I was hoping."

Since May 1, when President Bush landed on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and triumphantly declared the end to "major combat operations" in Iraq, 93 soldiers have been killed there, including nine in the past week alone. While the White House struggles to convince an increasingly concerned public that ongoing military operations in Iraq are worth both the human and monetary costs, people like Christine Dooley are left to mourn the loss of loved ones -- and wonder whether they died in vain.

Like many soldiers who have fallen in the three months since the official end of the war, Micheal Dooley's death was not combat-related. On June 8, while working security at a traffic checkpoint in western Iraq, near the Syrian border, Micheal was ambushed by three Iraqis who claimed to need immediate medical attention. When Micheal approached their car to offer help, he was shot at the base of his skull. Two of his assailants were killed by American soldiers, and the other escaped. "I've been told he went quickly," Christine says. "I don't know what I'd do if he had suffered like some soldiers I've heard about."

Born Feb. 2, 1980, to a 16-year-old struggling single mother in Pulaski, Va., Micheal was the quintessential all-American kid who played baseball and basketball, loved Nintendo, and rode a skateboard. He had a wide, open smile and "couldn't say no to anyone," says his mother, Ann Davis, 40, who speaks in a honeyed Southern drawl. "He'd give a stranger the shirt off his back."

After graduating from high school in 1998, Micheal began feeling restless in Pulaski, but wasn't ready to go to college. He enlisted in the Army and was stationed in Fort Stewart, Ga., but still found time to come home and hang out with his 11-year-old half-brother, Jacob, who was born hearing-impaired. For hours, Micheal would lie on the living room floor with Jacob, patiently working with him on his homework. They rode bikes together and even went to the barbershop together, Micheal always instructing the barber to cut and shape their chestnut hair the same way -- "short on the sides, high in height," says Jacob.

In 2000, Micheal was in the midst of a peacekeeping tour in Bosnia when he received a letter from a biology student at La Roche College in Pittsburgh. Christine, then just 19, had been complaining to her parents that she never got mail at school. So on her mother's advice, she contacted an organization called Adopt a Platoon and was assigned a military pen pal: Micheal Dooley.

"There was nothing romantic about it at first," Christine remembers. "We were just two strangers writing each other." But after months of frequent letters and e-mails -- Christine wrote about her studies, Micheal about life in Bosnia and how much he liked the people there -- the two became close friends. When Micheal returned to the States in May 2001, he immediately drove to Pittsburgh for the day to finally meet Christine face to face. Although she wasn't expecting romantic fireworks, that's exactly what she got. "As soon as I walked into the hotel and saw him sitting there in the lobby, I instantly knew I would marry him," she says. "I started shaking and my heart was racing. He asked me what was wrong," she laughs. "But I definitely wasn't going to tell him."

Micheal's day trip turned into a weeklong stay. By July, he had chosen a princess-cut diamond engagement ring for Christine, and by the end of the year, she had moved out of her dorm room and into an apartment near Fort Stewart. The two married in a civil ceremony on March 7, 2002. "Just us," says Christine, "in T-shirts and jeans."

Next Page: "I feel robbed by my son's death," says Micheal's mother

• View blog reactions