Omran would like to have armored vehicles instead of the jury-rigged pickup they now use, but the Special Forces team itself has mostly old humvees. Once outside the gates of the K1 base, the humvee gunner flicks on the jammers and the driver hits the gas, heading straight at oncoming cars to determine who is a suicide bomber. The aggressive tactic forces regular drivers to pull off the road until the humvee passes. Back at the team house, named Hornbeck Hall for a Special Forces soldier killed in 2004, the team sergeant expresses concern that the next team may be spread too thin if asked to take on more police mentoring. "If our work is not sustained by those who come after us, it will all fall apart," says the 20-year Army veteran. "They will just go back to their old ways."

The team's final days were marked by a disappointment, when the local U.S. conventional commander did not incorporate the whole team into the planning and execution of a sweep through three insurgent-ridden towns west of Kirkuk. The massive cordon-and-search operation turned up over 300 weapons, 300 fuses for bombs, and hundreds of ammunition rounds, as well as 77 detainees. But they do take home one clear measure of their impact here, the gratitude of young Lieutenant Mohammed. Thanks to his own courage and the combat lifesaver course taught by the special forces, he was able to put tourniquets on both his legs when his vehicle was bombed. The medic helped save one leg, and the team is now trying to get him a U.S.-made prosthetic. "I want to get back to duty," the plucky Iraqi said from his hospital bed.

Colonel Tovo, who led special ops forces here in the first phase of the war, believes Iraq is at a tipping point. "If you look over the long term," he says, "we've made tremendous progress on the ground. But this is long-duration work. We are trying to change a culture at every level."