Normally, I’m not in the habit of reprinting articles like the one far below. Hopefully they’ll forgive me for it. As for the upper one, it’s by one of our own, Cadillac Frank and has been posted with full permission. – Ed.
Why are our troops in Iraq? Who are they fighting for?
by Cadillac
Frank
------------------------------------
Keeping as up-to-date on the current situation in Iraq as an embedded
journalist (I just love saying those words... embedded journalist), I
have adopted a role as a "local correspondent" to those who:
* aren't
following along in the newspapers or on television
* don't understand what they are
seeing or reading
* don't have background
knowledge of Iraq and politics and even life
In a non-American, unfree nation
* care enough to ask, but can't
shut me up once I get started
None of these are anything to be ashamed of (except maybe the last
one). All kinds of people learn and are interested in different ways and
in
different things.
Now, I confess that I am not the end-all source for 100% accurate,
endless information. But as an intelligent, open-minded, and reasonable
man
whose family has endured some of the hardships of that region first-hand, I
consider my opinion and the view I take on the facts fairly credible
and respectable.
And as just about all of you thought when you read the opening to this
essay, the answer to: Why are our troops in Iraq? the first answer that
everyone says is OIL.
And even for the naive, there is no denying oil as a reason. But
imagine over 25 million suffering, starving people wasting away with no one to
help them. What was their sin? What was their crime to warrant such
a
punishment? Simple. Their heritage.
And, of course, the obvious question comes up: "Well, what are they
doing still living there if it's so bad?" That's their
homeland. Baghdad
was not always a wasteland; it was the jewel of the Middle East. The
English
had petroleum engineers there since the turn of the century and luxurious
imported good from France would arrive weekly, long before supplies
reached even the United States in the 1950's. Babylon and Mesopotamia
(where
civilization started) are there.
And since Gulf War I, it is nearly impossible for anyone to leave the
borders of Iraq legitimately. Even less feasible for any free nation
to give a native Iraqi a visa to enter their country.
But to put it in an even better perspective, would we, as Americans,
abandon our beloved nation if a disaster were to strike it? Hell
no! We, as
Americans, would do everything we could to better our United States.
In Iraq's case, a barbarian regime, masked by politics, strengthened by
fear, mass murder, secrets, and totalitarian rule is the disaster. The
Iraqi
people don't want a new homeland, they want a better Iraq.
Twenty-five million people are suffering from things we take for
granted. The flu and simple infections are debilitating people.
Hunger is
claiming lives. Sixty-two out of every 1,000 infants born do not live to
see
their first birthday. Our troops are fighting more than just a political
war.
They are fighting an injustice to humanity. In 1915, 1.5 million
Armenians were slaughtered, beheaded and raped in the Genocide. During
World War
II, roughly 6 million Jews were starved, tortured, and killed. All of the
above punishments and more have been and are continued to be used against the
25,000,000 people of Iraq.
Which is what it all comes down to in the end. People.
Humanity. Our
troops are removing a man who holds no value for a human life having
committed his first murder at the age of 10. Having slaughtered
countless Iranians for a war that spanned eight long years. Having turned
mustard gas, nerve gas, and other heinous chemical weapons on people living
WITHIN HIS NATION'S OWN BORDERS.
Have you ever recycled a soda can? To "save the Earth"?
This is a
REALLY big soda can being worked on... to save those who are suffering.
Those
who want to be saved. And no, they aren't going to be hailing our troops
with garlands of
flowers and all that pomp like Rumsfeld says. Get real. They are
still in fear for
their lives. Keep a man in the darkness for 50 years, and he too will
cringe away from the light... but still try desperately to see that
light again. Same with the people of Iraq.
And keep in mind, when you wonder who we are fighting for, they are
those people you see falling over themselves to offer blessings and prayers
to our troops. Grown men kissing the faces, hands, and feet of those
soldiers
of their nation's salvation; crying tears of pure relief for when their
own nation will be free. They are those mobs of innocent children
gathered
around each soldier to accept a candy bar, offer a little smile, even
learn a new song or two. All this symbolized by our courageous men and
women
from all walks of life, wearing the universal symbol of freedom on their
uniforms -- the flag of the United States of America.
Also for those few brave people like the man mentioned in the following
article from the Washington Post. A real hero. I know, I probably
shouldn't have just copied it, but it's important and I hope they will
forgive me. It is truly a story too unbelievable to be anything but
true.
For all of you who have a bulletin board with nothing better to post,
feel free to print and post this message. For all of you who have an
e-mail
buddy who would appreciate reading this, please forward it to them.
For all of you sending notes of support to our troops, please see that this
message gets to them too. In fact, as many of our troops as you can
because
they all need to know that despite ANY criticism or protest, there are
plenty of us back home who appreciate the sacrifices they are making in our
name.
No matter how many people put "No War In My Name" stickers on their
cars,
there are many more of us, just like me who want our troops to represent
Freedom, in my name.
"Freedom, In My Name" by Cadillac Frank
______________________________
Reprinted
without permission from: <a
href=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23979-2003Apr3.html> THE
WASHINGTON POST </A>
IRAQI MAN RISKED ALL FOR U.S. POW
32-year-old lawyer helped free Pfc. Lynch
By Peter Baker
THE WASHINGTON POST
MARINE COMBAT HEADQUARTERS, Iraq, April 3 — Mohammed, a gregarious
32-year-old Iraqi lawyer, went by the hospital in Nasiriyah one day
last week to visit his wife, who worked there as a nurse, when he noticed
the ominous presence of security agents.
Curious, he asked around, and a
doctor friend told him an
American soldier was being held there. Something made him want to go see. The
doctor took him to a first-floor emergency wing where he pointed out the
soldier through a glass interior window — a young woman lying in a bed,
bandaged and covered in a white blanket.
Inside the room with her was an imposing
Iraqi man, clad all in
black. Mohammed watched as the man slapped the American woman with his
open palm, then again with the back of his hand. In that instant, Mohammed
recalled today, he resolved to do something. After the man in black
left, Mohammed sneaked in to see the young woman.
“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” he told her.
He was going for help.
As he recounted the events today, that
decision set in motion
one of the most dramatic moments in the first two weeks of the war in Iraq.
Five days later, after Mohammed located U.S. Marines and told them what he
knew, Black Hawk helicopters swooped in under cover of darkness, touching
down next to the six-story hospital, and a team of heavily-armed commandos
stormed the building. With hand-scrawled maps from Mohammed and his
wife, the commandos quickly found the injured Pfc. Jessica Lynch and spirited
her away to safety.
Mohamed said he decided to save the
19-year-old soldier because
he could not bear to see her beaten in the hospital. “My heart is cut,” he
recalled of his reaction when he saw her. “I decided to go to the
Americans and tell them about this story.”
Mohammed and his family were flown to this
crude desert camp by
helicopter today to stay the night before being taken to a refugee
center in the southern port city of Umm Qasr. They were allowed to clean up in
a
makeshift “shower” fashioned out of a giant cardboard box and then
given clothes to wear — an MTV shirt for Mohammed’s wife, Iman, and an
oversized military T-shirt for his 6-year-old daughter. When Mohammed mentioned
that he would love an American flag, the Marines rushed to find one.
“He’s sort of an inspiration to all of
us,” said Lt. Col. Rick
Long, who hosted the family in his trailer for a dinner of Meals Ready to Eat
tonight.
If not for his help, the Marines said,
they might never have
been able to rescue Lynch. “The information was dead-on,” said Col. Bill
Durrett, who was helping process their refugee status to keep them safe from
reprisals.
Lynch was part of a convoy from the Army’s
507th Ordnance
Maintenance Company that made a wrong turn at the city of Nasiriyah on the
banks of
the Euphrates River on March 23 when it was ambushed by Iraqi paramilitary
fighters. The U.S. invasion force was being attacked by Saddam’s
Fedayeen, a militia formed by President Saddam Hussein’s son Uday.
Several of the soldiers were killed in the
attack, and Lynch
returned fire, according to the account given by U.S. officials. Lynch’s family
said today that she was not shot or stabbed, as early intelligence reports
had indicated. Five soldiers were captured in the attack, while seven are
still listed as missing in action.
In a German hospital, Lynch underwent back
surgery today to
repair a fracture that was pinching a nerve. She is suffering two broken legs
and a broken arm. She spoke by telephone with her parents in Palestine, W.
Va.
Mohammed, whose last name is being
withheld at the request of
the Marines, set off the chain of events that led to Lynch’s rescue.
Mohammed was born in Najaf, a holy city to Shiite Muslims like him. He displays
an easy smile and is quick to say “welcome.” He studied law and a little
English in Basra in southeastern Iraq and became an attorney. He and
his wife did what they could to make a decent life for themselves and their
daughter; they had a house and a Russian-made car. But, as Mohammed
told it, they longed for the day Hussein would fall.
So when he saw some Fedayeen in the
hospital, he concluded they
were up to no good. He said he knew some of them personally. Asked about
them, he simply shook his head. “Very bad,” he said, switching back and forth
from English to Arabic. “Very, very, very, very bad. There’s no kindness in
my heart for them.” Mohammed recalled that, after the war began, he
watched them drag a dead woman’s body through the street, apparently killed
because she waved at a U.S. helicopter.
When he first saw Lynch that day, he said
the Iraqis were
talking about amputating her leg, which had been injured during or after the
attack. Mohammed said he urged his doctor friend to stop the amputation. When
he went in to see Lynch, he said, she mistook him for a doctor.
“A person is a human being regardless of
nationality,” he
explained today. “Believe me, I love Americans.”
The same day he saw Lynch he said in an
account vouched for by
the Marines, Mohammed set out by foot to find the Americans. The Marines
had been trying to secure a route on the eastern side of Nasiriyah to keep
critical supply convoys flowing over a pair of bridges that took them
across the Euphrates. Mohammed said he walked six miles out of the town center
before he came across some Marines.
He said he approached them with his hands
raised.
“What do you want?” a Marine asked.
“I have important information about woman
soldier in hospital,”
he replied.
Mohammed was taking a chance, not only in
defying Iraqi
authorities but in approaching the Marines. Saddam’s Fedayeen and their allies
had
been dressing in civilian clothes to get close to U.S. troops, sometimes
even faking surrender, only to open fire at short range. U.S. troops have
also fired on civilians at checkpoints.
But with the mention of a woman soldier,
Mohammed got the
Marines’ attention, and he was quickly ushered in to talk with officers who
began grilling him about the hospital and the soldier inside. At the same
time, Mohammed instructed his wife to go stay with their family — and none
too soon. That night, friends told him later, the Fedayeen showed up at his
house and ransacked the place, searching for something.
It was not enough to simply tell the
Americans that one of their
own was at Saddam Hospital. Twice over the next two days, he said, they
sent him back to the hospital to gather more information. Just to get to the
hospital was perilous, he said, because of the U.S. bombs that seemed to be
falling all around Nasiriyah. Once in the hospital, he had to make sure he was
not spotted by anyone who would inform on him to the Fedayeen.
As he skulked around, he counted the
number of Fedayeen at the
hospital, until he came to 41. He noted that four guards in civilian
clothes stood watch at Lynch’s first-floor room armed with Kalashnikov assault
rifles and radios. He traced routes through the building that commandos
could use. He tried to learn what he could about the operations center
they set up at the hospital on the first day of the war.
After returning to the Marine base, he
drew out five maps by
hand, and his wife, who was brought there, drew one, too. The military
planners took the scraps of paper and got to work.
In the end, a Special Operations force of
Navy SEALs, Army
Rangers and Air Force personnel swooped in early Wednesday morning, while
Marines staged a fake offensive elsewhere around Nasiriyah to distract
attention of the Fedayeen and their allies. It was one of the few times an
American
prisoner of war has been successfully rescued in the last half century.
Mohammed has given up the life he knew to
help a woman he met
only briefly. He and his family came to this Marine base with nothing but
the clothes they were wearing and a blanket. But Mohammed smiled broadly
and happily talked about his role. He expressed no doubts about his
decision.
“She would not have lived,” he said
simply. “It was very
important.”
He knew the risks, he said. “I am afraid
not for me. I am afraid
about my daughter and my wife,” he said, turning to them sitting
quietly next to him. “Because I love much.”
Mohammed wants to work with the Americans
some more, maybe help
them gather information elsewhere in Iraq. His wife could help treat injured
soldiers, he offered. Maybe he will go to America. But eventually, he
said, he wants to return home.
“In the future when Saddam Hussein is
down,” he said, “I will go
back to Nasiriyah.” He said he would not worry then about the Fedayeen.
“When Saddam Hussein goes down, I’m sure they will go away.”
© 2003 The Washington Post Company