GI Special C/O: 6.14.03 Print It. Send It On

GI Special C/o: 6.14.03 Print it. Send it on.

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GI SPECIAL #44

“It Makes Me Angry That They’re Saying The War Is Over, Because It’s Not. People are Still Dying,” Army Wife Says

“You Had Your Goal Set—going home—And Then You Get Slapped In The Face And Told To Stay,” soldier says

By Jack Kelley, Gary Strauss and Martin Kasindorf
USA Today, Thursday 12 June 2003

FALLUJAH, Iraq — Army Spc. Casey Wilcox has experienced a lifetime of emotions in the past three months. He fought a war. He mourned the death of a fellow soldier. He celebrated the birth of his first child from thousands of miles away.

Last week, just when he thought he was going home in victory to meet his son, Dawson, Wilcox struggled with a crushing disappointment. His brigade was redeployed to this city, where U.S. forces have met some of the worst violence since President Bush declared on May 1 that major combat was over.

"I don't think I've ever been so devastated as on the day they told us," says Wilcox, 20, of Hinesville, Ga. "I've cried several times since then." At home, his wife was equally dashed and says she cried all day. "I don't think it's fair," Michelle Wilcox says.

For the 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, the war doesn't seem to end. Some feel angry that they're still here, guilty that they're not with their families and perplexed that their reward for capturing Baghdad has been extra duty in a country they have grown to dislike.

Their families, who watched the liberation of Iraq on TV, expected a clean end to the a hard-fought war. Instead, they worry their loved ones could die keeping peace in a country where U.S. forces are widely regarded as occupiers, not liberators.

Large numbers of U.S. troops will probably be in Iraq for at least a year. And more families back home will worry about their soldier, Marine, sailor or airman who may be in harm's way. "Do I think the war is over? No. I think it's an ongoing struggle that we will have to deal with for years," says Vivian LaMont of Eureka, Calif., who buried her son Saturday.

The televised images of President Bush landing on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln on May 1 struck a note of triumph. In a speech from the deck, Bush declared an end to major combat operations. Many military families had the impression of a conclusive end to the war, only to be shattered by the loss of a loved one in the unsettled aftermath in Iraq.

"I thought the war was over," says Candice Benavides, 18, of San Diego, Texas. Her cousin, Army medic Amancio Perez III, 22, was killed in an ambush May 28. "I would never have expected casualties among U.S. soldiers."

At Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, Michelle Griffin says she is proud of her husband but is angry about his death on May 13. Staff Sgt. Patrick Griffin Jr., 31, a data systems technician, was in a convoy carrying air-traffic-control equipment from Kuwait to Baghdad when he was killed by a sniper's bullet.

Griffin was sent to the Persian Gulf after Bush declared that combat essentially was over. That had comforted his wife and his father but not him. He had told his wife: "It's still going on. People don't like us over there, and (U.S. troops) are going to die."

"It didn't have to happen," Michelle Griffin says. "It shouldn't have happened. And it makes me angry that they're saying the war is over, because it's not. People are still dying."

"For me to fix blame, it wouldn't be fair," the father of one dead soldier says. "The only thing I'd kind of like to say is that ... I hope all these things they're lookin' for, these weapons of mass destruction and other things, I hope they find them. ... Then I will feel in my heart that the ultimate sacrifice that he made has some kind of justification."

Many of the soldiers in Fallujah, 32 miles west of Baghdad, said their redeployment here was not how they wanted to end their time in Iraq. The city has been the scene of almost daily clashes between American troops and Saddam loyalists since U.S. forces killed at least 15 demonstrators and wounded 78 others in two confrontations in April.

"After the war, we thought we'd be going home," says Staff Sgt. Joseph Shell, 31, of Pascagoula, Miss. "It's hard to convert from war to peacekeeping. This is more dangerous even than Desert Storm. You don't know who the enemy is. They pop up everywhere."

"It's constant, endless, and you always have to watch your back," says Staff Sgt. Ian Murray, 28, of Torrance, Calif. "We're not going to hesitate to pull the trigger."

Last week in Baghdad, several soldiers of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division were saying they didn't fear their new assignment in Fallujah.

Even so, the brigade already has been in the Persian Gulf region six months. Extending their stint at least two months in Fallujah is eating at the morale of many soldiers. "It's hell," Hohrn says. "You had your goal set — going home — and then you get slapped in the face and told to stay."

Hohrn's sister, Denetia Wells, 26, of Marks, Miss., says her brother called home recently. "He said he was mentally and emotionally drained." The family is apprehensive. "The worst is over, as they say, but you still have bullets flying, and you don't know where they're coming from," Wells says.

Plans put on hold

The brigade's long deployment has led to dozens of delayed engagements, missed births and broken marriages. "Guys who had a rocky marriage before, it's worse now," says Staff Sgt. Gordon Baker, 26, of Tannersville, Pa. That may be why many soldiers beg international aid workers and journalists to use their satellite phones. Some vent their frustrations to the folks at home. Others reassure relatives they'll be home soon.

Medic Luis Sanchez, 24, of Austin has been keeping his worries about Fallujah from his fiancée, Keri Nettle, 23. He says he frets that he may have to treat soldiers for possible heat exhaustion in the 100-degree temperatures. And he worries about complacency. "We went through the heavy stuff," he says. "Now we're going to a small town to man checkpoints, do security and house-to-house searches to weed out bad guys. If you're not on top of things, you can get hurt."

Nettle, back in Austin, says: "I don't know anything about this new town where they're going. He just told me that they're going there to help the guys who are already there get the job done." She says her spirits have soared and dipped with the changing conditions. "It was a relief when it was finally over, and it was just a peacekeeping mission, and the Iraqis were happy that we were there. But then that changed, and we got word they had another mission. And there are still casualties."

Perhaps soldiers with young children feel the pain of separation the most. Hohrn has a 6-month-old son, Mikkel. Baker says he was supposed to be home by now, watching Spongebob Squarepants on TV with daughter Lillith, 4. Maj. Mark Rasins, 39, of Dallas, had planned to be at Walt Disney World with his sons Rick, 9, and Ryan, 6.

The delayed reunion has been especially tough for 6-year-old Skylar Munds, the son of Sgt. Jeremy Munds, 30, of Anchorage. "My son was all gung-ho about the Army," the artillery gunner says. "But when I left he said, 'Dad, the Army sucks.' Now, every time he sees a uniform on TV, he cries because I'm not there anymore. So my wife doesn't watch the news anymore."

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OCCUPATION ISN’T LIBERATION;

BRING ALL THE TROOPS HOME NOW

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______IRAQ:RESISTANCE ROUNDUP______

Iraqi Resistance Destroys Ammunition Depots

BAGHDAD, June 10 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – As the U.S. Central Command said Tuesday, June 10, that an explosion at an Iraqi ammunition supply depot killed three Iraqis and wounded two others, a senior American official said that ousted President Saddam Hussein is the one to blame for the country’s unrest. (Comment;: Yeah, he blew the dump and ate your homework too.)

The U.S. forces sustained no casualties in Monday morning's blast in the southern city of Diwaniyah, a CentCom said in a statement posted on its Web site.

A U.S. army munitions disposal team cordoned off the area for fear of follow-on explosions, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

The statement said that the U.S. forces are to help clear the depot once the area is safe to do so.

A blast shook Diwaniyah last month, leaving one American soldier dead and another injured. The CentCom said at the time it did not believe the blast was caused by "hostile action."

In a separate incident, a series of explosions ripped through another ammunitions depot belonging to the U.S. occupation forces in the central holy city of Karbala, CentCom said.

No casualties were reported but U.S. forces established a four-kilometer (more-than-two-mile) buffer zone around the dump to protect residents.

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THOUGHT-FOR-THE-YEAR

"A people who want to win independence cannot confine themselves to ordinary methods of warfare. Mass insurrections, revolutionary warfare, guerilla detachments everywhere - such is the only way."
Frederick Engels

______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.

Job Opening for Former Khe Sanh Pilots….

Baghdad Airport Under Fire Nightly

by Amy Goodman and Robert Fisk
Democracy Now, June 12, 2003, ZNet
On June 11, 2003, Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman interviewed Robert Fisk, reporter with the Independent newspaper of London. He recently left Iraq where he was
chronicling the rising resistance to the U.S. occupation.

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, can you talk more about what you found there?
ROBERT FISK: I don't think I've ever seen a clearer example of an army that thought it was an army of liberation and has become an army of occupation.

It's important perhaps to say -- I did mention it in [a recent] article that a number of those soldiers who were attached to the 3rd infantry division who were military policeman, American ordinary cops like one from Rhode Island, for example--they had a pretty
shrewd idea of what was going on.

You got different kinds of behavior from the Americans. You got this very nice guy, Phil Cummings, who was a Rhode Island cop, very sensitive towards people, didn't worry if people shouted at him. He remained smiling. He just said that if people throw rocks at me or stones at me, I give them candies. There was another soldier who went up to a middle aged man sitting on a seat and he said, "If you get out of that seat, I'll break your neck," and there was quite a lot of language like that as well.

There were good guys as well as bad guys among the Americans as there always are in armies, but the people who I talked to, the sergeants and captains and so on--most of them acknowledge that something had gone wrong, that this was not going to be good.
One guy said to me, every time we go down to the river here--he was talking about the river area in Fallujah--it's a tributary of the Tigris--it's like Somalia down there. You always get shot at and you always get stoned, I mean, have stones thrown at them.

Some of the soldiers spoke very frankly about the situation in Baghdad.

BAGHDAD AIRPORT UNDER FIRE NIGHTLY

One man told me--I heard twice before in Baghdad itself, once from a British Commonwealth diplomat and once from a fairly senior officer in what we now have to call the Coalition Authority They all say that Baghdad airport now comes under nightly sniper fire from the perimeter of the runways from Iraqis. Two of them told me that every time a military aircraft comes in at night, it's fired at.

In fact some of the American pilots are now going back to the old Vietnamese tactic of cork screwing down tightly on to the runways from above rather than making the normal level flight approach across open countryside because they're shot at so much. There is a very serious problem of security.
The Americans still officially call them the remnants of Saddam or terrorists. But in fact, it is obviously an increase in the organized resistance and not just people who were in Saddam's forces, who were in the Ba'ath Party or the Saddam Fedayeen.
There was also increasing anger among the Shiite community, those who were of course most opposed to Saddam, and I think what we're actually seeing, you can get clues in Iraq, is a cross fertilization.

Shiites who are disillusioned, who don't believe they have been liberated, Sunni Muslims who feel like they're threatened by the Shiites, former Sadaam acolytes who've lost their jobs and found that their money has stopped. Kurds who are disaffected and are beginning to have contacts, and that of course is the beginning of a real resistance movement and that's the great danger for the Americans now.

I also know that in Fallujah, for example, there's a system of honking the horns of cars: when the vehicles approach, the American convoy approaches, there's one honk on the horn. When the last vehicle goes by the same spot, there's two honks on the horn, and the purpose is to work out the time element between the first hooter and the second because by that, they know how big is the convoy and whether it's small enough to be attacked. That comes from a sergeant in the military police in Fallujah taking part in this actual operation which I described to you just now, which you read out from my report.
One of the problems with the Americans I think is that the top people in the Pentagon always knew that this wasn't going to be human rights abuses ended, flowers and music for the soldiers, and everyone lives happily every after and loves America. You may remember when Rumsfeld first came to Baghdad,

He made a speech which I thought was very interesting, rather sinister in the big hanger at Baghdad airport.

He said we still have to fight the remnants of Saddam and the terrorists in Iraq, and I thought, hang on a minute, who are these people? And it took me a few minutes to realize I think what he was doing, he was laying the future narrative of the opposition to the Americans. I.E. when the Americans get attacked, It could be first of all laid down toremnants of Saddam, as in remnants of the Taliban who seem to be moving around in Afghanistan now in battalion strength, but never mind. It could be blamed on Al Qaeda, so America was back fighting its old enemies again. This was familiar territory.
If you were to suggest that it was a resistance movement, harakat muqawama, resistance party in Arabic, that would suggest the people didn't believe they had been liberated, and of course, all good-natured peace loving people have to believe they were liberated by the Americans, not occupied by them.

What you're finding for example is a whole series of blunders by Paul Bremer, the American head of the so-called coalition forces, at least coalition authority in Baghdad.
First of all, he dissolved the Iraqi Army. Well, I can't imagine an Army that better deserves to be dissolved. But that means that more than quarter of a million armed men overnight are deprived of their welfare and money. Now if you have quarter of a million armed Iraqis who suddenly don't get paid any more, and they all know each other, what are they going to do? They are going to form some kind of force which is secret, which is covered; then they will be called terrorists, but I guess they know that, and then of course they will be saying to people, why don't you come and join us.
It was very interesting that in Fallujah, a young man came out to see me from a shop just after the American searches there had ended and said some people came from the resistance a few nights ago and asked him to join. I said, what did you say, and he said, I wouldn't do that. But now, he said, I might think differently.

I met a Shiite Muslim family in Baghdad who moved into the former home of a Saddam intelligence officer. This family had been visited three nights previously by armed men who said, you better move out of this house. It doesn't belong to you unless you want to join us.

The guy in Fallujah said that the men, the armed men who came to invite him to join the resistance had weapons, showed their mukhabarat intelligence identity card and said, we're still being paid and we are proud to hold our I.D. cards for the Ba'ath Party. So, now you have to realize that Fallujah and other towns like it are very unlike Tikrit, are very much pro-Saddam.