Good Morning, Baghdad A peacetime report from a combat zone that is not Vietnam
SHERWOOD, CARLTON
Good Morning, Baghdad where tensions between the U.S. military and the Coalition Provisional Authority mirror those between the Pentagon and the State Department. BY CARLTON SHERWOOD FTER A...
...military officials in Iraq, who tend to judge most things in numbers, have a simple answer for why such "success stories" aren't being covered by the media...
...Our military was not happy...
...Maybe al-Jazeera...
...EVERTHELESS, the Coalition has made remarkable progress on nearly every front...
...Their job, as they see it, is to keep score, to count the casualties, little else...
...Had I spent 18 hours in the air just to park in an air-conditioned palace trying to decipher diplomatic blather and military acronyms...
...And, just as clearly, our intelligence failed to accurately measure the top to bottom state of decay, the utter shambles Iraq had become...
...Yeah," he said, "a combat zone...
...The tensions between the military and CPA in Iraq closely mirrors that of the State Department and Pentagon in Washington...
...acted as his ally...
...It's going to take a while," said a CPA briefer...
...I was part of a 15-member fact-finding group given full access to U.S...
...Made me sick to watch," a grizzled Army First-Sergeant from Chicago complained...
...I vividly remember the sense of betrayal I felt in 1968 when, within days of soundly defeating the Vietnamese Communists, the architect of the war, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, resigned and President Johnson announced he would not run for re-election...
...Saddam never put a dime into the needs of his people...
...As one of the former generals in our delegation remarked out of earshot of our CPA hosts: "Give me one day, a little of Baghdad's electricity, and the CPA won't be able to shut those bastards up...
...But none of those in custody for months, people who designed and carried out most of Saddam's genocidal orders, has given us a shred of intelligence...
...Alas, we learned that our CPA banned them from government offices and news conferences only for a month...
...I'm a former newspaper and TV network investigative reporter, also a Vietnam veteran, a grunt Marine on 18 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2003 GOOD MORNING, BAGHDAD the DMZ in 1968, when U.S...
...Carlton Sherwood, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter, is executive vice-president of the WVC3-Group, headquartered in Reston, Virginia...
...He's on the winning side...
...Even harsh language wasn't allowed...
...Iraq is not Vietnam...
...Interim governing bodies have been created with great care taken to see that all religious and cultural factions are represented— Shi'ites, Sunnis, Kurds, Turkomen and Assyrians...
...The 101st has underwritten everything from schools and playgrounds and hospitals, to road and bridge repairs, to reopening the first hotel in the region...
...running Iraq again...
...In one Army division command center, there was a very tall Brit Hume up on the "big board" usually reserved for maps...
...They want us to stay until they themselves can make sure nothing like him happens again...
...While Baghdad was still in the dark with no phone service, Mosul and the surrounding area were lighted and connected...
...True, many were wrecks, even some beat-up VWs Saddam bought en masse, distinguishable by the bright This is a combat zone...
...According to Baghdad CPA and military officials, that could turn out to be a very long time, two to five years...
...A slap on the wrist...
...fiddled while Saddam slaughtered...
...Petraeus was also among the first to set up interim government counsels that included representation from the religious and ethnic factions in the area...
...For an impoverished population, the Iraqis seem sufficiently well-heeled to have millions of TVs and the power to light them up...
...Now, the military believed these men had become "guns-forhire," paid guerrilla fighters, who, for $50 or $100, would be more than willing to ambush American troops...
...These tips have saved countless American lives...
...probably get a job with the U.N...
...This General's attitude, while an inspiration to his men and fellow officers, doesn't sit well with the On assignment in 115 degrees...
...The terrorists in the Middle East know what our enemies in Vietnam discovered in 1968: they have no greater allies than U.S...
...It's a short drive from the CPA palace through a maze of concrete barriers to the First Armored Division headquarters, located in another ostentatious Saddam palace, this one partially destroyed by a couple pin-point bombing raids...
...Everything was jerry rigged, a North Korean generator, wired to an old Soviet pump, hooked to a Bulgarian fitting...
...Hospitals are operational again and medical services are available to virtually all Iraqis, even in CARLTON SHERWOOD outlying regions that have never seen a doctor...
...DEMPSEY'S headquarters we also learned that two of the Arab world's leading TV news organizations, al-Jazeera and alArabiya, notorious for their antiWestern slant to news coverage, were about to be expelled from Iraq for allegedly encouraging violence against American troops and newly seated Iraqi officials...
...BY CARLTON SHERWOOD FTER A BRAIN-NUMBING RACKET OF A FLIGHT, the Air National Guard C-130 cargo plane suddenly banked one wing almost perpendicular to the ground, plummeting hundreds of feet in seconds...
...Privately, we were told the real reason for the expulsions was that camera crews for 22 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2003 both satellite TV stations were starting to show up at the scenes of terrorists attacks before they occurred...
...He explained that the "face" and tactics of the enemy had changed...
...Now religious fundamentalists, possibly from Syria and elsewhere outside Iraq, along with some Baghdad criminals, were using remote-controlled roadside bombs made from artillery and mortar shells...
...It's a testament to the genius of Iraqi engineers that they keep any of these systems running at all...
...All the occupying military forces in Iraq are subordinate to CPA head Paul Bremer and his army of suits and ties...
...The For an impoverished population, the Iraqis seem sufficiently well-heeled to have millions of TVs and t e power to 1 them up...
...Reality returns...
...Before going into hiding, Saddam had ordered his jails opened, releasing some 40,000 prisoners, among them some of Iraq's worst criminals, murderers and rapists...
...Most of the group were so-called "TV Generals," or people you might see on the PBS NewsHour or Nightline—political appointees or policy advisers to previous White Houses...
...While there was "evidence of the existence of WMDs" in secret laboratories and elsewhere around Iraq, our briefers said sheepishly: "No smoking gun yet...
...I wondered, where had they got their news...
...at worst, they believe the U.N...
...If this was a city caught in the clutches of war, terror and chaos, there were no outward signs...
...civilian and military leaders on the ground...
...Over 30,000 Iraqi police and security officers have been trained, equipped and put on the street, easily identified by their new blue uniforms...
...Where State Department-trained CPA officials are circumspect, hesitant and devoted to the process, the military leaders we met were direct, action-oriented and made no bones about getting results, no matter what it takes...
...When I returned from Vietnam following the 1968 Tet offensive, still recovering from wounds, I knew we had just won the most important, decisive battle of that war, decimating the North Vietnamese Army and wiping out the South's Viet Cong...
...This is a combat zone...
...This filled some of the gap in human intelligence resulting from the refusal of captured Saddam loyalists to talk...
...His "Screaming Eagles" were the soldiers who surrounded and killed the Hussein brothers, Uday and Qusay, in late July...
...Clearly, Saddam Hussein snookered nearly everyone with the threat that he had .weapons of mass destruction and was more than willing to use them...
...To the military, the CPA has come to stand for "Can't Provide Anything...
...A line of port-a-potties stood under the three 25-foot-tall granite heads of a jowly, helmeted Saddam...
...This is not ancient Rome...
...Off in the distance, a column of thick black smoke rose a couple hundred feet in the still air...
...The conveniences we are accustomed to, said the briefers, basics such as phone service, cable, mail, roads, bridges, and water systems, had not existed in Saddam's Iraq...
...The University of Maryland's Program on International Policy determined that "the more closely you followed Fox, the more misconceptions you had...
...In June and July, Saddam loyalists and former members of the Republican Guard—Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's so-called "dead-en de rs"—ambushed mechanized columns with grenade launchers and rifles...
...NOVEMBER 2003 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 21 GOOD MORNING, BAGHDAD culture clash was apparent, though both sides made every effort to veil it...
...CARLTON S WOOD CPA in Baghdad...
...Within minutes, the back ramp of the cavernous fuselage opened into the early morning heat and a sign could be made out: "Welcome to Baghdad International Airport...
...In Iraq as in Vietnam, presidential politics is driving the news...
...General Martin Dempsey, who commands the First Armored Division's 35,000 troops in and around Baghdad, made clear his primary concern was for the lives of the men and women in his care...
...At the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) headquarters in Saddam's main Baghdad palace, the one with the gold plated bathroom fixtures, we were met by the CPA's number two, Ambassador Pat Kennedy, a bookish man, and his aides, the only people wearing suits...
...The suspicion was they were paying the terrorists for the advance notice—in effect, paying for the attacks...
...Bill Cowan, a Fox News military analyst and the only other former Marine on the trip...
...Likewise, the streets were jammed with people, cars, buses and trucks...
...What had I missed...
...Later we learned it was U.N...
...I was stunned by "news reports" that claimed just the opposite...
...Sure smells and feels like Vietnam to me," I said to retired Col...
...Unfortunately for America, many of the same forces that made the media spread disinformation about Vietnam now haunt Iraq...
...They ushered us into six, maybe seven hours of non-stop, detailed briefings on everything from the terrorists' new weapon of 20 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2003 choice, homemade road-side bombs, to the Baghdad sewer, water, and electric systems, oil production, banking and currency, religious factions, media and communications, agriculture, education, mass grave sites of genocide victims, crime, law, human rights, military operations, troop morale, police, security forces and creating provisional and constitutional governments...
...Now, we were told, many of those services and systems were "at or above pre-war levels...
...The TV wars too give a sense of deja vu...
...NFORTUNATELY, many of Saddam's cabinet members were not apprehended, but surrendered following days, sometimes weeks, of negotiations...
...There's nothing sexy about rebuilding bridges, restoring schools or reopening businesses...
...But in the end, many of the same political issues that turned victory into shameful defeat nearly four decades ago are still present in Iraq and Washington today...
...Perhaps, as the argument goes in Baghdad, Saddam himself was duped by subordinates...
...Today, there only about 50, nearly all here in Baghdad...
...orange paint inexplicably slathered on the rear and front bumpers...
...But there were new BMWs and Mercedes sedans ripping up and down the boulevards as well...
...Petraeus's headquarters are located in yet another Saddam palace, this one in Mosul, Iraq's second largest city...
...killed in action topped 300 a week and wounded were in the thousands, myself among them...
...In many cases, the military's decisions are reversed by career State Department wonks who rarely leave their air-conditioned offices in Baghdad...
...After fighting the war, the 101st was assigned to this hard-scrabble region on the borders of Syria and Turkey...
...At the same time the enemy tactics changed, however, individuals and citizens' groups began tipping off the Army about pending attacks and directing them to the would-be gunmen's hideouts...
...The distance between the civilian and military command posts maybe small but in terms of style and'sub stance, the two are worlds apart...
...Nobody seems to like Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, or Wolf Blitzer...
...soldiers and, as a result, cause the American public to question what PHOTOS: WILLIAM V. COWANit is prepared to pay for a war it has already won...
...The Iraqis have problems understanding, a constitution, equal justice, first amendment, human rights, laws and courts...
...Did morphine play tricks with my head...
...At Baghdad Airport, I couldn't avoid a sense of déjà vu...
...politicians with presidential aspirations and their willing dupes in the press...
...The maneuver was designed to dodge surface to air missiles...
...Money is ammunition" he says, "and the surest way I know to make lasting friends, to earn trust and create peace is by providing meaningful jobs, putting people back to work so they can feed their fanilies...
...Everyone, even "the most trusted man in America," Walter Cronkite, said we had lost the war...
...Without instructions or approvals from the CPA headquarters, Petraeus claims, he tapped part of the more than $3 billion of Saddam's stashes found scattered around Iraq to revive the local economy...
...In some cases, Saddam's henchmen demanded no handcuffs and at least one insisted on being addressed as "Your Excellency...
...However, later that morning, when I sought the Palace men's room, I found that the marble inlaid, gold-plated fixtures were inoperable...
...Political cowardice at home repaid courage and self-sacrifice on the battlefield...
...We had to start with nothing...
...On this day, mercifully, there were no missiles...
...The acrid mix of diesel fuel, Avgas and wood smoke from nearby houses hung in the stifling 115 degree air, then blended together in the helicopter prop wash to create a grimy witches-brew...
...In fact we had won those battles...
...Coalition forces had been counting on Saddam's former regime loyalists to spill the beans on Iraq's weapons programs, perhaps even lead them to some of the caches...
...RILE AT GEN...
...We should have learned from Vietnam to be wary of politicians who, 'after sending young Americans in harm's way, question the right or wrong of their being there...
...They set conditions, like asylum for their families and, of course, their own care and treatment...
...Petraeus says that, on his own, he traveled to Turkey and Syria to trade Iraqi oil for surplus electricity...
...headquarters—another suicide car bombing attempt, this one thwarted by a newly trained Iraqi policeman who died for his efforts...
...This time, with a Republican in the White House, the media are even more willing to ignore victories in Iraq...
...The Coalition is "standing up" the new Iraqi economy, establishing an oil trust fund, promoting commerce and business opportunities and, since an estimated 30 percent of all Iraqi currency is counterfeit, printing new money that will have legitimacy in and out of Iraq...
...As we flew over Baghdad, as far as the horizon were TV satellite dishes...
...They hold out long enough...
...Brig...
...During the war there were 450 reporters and news technicians embedded in our units scattered across Iraq," one Army briefer explained...
...These scum-bags aren't going to talk, why should they...
...Just about everyone I talked with in Iraq was adamant that the U.N...
...There was nothing to build on...
...AS S FOR AMERICAN TV, everywhere I traveled in Iraq, in military division command centers, mess halls, CPA offices, ny place cable TV is available, Fox ews or ESPN Sports were tuned in...
...More than 1,000 schools have been refurbished and classes resumed, textbooks cleansed of Ba'athist propaganda...
...Unspoken inside the room—so as not to offend the sensitivities of State Department diplomats present—was the obvious question: Why haven't we used tried and true methods to extract the information needed from these people, many ofwhom qualify as war criminals...
...Weapons of Mass Destruction are another matter...
...If there is an arch-type for a modern general in this era of nation-building, it is Army Major General David Petraeus, commander of the vaunted 101st Airborne in the far northern reaches of Iraq...
...CPA and military officials alike worry that, sooner or later, there will be an incident—coordinated car bombings or ambushes—that will kill dozens, perhaps hundreds of U.S...
...NOVEMBER 2003 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 23...
Vol. 36 • November 2003 • No. 6
