look for me. It's an interview with a lieutenant-colonel with 15 years
of service. And he says:
"We've been betrayed. A lot of those who serve in the military will be
voting for John Kerry this time around. They might have to hold their
noses to do it, but they will do it."
Here's the link again. Full text follows for those who don't like to click.
http://www.alibi.com/editorial/section_display.php?di=2004-07-08&scn=feature#8606
The newspaper in question is a local weekly that is unabashedly
left-of-center but has a pretty good reputation for journalism.
Dana
>>the Military are being demoralized,
>I don't see this and I don't think you should try to
plant this thought
Support Our Troops, Dump Bush
[click to enlarge]
>From June 2003 through June 2004, Lt. Col. George Garcia headed
military teams working in Samarra, Baqubah, Ramadi and Fallujah. The
red area on the map indicates the Sunni Triangle, epicenter of the
worst violence currently plaguing Iraq.
An Albuquerque Lieutenant Colonel returns from Iraq with a bitter
message for the Bush administration
By Steven Robert Allen
Watching the gruesome opening scene of Saving Private Ryan is the
closest most of us will ever come to armed combat. Yeah, sure, it's
horrifying and all, but at least we have the luxury of being horrified
while reclining in cushy purple theater chairs, oil-barrel-sized
troughs of popcorn gripped comfortingly between our thighs.
Lt. Col. George Garcia (not his real name) doesn't need to watch any
Hollywood manufactured fantasies of military combat�he's seen more
than enough of the real thing. He served during the invasion of Panama
in 1989, the liberation of Kuwait in 1991 and the failed humanitarian
mission in Somalia in 1993. After leaving active duty in 1995, he
joined the Army Reserve and was called up to work in Bosnia in 1998.
>From June 2003 through June 2004, he also served as part of the
occupation force in Iraq.
For security purposes and due to the nature of his work, Garcia can't
use his real name in this article. Yet given the current mess in Iraq,
this Albuquerque soldier's thoughts on the Bush administration's
faulty justifications for the war and his own dramatic experiences in
the country are of utmost interest. Garcia, of course, can't claim to
speak for the entire military. As a registered Republican, however,
who voted for Bush in 2000, his take on the Iraq debacle is an
eye-opener, to say the least.
"The bottom line is we didn't need to do this," Garcia says. "The war
in Iraq diverted attention from al Qaeda, and it also handed Osama bin
Laden a strategic victory. In other words, the Bush administration did
exactly what al Qaeda wanted us to do. It's created a huge recruiting
opportunity for our enemies, and we've alienated the whole world in
the process."
I asked Garcia what he'd say to George W. Bush if he had the chance.
"With respect, sir," says Garcia, "you've lost my vote."
The Bloody Triangle
Throughout most of his time in Iraq, Garcia was quartered at a secure
base in the middle of the infamous Sunni Triangle. He served under a
full colonel who in turn served directly under Lt. Gen. Ricardo
Sanchez, the former commander of coalition forces in Iraq. This gave
Garcia a fairly direct line to the heads of military power in the
country.
While in Iraq, Garcia was responsible for supervising four captains
who each led military teams composed of 10 to 20 people. These teams
assisted locals in building the infrastructure necessary to
reconstruct civil society in this severely battered country.
"We also did human resource training," Garcia says, "basically
instructing local officials on how to run an open, free democracy."
Each of Garcia's teams was assigned to a different town in the Sunni
Triangle�Samarra, Baqubah, Ramadi and Fallujah. "I tried to spend at
least one day a week in each town," Garcia says. "The rest of the
time, I was usually in Baghdad or at the base."
When problems cropped up, of course, he'd often need to spend several
consecutive days in a single town. "We worked with a lot of highly
trained Iraqis who were educated in the West, very able people," says
Garcia. "Unfortunately, there's a lingering mistrust toward any kind
of official authority, which is a natural reaction to Saddam's
psychotic regime. Everyone, even most Sunnis, seems to have a relative
who was arrested, tortured or murdered by Saddam. This made our job
difficult, but most Iraqis want to get their society up and running
again. What a lot of Americans don't understand is that Iraq was a
fully industrialized, modern country before Saddam took over."
Ignoring the Experts
Over the last year, U.S. troops have done a lot of good in Iraq. Yet
even before the war began, Garcia believed the Bush administration
hadn't presented an adequate case for sending American troops to war.
Using the military, Garcia emphasized several times during our
conversation, should always be a last resort. "There just wasn't
enough evidence that Iraq presented an imminent threat to our national
interests," he says.
To make matters worse, Garcia says, the war wasn't conducted the way
the military wanted it to be conducted. "The civilian leadership
disregarded the advice of military planners. They have manuals about
how to do this sort of occupation. The Department of Defense ignored
them. Look what happened to Shinseki."
Gen. Eric Shinseki, you might recall, was the Army Chief of Staff.
Right before the invasion, he testified to a congressional committee
that, due to Iraq's size and cultural complexity, he believed the
military required a force of several hundred thousand troops to
adequately occupy the country. Shinseki was much more worried about
the subsequent occupation of Iraq than the war itself.
A couple days later, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz publicly
rebuked the general before another congressional committee, calling
Shinseki's estimate "wildly off the mark." Wolfowitz also said, "It's
hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability
in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and
to secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army. Hard
to imagine."
Hard to imagine for Wolfowitz, maybe, but not for the military experts
who had spent years researching the intricacies inherent in attempting
to overthrow Saddam's regime. As it turns out, it was Wolfowitz'
statements that were wildly off the mark. Garcia believes that the
occupation of Iraq has become a catastrophic disaster not because the
military didn't plan appropriately, but because the Bush
administration ignored the military's plans from the beginning. The
result, he said, has been a much greater loss of life, both American
and Iraqi, than would otherwise have been the case.
According to Garcia, the current administration has combined extreme
arrogance with a capacity for deluding itself that makes such
disasters almost inevitable. "I don't think the big shots in the Bush
administration are malicious or conspiratorial or conscious liars," he
says. "Actually, I think they really believe the things they say,
which to me is even scarier. These people don't listen to other
viewpoints, and they don't seem to have the ability to use basic
critical thinking skills to reach logical solutions to the problems we
face in the war on terrorism. The neo-conservatives really scare the
crap out of me. Their messianic view of global democracy is pure
fantasy."
A Gesture of Respect
Despite his anger at the Bush administration, Garcia is proud of the
U.S. troops' many accomplishments in Iraq. "A lot of our biggest
successes haven't really been reported in the media," he says. "One of
the biggest is the education system."
One day, three Iraqi women approached Garcia's team in Samarra to ask
if the Americans would help them reopen a small school for girls. The
school had been under-funded throughout Saddam's reign. Following the
invasion, its windows were smashed and its contents looted. The
10-room elementary school remained structurally sound, though. All it
needed was an influx of fresh resources to get up and running again.
"The first step was to get permission from the local school board,"
says Garcia, "which we promptly did. As is so often the case in Iraq,
though, we also had to get the blessing of the mayor and the local
tribal chieftain."
Garcia made contact with the two men and was soon invited to discuss
the matter over dinner. The episode provides a fine illustration of
some of the intricacies involved with navigating Iraqi society.
Garcia brought five of his men with him to the dinner. The chieftain,
the head of a prominent local family,
brought 25, all of them male.
Everyone sat down on rugs, and they spent the next hour with
introductions. Through a translator, Garcia listened to the chieftain
express his views on everything under the sun. "He delivered a litany
of good and bad things that had happened over the last 50 years. He
was a thoughtful guy. He said Americans are basically good people, but
he didn't understand certain things about them, which is fair enough."
They had tea and then ate a meal consisting of strips of lamb in a
spicy sauce with pita bread and yellow curried rice. Following the
dinner, they talked about random subjects for another hour. Then they
washed their hands in large bowls brought out by servants and drank
some coffee.
"Three hours later we finally got around to talking about the school,"
Garcia says. "The conversation didn't last longer than 10 minutes. The
chieftain basically said, 'I hear you want to get the school open
again.' 'Yes, that's right,' I said. Then he said, 'I think it's a
good thing.' And that was it. The deal was done."
An Islamic nonprofit brought in pencils, books, chalk and other
educational supplies. "Then USAID provided a bunch of desks," says
Garcia, "and local engineers fixed the roof and hooked up the
electricity and water. It took maybe two to three months to complete
the project. All the locals were very enthusiastic about it. When
you're involved in a project like this, you can't help but make
friends."
The meeting with the tribal chieftain went so well partly because
Garcia has a lot of experience with this kind of complex cultural
exchange. "One thing that isn't reported often enough in the American
media is that a lot of our problems with Iraqis are rooted in their
impression that they've been disrespected by the U.S. Almost all
Iraqis are extremely glad that Saddam Hussein is gone, but they're
also embarrassed that they were liberated by us."
For that reason, Garcia went out of his way in situations like this to
behave in a humble manner. "I'm not sure if many Iraqis have that
experience with Americans. It's extremely important in a culture like
Iraq's to show respect."
Under Attack
Garcia is quick to point out that Iraq isn't one big bloodbath, as we
might suspect from depressing daily media reports. "In one city I
worked," he says, "nothing happened for three months. When an attack
does happen, of course, the tragedy is that most of the violence kills
ordinary Iraqis, school kids, police officers, just ordinary people on
the street."
During his time in Iraq, Garcia only came under attack twice. The
first attack occurred early in the morning at around 7 a.m. "We were
traveling with maybe three Humvees, a small convoy and a civilian Land
Rover. A road-side bomb, probably a mortar round, went off, but it
wasn't close enough to do any damage. It just scared the hell out of
us."
The bomb was probably detonated remotely, and Garcia believes the
culprits were most likely amateurs. The second attack occurred a
couple months later, on a different road at least 100 miles from the
first attack. "This was a much bigger bomb," Garcia says, "probably
some kind of artillery shell or tank round."
This bomb, which he thinks was also detonated remotely, damaged two of
their vehicles. Four people sustained minor injuries, including
Garcia, who caught some glass shards in his face.
All in all, though, he's been lucky. Garcia's operation didn't engage
in regular combat patrols. For this reason, he and his teams suffered
very few casualties. They often traveled in groups of only two to four
Humvees, using alternate routes as often as possible to avoid attacks.
"Most of the attacks you read about have been aimed at large convoys,"
Garcia says. "The other thing that probably helped us is that we were
close to Iraqis. We built a lot of relationships with respected
leaders in the communities where we worked, and we also kept a pretty
low profile."
A Nightmare in Fallujah
Of course, violence in Iraq isn't easy to avoid. We all recall the
horrific March 31 murder and mutilation of four American civilians in
Fallujah. The contractors were pulled from their burning SUVs by an
angry mob, dragged through the streets and hung from a Euphrates River
bridge while a crowd of Iraqis cheered. That scene, along with the Abu
Ghraib torture photos and the infamous televised beheadings, belongs
in the same fat file with the most offensive and disgusting images
we've seen thus far from this war.
On that particular day, Garcia's Fallujah team heard the report that a
civilian convoy had been attacked. Garcia arrived about an hour after
the incident, when the riot had already dispersed. By then, Iraqi
police had secured the scene, and a U.S. combat patrol consisting of
about 40 troops, with three or four Bradley fighting vehicles and two
tanks, had taken control of the area.
"Helicopters were flying overhead," says Garcia, "and the media were
already there. Smoke was coming from cars. My guys, along with some of
the combat troops, had to help take the bodies down from the bridge."
Viewers at home were understandably sickened by this event, because it
presented such a graphic portrait of extreme violence aimed at
Americans. Many compared it to the televised images of American
soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu in Somalia
back in 1993. Garcia's reaction to the incident was more balanced.
"I felt sad, but I'd seen a lot of that kind of thing before," he
says. "It's part of doing this kind of business. Of course, I was
angry that they'd been strung up. It was barbaric, but then war is
barbaric. This kind of thing happens in every war, whether the media
reports it or not.
"You know, I have no way of knowing, but it's entirely possible that
the people who did that had family members who were blown up by our
bombs. Decent people�including you, me or anyone else�can be moved to
do very bad things when they have that kind of incentive."
Angry, Young, Unemployed Men with Guns
Like many experts, Garcia believes the Bush administration made a
terrible mistake when it opted to disband Saddam's army. "They
should've just lopped off all the top generals and done some spot
removals of the hardcore Baathists, but kept the military together.
Iraq under Saddam was a highly militant society. Being in the army
brought with it a huge amount of prestige. These young guys lost that
prestige, and on top of that they brought all their guns home with
them. It created a very bad situation."
That's just one example of what Garcia views as the Bush
administration's gross incompetence in conducting this war. "I'd love
to be at West Point in 10 years for the class 'How Not to Conduct a
War,'" he says, "I'm sure they're talking about it right now, how
badly the civilian leadership screwed up."
Despite this, Garcia is still hopeful that something good can be
salvaged from our current predicament. "The war can still be won and
it can still be lost," he says. "I don't think Iraq can have a full
Western-style democracy, at least not any time soon. At best, we can
hope for a reasonably functional, moderately progressive government,
something like Jordan or maybe even Turkey. At worst, the country
could easily devolve into civil war. There's a very real danger of
that."
During his service in Iraq, Garcia developed a great respect for
Iraqis. He's hopeful that they'll be able to make it through this
period without dragging their country into full-on civil war. "Iraqis
are naturally entrepreneurial people," he says. "They're a rich
country, and many Iraqis are very well-educated. It's not like
Afghanistan. Iraq has been at the crossroads of global trade for
centuries. Whatever happens, it's not going to be a poor country."
Regime Change at Home
Garcia would like to believe that the significant achievements
coalition forces have made in rebuilding Iraq justify the invasion.
Unfortunately, he still believes the war was a giant mistake.
"In the larger context," he says, "these small victories in
reconstructing Iraqi society aren't worth what they've cost us in
lives and resources. Strategically, the war has done us more harm than
good. Even if we can transform Iraq into a relatively progressive,
non-radical regime, there still wasn't a close enough connection
between Iraq and al Qaeda to justify the war.
"I mean, we could invade Venezuela tomorrow and do the same sort of
net good for the Venezuelan people that we've done in Iraq, but it
would be strategically detrimental to us. If we really wanted to help
the Iraqi people, if that was our goal, then we should've used NATO or
the U.N. from the beginning. Going it alone has hurt us in a big way."
Garcia considers himself to be a moderate, old-style Rockefeller
Republican, but these days he feels like a minority in his party.
Although he won't change his party affiliation, he's finished with the
Bush administration.
"No decision is more critical for a nation than whether to wage war,"
he says. "Make our elected leaders prove to you that it is the last
resort. If they don't, hold them accountable come election time. Like
retired generals Anthony Zinni, Barry McCaffrey and Norman
Schwarzkopf, I believe that no convincing case was made by our
president that we needed to invade Iraq when, how and why we did. I
think that events today are bearing that out. Strategically, Iraq is a
dangerous distraction and drain from the battle against al Qaeda and
Islamic jihadist terrorists, and for that we may pay dearly. Remember
that when you decide who should lead our country."
For Garcia, the only defensible option this presidential election year
is to vote for John Kerry. "My impression is that a lot of people in
the military feel the same way," he says. "We've been betrayed. A lot
of those who serve in the military will be voting for John Kerry this
time around. They might have to hold their noses to do it, but they
will do it.
"I mean, I don't want to harp on this too much, but Kerry understands
the cost of doing something like this because, unlike most of the Bush
administration, he's been there. He's a smart guy. I definitely don't
agree with everything he's ever supported, but I really think it's
time for a change."
Home Sweet Home
Fresh back from Iraq, Garcia relishes his job as an analyst at a
civilian government agency here in town. There's a chance the military
will send him back to Iraq at some point, but he doesn't think it's
likely, and that's just fine with him. "I'm too old for this stuff,"
says the 41-year-old, laughing. "Let the young guys do it."
Throughout our conversation, Garcia was thoughtful and restrained
while making comments about the Bush administration's failures in
Iraq. After serving in so many overseas operations, he's learned to
treat governmental incompetence with a sense of humor. Even so, he's
clearly upset that the Bush administration dragged our nation into
this costly, dangerous, unnecessary war.
"I've seen a lot of carnage over the years," Garcia says, "and it
always makes you mad, but it makes you especially mad in a case like
this when we didn't need to be there. A lot of war widows are asking
why? Why did we do this?"
While American troops continue to die in Iraq, we have yet to hear a
reasonable answer to this question.
----- Original Message -----
From: Sam Morris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2004 16:40:16 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: 9/11 Commission to Cheney - You're still wrong.
To: CF-Community <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
--- Doug White <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>There is more than 50% of American opinion that
>believes the American people were deceived
Where'd you get that figure?
>and now that we are there, we are stuck in a modern
>day Viet Nam
Modern day Vietnam? That's what Ted Kennedy was using
to turn Americans against the war. Nobody except you
and the terrorist bought it.
Did you miss the memo about the handover of power to
Iraq?
>wherein the US reputation, is being sullied,
By a handful of Democratic politicians here that want
to win the election and a few rogue countries that
lost their gravy train.
>the Military are being demoralized,
I don't see this and I don't think you should try to
plant this thought.
>The only remaining allies are those whom we pour tons
>of bribery (termed foreign Aid) who are just
>following the money trail.
Ironic that the only ones against us are involved with
the food-for-oil scandal. Talk about a money train. We
broke up that multi-billion dollar bribery ring.
-sm
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail________________________________
[Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
