As the Command Judge Advocate of 5th Special Forces Group, Major Mark Holzer reviewed rules of engagement and briefed and de-briefed SOF teams mostly in the Baghdad environs during his March to May 2003 deployment in support of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. In this interview, Holzer expresses surprise that not a single U.S. organization had translated the Iraqi Criminal Code or Civil Code into English prior to the invasion. "So here I am, the legal officer, going to go in and I know that my counterparts are going to help set up this legal system-or reestablish the legal system in this country-and we don't know what the heck it is. Nobody reads Arabic." Thus, organizing the translation of Iraqi law was one of his office's first tasks. Holzer also discusses the complicated rules of engagement and other attendant legal questions with respect to the busloads of suspected insurgents that were coming across the Syrian border into Iraq. "When there are seven busloads of people, all traveling in convoy across the border, coming into a war zone, that’s a pretty good indicator of what the intent is.” Indeed, determining hostile intent – or “at what point do you pull the trigger” – was a major issue in what he termed a “legally intense battlefield.” Other legal aspects of war that Holzer addresses are the enemy’s military use of mosques, hospitals, schools and other protected structures, as well as his recommendations for how Judge Advocate Generals might be better employed in combat zones.

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