Speaking of IEDs and the "Marlboro Man"... (My Friend Came Back...) [View All]

[Hissyspit]

(And I didn't even know she almost died.)

Speaking of IEDs and the "Marlboro Man" and Bob Woodruff and Jill Carroll, in case you haven't heard...

Iraq is a BIG FUCKING MESS.

It has been for a LONG time now and it is STILL going on.

Found myself angry about it all over again after a phone call last week from a friend and former student of mine who went to Iraq in early 2005 as part of the international police program to assist in the training of Iraqi police.

Within two weeks upon arriving, standing next to a window in the Al Sadeer Hotel, she was blown off her feet in the hotel bombing of March of last year. I received a couple of more emails from her and her husband communicating what she had experienced - then nothing more. In our phone conversation she expressed surprise that she had not heard from me lately. This gap in communication, apparently due to address book or spam-guard interference, kept from me the news from September of her being blown up in but surviving an IED incident.

Basically, without revealing too much personal information about her because she is a friend and I didn't ask if I could identify her online, she has been part of the International Civilian Police Program in Iraq, signing up after serving as a police officer for some years here in the state where I live.

There was a great deal of IED activity several months and I recall expecting to hear that she had been involved, killed, or injured in one of the incidents, but I hadn't been hearing anything from her. She called me this past week and was surprised to find that I had not heard about any of her latest experiences.

As she tells it she was arranging to get to Jordan for some leave and went out that with the convoy, sitting in the back seat of the lead vehicle (I believe).

There was an explosion and noise - the main thing she remembers thinking at that instance was who was going to stop the vehicle (I didn't ask what kind it was exactly, she may have mentioned but I've forgotten) because no one was in control of it. Suddenly it came to a halt, slamming into a wall. With the vehicle stopped but on fire and fuel all over the place, her thought was to get out, coupled with the awareness that she felt sharpness in her legs. Once she was out of the vehicle and it became clear that her legs were alright. then the concerns became helping/ one another and getting to a safe area to avoid capture.

Her M-16 left behind because everything was hot, she was in a cloud of smoke and/or dust, but became cognizant that her legs were alright and probably just affected by the heat. There were burns on her arms, however. One of her friends in the front seat was dead.

As, she says, her police training automatically kicked in, she was aware that others were yelling to get back to the safety zone, pieces of brains and limbs of her friend, with whom she had been goofing around with in the Green Zone, all over the place."

She made it back to the SZ, but did not want to travel to the hospital, changing her mind only upon being assured that there would be a tank escort.

She suffered a damaged tooth - a metal pin is holding it in now, she says, and burns on her arms. Her hip has been thrown out of whack and she has suffered post-traumatic 'stress.'

Later that night after the phone conversation, I heard, as reported by NBC's Andrea Mitchell, quoting from the Audits from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, that the reconstruction efforts are not going well: "We can't rebuild," she quoted an official as saying, the report citing high personnel turnover and spiraling security costs. Bremer said we predict the insurgency. Journalist Thomas Powers in an interview two days before the ground war started:

But you've changed the fundamental relationships of people there and gradually they realize what the limits of their action are, and they realize, well, we can't have any, you know, any military forces with tanks attacking the Americans, but it isn't that hard to kind of sneak up on 'em in the streets.

And I think sort of an endless amount of trouble will slowly begin to bubble forth, so I figure we're gonna have a month of war, and then we're gonna have a month of indecision, and then we're gonna have a couple of months where everything looks pretty good. And then after that, things are gonna start going downhill, and it's gonna be trouble, and it's gonna be money and it'll take a generation to resolve it.

My friend and I met for dinner before she went to Iraq and she was surprised when I criticized the Bush administration over Iraq. Finding myself exasperated when she talked about fighting the terrorists in Iraq in response to 9/11, I reminded her of what we talked about in class and of emails I had sent out her; that plenty of people expected 9/11 and knew there would be no WMDs. We talked about finding the true values being communicated by what people say and do. I did not push the issue because it was more important, I felt, to be supportive, and the same was true of our telephone conversation. I believe she is cynical about the situation there, but I'm not really aware of much more of her political outlook. Nevertheless, since we had not been in touch for a while, I was somewhat naive in my expectations that (and especially in light of her professional environment) she have been exposed to the same daily information and influences about this administration and thus come to the same conclusions I had. But I was not incorrect in thinking that her trip to Iraq was most likely going to be a trip into a non-ameliorating hell-hole - I just hoped for the best. Ironically, in her first email to everyone upon arriving there, she wrote that "it is not that bad" and "I am having a blast." I hate that she went through want she went through, but I am glad to hear that she is back at home safe.

As Bob Woodruff and Jill Carroll remind us, the ethical/moral morass, humanitarian debacle, federal/state/local budget and resource blackhole, and logistical disaster that is Iraq continues. The "Marlboro Man" interview reminds of the consequences to real people of the decisions of those in power who hide their true and ulterior motives.