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thedrifter
10-11-04, 07:11 AM
Bittersweet reunion

Norwalk brothers back home on leave from Iraq, while father is still there

By KRISTIN HOELSCHER
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
October 9, 2004

Kimberly Downing is gripped with terror every day her husband and two sons are stationed in Iraq, expecting the worst each time the telephone rings or the doorbell chimes.

Her anxiety subsided somewhat when her youngest son came home on leave Friday morning, but will return when he and his brother head back to their Marine Corps units in Iraq later this month, she said.

Lance Cpl. Justen Downing, 19, was greeted at the Des Moines airport by family and friends, including his brother, Lance Cpl. Ryan Downing, 20, who came home on leave one week ago.

The reunion is bittersweet for the Downing family of Norwalk because the father, Sgt. Jeff Downing, remains in Iraq and is not expected to return until June. Justen unexpectedly crossed paths with his father in Kuwait last month, but the rest of the Downing family has not seen him since he left the country last June.

"It was really hard to leave him over there after seeing him," Justen said. "You end up hating the place by the time you get to leave, and I couldn't stand coming home without him."

Kimberly said it was just as hard for her to stay home when her sons left for Iraq two weeks apart in February.

"I was on my hands and knees begging them not to leave and I'll probably do the same thing in a couple weeks," she said.

Justen and Ryan are lucky if they talk to their mother once a month, leaving Kimberly worried and scouring the news for any hint of their location or welfare. Kimberly's daughter, Megan, 9, has helped her cope will the absence of her husband and sons.

"My daughter has been my rock," she said. "I've been a basket case. . . . She hugs me and tells me everything will be OK and the boys will come home safe."

For the next two weeks, Justen and Ryan, who both received Purple Hearts in their seven months in Iraq, said they plan to do nothing but relax. Ryan was even talked into a pedicure because his mother said "his feet were disgusting."

Jeff, a Des Moines firefighter and reservist, adopted Justen and Ryan more than 10 years ago after he married Kimberly. Jeff was an active-duty Marine at the time and the boys decided quickly that they wanted to follow in his footsteps.

"I thought at some point they would grow out of wanting to become Marines, but they never did," Kimberly said.

While her sons' duty is stressful, Kimberly cannot help but be proud. As for Jeff, he called Justen and Ryan his "superheroes" in a letter he sent his wife to deliver upon their sons' arrival.

The young men still have more than two years of active duty remaining. Until then, Kimberly will continue her motherly tour of duty in Norwalk, not dodging bullets, but doorbell chimes.

http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041009/NEWS11/410090327/1001/NEWS

Ellie

thedrifter
10-11-04, 07:12 AM
For marines on raids, an eerie silence

By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

HASWAH AND MUSAYYIB, IRAQ – In the shadow of night, on the edge of the volatile town of Haswah, a convoy of humvees silently pulls to a stop and disgorges its marines.
In the wake of daytime raids Wednesday, in which 200 US troops cordoned off the town and 100 Iraqi special forces arrested 17 men, the marines of Operation Phantom Fury, which began this week, expected resistance.

They had never been here, some 30 miles south of Baghdad, and not been engaged by insurgents. And they had never planned such deep penetration, striding behind storefronts to the narrow, dusty streets behind.

But instead of a firefight, they stepped into a surreal silence.

"I don't believe this - aren't there supposed to be people in the streets at 11 at night? Drinking tea?" asked one marine emerging from a side street in full combat gear, threatened by nothing more than clusters of wild dogs.

"I've never seen it before - not a soul," says 2nd Lt. Mark Nicholson, a platoon commander of the 1st Battalion 2nd Marines, from Wheeling, W.Va. Previous visits at even 2 a.m. found people on the street - and always an armed reaction.

"It's a good thing," says Lieutenant Nicholson. "But I'd like to see people in the streets, people who want us there, who greet us."

The apparently lifeless town, a chronic hotbed of insurgent activity, may typify what control can be achieved in Iraq with joint US-Iraqi forces. But as marines prepare to return to Haswah and other insurgent strongholds day after day, officers say the calm may be misleading, and tough to maintain.

"We can't be at every location, 24 hours a day," says Capt. Chris Ray, an intelligence officer. "[Insurgents] know they can just drop their AK-47s and blend into the crowd, if nobody points their finger at them."

"Our biggest problem right now is overcoming the intimidation that [insurgents] have working all the time," says Captain Ray, from Tolland, Conn. "They're here all the time, they know where everybody lives. In the past, [after an big arrest operation], for 24 hours it will calm down. Then they will actually pick up operations, to send the message: 'We control this town.' "

"We've seen it in every town," Ray says. "After we leave, there are more reports of people forcing shop owners to close, or stay off the streets. They're doing well with psychological operations."

Iraqi forces are meant increasingly to pick up the slack, and take permanent control of hotspots like Haswah. The arrests Wednesday, in fact, were prompted by Iraqi forces. "The Iraqi police called us, saying 'We got some people we know are bad, we're going to come get them," says Maj. Matt Sasse, chief of operations for the 1-2 Marines.

"We're perfectly willing to go out andkill these guys, but it's better if the Iraqi forces are going to deal with it on their own," says Major Sasse, from Midland, Mich. He notes that the 17 detainees were taken to the Iraqi jail at Hilla. "They're getting progressively better, and every time they have a successful operation, they get a bit more aggressive."

Down the road, Alpha Company was making less progress. The unit - with 48 people in eight vehicles - pulled into Musayyib, a grindingly poor Shiite town southwest of Haswah, to make an arrest. The target was a man who had sold a remote-detonated bomb - the kind that has taken a frequent toll on US and Iraqi forces - to an Iraqi "source" for $100.

Racing on foot past a street barrier, the marines found the building and burst through two doors - thinking the house was linked inside. They shot the chain off one door to gain entry, an irregular step the platoon leader later quizzed a marine about, saying it could have been removed without firepower.

Inside, a terrified family watched as they ransacked the rooms for evidence. During the raid, the man of the house was spreadeagled on the floor; the complaining but cooperative mother rushed to find her black shawl to cover her night clothes; children were led to a back room. Another boy was found with his head in his hands behind the bed.

After a short time, the marines realized the family was innocent. "Oh, this is the wrong one," groaned Nicholson.

They shook hands with the quivering children and apologized. "Tell the children not to play with this in the street," a marine told a translator, holding a toy assault rifle. "If they were holding this when we came in, we could have shot him."

The next door was the right one. Inside, marines found several women, a boy, an elderly man. The family said the target man had been gone for two days.

Disappointed, the marines finished by interrogating two suspects found in a grimy parking lot. One man turned out to be a guard, sleeping on post; the other was drunk and had stopped to sleep.

A loudspeaker blaring at 2:40 a.m. was taken by one marine as a call to arms from a mosque - not uncommon in such raids - until he was laughingly corrected: The sound was in fact a US psychological operations unit blasting pro-coalition messages.

The marines then turned the raid into an impromptu foot patrol, setting off down a street brightly lit with strings of bulbs, toward the town center. Two blasts from a whistle gave them pause.

The source was another security guard, this one awake. The marines didn't believe his story till they saw his ID card. "Who are his friends?" Nicholson asked the man through an interpreter. "Ask him: 'Who did he signal?' "

As time passed, bakers began their predawn work and vegetable sellers came to the muddy central market. Local allegiance was not in doubt: every wall seemed to have a poster of the anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Marines removed a few posters and took photos of others with longer messages. And, in a sign of new permanence, images of Mr. Sadr were spraypainted onto walls using a template, just as Hizbullah honored their revered clerics and martyrs in southern Lebanon.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1008/p06s02-woiq.html

Ellie

thedrifter
10-11-04, 07:13 AM
Benton family and friends mourning Marine killed in Iraq

By Mona Sandefur
Staff writer

mona@neondsl.com

Though Marine Corps 2nd Lt. Ryan LeDuc did not grow up in Benton, family and friends consider him one of their own and are grieving his loss.

"He loved anything to do with the outdoors, including four-wheeling and camping," said Tommy Hammond, who considered LeDuc a brother. "He just showed up at our door one day because he saw the four-wheelers in the yard and asked if there was a place nearby to ride. He was staying with his brother, who worked for Mariah Boats at the time. My brother, Billy, Ryan and I immediately became friends. We were inseparable, like the three amigos."

LeDuc, a native of Pana, lost his life Saturday, Sept. 28, in a non-combat vehicle accident, two weeks after deploying to Iraq. His grieving family said news reports and other sources claimed Ryan was killed when his Humvee was blown up by a roadside bomb in the town of Rutbah in Anbar Province, the scene of fierce combat recently.

LeDuc, who lived with the Hammond family from 1996 to 1997, graduated from Pana High School and received a degree in aircraft engineering from Southern Illinois University. He joined the Marines in January 2003 and was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 10th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force based in Camp Lejeune, N.C.

"Ryan took me into his confidence about everything," Hammond said. "He talked to me about getting engaged to his fianc/, Megan McCabe. He said, 'Megan told me she loved me. What should I do?' I asked him if he loved her and he said, 'I don't know, I've never been in love before.' I told him a good woman was hard to find and if he thought he loved her he had better let her know."

Hammond said he has lost his best and only friend. "He valued my opinion and was the nicest person you would ever want to meet," Hammond said. "He loved scuba diving, was a certified welder and worked with us paving asphalt. He loved cutting up, practical jokes and just hanging out with my brother and I. He loved trees and climbing them He even raised turkeys from eggs.

"Even when he lived in Buckner and worked in Christopher, he stayed with us and considered us his family," Hammond said. "The last day I saw him we went out and shot guns and talked about old times. Even when he was visiting his fianc/ in Carbondale, he called me and asked me to either come to Carbondale or if he could come to Benton to visit us. He left me two books to read and marine bumper stickers. I told him not to be a hero and get himself killed. I told him I wanted him to come home safe. He hugged me and told me he loved me and I told him I loved him."

Hammond said LeDuc had a prized possession, a German dagger, left to him by his grandfather. "He asked me to hold it for him. That meant so much to him because his grandfather left it to him. He was so much more than just a Marine, he had such a great spirit and was so full of life."

Hammond said he talked to LeDuc's mother, Nola Hector, who said she had received notification of LeDuc's promotion to 1st Lieutenant on Sept. 9, the day he left for Iraq.

Visitation is scheduled for Friday, with LeDuc's funeral being held Saturday in Pana. Hammond said LeDuc is receiving a police escort from St. Louis to Pana.

The flag located outside Benton City Hall will be lowered to half-staff Saturday in honor of the fallen hero.

http://www.bentoneveningnews.com/articles/2004/10/04/news/news04.txt

Ellie

thedrifter
10-11-04, 07:14 AM
Back from Iraq
Marine visits elementary, middle and high schools he attended growing up and as is honored for service in Middle East.

Marisa O'Neil, Daily Pilot


While on duty in Iraq, 19-year-old Marine Lance Cpl. Mike Casillas loved getting letters and packages from home.

He especially loved the gummy bears.

On Friday, Casillas, home on a 21-day leave, returned to his former school, Wilson Elementary, to visit with family, old friends and new students. Some of those students, from his brother's first-grade class last year, got to see in person for the first time the Marine with whom they'd corresponded and sent goodies.

"It brings me up; it cheers me up," Casillas said of getting the letters and packages. "It keeps me alive longer and keeps me fighting. And it helps me fight the heat."

Casillas attended Wilson Elementary School, TeWinkle Middle School and Estancia High School before joining the Marines and getting shipped off to Al Ramadi, Iraq, for seven months with the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines. He visited Wilson Elementary School Friday morning during an emotional ceremony when parents and children gave him a warm welcome home and presented him with gifts.

His mother, Leticia Vitela, read a Spanish poem to him at the ceremony.

"It's is a proud moment," parent Louie Rincon said as he snapped photos.

Rincon has known Casillas and his family since his daughter Crystal ran on the Estancia cross-country team with the young runner destined for the Corps. Even then, Casillas liked to help others. One night he ran out to search for Crystal and another girl when they took a wrong turn during practice and hadn't returned well after dark, Rincon said.

"It's great to see him grow up and become a Marine," he said.

Last year, Casillas' little brother, Danny, was having a tough time dealing with his brother's absence, first-grade teacher Lori Maurer said.

"He started telling the class about his brother, who was fighting in Iraq," Maurer said. "He was very upset and emotional about it."

Maurer decided to have the students write letters to Casillas and collected money to buy things to send him, like toiletries and candy. One child sent him a giant bag of gummy bears, which he carefully rationed out to himself.

To Maurer's surprise, he responded to each individual student with a letter.

"Every time I had a chance, I'd write back," Casillas said.

While in Al Ramadi, Casillas' unit was tasked with missions such as patrolling areas of responsibility and conducting raids on suspicious houses, but it also helped in rebuilding the city's infrastructure and building a school, he said.

Yvonne Garcia, 7, wrote to Casillas and finally met him this week.

"He was in the war in Iraq, and it was 1,200 degrees or so," she said. "And they were building all this stuff. I think they're going to win the war."

After his visit, Casillas will report to his base for normal, ongoing training and await redeployment. He may have to go back to Iraq, he said.

But for now, his family is happy to have him home.

"God sent him back," Vitela said. "It was hard for everybody, for his three brothers, too. We were all praying and waiting for his telephone calls."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
• MARISA O'NEIL covers public safety and courts. She may be reached at (949) 574-4268 or by e-mail at marisa.oneil@latimes.com.


http://www.latimes.com/news/local/pilot/news/la-dpt-wilson09oct09,1,5950266.story


Ellie

thedrifter
10-11-04, 07:15 AM
Cease-Fire Deal Reached, Sadr Militia Announces
But the government says it is waiting to see whether the fighters will keep a pledge to disarm.

By Thomas S. Mulligan, Times Staff Writer


BAGHDAD — Followers of radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr said they reached a cease-fire agreement Saturday with the interim Iraqi government, but a government spokesman said the only proof of a deal would be if the rebels started handing over their weapons Monday.

A cease-fire would be a breakthrough in the government's redoubled efforts to pacify insurgent strongholds ahead of national elections scheduled for January.

Sadr's Al Mahdi militia has fought U.S.-led forces for weeks in Sadr City, a sprawling section of northeastern Baghdad that is home to about 2 million people, mainly impoverished Shiites. As the fighting has intensified, American warplanes have conducted almost nightly airstrikes there.

The pounding is thought to have taken a heavy toll on Sadr's militia, forcing the talks with the Iraqi government.

The fighters also appear to be under pressure from fellow Sadr City residents who, despite sympathy with the home-grown insurgency, are tired of a conflict that has caused civilian casualties and massive property damage and has kept children from school.

Previous deals with Sadr's followers have fallen apart at the last moment, including several times during the long siege of the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf two months ago. That may account for the government's cautious approach Saturday.

"There is no formal cease-fire," Sabah Kadhim, a senior advisor in the Interior Ministry, said in an interview Saturday night. "The understanding is that they will give up their arms. If they do as they say on Monday, all well and good. If not, force will have to be used."

Kadhim confirmed some elements of the "deal" announced by Sadr representatives. They include a halt to U.S. airstrikes, the release of certain rebel prisoners and a cessation of efforts to arrest others in return for the surrender of weapons.

Several spots around Sadr City have been designated as drop-off sites for weapons, Kadhim said. Citizens who suffered injuries or property damage would be able to apply for compensation, he said.

Rear Adm. Greg Slavonic, a U.S. military spokesman, said that there would be no change in position "until we really have something concrete." If troops were attacked, they would continue to respond with airstrikes, officials said.

In Sadr City on Saturday night, loudspeakers at various mosques were announcing word of an agreement and exhorting Al Mahdi militiamen to lay down their weapons. The mood, witnesses said, was joyful at the prospect of an end to the fighting.

The U.S. has stepped up anti-insurgent efforts in a bid to curb violence before elections scheduled for January.

On Oct. 1, U.S. and Iraqi security forces stormed 5,000-strong into Samarra, bringing the rebel-held city back under government control. It was thought to be first of several such offensives, aimed at sweeping out insurgents and establishing adequate security for the elections.

A U.S. and Iraqi force of 3,000 on Tuesday pushed south from Baghdad into the Sunni Muslim town of Latifiya and surrounding parts of Babil province, which have been the sites of recent violence.

As a result of the offensive led by the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, 59 suspected insurgents have been captured and a key bridge over the Euphrates River has been secured, according to a statement Saturday.

Also Saturday, in Iskandariya, south of Latifiya, insurgents carrying rocket-propelled-grenade launchers destroyed the city council building in a midafternoon attack. No casualties were reported.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A special correspondent in Sadr City contributed to this report.

http://www.latimes.com/news/yahoo/la-fg-iraq10oct10,1,4753010.story

Ellie

thedrifter
10-11-04, 08:18 AM
Greece Marine presents stars and stripes to teacher


Victoria E. Freile
Staff writer

(October 5, 2004) — GREECE — A Greece Marine gave his former teacher something special last week — an American flag that flew above the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 6 in her honor.

Lance Cpl. Martin Murray, 20, officially presented the flag to Theresa Luther, his English teacher at Greece Arcadia High School, Monday afternoon during a ceremony at the Greece Teachers' Association office on Mt. Read Boulevard.

"I was just blown away," said Luther, 47. "I was a big puddle of tears."

Murray, a 2002 Arcadia graduate, said he wanted to honor his teacher because she was such an inspiration to him.

More than five years ago, Luther was diagnosed with cancer, she said. It spread from her parotid gland in her neck to her face and head. She's taught in the Greece Central School District for 22 years.

"Things happen," Murray said. "They aren't always in your favor and are often hard to deal with. But as you deal with it, you become a better person. She had cancer. She fought it, got over it and kept teaching."

When given the chance to fly a flag in someone's honor, Murray said he knew who to pick right away.

"She's hands-down the best teacher I ever had," he said. "Everyone in school knew I was going to join the Marines. She was the only one who didn't try to talk me out of it."

Luther said she had no doubt that Murray would succeed as a Marine. She also recognized some commonalities between Murray and her father, a Marine who served in Korea.

Murray, a machine gunner, is currently on leave and will head back to Camp Lejeune, N.C., next week.

He has already served eight months in Afghanistan since October 2003 and is slated to head to Iraq in 2005, he said.

VFREILE@DemocratandChronicle.com

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041005/NEWS01/410050330/1002/NEWS


Ellie

thedrifter
10-11-04, 10:32 AM
The Media and the Military
The Atlantic Online ^ | Robert D. Kaplan




The Media And The Military

American reporters would shudder to think that they harbor class prejudice-but they do

By Robert D. Kaplan

Ever since the American-led invasion of Iraq last year, when hundreds of journalists were embedded with military units, people in media circles have been debating whether journalists lose their professional detachment under such circumstances and begin to identify too closely with the troops they are covering. A journalist I met recently in Iraq told me that whenever he returns from a stint with the military, he gets a string of queries from journalism professors, wanting to know if embedded journalists have become, in effect, "*****s" of the armed forces.

Having spent much of the past two years embedded with U.S. military units around the world, I find such fears to be a case of class prejudice. As with many forms of prejudice, the perpetrators are only vaguely aware of it, if at all.

Even with the embed phenomenon the media still manifest a far more intimate-one might say incestuous-relationship with politicians, international diplomats, businesspeople, academics, and humanitarian-relief workers than with the U.S. military. Given that all these groups push various political agendas, it is fair to ask why embedding has struck a raw nerve.

The common denominator among the non-military groups is that they derive from the same elevated social and economic strata of their societies. Even relief workers are often young people from well-off families, motivated by idealism and a desire for adventure. An American journalist would most likely find it easier to strike up a conversation with a relief worker from another Western country than with a U.S. Marine or soldier, especially ifthat Marine or soldier were a noncommissioned officer. This is not necessarily because the journalist and the relief worker share a liberal outlook; a neoconservative pundit would fare no better with the NCO, for example. The NCO is part of another America-an America that the media elite is blind to and alienated from.

I am not talking about the poor. The media establishment has always been solicitous of the poor, and through much fine reporting over the years has become intimately familiar with them. I am talking about the working class and slightly above: that vast, forgotten multitude of Americans, especially between the two cosmopolitan coasts, with whom journalists in major media markets now have fewer and fewer opportunities to engage in a sustained, meaningful way except by embedding with the military.

The U.S. military-particularly at the level of NCOs, who are the guardians of its culture and traditions-is a world of beer, cigarettes, instant coffee, and chewing tobacco. It is composed of people who hunt, drive pickups, use profanity as an element of ordinary speech and yet have a simple, sure, demonstrative belief in the Almighty. Though this is by and large a politically conservative world, neoconservatives might not feel particularly comfortable in it. Some neocons, who have taken democracy and turned it into an ideological ism, wouldn't sit well with Army and Marine civil-affairs and psy-ops officers who pay lip service to new democratic governing councils in Iraq and then go behind their backs to work with traditional sheikhs. The meat-and-potatoes military is about practicalities: it does whatever is necessary to, say, restore stability in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, Army Special Forces work regularly with undemocratic warlords and tribal militias, and see no contradiction with their own larger belief in democracy. Arguing over abstractions and refining differences between realism and idealism is the luxury of a well-to-do theory class.

The military is an unpretentious environment in which, for instance, the word "folks" is commonly used for people both good and bad. When, after 9/11, President George W. Bush drew snickers from some writers for his reference to al-Qaeda terrorists as "those folks," it was an indication not of Bush's poor speech habits but of the regional and class prejudices afflicting the media establishment.

The starkly differing attitudes toward Bush that one encounters within the media and the military go to the heart of this class divide. You may not get much of a sense of it at the Pentagon, or at military academies such as West Point and Annapolis. The Pentagon is about as indicative of the rest of the military as Washington is of the rest of America; West Point and Annapolis are about as indicative of U.S. military schools as Harvard and Yale are of colleges and universities across the heartland. To know what soldiers, Marines, and other uniformed Americans think, visit the housing for young NCOs at a base such as Camp Lejeune, North Carolina; Fort Campbell, Kentucky; Camp Pendleton, California; or Fort Hood, Texas. Visit the Army Sergeants-Major Academy in El Paso, Texas, or the Army and Marine infantry schools at Fort Benning, Georgia, and Twentynine Palms, California. Visit U.S. barracks and military chow halls around the world.

NCOs in these places appreciate President Bush, whatever his manifold weaknesses, for subjective cultural reasons. His voice is a clear, simple one that speaks of a clash between good and evil, between good guys and bad guys. Bush talks like a believer; he is unabashedly Christian. He says openly that it is all right to kill the enemy, which goes a long way with military fighting units. One Air Force master sergeant told me, "I reject the notion that Bush is inarticulate. He is more articulate than Clinton. When Bush says something, he's clear enough that you argue about whether you agree with him or not. When Clinton talks, you argue over what he really meant."

Bush, from an elite East Coast family, connects with sergeants and corporals in the same visceral, almost tribal way that I saw Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, a sophisticated European Jew who relaxed to the music of Chopin, connect with the tough, working-class Oriental Jews of Israel's slums and development towns a quarter century ago. The Oriental Jews, like American NCOs, were looking not for subtlety or complexity but for clarity. How deeply does this man believe? Will he fight to the finish?

In a recent article in The National Interest, Samuel Huntington, of Harvard University, writes about the divide in American society between the elites, who are cosmopolitans, and the mass of citizens, who are nationalists. The media and the armed forces, respectively, are poster children for these two categories. The world of the media is just as easily defined as that of the military. Journalists are increasingly global citizens. If they themselves do not have European and other foreign passports, their spouses, friends, and acquaintances increasingly do. Whereas the South and the adjacent Bible Belt of the southern Midwest and the Great Plains dominate the military, and the only New Yorkers and Bostonians one is likely to meet in the barracks are from working-class areas, heavily Irish and Hispanic, the urban Northeast, with its frequent air connections to Europe, is where the media cluster. Whereas the military is a lower-middle-class world in which a too-prominent sense of self is frowned on, the journalistic world too often represents the ultimate me, me, me culture of today's international elite.

The military and the media occupy distinct cultural and economic layers. For the military this doesn't really present a problem. Its culture is appropriate to its task, which is to defend the homeland, through the violent use of force if necessary. The troops who do this require nationalism more than they do cosmopolitanism, though a bit more of the latter would certainly be healthy. They also require a religious spirit that is both martial and compassionate, a requirement that the Old Testament orientation of southern evangelicalism satisfies nicely. The soldiers I have met harbor no particular resentments. They are middle-class in their minds, whether or not they are in reality; the military offers a telling demonstration that class resentment is mainly an obsession of the elite.

But the media do have a problem. They are supposed to explain what is happening in a diverse world, which is difficult to do if journalists all hail from the same social and economic background. The media establishment may claim eclectic origins, but whether a journalist grew up in New York or Hong Kong or Mexico City matters less than you might think if in any case he is affluent and well educated: the New Yorker will have more in common with his colleagues from Asia or Latin America than he will with someone from a working-class background in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

To deny that this is an issue for the media is to deny a basic truth of writing: though journalists assume the mantle of professional objectivity, a writer brings his entire life experience to bear on every story and situation. A journalist may seek different points of view, but he shapes and portrays those viewpoints from only one angle of vision: his own.

The blue-collar element that once kept print journalism honest has been gone for some time. Journalists of an earlier era may have been less professional, but they were better connected with the rest of the country. The mannered intrigues of the well-heeled Washington and New York media world have come to resemble those of the exclusive Manhattan society that Edith Wharton chronicled a hundred years ago.

How many members of this world really know people in the active-duty military or the National Guard? The East Coast media's social circle is much more likely to include aging sixties protesters than Vietnam veterans. Of course there are exceptions to all of this, but exceptions don't cut it.

Yes, the editorial boards of prestigious newspapers regularly invite top military brass up to their offices, and a contingent of colonels are always studying at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and similar places. Furthermore, the military correspondents of the major newspapers are in a category by themselves in terms of considerable expertise and well-rooted personal relationships with military men and women. But such cross-fertilization does not go very deep in the larger scheme of things. Besides, generals and colonels are not really what the military is about.

So although some journalism professors may worry that military embedding is subverting the media, I would argue the contrary. The Columbia Journalism Review recently ran an article about the worrisome gap between a wealthy media establishment and ordinary working Americans. One solution is embedding, which offers the media perhaps their last, best chance to reconnect with much of the society they claim to be a part of.

Robert D. Kaplan, a correspondent for The Atlantic, is the author of Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos (2001). He is writing a series of articles about American troops in far-flung parts of the world.


Ellie

thedrifter
10-11-04, 12:45 PM
October 11, 2004

Radical cleric’s followers begin turning in weapons

By Sinan Salaheddin
Associated Press


BAGHDAD, Iraq — Followers of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr trickled in to police stations in Baghdad’s Sadr City district to hand in weapons Monday under a deal seen as a key step toward ending weeks of fighting with U.S. and Iraqi forces in the Shiite militant stronghold.
In the northern city of Mosul, a suicide driver exploded his car in the path of an American convoy, killing at least two Iraqis and wounding 18 others. The U.S. military said first reports indicated some U.S. casualties but there were no details.

Shiite militiamen have five days to turn in medium and heavy weapons as part of an agreement with the Iraqi government to end weeks of fighting with American soldiers in Sadr City. After the weapons deadline has passed, Iraqi police and National Guardsmen will assume security responsibility for the teeming Shiite slum, which is home to more than 2 million people.

In return, the government has promised to start releasing detained al-Sadr followers, provided they did not commit crimes, suspend raids and allocate millions of dollars to rebuild the slum district.

An end to the Shiite rebellion will enable the United States and its Iraqi allies to concentrate on the more widespread Sunni Muslim insurgency.

In preparation for the turnover of weapons, checkpoints were set up along the roads to three Sadr City police stations, and Iraqi National Guard members took up position on the surrounding rooftops.

At al-Nasr station, Police Maj. Kadhim Salman said fighters had turned in machine guns, TNT paste, land mines and other explosives.

Fighters are supposed to be compensated for the weapons they turn in, but Salman said those responsible for the payments hadn’t turned up yet. So, receipts were issued instead.

The rates ranged from $5 for a hand grenade to $1,000 for a heavy-caliber machine gun, police said.

Malik Jomaa walked up to the station with a white bag containing two grenade launchers slung over his shoulder.

“God willing, there will be no more fighting and Sadr City will live in peace,” said the 20-year-old fighter in a track suit.

Hassan Kadhim, 31, drove to a police station with a pickup loaded with weapons.

“We are fed up with fighting,” Kadhim said, telling reporters he would use the money received for the weapons to start a small business.

Outside the Habibiya police station, a pickup truck offloaded some 20 grenade launchers and dozens of mortar rounds, Associate Press Television News footage showed. Guns and explosives were spread out on the ground. U.S. soldiers supervised the process from a distance.

Vice President Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a leading Shiite politician, welcomed the handover Monday as a “good and positive initiative,” telling APTN that he hoped other insurgent enclaves would follow Sadr City’s example.

Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s interim administration has committed more than $500 million to rebuilding Sadr City, scene of heavy clashes between U.S. troops and al-Sadr’s militia.

This is not the first time Iraqi authorities have tried to make peace with the Mahdi Army. A peace deal brokered after heavy fighting in the holy city of Najaf in August allowed the militia to walk away with its weapons and clashes continued in Sadr City.

So far, al-Sadr has not pledged to disband his militia, a key U.S. and Iraqi government demand. But American and Iraqi authorities are eager to end the clashes in the Shiite stronghold so they can concentrate on suppressing the country’s more widespread Sunni insurgency.

Elsewhere, two U.S. soldiers from Task Force Baghdad were killed and five wounded Monday in a rocket attack in southern Baghdad, the military said. The names of the dead soldiers were withheld pending notification of their families.

More than 1,000 members of the U.S. military have died since American-led forces invaded Iraq in March 2003.

Clashes continued Monday between U.S. forces and insurgents in Hit,100 miles west of Baghdad. Police Capt. Nasir Abdullah reported heavy exchanges of fire.

Rocket-propelled grenade explosions and machine gun fire also rocked the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi overnight. Residents reached by telephone said insurgents launched attacks in a half dozen parts of Ramadi, 110 kilometers (70 miles) west of Baghdad, and that four huge explosions shook the city center Sunday night. Blood stained the streets Monday and there was heavy damage to the central library.

Rumsfeld traveled 12 hours Sunday from a dusty air base in Iraq’s western desert, to the protective zone in Baghdad where the U.S. Embassy and the interim Iraqi government are preparing for January elections, to the provincial capital of Kirkuk in the north.

He said he saw evidence that the Iraqis are on the right track, but that a lot of effort was still needed.

“It won’t be easy and it won’t be smooth,” he told several hundred South Koreans over dinner at their new outpost on the outskirts of Irbil, west of Kirkuk, the final stop on his whirlwind one-day tour.

Rumsfeld’s visit came as car bombers struck twice in rapid succession in Baghdad Sunday, killing at least 11 people including an American soldier.

Iraq’s most feared terror group — Tawhid and Jihad — claimed responsibility for the near-simultaneous car bombings, one near an east Baghdad police academy and the other outside an east Baghdad market as an American military convoy was passing by.

An American soldier was fatally injured in the convoy attack, U.S. officials said. One Iraqi was wounded in that attack. The Kindi Hospital said it received 10 bodies from the police academy blast, and police said 15 others were injured there.

The dead at Kindi hospital included three police academy students and a female officer.



http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-445340.php


Ellie

thedrifter
10-11-04, 02:45 PM
Saddam's threat wasn't far away
October 11,2004


A report from U.S. weapons inspectors says much that has been known for many months, although more definitively than in the past: Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction when invaded by the United States and its coalition partners.

What the report also says that is new - and that tends to support the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power - is that he fully intended to reconstitute programs to develop nuclear and other weapons once U.N. sanctions had been removed. And not only were those sanctions in a perilous state prior to the war, but Saddam had figured out how to dodge them by bribing public officials or business executives in such countries as Russia, France and China and even officials of the United Nations itself.

Saddam's weapons-securing motives, according to the report, had largely to do with his fears of his neighbors. He worried about an attack from Iran, for instance. But it should not be forgotten that this was a man full of hatred for the United States, a genocidal friend of terrorists and a leader given to inexplicable recklessness.

That recklessness may have had something to do with his downfall. Prior to the war, there was ample reason to believe that Saddam did have the weapons.

When U.N. inspectors arrived the second time, he refused fully to account for what had happened to weapons he had once had for a known fact. Coming on top of reports from top intelligence agencies in Europe and the United States that he continued to possess the weapons, that failure to tell all seemed final confirmation that he remained armed.

It is sometimes forgotten in debate over the war today that Saddam would never even have agreed to admit the inspectors if it had not been for a U.N. resolution threatening drastic consequences in the event he was not wholly forthcoming. He would again have been in the driver's seat if he could once more have gotten out of this tough spot without complying with the resolution, and it looked as if he just might when the United States did not get the U.N. Security Council backing for the consequences sought. Those three bribed permanent members - Russia, France and China - did not stick with the United States (some of whose own companies were bribed, too).

An argument at that time - and an argument still made by John Kerry and John Edwards today - is that Saddam could have been contained simply by keeping these U.N. inspectors on the case. But if Saddam had once more demonstrated U.N. resolutions were nothing but bluffs, it is likely he would eventually have found ways to either work around the inspectors or get them out of the country.

Meanwhile, three Security Council nations - look again at who was bribed - were working to lessen the reach of the sanctions. There, by the way, goes another Kerry argument, the one that says the reason these countries did not support the United States was failed U.S. diplomacy.

The person who spilled the beans about Saddam's weapons ambitions is an expert on Saddam: the man himself. He reportedly agreed to talk because he would thereby get a chance to have some of his own version of his dictatorial tenure publicized. His words enable us to know that the danger he posed had not disappeared because his weapons of mass destruction had disappeared.

In his wily brain, that was only a temporary state of affairs, and one that could be fixed by deals with the unscrupulous.


http://www.jacksonvilledailynews.com/SiteProcessor.cfm?Template=/GlobalTemplates/Details.cfm&StoryID=26336&Section=Opinion


Ellie

thedrifter
10-11-04, 03:39 PM
Marines engaged heavily in Hit, mosque damaged

US marines are reported to be engaged in heavy clashes with scores of insurgents near a mosque in western Iraq, leading to US air strikes which have damaged the mosque, and left it ablaze.

A US miltary spokesman says the marines have come under fire from around 100 insurgents near the town of Hit, about 170 kilometres west of Baghdad.

He says air support was called in, after the guerrillas took up positions around a mosque in the town.

The spokesman says the mosque has since been partially damaged, and is on fire.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200410/s1217853.htm

Ellie

thedrifter
10-11-04, 04:18 PM
Sadr Followers Hand in Weapons
Baghdad Rocket Attack Kills Two U.S. Soldiers and Two Iraqis

By Fred Barbash and William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, October 11, 2004; 12:10 PM

Followers of a radical Shiite Muslim cleric began handing in weapons in a Baghdad slum today under a deal with the Iraqi interim government, as clashes and bombings continued elsewhere, killing at least two U.S. soldiers and two Iraqis.

With U.S. troops watching from a distance, fighters of the Mahdi Army militia loyal to Moqtada Sadr brought medium and heavy weapons to three Iraqi police stations in Sadr City, a militia stronghold in northeastern Baghdad, at the start of a five-day process aimed at handing security responsibility for the sprawling district to Iraqi government forces.

It was not immediately clear, however, whether the weapons being surrendered would be sufficient to eliminate the Mahdi Army as a competing security force. While agreeing to turn in weapons, Sadr has stopped short of pledging to disband his militia, which has battled U.S. and Iraqi forces in the holy city of Najaf and other Shiite strongholds.

Under the deal, fighters are supposed to be paid for turning in weapons, with rates ranging from $5 for a hand grenade to $1,000 for a heavy-caliber machine gun.

At the Nasr police station in Sadr City, an Iraqi police major said fighters this morning turned in machine guns, TNT paste, land mines and other explosives, the Associated Press reported. But since the officials responsible for handing out the payments had not shown up, the fighters instead got receipts. One of the fighters who trooped to the station brought in two grenade launchers.

At another police station where guns and explosives were spread out on the ground, a pickup truck arrived with 20 grenade launchers and dozens of mortar rounds, AP reported.

In addition to the payments, the Iraqi government agreed in return for the weapons to suspend raids in Sadr City and promised to start releasing Sadr followers who had not committed crimes.

Ibrahim Jafari, the interim vice president, hailed the program as a "good and positive initiative" that he hoped would be followed in other insurgent enclaves, AP Television News reported.

U.S. troops, along with Iraqi security forces, have been battling Sadr's Mahdi Army for months, pounding Sadr City from the ground and air on a regular basis.

While large numbers of Sadr fighters have reportedly been killed, the military effort has not suppressed the insurgency.

Today is the first of five days during which militia members are to surrender their weapons in exchange for cash payments. Iraqi security forces then will be free to search suspect houses.

"We are trying to concentrate on the concept of the rule of law, disarming all of the illegal militias and arresting all of the terrorists," Qasim Daoud, Iraq's national security adviser, said. "These concepts are paramount in our minds."

In some of the latest violence, two American soldiers were killed and five injured today in a rocket attack in southern Baghdad, the U.S. military said. A brief statement on the incident said the rockets struck at about 8 a.m. but gave no other information and did not indicate who might have been responsible.

The deaths brought to at least five the number of American troops killed since Friday.

Two car bombs in Baghdad killed at least 11 people Sunday, including one American soldier. The U.S. military also announced the death of a Marine in Anbar province on Saturday, when a car bomb exploded beside a Marine convoy outside the city of Fallujah.

A fifth soldier was killed Friday when his patrol was attacked near the town of Tuz, about 100 miles from Baghdad.

Separately today, news agencies reported that a suicide car bomber attacked a U.S. military convoy in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, killing two Iraqis and wounding 18 other people.

"Initial reports indicate that there were civilian and military casualties," the U.S. military said in a statement, adding that it had been a "complex" attack.

Insurgents have frequently mounted attacks on U.S. forces in Mosul, 240 miles north of Baghdad.

Also in Mosul, police said the beheaded bodies of two residents had been found in the city in the past 24 hours. One was discovered today in an eastern district, the other in the south of the city the previous day.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23773-2004Oct11.html


Ellie

thedrifter
10-11-04, 05:24 PM
Troops could withdrawal next year

By Dogen Hannah

CONTRA COSTA TIMES


BAGHDAD, Iraq - Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said Sunday that the United States could begin to withdraw some troops from Iraq beginning early next year, if newly trained Iraqi security forces can shoulder more of the burden.

However, Rumsfeld cautioned that the violence in Iraq is likely to increase before the country's planned January elections.

Speaking to as many as 2,000 Marines at a town hall meeting in a hanger at Al Asad air base in the desert about 150 miles northwest of the Iraqi capital, he said:

"Those who are determined to try to take back Iraq -- to take it back to a dark place -- have launched a vicious campaign of kidnappings, beheadings, suicide bombings," Rumsfeld said. "They're hoping to snuff out any signs of progress."

Rumsfeld made an unannounced whirlwind tour of Iraq by helicopter, jet and motorcade.

A U.S. official in Washington, who agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity because he's not an authorized administration spokesman, said Iraqi insurgents and foreign terrorists may mount more attacks in an effort to torpedo a tentative cease-fire with Shiite Muslim militiamen in Baghdad and negotiations to end the insurgents' control of the nearby city of Fallujah.

Iraqi national security adviser Kassim Daoud said Sunday that on Monday, members of the Mahdi Army, the militia led by renegade cleric Muqtada al Sadr, are to begin surrendering heavy weapons such as mortars and rocket-propelled grenades at three police stations in Sadr City, a largely Shiite slum in Baghdad.

Despite the rays of hope in Sadr City and Fallujah, Rumsfeld said unrest is likely to prevent any reduction in the number of U.S. forces in Iraq until the January elections, and any reduction after that will depend not only on standing up Iraqi forces, but also on quelling the insurgency.

In his sixth visit to Iraq since last year's U.S.-led invasion, Rumsfeld highlighted efforts to equip and train Iraqi soldiers, police, border guards and other security forces as he met with U.S. military and diplomatic leaders and interim Iraqi government officials.

Rumsfeld said U.S. and Iraqi officials expect to have equipped and trained as many as 145,000 Iraqi security forces by the elections.

It remains to be seen whether that goal will be met and whether those forces will be proficient enough to have an impact by January.

Rumsfeld and U.S. military officials have pointed to Iraqi forces' contributions to victories in the restive cities of Samarra and Najaf as evidence of their abilities.

In Baghdad, Rumsfeld met with U.S. ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte and Army Gen. George Casey, the commander of coalition forces in Iraq. When asked whether he and Casey had discussed whether more or fewer U.S. forces would be needed in Iraq before the elections, Rumsfeld deferred to the general.

Casey said he didn't discuss the issue with Rumsfeld. "I think it's instructive that the subject never came up. If I need more troops, as the secretary said, I will ask for them."

Rumsfeld also flew to the city of Kirkuk, where he reviewed some 50 Iraqi National Guard and police recruits working with U.S. forces. He later visited a Korean military base near the northern city of Irbil before departing for Skopje, the capital of the Republic of Macedonia in the Balkans.

http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/9890088.htm


Ellie