GI Special C/o: 5.29.03 Print it. Send it on.
GI SPECIAL #32
An American soldier
at the site of an attack on a
military convoy near the
Baghdad airport. Ruth Fremson
The New York Times’
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“they need to send us home’
Third infantry has had enough of Iraq
Saddled with peacekeeping role, 3rd ID soldiers’ morale dips
By Chris Tomlinson, May 28, 2003, Associated Press
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Ask any soldier in Iraq with a 3rd Infantry Division patch on the shoulder how it’s going, and the reply will be some version of the following four words: “Ready to go home.”
The thrill of victory that followed the division’s capture of Baghdad in early April has faded. As Iraq’s summer heat builds, so do soldiers’ anxieties.
After more than six months in Kuwait and Iraq, tempers have begun to flare, both among the soldiers themselves and with the civilians they encounter. Adding to the worries, eight American soldiers have died in Iraq since Sunday in attacks, accidents and explosions, including two killed by gunmen early Tuesday in Fallujah.
“We were told that once we entered Baghdad — and we won the war — they would send in other units to do the peacekeeping,” one senior soldier said on condition of anonymity. “Those who did the killing should not be the ones keeping the peace. They need to send us home.”
But more than six weeks after the fall of Baghdad, the troops who fought from the Kuwait border all the way to the capital are patrolling the streets. Troops from the 1st Armored Division have arrived in recent days, but the commander of the Fort Stewart, Ga.-based 3rd Infantry said he doesn’t know when his unit will be allowed to leave.
“We’ll continue to do our mission here until we are relieved. I don’t have any time estimate on that, but hopefully it’ll be soon,” Maj. Gen. .
Blount and other officers say that their men are ready to accept any mission given them, even if that means staying in Iraq until August. But unit commanders say privately that morale is plummeting, especially as repeated rumors of an imminent departure fail to materialize.
There are indications that the stress of combat, compounded by weeks of chasing looters and dealing with Iraqi demonstrators, has affected the troops. Leaders report more heated arguments between soldiers and more soldiers declining to re-enlist.
“This is when leadership gets tough,” Lt. Col. Philip DeCamp recently told his officers in Task Force 4-64.
Army psychiatrists who have been screening troops for combat stress have told many soldiers to seek help when they get home, but none know when that will happen. Soldiers have also been quicker to lose their tempers in dealing with Iraqi civilians, the troops said.
Blount said the Army is working to improve living conditions for the soldiers, making sure none are still living in tents and that they have running water and electricity. He said they have also begun distributing ice to soldiers to help keep them cool during walking patrols with more than 30 pounds of combat gear in 100-degree heat.
One reason some senior officers cite for keeping the division in Iraq was the widespread looting and lawlessness in Baghdad that began as U.S. troops took control of the city. But as security is restored and more troops arrive, commanders hope the 3rd Infantry will be allowed to return home. ______
OCCUPATION ISN’T LIBERATION;
BRING ALL THE TROOPS HOME NOW
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______TROOP NEWS______
British Troops in “Near Riot” Refuse Baghdad Duty;
Government Forced to Let Them Go Home
From: Jennifer Rubin
Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 07:16:45 -0700
My fiancé is with the 16 Air Assault Bde.(British Armed Forces) I read this article online Thursday morning and panicked. Of course I can't get in touch with Dave, so there was no way of confirming this. He emailed two days later to tell me what had happened.
The 16 AA Bde was supposed to go home in 2-3 weeks! They had their dates and everything, one foot out the door. They had even begun to pack up! Then they were told they would have to stay and be air-lifted into Baghdad, until September... maybe even longer! Can you imagine how these troops felt???
Apparently it caused quite an uproar, almost riot... even the Brigadier said he would resign. So the army backed off and said, ok... they could go home as planned.
How can they mess with people like that???!
______Do You have a friend or relative in the service? Forward this E-MAIL along, or send us the address if you wishand we’ll send it regularly. Whether in Iraq or stuck on a base in the USA, this is extra important for your service friend, too often cut off from access to encouraging news of growing resistance to the war, at home and in Iraq, and of other social protest movements here in the USA. Send requests to address above.
US Sending More Troops to Iraq
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington, 27 May 2003, Independent.co.uk
A further 20,000 US troops are to be deployed in Iraq amid growing concerns that there are insufficient forces to bring law and order to the country after the American-led invasion.
Over the next few weeks, troops from the 1st Armoured Division will start to arrive, bringing the total number of US forces to about 163,000. Whether forces from other countries will be deployed is unclear.
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Soldier found guilty for refusing to take anthrax vaccine
By William Kates, May 28, 2003, Associated Press
FORT DRUM, N.Y. — A military panel on Wednesday found an Army reservist guilty of disobeying an order for refusing to take the anthrax vaccine.
The panel of eight officers took only 40 minutes before returning a guilty verdict against Pvt. Kamila Iwanowska.
Iwanowska, who is Polish and became an American citizen last year, told her superiors that she considered the shot medically dangerous to children she might have in the future, saying the long-term effects of the anthrax vaccine are unknown. As a Roman Catholic, she also cited religious reasons for refusing it.
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What do you think? Comments from service men and women & veterans specially welcome. Send to the address up top.
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Ft. Knox Sergeant Foretold the Future
(Nearly one year ago, a Sergeant from Fort Knox wrote a prophetic letter about the risks of war in Iraq. Hope he is alive and well. Here it is, from the Wall St. Journal, June 12, 2002)
“The May 29 editorial-page essay ‘We’re Ready To Fight Iraq’ by Michael O’Hanlon makes a strong argument that we are still able to mount a large-scale military operation if circumstances and the political will are present.
I think Mr. O’Hanlon has dismissed factors that must weigh on the minds of Army Command. The first is that an extended conflict in Iraq with an inordinate amount of casualties is not the image the Army wants to convey after a relatively clean operation in Afghanistan.
The other concern is that an increased tempo and the realization that soldiers can get killed will hurt an already fragile enlistment and retention rate.
The Join Chiefs are facing mounting pressure from the belief that the terrorism fight must go through Baghdad.
Unfortunately, this pressure is being brought by civilians who are neither patient norknowledgeable in military intervention. An interesting thought: Start up the draft again and see what percentage of the American public would support increased military actions.
Sgt. First Class Berry, Ft. Knox, Ky.
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For more see “Imperial Law and Disorder” at
______IRAQ:RESISTANCE ROUNDUP______
Attacks Raise Worries of Violent Resistance in Iraq;
A Planned Military Operation
By John Daniszewski and John Hendren, May 28, 2003, Los Angeles Times
FALLOUJA, Iraq—The war was supposed to be over. But the deaths of four soldiers and the wounding of 15 others in just two days in armed attacks across Iraq raise the troubling prospect that a fresh wave of violent resistance to U.S. occupation is beginning.
A rocket-propelled grenade attack early Tuesday in this Euphrates River city had the earmarks of a planned military operation. The casualty toll — two Americans dead and nine wounded — was not dissimilar to many days of the war itself. It was followed later in the day by another rocket-propelled grenade attack in Baghdad, this one aimed at military police.
American foot soldiers also reported coming under sporadic fire while on patrol in the capital.
The attacks appeared to be independent of one another, and it was impossible to say immediately whether they might have been planned by people loyal to the former regime or whether they were separate acts of violence by angry people living in a society in which guns are everywhere. Like two other fatal assaults on U.S. forces that took place Monday, in Baghdad and Hadithah, Tuesday’s violence came against the backdrop of rising anger and frustration in the country after seven weeks of U.S. control.
Many Iraqis are livid at the perceived shortcomings of the U.S. occupation, particularly what they see as a slowness to pay salaries and provide basic services, and at the recent decisions of the U.S. civil administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, to dissolve the national army and put off until at least July forming an interim Iraqi government.
Late Tuesday, an attack took place in Baghdad: Two U.S. military police officers were injured, one seriously, after two rocket-propelled grenade attacks on a police station in northwest Baghdad, a U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Clint Mundinger of the Army’s 709th Military Police Battalion, told Associated Press.
After Tuesday’s firefight in Fallouja, some residents portrayed the clash as the beginning of a jihad, or holy war, to oust the Americans.
“They are not wanted here. No one wanted them to come here,” said a man who gave his name only as Abu Abba at the site where the Americans were killed.
Waving a piece of metal that he said was from the damaged helicopter, he said: “This is our pride.... Everybody says that the American military is invincible. This is the proof that it is not. We are shooting them with our own guns.”
An insular, conservative Sunni Muslim city of 200,000, Fallouja has been a hotbed of anti-U.S. feeling.
Last month, U.S. troops twice opened fire on crowds who appeared intent on attacking them, killing at least 18 Iraqis and injuring 78 more.
Mayor Taha Badawi Alwani, in an interview in his office, said the city was never particularly pro-Saddam Hussein.But neither do its fiercely independent tribesmen want to see American fighting vehicles and Humvees on their streets,he said. He estimated that 80 percent of the city’s population, frustrated with living conditions, wants the Americans to leave.
Abdul Wahid, head of the city’s education department, was seething in a reception room in the city hall.
“No security. No salaries. Not any services,” he said. “Our country may be the only one in the world to export petroleum and not have enough gas for our cars.... Tell your nation that Bush did nothing to keep his promises.”
At a former Iraqi airfield in Baghdad’s Al Salaam district Tuesday, attackers aimed rifle or handgun fire at a unit of the newly arrived 1st Armored Division, said Lt. Chris Labra of the division’s Battery C of the 4th Battalion, 27th Field Artillery.
As Labra and fewer than a dozen men made their rounds on foot, he had to pause occasionally for single shots that sounded as if they had come from a neighborhood a few hundred yards away.
“We think they’re testing us,” said Labra, whose unit took over duties from members of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division this week. “Everyone knows we’re new on the job.”
The 1st Armored Division soldiers, whose arrival has doubled the number of soldiers patrolling the capital’s streets, fret over a spot on the post they consider vulnerable to grenade attacks. Patrolling in Humvees and on foot, they alter their routes and security checkpoint routines so attackers cannot predict their movements.
Asked if he was concerned about an attack, Staff Sgt. Stephen Peacock, a 36-year-old 1991 Persian Gulf War veteran, answered, “We think about that 24/7.”
Rising discontent comes in part from soldiers uncertain of their pensions and future work now that Bremer has disbanded the Iraqi army.
The neighborhood, whose houses were built and subsidized for Iraqi soldiers before Hussein’s quarter-century regime, is home to many men such as former Maj. Ammar Khader, who frets that he is feeding a family of seven on his father’s pension, now $40 a month.
“How can I feed my family?” he asked Labra, perhaps 20 years his junior. “We are a normal army. We do not belong to Saddam’s regime.”
Labra’s refrain, repeated to satisfy complaints over power, water, safety and joblessness, is the same: “Every day it’ll get better.” But back at the airstrip, he gives Capt. Aaron Francis a frank debriefing.
“People will shoot, and it’s like 200 meters away,” Labra said. “On two occasions I said, ‘Who was that?’ and people said, ‘I will not tell you because this is my neighbor.’ “
Daniszewski reported from Fallouja and Hendren from Baghdad.
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U.S. Soldiers Ambushed In Baghdad
By PATRICK E. TYLER, Baghdad New York Times, 5.26.03
This afternoon in Baghdad, four American soldiers were wounded when an explosive device believed to be a land mine was hurled by an unidentified assailant at a convoy on the road to the international airport on the western side of the capital. The United States Central Command later issued a statement saying one soldier had died and three others had been wounded in the incident.
"A man came running straight out at the road, and I engaged," said Pfc. Dustin Meeks. "He just sprung out of the bushes, and I perceived him as a threat, and I shot at him."
Despite the gunfire, the assailant managed to throw the explosive device into the path of an Army Humvee, destroying it and wounding all three of the passengers, according to the Army sergeant riding in the second vehicle.
"The gunner of the truck was slung about 15, 20 feet," said Private Meeks, who was interviewed at the scene of the attack. He was the gunner of a Humvee driving in convoy with the destroyed vehicle. The two Humvees, part of a scout platoon of the Third Infantry Division, were driving north about three miles from the airport when they were attacked.
A fourth soldier, from the Third Battalion of the 69th Armored Regiment, was wounded by shrapnel from exploding munitions when he stopped to assist in pulling the soldiers from the smoldering wreckage.
"They deserved it and they deserve more. They are occupiers, not liberators," said Ali Abbas, a resident of the Amiriyah area in western Baghdad. (Al Bawaba 5.27.03)
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Dumbshit Bremmer Fires 400,000 Iraqi Troops, Who Pledge to Take Up Arms Against U.S.
Islam Online 5.26.03
Tensions between Iraqis and the country's U.S. administrators came to the fore yet again during a protest by demobilized Iraqi soldiers.
"We demand the speedy establishment of a government, the return of security, the rehabilitation of public institutions and the payment of wages to all soldiers," former general Saheb al-Mussawi said.
“If our demands are not respected, next Monday will mark the date of the break between the Iraqi army and people on one side and the occupiers on the other,” he said in reference to US-led coalition troops.
The protesting band of officers carried banners saying “Better to have the throat slit than revenues confiscated. The Iraqi army demands its rights!,” and “The Iraqi army is the army of the people and the nation!”
“Death, death so Iraq can live!” they chanted.
“We are soldiers used to combat and we have volunteers for martyrdom,” warned former lieutenant colonel Ziad Khalaf in reference to suicide bombers.
“We will take back by force what we have lost by force,” Khalaf said.
“Those not enrolled in this new army, what will they do? How will they feed their family?” Abdullah asked.
“Every soldier has kept his weapon and they (the Americans) will be witness to unpleasant things. If we do not receive our pay, we will transform ourselves into militias,” another colonel warned.
The protest followed Friday's announcement by Bremer that Saddam's former army and vast security apparatus would be abolished, replaced by a "non-political" army, and plans to issue the 400,000 demobilized soldiers just a single severance payment.
The 100 or so demonstrators warned they would stage further protests, formmilitias and possibly even carry out bomb attacks if their situation was not reconciled.
Several protests have since taken place, with workers urging that dismissed colleagues be reinstated despite their allegiance to the Baath party.
Jay Garner, the retired US general now part of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance running post-Saddam Iraq, insisted: “We are not paying them (soldiers). “The Iraqi economy will get started and they will have to find jobs.” ______