What’s Really Important?

[thedrifter]

Marine Corps Gazette
September Editorial: What’s Really Important?

Is the Marine Corps doing everything in its power to prepare our Marines for combat? For instance, take the way we man and train our Operating Forces. It’s pretty much done the same way it was when I was commissioned a second lieutenant 38 years ago.


Manning the force. There have been countless books and articles written about cohesion, or lack of it, in today’s Armed Forces. We are quite expert at forming up a MEU(SOC), getting it finely tuned through workups, and even on the cutting edge during deployments. After one or possibly two deployments at most, that cutting-edge outfit is pulled asunder by archaic manpower policies.


Our 32d Commandant, Gen James L. Jones, understood the problem, or at least part of it. At a Marine Ground Dinner, he made the emphatic point that the Corps needed to keep sergeants in the Operating Forces so they could ply their trade in combat MOSs and lead and train their young Marines. Shortly thereafter he signed off on an initiative to place the best and the brightest at the schools of infantry as instructors, affording that now elite group the same status as drill instructors, recruiters, and Embassy guards. And therein lies the rub. The Operating Forces become the billpayer for everything else the Marine Corps does.


Some good news is coming from the prolonged Operations ENDURING FREEDOM and IRAQI FREEDOM in the guise of critical combat experience for our junior officers. We may return to the “B” billet bleed of our junior officers after combat ceases, and we can expect a continuation of a bleed to joint billet assignments for majors that are not matched to congressional authorizations.


It’s easy to say that all of this amounts to nothing new under the sun, that Operation IRAQI FREEDOM II is but a blip on the radar, and that soon things will calm down and be just like before. But that is a huge problem, too. It’s time to take stock and make changes in the way we do business, or we will continue to suffer the consequences of our inaction.


Remedies are both internal and external. The Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, and Congress are all a part of the current problem and must be part of the solution as well. Internally we have to make the commitment that the Operating Forces and cohesion come first, and then the brain trust extant throughout the Corps will find solutions to make it all work.


Training the force. It’s one thing to man the force properly. It’s an entirely different matter to train that cohesive force into a finely tuned combat machine. We are all victims of our own experience and seem to continue training our Marines the way we always have. Blocks of time for the rifle range, more for the gas chamber, a little more for field training when the commander can afford the time, throw in a Combined Arms Exercise, and mix it with cold weather training and we are doing lots of neat things—but are we really training our Marines for combat, outside of the units deploying as MEU(SOC)s?


LtCol B.P. McCoy has just completed two tours in Iraq as the commanding officer of 3d Battalion, 4th Marines. In his seminal article, “‘Brilliance in the Basics’ and Other Expectations of Combat Leaders” (p. 50), the battalion commander makes a very strong case for constant training to standards and enforcing those standards through disciplined leadership to ensure the efficiency of a combat unit.


No single person has all of the answers on how to man and train our combat units more effectively and efficiently. Admitting that a real problem exists is a major, if humbling, first step. A recently completed study by the Force Structure Review Group has made recommendations for change to the CMC. When final decisions are made and promulgated, we will report them. Meanwhile, let’s use the pages of the Gazette to discuss the issues. Prove me wrong, or suggest solutions if you think I may have something here. There are plenty of really smart Marines out there. Let’s work together to ensure that our Operating Forces remain the very best combat machines on the planet.

http://www.mca-marines.org/Gazette/edt.html


Ellie

[thedrifter]

The Enemy in Iraq
Violence is likely to get worse between now and America's Election Day.

Saturday, September 18, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

Violence is spiking again in Iraq, and U.S. officials are warning that it is going to get worse before it gets better. So now is a good moment to sort out where we are in Iraq, and more important, to remember who precisely our enemy is.

The first thing to stress is that Iraq is not in "chaos," nor is there some general uprising against either Coalition forces or the interim government led by Ayad Allawi. If that were true, the violence would be far worse. The latest CIA assessment is negative, at least according to the spin of this week's news leaks, but given the agency's track record in Iraq that estimate may or may not be accurate. One clear CIA mistake has been its predictions of communal or religious fighting; the striking thing is how little Sunni vs. *****e, or Kurd vs. Arab, violence there has been so far.

The second crucial point is that the *****e majority remains committed both to elections and to a pluralistic Iraq. The moderate Grand Ayatollah Sistani is the recognized *****e authority in Iraq, as his role in negotiating the recent Najaf ceasefire shows, and he has explicitly rejected the Iranian model of religious government.

In Najaf, recent demonstrations were held to blame not the Americans but rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr for the recent violence there. Al-Sadr's followers are mostly underemployed young men who can be co-opted into the political process once they're convinced that America intends to honor its promise to hold elections. Al-Sadr himself still needs to be arrested or killed, but the way to neutralize his support is to show progress toward the January polls.



So who are we fighting? The answer is a combination of Saddam Hussein's former Fedayeen, intelligence services and other Baathists, as well as jihadists led by the long-time Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi. The extent of their cooperation is unknown, but they certainly share the same immediate goal of promoting violence--both random, and precisely targeted against Iraqis who work with the Coalition--to drive the Americans out and create enough mayhem so they can take over.
Regarding the Baathists, it's safe to say that the U.S., and especially the CIA, underestimated both their strategy and ruthlessness. In retrospect, the current guerrilla campaign probably was the Saddam strategy all along, starting with those raids in Nasiriyah on the invasion route to Baghdad.

As long ago as April 2003 we were hearing talk of a so-called "Party of Return," or attempt by the Baath Party to go underground and slowly undermine work toward a free Iraq. Coalition forces have found documents, also dating from the immediate post-invasion period in 2003, outlining a detailed plan for the efforts, including the establishment of Fallujah as a staging area with weapons caches and hideouts. The Bush Administration ought to release those documents to enhance American understanding of who our troops are fighting. These are bitter-enders who will never surrender and have to be killed.

As for the jihadists, their goal is the establishment of a Taliban-like regime in Iraq, or at least stopping the spread of liberal social and political ideas in the Middle East. Long before the war in Iraq, Zarqawi was linked to terror in Jordan, Georgia and London. The infamous January memo intercepted on its way from Zarqawi to al Qaeda commanders makes this clear: "Blood has to be spilled. For those who are good, we will speed up their trip to paradise, and the others, we will get rid of them."

The Zarqawi memo also reveals how much recent developments have been the product of a deliberate plan rather than a popular revolt. It talks of using the Sunni Triangle as a sanctuary, and of targeting the *****e community with car bombs, along with Iraq's "bastard government." Stopping the creation of Iraqi security forces appears to be Zarqawi's primary aim. "How can we kill their cousins and sons and under what pretext," he asks, "after the Americans start withdrawing?" This week's attack on the recruiting station in Baghdad and on a group of Iraqi police to the north shows that strategy at work.

The refuge for both of these groups is the Sunni Triangle, and especially the city of Fallujah. Our softly-softly attempts to handle the Sunni Triangle through outreach to local leaders may have been a reasonable gamble. But the problem is that we've been unable to protect and reassure the many Sunnis who would, all things being equal, choose our side. The recent murder of a leading Iraqi National Guard officer in Fallujah is one of too many tragic examples.

The start-stop battle of Fallujah this April was a mistake, and has left that city as a staging area for attacks in Baghdad in particular. At least the White House now seems to appreciate its error. U.S. commanders have lately been given the green light to attack Tal Afar, a mini-Fallujah near the Syrian border, with military success. A recent deal to allow U.S. and Iraqi forces to pacify Samarra, another Sunni city, also has potential. Donald Rumsfeld has said that other targets may have to wait until more Iraqi troops can be trained, and that makes sense if we have the time. Former commander of the 101st Airborne, Major-General David Petraeus, is making notable progress on the training front, but most of his Iraqis are still some months away from being an effective force.



Meantime, our enemies will continue to do whatever damage they can. They can read the U.S. election calendar as well as al Qaeda read Spain's, and their hope is to create precisely the appearance of "chaos" that American critics of the war are broadcasting for their own partisan purposes. It hasn't helped that many prominent Democrats, including recently John Kerry, are giving the impression that they will start to pull out as early as six months from taking office. Iraqis of all kinds have heard that too. As we've said, we think the stronger Kerry ground, on politics and substance, would be to criticize President Bush for not prosecuting the war fiercely enough. But the Senator doesn't seem capable of making that argument.
The Fallujah sanctuary has left the timing of engagements up to the enemy, so we can expect more car bombing and mortar attacks from now to November. We understand that some parts of the Bush Administration are wary of provoking more violence before the election. But what would be truly damaging politically aren't further troubles in Iraq by themselves, but any perception that we aren't really fighting to win.


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Courage amid chaos: How one Iraq battle unfolded <br />
<br />
The information in this story is largely based on an after-action report filed by 1st Lt. Lamar Breshears. Such reports are filed after military...

[thedrifter]

A final act

Reynoso fires on the enemy so his men can withdraw


Reynoso and the others in the 1st Section faced a perilous predicament. As the other units fell back, these Marines were exposed on three sides to rocket-propelled grenades and other hostile fire.

In his final moments, Reynoso led his men in battle. He threw a grenade that killed three enemy fighters, according to the report. He instructed another Marine to launch a shoulder-fired rocket that killed four more insurgents.

Those actions drew more intense fire from the enemy.

Reynoso, hoping to give his squad a chance to withdraw, made a dangerous decision. He would start firing with his own rifle in hopes of pinning down the enemy long enough to give his men cover for an escape.

But that act exposed him to the enemy. He was hit twice: once in the neck, once in the face.

From about 50 feet away, Navy medic Joshua Bunker watched Reynoso fall. In the face of intense enemy fire, Bunker stood up and ran from tomb to tomb to reach Reynoso's side. He discovered that Reynoso was dead.

The 1st Section Marines moved in to retrieve Reynoso's body. Somehow, they managed to reassemble around his body, forming a circle and firing in all directions. Under cover of darkness, they fought their way back to a road outside the cemetery, rejoining the 2nd Section of the platoon to pass an uneasy night.

The fighting was far from over.

At 4:30 a.m. Aug. 6, the platoon was targeted by mortar fire that fell within 50 feet of its position. As another day and another night wore on, the platoon moved back into the cemetery, spreading out in a position known as a picket line.

The platoon took more mortars and other fire. Another Marine died. Another was evacuated due to shell shock. Another suffered shrapnel wounds. Another had a slipped disk, and another had heat exhaustion.

At 7 a.m. Aug 7, the Marines withdrew from the cemetery.

Postscript

The platoon spent most of the remaining days of August firing mortar on enemy positions. It was dangerous work because if it stayed too long in any one spot, it risked attracting enemy fire.

Platoon life quieted down in late August, when the insurgents, after negotiations with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most powerful Shiite cleric in Iraq, agreed to withdraw from the cemetery and the shrine.

Reynoso's body was taken back to Wapato, where the flag-draped casket lay in state at the high-school gymnasium before burial. The City Council recently passed a motion proclaiming Aug. 5 Sgt. Yadir Reynoso day. "He fought like a true warrior and always will have a place in my heart," Breshears wrote in a letter to the Reynoso family.

Reynoso is under consideration for a Silver Star for gallantry in action, Breshears said in a recent e-mail to his father, Larry.

Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com


http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2004/09/17/2002002891.jpg

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002039248_najafheads.html

Ellie

[thedrifter]

THOUSANDS OF MILES AWAY FROM THE SONORAN DESERT
E-mails from Iraq: A Tucson marine writes home

ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Growing up in Tucson, Marine Sgt. Kim H. Bahti learned plenty about life in the desert.

But now she finds herself in another desert - a harsher desert - thousands of miles from home. Bahti, 31, is serving in Iraq with a military police unit based in Pittsburgh.

Her assignment is to help train Iraqi police officers - a dangerous task because such officers are frequent targets of attacks by insurgents. More than 700 have been killed in the past year, the Interior Ministry reports.

Bahti was born in Vietnam to a Vietnamese mother and an Army sergeant father. She was adopted when she was 20 months old by Mark Bahti of Tucson and Kekku Lehtonen. Lehtonen now lives in Olney, Md., and is married to David Lovinger.

Kim Bahti attended Sam Hughes Elementary School, Carrillo Intermediate School and Tucson High before graduating from high school in Maryland in 1991. She returned to Tucson and earned a political science degree at the University of Arizona in 1996, then moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting and modeling.

"That didn't work out as planned and I decided I needed to change my life," Bahti wrote in a recent e-mail from Iraq. "I wanted to join the military and I wanted a challenge, so I opted for the finest: the Marines."

She graduated from boot camp on Aug. 13, 1999, and served four years in the U.S. Marine Corps, with stints at Camp Pendleton, Calif.; Camp Lejeune, N.C.; and Newport, R.I. Her last tour of duty was as a legal instructor at the Naval Justice School in Newport.

After leaving active service in January, Bahti joined the Marine reserves and volunteered in April for deployment in Operation Iraqi Freedom II.

"I knew Marines were being extended and I thought that I could let some Marine come home and be with his family if I volunteered," she wrote. "So that's what I did, because this is what Marines do."

Starting today, Bahti will write weekly dispatches for the Star. Future installments will run Sunday, starting Sept. 26, in the Tucson/Region section.



8-19-2004

The time has finally come.

We are shipping out Saturday morning for our deployment of seven months.

I cannot divulge our exact schedule because of security concerns, but I should be at my permanent base sometime next week. I didn't really feel scared, but now I feel a little jittery.

There's something about having to travel 7,000 miles in your flak jacket and Kevlar and having your weapon on alert when you de-board the plane.

We have been given three MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) for our journey over there, so that tells you how long it's going to take. The only thing that keeps me going and excited is my Marines and the camaraderie we have formed.

I'm not one to shed a lot of tears, but it gets me all misty-eyed just thinking about losing one of them. This is a good group of people and I'm proud to serve beside them.


8-29-2004

Well, I made it here safely.

We flew from California to Frankfurt on a commercial airline. I flew business class.

At least I got something out of this.

Then we flew to Kuwait and spent the night at an Army base.

Kuwait was nice. It's a huge tent city in the middle of the desert. The chow hall was awesome and you wouldn't believe that they had Baskin-Robbins, Hardee's and a Pizza Hut tent there. What can I say, it's an Army base. … We know we won't have it that good at our base.

The next day we flew to Iraq on a C-130. No business class there! That was the most miserable flight of my life.

The desert heat seeped into the hold in no time - I have never sweated so much in my life - not even during Crucible (a 56-hour final combat test Marines must pass if they are to graduate from boot camp).

We were packed in the back like sardines and knee-to-knee for the two-hour flight. I finally passed out because I was so hot. I was only awakened when the plane was doing nose dives and some other wild stuff.

I seriously thought we were going to die. No, we were only taking incoming fire. I would have liked to have thought it was just bad turbulence.

So here I am at base for my tour of duty. I can't give you the name but I can tell you it's where it's hot. Hotter then hell on a bad day. Hotter than Yuma and Gila Bend mixed together and sprinkled with a little Phoenix.

There's sand, sand and, oh yeah: more sand. The only thing that makes it worthwhile is the fact that I'm in a can (metal pre-fabricated barracks), have a rack (bunk) with a mattress, and I have my own AC!

We also have running water for showers and I just found out that we actually have real toilets now, which means no more porta-johns at 2 in the afternoon for me. It's not that bad and it's not what they show you on the news.

The chow hall is decent except you can't get anything cold to drink. That's all I'm concerned about. I can do seven months here easy.

We received our mission today: We're going to be training the new Iraqi police force. This means we are going to be in some danger areas when we have to travel to the cities. That's the only thing that concerns me because when they know we're coming they start laying IEDs, improvised explosive devices.

You have to watch for them everywhere. Nowhere is safe. But we've trained for that kind of thing - it's still scary, though.

I'm doing well. And I miss the life back home. I miss oysters, sushi, Thai food and coffee.

And I'm out.


http://www.azstarnet.com/ss/2004/09/18/39495-1.jpg

Photo courtesy of Sergeant Kim Bahti
Sgt. Kim Bahti was born in Vietnam and raised in Tucson. Bahti's e-mails from Iraq will run each Sunday in the Tucson/Region section starting Sept. 26.

http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/dailystar/39495.php


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Utah Marine to come home for burial
By Dawn House
The Salt Lake Tribune




The body of 20-year-old Lance Cpl. Cesar F. Machado-Olmos was scheduled to be flown Wednesday night to Dover, Del., from the war zone for funeral services and burial later this week near his home in Spanish Fork.
Machado-Olmos and Lance Cpl. Michael J. Halal, 22, of Glendale, Ariz., died Monday in the restive Iraqi province of Al Anbar, the Department of Defense said in separate news releases.
The Marines were killed when their Humvee rolled over while on patrol.
Military officials are giving no other details, other than to say neither of the victims was driving the vehicle.
The accident was being investigated, the Defense Department said.
The two Marines were assigned to the 2nd Marine Division based at Camp Lejeune, N.C., said Gunnery Sgt. Marcus McAllister, a division spokesman.
Machado-Olmos was assigned to the division's 2nd Combat Engineer Battalion while Halal was assigned to its 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, according to the military.
Machado-Olmos, who would have turned 21 on Monday, is the second soldier from Utah who is not a U.S. citizen to die in Iraq.
On Jan. 31, Cpl. Juan Carlos Cabral Bannelos, 25, Washington Terrace, and two other soldiers were killed when their unarmored Humvee struck a homemade bomb near the Iraqi city of Kirkuk.
Cabral Bannelos, who is survived by a wife and two young sons, was awarded U.S. citizenship posthumously.
Machado-Olmos moved from his native country of Mexico when he was a toddler, living in California, then in Provo, attending school and working as a paperboy.
In Spanish Fork he volunteered as assistant librarian at the high school library.
He enlisted after graduating from Spanish Fork High School and was serving his second tour in Iraq at the time




of his death.
Machado-Olmos is survived by his mother, Patricia Acosta, stepfather Esau Acosta, and stepsiblings Esau, 12, and Samantha, 8.
"He had completed the necessary paperwork for becoming a U.S. citizen," said his mother, "and he often talked about it, but we didn't hear anything."
Said Marine spokesman McAllister: "I have also reached out to the unit in Iraq to see if Lance Cpl. Machado-Olmos had begun this process."
On July 3, 2002, President George W. Bush signed Executive Order 13269 to help service members become citizens.
The president is authorized to expedite citizenship during periods in which the United States is engaged in armed conflict with a hostile foreign force.
Service members who have served honorably for any period of time after Sept. 11, 2001, are eligible to apply for expedited U.S. citizenship, which shortens the peacetime waiting period from three years to one year of honorable service.
The new law also provides quicker avenues for the non-U.S.-citizen spouses, children and parents of service members who have died in combat to obtain "immediate relative" alien status.

http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_2416194


Ellie

[thedrifter]

U.S. Marine Killed; Operations to Halt Insurgency Continue in Iraq
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, September 18, 2004 -- A U.S. Marine was killed Sept. 17 and three U.S. soldiers wounded today as violence continues in Iraq.

Military officials in Baghdad said the Marine, assigned to 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, was killed while conducting security and stability operations in the al Anbar Province of Iraq.

Meanwhile, three U.S. soldiers were wounded when a car bomb exploded on a road leading to Baghdad International Airport, military officials also reported.

The wounded soldiers were medically evacuated to a nearby military hospital.

Elsewhere, three Iraqi citizens were wounded in another bomb attack at about 10 a.m. in central Baghdad.

According to a Multinational Force Iraq press release, initial reports from the scene indicate that a portion of the airport road has been closed to traffic while Task Force Baghdad soldiers investigate and secure the blast area.

According to reports, a Task Force Baghdad patrol in the area heard the explosion and proceeded to the blast area to investigate and render assistance.

Initial reports from the site indicate that three Iraqi civilians were wounded in the blast, although outside media reports put the number wounded as high as 20. Both attacks are under investigation.

Meanwhile today, multinational forces detained seven individuals wanted for planning and conducting anti-Iraqi activities in the city of Tal Afar, U.S. military officials reported.

Soldiers from the 3rd Stryker Brigade's 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment took the individuals into custody. During the search of a residence, the soldiers discovered intelligence documents and confiscated two vehicles.

The suspects are in custody, and no injuries were reported during the operation.

The media release also stated that multinational and Iraqi security forces are asking local Iraqi citizens to provide information that might lead to the capture and arrest of anti-Iraqi forces.

In Ramadi, multinational forces continue Operation Hurricane II, an effort to clear and remove illegal weapons and ammunition caches from the streets and disrupt the Daham terrorist network, a U.S. official said today.

Soldiers and Marines from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Marine Division are taking part in the operation, which began at 3 a.m.

A military official said the Daham terrorist network is responsible for a wide spectrum of terrorist and criminal activities against the Iraqi people and multinational forces in the al Anbar Province.

Earlier this week, a similar operation in another part of the town resulted in the detention of four suspected anti-Iraqi forces, the removal of six improvised explosive devices and the confiscation of IED making materials, including cell phone parts.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Troops in Iraq to Get Combined Lethal/Nonlethal Weapons System

By Sandra Jontz,
Stars and Stripes European Edition


ARLINGTON, Va. — A new sheriff is coming to town.

The Pentagon’s Office of Force Transformation is designing a combined lethal and nonlethal weapons system to be fielded to Army and Marine Corps units in Iraq by summer, 2005, in an experiment called “Project Sheriff.”

The concept is to retrofit ground vehicles already in the services’ inventories with an array of new lethal and nonlethal systems, giving troops working in urban terrain more options, especially when deciding how to deal with potential noncombatants or civilians being used as shields, said program director and transformation strategist Col. Wade Hall, a 23-year veteran of the Marine Corps.

Like a sheriff, Hall says.

“He’s not there to cause destruction. He’s there to keep the peace, but has the option to go to destruction status if he needs it,” Hall said.

The Pentagon hopes to launch the system in Iraq in June or July, equipping four to six Army and Marine Corps vehicles with a combination of off-the-shelf technology and systems being developed.

Vehicles under consideration include the Army’s new Stryker armored personnel carrier or the Armored Security Vehicle, or ASV, and the Marine Corps’ Light Armored Vehicle, or LAV, already proven to work well in cities, said Hall.

A goal of the Office of Force Transformation is to cut through the years and years it used to take the department to introduce a new system, he said, while assuring that the technology employed is well-studied and the office is not sacrificing safety for the sake of speed.

Designers see the systems being used for missions such as armed reconnaissance, raids, crowd control, security patrol and vehicle checkpoints.

While no decisions have been made on which systems will be used, managers have narrowed the field to a few for consideration, Hall said.

Among them is Raytheon Company’s nonlethal Active Denial System, a counter-personnel directed energy weapon that projects a speed-of-light millimeter wave of energy that makes skin feel like it’s on fire.

According to studies done by the Air Force Research Laboratory, which developed the technology in a joint effort with the Marine Corps and Raytheon, the invisible beam penetrates the skin to a depth of less than 1/64 of an inch and produces heat that within seconds becomes intolerable, said lab spokeswoman Eva Hendren.

The sensation stops when the individual moves out of the beam. The beam does not cause injury because its penetration is so shallow, Hendren said.

Vehicles also could be equipped with high-powered lights to aid in searches, and an acoustics system such as the Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, a high-powered bullhorn of sorts that emits an ear-piercing noise.

Marines in Iraq already are using the LRAD system. No decision on LRAD has been made, but the office has no alternative if it is not picked, Hall said. Critics of the LRAD system have said the ear-piercing noise could cause permanent damage and deafness. He said the military still is conducting studies.

The lethal portion of the projects includes a mounted rapid-fire gun that will be able to carry a diversity of medium- and small-caliber machine guns at a high rate of fire. The system under consideration is called Gunslinger and is under development at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Va.

An Active Protection System would place an array of sensors that could deploy decoys and detect chemical or biological agents.

While the Pentagon is taking the lead in developing Project Sheriff, other agencies interested in the experiment’s progress include the Justice, Energy, and State departments and the FBI, Hall said.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Roger Simon:
Why aren’t the Iraqis grateful?
By ROGER SIMON




WINNING the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people is a major goal of the Bush administration, since this seems to be the best way to get the Iraqis to stop killing us.

Though our troops came as liberators, they are now seen as occupiers. What’s worse, they are seen as targets.

And am I the only one who wonders why the Iraqis are not more grateful to us for freeing them from their evil dictator, Saddam Hussein? Don’t they know how much better off they are today? Don’t they listen to President Bush’s speeches?

Yet, not only do U.S. combat deaths now exceed 1,000, but the pace of attacks on U.S. forces has increased and it seems clear that Iraq is less safe for Americans now than it was at the beginning of our occupation.

This is not progress.

Further, we are getting trapped in the familiar “cycle of violence,” where attack begets response, which begets new attack, etc.

From the front page of The Washington Post Monday came this chilling story: “A U.S. military helicopter fired into a crowd of civilians who had surrounded a burning Army armored vehicle in the capital, killing 13 people, said Saad Amili, spokesman for the Health Ministry. . . . The U.S. military said it was trying to scatter looters who were attempting to make off with ammunition and pieces of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, which had been hit by a car bomb early in the morning on Haifa Street, a troublesome north-south artery west of the Tigris River.”

Why is that so chilling? Because in Baghdad U.S. force are now firing into crowds of civilians to try “to scatter looters.” I would imagine that in postwar Iraq — a poor country to begin with — looting has become a way of life for many. But is firing missiles into a crowd of unarmed people the best way to prevent it?

I am sure the U.S. military is upset that the civilians were trying to steal ammunition that could later be used against U.S. forces. But we are also told there are vast, virtually unguarded Iraqi weapons caches throughout the country, and the insurgents we are fighting do not seem to be hampered by a lack of ammunition.

But now those insurgents have a new recruiting tool, what the British newspaper the Independent is already calling “the slaughter in Haifa Street.”

Those sources are either foreign or liberal, you say. Well, there is this from the front page of The Wall Street Journal Wednesday: “Iraq’s once highly fragmented insurgent groups are increasingly cooperating to attack U.S. and Iraqi government targets, and steadily gaining control of more areas of the country.”

Got that? The insurgents are controlling more of Iraq now than they did when the occupation began. You can call the U.S. effort many things, and one of those things seems to be “losing.”

And because the insurgents are doing so well, the United States is shifting funds away from those rebuilding projects that were supposed to win hearts and minds — providing water and electricity, for instance — to military and police forces.

We really have no choice. As the Journal states: “The shift marks a recognition that Iraq’s security condition is worsening rapidly and that without more local troops and police, the rebuilding effort cannot proceed.”

You may wonder what we have to show for our efforts in Iraq so far. Well, an increasing casualty rate for one. According to the Journal, “August’s 1,300 wounded was the highest monthly combat-injury total since the war began.”

When it will all end, nobody knows. John Kerry, as if awakening from a long slumber, is finally starting to attack Bush on the war in Iraq in new, more stark terms.

“But you know and I know, Americans know and the world knows . . . that the situation in Iraq is worse, not better, that whole parts of Iraq are in the control of terrorists,” Kerry said at a campaign stop in Ohio this week. “I know what we need to do in Iraq and the world to fight a more effective war on terror . . . I know how we can reduce the number of terrorists in the world, how we can get other countries in the world to join us.”

Now if he would just tell the rest of us.

Roger Simon is political editor at U.S. News and World Report.

http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showa.html?article=44199


Ellie

[thedrifter]

A mom's internal struggle when her son enlists


By SUSAN PAYNTER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Alex Sidles called home to Seattle from Iraq last week with some good news and some not so good.

The 21-year-old Marine told his mother, Connie, that he'd lost his foot. Part of it, anyway. But the doctors said it was "a wonderful amputation." And he still has his ankle.

More of the foot was amputated on Thursday. But with a prosthetic, he should have a functional foot again, he said.

A lot of American moms are getting phone calls like that, and worse these days.

As a mom to whom scary is the looming prospect of a teen's driver's license, I wondered how Connie has handled it all, so I asked.

"People even ask, 'How could you let your kid do that?'" (meaning join the Marines and go to Iraq) she said. "But when you're the mother of a grown son, you can't just tell your kid what to do anymore. And any bully pulpit you have as a mother can be harmful if they've already made up their mind."

Not that she didn't question, probe and counter. A master in residence in the writing program at Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences (where Alex graduated in 2000), Connie knows how to gather information. And she wanted to be sure Alex did, too.

Even before he called to say he was joining up, Connie shipped Alex boxes of books on philosophy and other things she'd wanted him to read, growing up.

At the time, he was a captive audience with no TV and not much to read. Post-high school, Alex spent three years as a volunteer teacher in Micronesia.

When a typhoon shredded the breadfruit crop on the small outer island where he taught, Alex figured it would take $40 worth of rice per person to get the 400 people on the island through the season alive. So he raised it.

He also figured it shouldn't be one-way charity. So he encouraged the people to make and send shell necklaces and woven beadwork back to their Seattle benefactors.

Soon Connie found herself in the thank-you gift distribution business -- her garage filling with boxes each week.

"The best things were the touching thank-you notes," Connie said. "One from a little kid said that, before, he had been too hungry. But now he could go back to school so he was 'as happy as whitecaps.' "

Next came this from Alex: "After I finish here, Mom, I'm joining the Marine Corps."

"It seemed incomprehensible to me," said Connie, who, in college, opposed the war in Vietnam.

Still, her own dad was in World War II. And she had raised her kids to believe that it's up to individuals to make the world a better place.

She just wanted to make sure Alex had thought this through. So she sent him wads of clippings. And asked big clots of questions.

Did Alex think he could kill a person? Could the kid who never took an order in his life think he'd get through boot camp? What if he were injured? Or killed?

Turned out Alex had considered all of that -- and more. He'd done a tremendous amount of reading. He'd talked, via the Internet, to other Marines from World War II on down.

"He'd gone as far down the road of what it would be like to be in combat as you could without actually being there," Connie said. "And this was what he wanted."

A week ago Sunday in the Sunni Triangle, a roadside missile struck just under the side of the Humvee Lance Cpl. Sidles was riding in. The main blast was taken by the Marine sitting in front of him. So, despite his own injury, Alex used his EMT training to apply pressure to the man's gushing wounds.

Half of Alex's sunglasses were disintegrated. But the ballistically hardened Wiley X glasses saved his sight. And thanks to the Kevlar body armor he had proudly showed his mom at Fort Pendleton, there wasn't a scratch on his body. Just the foot blown to bits.

Alex was flown to Germany and will be sent stateside soon -- probably to a D.C.-area hospital specializing in amputees. Connie will fly there as soon as she can.

Having lived this experience, Connie Sidles says she still would have said the same thing to her son: "I am not sorry you decided to go."

"Of course, I'm also saying, 'My poor son and his precious foot,' " she told me. "But Alex believes utterly that he's trying to bring democracy to Iraq and that he's making progress. He wants to stay in the Marines if he can. And when you're convinced that what your child is doing is right and noble, you can feel proud of that. We protect our children as long as we can, but then they start protecting us."

This feat of parenting is even more impressive considering that Connie's own views on the war come closer to those of John Kerry than to Alex's commander-in-chief.

"I can understand voting for it, but still feeling we should pursue it in a better way. I wish we'd gone in the way Colin Powell wanted to, with a superior force. And that we'd established an infrastructure much faster," she said.

That is not what her son thinks and she supports him.

"But I don't think our leaders are serious people," Connie said. "My son is serious. What he's doing is serious. But this 'bring it on' policy. Is that leadership? This ignorant belief that we'd be welcomed with roses?

"These people are playing video games with our kids," Connie said. "If you're going to send men and women to war, you had better understand at the deepest possible level what price people are going to pay. You'd better understand it as if your own children are there. And I don't think (President) Bush does."

Still, Connie shares her son's conviction that now that we're in Iraq, there are positive things to accomplish. We can't simply walk away from it now, she said.

Not even on two whole feet.


Ellie