Lil Sister Don't You Lie To Me...
the percentage of the public who think the war is going badly has risen to 42 percent, from 13 percent in May.
Today, eight American soldiers were hurt in hit-and-run attacks, and an enraged crowd of Iraqis stomped a burned Humvee.
"The soldiers were supposed to be welcomed by waving crowds. Where did those people go?"
Frustrations became so bad recently at Fort Stewart, Ga., that a colonel, meeting with 800 seething spouses, most of them wives, had to be escorted from the session.
nytimes.com
Anger Rises for Families of Troops in Iraq
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
FORT HOOD, Tex., July 3 — Luisa Leija was in bed the other morning, she recalled, when her 9-year-old daughter bounded in the room, saying, "Mommy, mommy, there's a man in uniform at the door."
Ms. Leija, the wife of a young artillery captain in Iraq, threw on a robe and took a deep breath. She dashed to the door, thinking: "This is not happening to me. This can't be happening to me."
A soldier in full camouflage was on the doorstep. It was a neighbor locked out of his house.
Ms. Leija is still upset. The panic has passed, but not the weariness. Or the anger. Anger that her husband, Capt. Frank Leija, has not come home yet, even though President Bush declared two months ago that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended." Anger that the end of that stage has not meant the beginning of peace, that the Army has assigned new duties for her husband and his men that have nothing to do with toppling Saddam Hussein.
And anger that the talk in Washington is not of taking troops out of Iraq, but of sending more in.
"I want my husband home," Ms. Leija, a mother of three children, said. "I am so on edge. When they first left, I thought yeah, this will be bad, but war is what they trained for. But they are not fighting a war. They are not doing what they trained for. They have become police in a place they're not welcome."
Military families, so often the ones to put a cheery face on war, are growing vocal. Since major combat for the 150,000 troops in Iraq was declared over on May 1, more than 60 Americans, including 25 killed in hostile encounters, have died in Iraq, about half the number of deaths in the two months of the initial campaign.
Frustrations became so bad recently at Fort Stewart, Ga., that a colonel, meeting with 800 seething spouses, most of them wives, had to be escorted from the session.
"They were crying, cussing, yelling and screaming for their men to come back," said Lucia Braxton, director of community services at Fort Stewart.
The signs of discomfort seem to be growing beyond the military bases. According to a Gallup poll published on Tuesday, the percentage of the public who think the war is going badly has risen to 42 percent, from 13 percent in May. Likewise, the number of respondents who think the war is going well has dropped, from 86 percent in May to 70 percent a month ago to 56 percent.
The latest poll was based on telephone interviews with 1,003 adults. It has a sampling error of three percentage points.
News this week has not helped. Today, eight American soldiers were hurt in hit-and-run attacks, and an enraged crowd of Iraqis stomped a burned Humvee.
"The soldiers were supposed to be welcomed by waving crowds. Where did those people go?" said Kim Franklin, whose husband is part of an artillery unit, 3-16 Bravo, also known as the Bulldogs, commanded by Ms. Leija's husband.
In the postwar and pre-peace phase, it is not Green Berets or top-gun fighter pilots who are being killed. The casualties have been mostly low-ranking ground troops who are performing mundane activities like buying a video, going out on patrol or guarding a trash pit.
Those are the types of missions that the Bulldogs are on. With major battles over and little use for field cannon that can shoot 15 miles, the unit has been running checkpoints and searching houses north of Baghdad, rarely firing a shell.
The Bulldogs took up their assignment in April along with 20,000 other soldiers from Fort Hood. Yellow ribbons now droop from the trees where they used to meet at dawn and stretch before exercises. The grass is long and dead. The blacktop that once echoed with roll call and the stomp of a thousand combat boots is hot, quiet and empty.
Army bases can be drab places in the best of times. Fort Hood right now is downright depressing. Even on the Fourth of July.
"I tried every trick in the book to get out of this," said Maj. William Geiger, the commander of the rear detachment for the artillery soldiers who has remained here.
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