A Plague on the Nation

January 17, 2005
RANCOR IN THE U.S. RANKS
U.S. Military Personnel Growing Critical of the War in Iraq
By GEORG MASCOLO and SIEGESMUND VON ILSEMANN,
Der Spiegel

US military officials are becoming increasingly vocal in their criticism of the
war in Iraq, telling Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that more troops are
needed to prevail over the insurgents. Moreover, recruitment is down and more
reservists and members of the National Guard are being sent to Baghdad.

The war is over, at least as far as Darrell Anderson is concerned. Anderson, a
22-year-old GI from Lexington, Kentucky, deserted a week ago, heading across
the US' loosely controlled border with Canada. When his fellow soldiers in the
First US Tank Division, stationed in Hessen, Germany, ship out to Iraq for
their second tour of duty, he'll be in Canada.

Anderson spent seven months in Iraq last year as a part of a unit assigned the
dangerous mission of guarding police stations in Baghdad. He was wounded by
grenade shrapnel during an insurgent attack, was awarded the Purple Heart and
allowed to spend Christmas at home in the United States. But instead of
returning to duty, Anderson fled to Toronto.

Now he's a deserter and a warrant has been issued for his arrest. If
apprehended, he faces several years in a US military prison. In justifying his
desertion, Anderson says: "I can't go back to this war. I don't want to kill
innocent people." He talks about the constant pressure soldiers face to make
decisions in the daily grind of war. Once, when a car came too close to their
Baghdad checkpoint, his commanding officer ordered him to shoot, even though
Anderson could only make out a man and children in the vehicle. The soldier
refused. "Next time you shoot," his commanding officer barked.

On another occasion, the safety on his automatic weapon was all that prevented
Anderson from losing control. "I was holding a heavily injured comrade in my
arms, there was blood all over the place, and Iraqis were cheering all around
us," he recalls. "I was so furious that all I wanted to do was kill someone,
anyone."

Anderson has now applied for political asylum in Canada. His attorney, Jeffry
House, was once one of the 50,000 draft dodgers who fled to Canada to avoid
serving in the Vietnam War. Deserters who are now fleeing to Canada to avoid
the Iraq war have reawakened memories of an exodus that took place more than
thirty years ago. House says: "Every day I get calls from at least two soldiers
looking for a way out."

Revolt no longer Rare

Deserting US recruits -- once a rarity -- are not alone in their search. Three
months after being reelected and immediately prior to what is expected to be a
triumphant inaugural party to mark the start of his second term, US President
George W. Bush will be hard-pressed not to reevaluate the strategy for the
deployment of US troops in Iraq. He faces massive doubts among the members of
his own military, who are becoming increasingly vocal in their opinion that the
US war with Iraqi insurgents is being conducted with insufficient manpower and
equipment. Lieutenant General James Helmly, chief of the Army Reserve, warns
that his troops in Iraq have "deteriorated into a broken force."

A revolt seems to be taking place within the ranks. Even though daily bomb
attacks in Iraq and the latest death toll of 1,361 US soldiers have yet to
trigger any significant reversal in US public opinion, and even though
President Bush reiterated last week that the world is a safer place without
Saddam Hussein, Bush's soldiers and officers seem increasingly convinced that
the opposite is true. Almost without warning, America's armed forces, superior
to any of the world's other militaries but faced with severe personnel
shortages, are suddenly encountering almost insurmountable obstacles --
politically, strategically and financially.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld particularly faces growing criticism. In
light of the disastrous situation on the ground in Iraq, even fellow
Republicans are quietly demanding his removal and calling for a change in
strategy. Rumsfeld bears the brunt of the blame for the precarious situation in
which the US military now finds itself. The Iraq war has cost US taxpayers more
than $150 billion to date, with the Pentagon spending $4.5 billion a month on
its campaign in Iraq.

And there appears to be no end in sight, at least for the time being. Rumsfeld,
in an attempt to boost morale among his frustrated troops, has said that he
expects the Americans to withdraw from Iraq within his second four-year term as
Secretary of Defense. However, only the most optimistic of the president's
closest advisors believe that the situation in Iraq will improve in the wake of
the January 30 elections.

Retired general D. Brent Scowcraft, national security advisor under the first
President Bush, sees the election as providing nothing but "substantial
potential for expanding the conflict." Last week, Lieutenant General Thomas
Metz, commander of US ground forces in Iraq, openly admitted that regular
elections are no longer a likely scenario in four of Iraq's 18 provinces.
Because a quarter of the Iraqi population lives in these provinces, the
question arises as to how meaningful this election, now called into jeopardy by
increasingly violent attacks, can be.

Even though the 125,000-strong Iraq security forces are not even remotely
capable of keeping the peace in their own country, politicians in Washington
have already begun debating the possibility of a withdrawal of US forces.
During Congress' Christmas recess, many lawmakers were forced to respond to
questions from their constituents who wanted at least some indication of
whether there is an end in sight to the US' bloody adventure in Iraq. Last
week, outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell confessed that he hopes the
withdrawal will get underway this year.

Retired four-star general Gary Luck has been sent to Iraq to determine how and
how quickly the United States can withdraw from the Iraqi conflict without
losing face. Within a few weeks, he is expected to provide Rumsfeld with an
unfiltered assessment of the current situation and of the overall US Iraq
strategy. According to retired general Sir Michael Rose, the well-respected
former commander of Britain's contingent of UN peacekeepers in Bosnia, "the
Americans' current strategy clearly isn't working."

Recruitment Getting Tougher

The Pentagon's original plans called for the withdrawal of US forces by
September 2003. After that, a small protective force was to remain behind to
guaranty security in postwar Iraq. Until now, however, only US allies have
withdrawn their troops, including Ukraine, which announced its plans to
withdraw just last week.

The increasingly heated debate in the United States over withdrawal from Iraq
is being fueled by the fact that US forces stationed in and around Baghdad have
long since ceased to consist entirely of professional military personnel. 40
percent of the 150,000 US troops in Iraq are army reservists or members of the
National Guard. These troops, whose service normally consists of occasional
weekend drills and yearly exercises, are people who have long since turned to
other more or less successful careers. Now, they have been forced to
temporarily abandon those careers to serve in Iraq, an obligation hardly any of
these part-time soldiers had expected.

As a result, both the Army Reserves and National Guard are having trouble
recruiting new members. "It's the mothers who are warning their kids about
going to war," complains Sergeant Kevin Hudgins, a Tennessee recruiter. "In the
past, the kids saw it as an easy way to pay for college," says Curtis Mills, a
veteran who was severely wounded in Iraq. The National Guard is currently 30
percent shy of its recruitment goals. To make up for the difference, it is
introducing an incentive system under which new recruits will receive up to
$10,000 to join the National Guard.

Indignation is growing, especially among reservists once derided as weekend
warriors. Although national guardsmen and reservists are generally assigned to
support positions, their jobs as mechanics, drivers and cooks are also
dangerous, as demonstrated by last month's suicide attack on a military mess
hall near the Iraqi city of Mosul.

National Guard commander Steven Blum has asked the Pentagon for $20 billion,
with the bulk of the requested funds earmarked for re-outfitting his troops,
who were previously treated as second-class soldiers when it came to equipment.
"I would have felt safer in a Volvo than in our Humvee," complains Richard
Murphy, who was compelled to serve for 15 months in Iraq. In Alabama, veterans
and schoolchildren even forged home-made armor to protect jeeps when their
local National Guard troop was given its marching orders.

The regular armed forces will also find their patriotism severely tested in
coming months as the Pentagon uses every trick it knows to extend tours of duty
by up to one year. A new rule, for example, prohibits soldiers from leaving the
service if their unit is scheduled to be deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq within
three months' time.

How Can Security Be Improved?

Proposals being considered to improve the security situation in Iraq also show
signs of desperation. For the first time, regular soldiers are being offered
training to fight insurgents. Until now, such special training was reserved for
members of the elite forces and for marine infantry troops. Part of the
training includes a marines' training manual written in 1940. Some is helpful,
but parts are completely antiquated. For instance, there is a section labeled
"working with animals," (mules, mostly) and another on "mixed-race" companies.
According to the manual, such companies are unusually "unmanageable due to a
lack of strong character."

Models that have long since been discarded as failures are hectically being
revived. For example, US military advisors are to be embedded as supervisors
and support personnel within units of the new Iraqi army, who have the dubious
but well-deserved reputation of fleeing the minute they come under fire.

Precisely the same recipe was incapable of stopping the Vietnam debacle 40
years ago. Military officials are also talking about forming death squads,
whose job would be to track down and eliminate the insurgents within the
territory they control or to which they normally withdraw. This would include
foreign territory beyond the borders of Iraq. It's a strategy that was largely
discredited during civil wars in Latin American in the 1970s.

These experiences have led military personnel in particular to call for a
rethinking of Washington's strategy. The Pentagon's civilian leadership has not
been faced with so much criticism from within its own ranks since the Vietnam
War. Retired general D. Barry McCaffrey is even concerned that "the army will
lose its base in the next 24 months." General Peter Schoomaker, the current
Chief of Staff of the US Army, has already warned Congress against drastic
consequences, saying that "it may be necessary to augment the regular armed
forces," something that Rumsfeld wants to avoid at all costs, mainly for
budgetary reasons.

To maintain a security force of 150,000 troops in Iraq in the longer term, the
United States will in fact need three times as many soldiers. According to
military planners, a third of these troops would be preparing for deployment, a
third would actually be deployed, and a third would be involved in
post-deployment work or on vacation.

This approach would thus require 450,000 troops to be available for Iraq at all
times. However, the entire US armed forces, which would provide the lion's
share of this military force, currently comprises only 500,000 troops. It's
mainly because of these anticipated personnel needs that US military commanders
are opposed to Rumsfeld's pet project -- converting the US armed forces into a
relatively small but highly mobile high-tech commando force designed for
lightning missions throughout the world. Military commanders argue that
although this concept may have ensured the US a rapid initial victory over
Iraq, it cannot guarantee peace in Iraq.

But it is precisely the military's desire for more troops that could unleash a
public debate over the reintroduction of compulsory military service -- a
discussion that no Washington politician of any stripe truly wants to tackle.
The threat of a general draft could trigger a massive exodus to Canada which,
until now, has only been an option occasionally resorted to by American
opponents of the war. But even the few deserters that have already fled have
put the Canadian government into an embarrassing bind.

Until now, Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin has responded evasively to
asylum requests filed by US soldiers. "We are a nation of immigrants and I have
no intention of discriminating against anyone," he explained. But even though
the Iraq war is as unpopular in Canada as US President George W. Bush himself,
Martin knows full well that Washington would view Canada's granting asylum to
GIs from south of the border as an open insult.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

January 23, 2005

Few but Organized, Iraq Veterans Turn War Critics

ean Huze enlisted in the Marine Corps right after the Sept. 11 attacks and was, in his own words, "red, white and blue all the way" when he deployed to Iraq 16 months later. Unquestioning in his support of the invasion, he grew irritated when his father, a former National Guardsman, expressed doubts about the war.

Today, all that has changed. Haunted by the civilian casualties he witnessed, Corporal Huze has become one of a small but increasing number of Iraq veterans who have formed or joined groups to oppose the war or to criticize the way it is being fought.

The two most visible organizations - Operation Truth, of which Corporal Huze is a member, and Iraq Veterans Against the War - were founded only last summer but are growing in membership and sophistication. The Internet has helped them spread their word and galvanize like-minded people in ways unimaginable to activist veterans of previous generations, who are also lending help.

"There's strength in numbers," Corporal Huze said. "By ourselves, we're lone voices, a whisper in a swarm of propaganda out there. Combined, we can become a roar and have an impact on the issues that we care about."

Those who turn to the groups are generally united in their disillusionment, though their responses to the war vary: Iraq Veterans seeks a quick withdrawal from Iraq; Operation Truth focuses on the day-to-day issues affecting troops and veterans.

Iraq Veterans Against the War, which started in July with 8 people, now has more than 150 members, including some still serving in Iraq, said Michael Hoffman, a former lance corporal in the Marines and a co-founder of the group.

Operation Truth, based in New York, began with 5 members and now has 300, with an e-mail list of more than 25,000 people. Its Web site is a compendium of soldiers and veterans' stories, a media digest on the war, and a rallying point on issues affecting troops.

Iraq veterans are keenly aware of the need to argue for their interests, given the struggles of veterans of Vietnam and the Persian Gulf war. The older veterans have offered a reservoir of knowledge and compassion to help Iraq veterans avoid the mistakes they made.

It took Vietnam Veterans of America almost 15 years to have an effect on government policy, said Steve Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center, an advocacy group for gulf war veterans. Mr. Robinson said his group did not come into its own for about eight years, despite help from Vietnam Veterans of America.

Mr. Robinson is working closely with Operation Truth, which he said had already surpassed his operation in raising money.

For Corporal Huze, the transformation began when he returned home in fall 2003. Unable to forget the carnage he had seen in Iraq, he began to grapple with the justification for the war, he said.

"By sometime in December 2003, I came to the conclusion that W.M.D.'s weren't there and that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11, and now I'm left with all that I'd experienced in Iraq and nothing to balance it," Corporal Huze said, emphasizing that he was speaking as a citizen, not as a marine. "When I came to that conclusion, I felt this sense of betrayal. I was full of rage and depression."

That rage has since fueled Corporal Huze, a native of Baton Rouge, La., who is awaiting a medical discharge for a head injury. With the consent of his commanding officers at Camp Lejeune, he speaks regularly to the media and others as a representative for Operation Truth.

"Who I was before the war, who I was in Iraq and who I am now are three very different men," Corporal Huze said. "I don't think I can ever have the blind trust in the government like I had before. I think that my being over in Iraq as an active participant, I'm a bit more responsible than others for things there. And I think by speaking out now, it's my amends." He added, "I don't know if it will ever balance."

Operation Truth does not address the necessity of the war. David Chasteen of suburban Washington, a former Army captain in the Third Infantry Division and a member of the group's board, said Operation Truth hoped to stake out a nonpartisan position on aspects of the war that could realistically be changed, as opposed to tackling the administration's Middle East policy.

"Our attitude was 'Want to do something? Here's what you can do: get body armor to the guys on the ground, get interpreters to people on the ground, get people who know how to plan this stuff on the ground,' " said Mr. Chasteen, who said his experience in Iraq as an expert on unconventional weapons left him disillusioned about the war. "Maybe if we tell people what we saw, maybe some of these things can get fixed. I definitely think we added momentum to some issues."

Operation Truth points out that when Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld took questions from soldiers in Kuwait last month about equipment shortages, the Web site's readers sent 3,400 e-mail messages in 24 hours to members of Congress asking for hearings into the issue, which are to be held in the next few months.

Organizing those who have recently returned from Iraq is an uphill battle, older veterans and Iraq veterans agreed. The first priority for many is resuming their lives. And unlike most Vietnam veterans, many Iraq veterans have remained in the military after returning, limiting their ability to participate in groups critical of the government.

Despite their different focuses, Operation Truth and Iraq Veterans Against the War overlap on some issues, most notably with lobbying the government to address what is expected by many veterans of Iraq and previous wars to be a high incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder among those who served in Iraq.

Some who served in Vietnam, like Tim Origer of the Santa Fe, N.M., chapter of Veterans for Peace, have said Iraq veterans face a more intense version of the stresses they experienced: constant threats inherent to guerrilla war, inability to distinguish friend from foe, and profound despair that often accompanies taking a life, especially a civilian's.

In March 2003, reports of suicide-bombing attacks on American soldiers had reached Sgt. Rob Sarra's Marine Corps unit in an Iraqi town called al-Shatra. A short time later, soldiers saw an older woman walking toward them with a small bundle. The marines, fearing that she might be a bomber, called to her to stop, but she kept walking.

"I was looking at her, and I thought 'I have to stop this woman,' " Mr. Sarra said. "So I fired on her, and then the other marines fired on her."

"When we got to her, we saw that she was pulling out a white flag," he said. "She had tea and bread in her bag. I kept thinking, 'Was she a grandmother? Was she a mother?' "

Mr. Sarra, who has left the Marines after nine years, struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder in Iraq and at home in Chicago before seeking counseling and help from other veterans. Now he is one of the leaders of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

"When someone is wounded or goes through P.T.S.D., it brings what they went through to the forefront," Mr. Sarra said. "I knew when I joined the Marines that if I was going to be there for 20 years, I'd face combat. But the question is, why did we go?"

A grenade tossed into Robert Acosta's Humvee in Baghdad in July 2003 left him without his right hand and shattered his legs. Mr. Acosta, 21, spent months in hospitals surrounded by other young amputees, watching news about government commissions concluding that Iraq had no unconventional weapons.

He began reading, watching the news and talking to people, especially Vietnam veterans like Mr. Origer in Santa Fe. Last summer, his girlfriend heard Paul Rieckhoff, the founder of Operation Truth, speak on the radio. Mr. Acosta contacted him. By the fall, Mr. Acosta had become the organization's public face, appearing in a provocative television advertisement.

Mr. Acosta, who is attending community college in Southern California, said he hoped to bring friends from his old unit in the First Armored Division into Operation Truth as they leave the Army, because they might start to experience some of the problems he faced. For instance, he said, he once used duct tape to hold his prosthesis together because he could not get it repaired quickly at the local Veterans Affairs hospital. And people often asked about his injury.

"People would just come up to me and say, 'How'd you lose your arm?' " Mr. Acosta said. "And I'd say, 'In the war.' And they would be like, 'What war?' "

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Pat Oliphant
Sat Jan 22,12:00 AM ET
Pat Oliphant
Fri Jan 21,12:00 AM ET  
Ben Sargent
Mon Jan 17,12:00 AM ET