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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (12746)	4/6/2004 1:13:41 PM
From: JakeStraw	Respond to of 81568

Tennessee soldiers say there is plenty of good news in Iraq 2004-04-05 The Associated Press KINGSPORT -- Two Kingsport soldiers who recently returned home from Iraq say the media coverage of the war is too narrow, and that there are a lot of good things happening there, too. Lt. Col. Jerry Duncan and Master Sgt. David Douthat, both engineers of the 416th Army Reserve stationed in Atlanta, have spent the last year in Iraq helping establish base camps for the troops and working with the Iraqi people on getting the power and water back systems functioning. The two men said they worked from one end of Iraq to the other and that their group was responsible for about a third of the country, from Ramadi to the Jordan and Syrian border. Duncan and Douthat were stationed in Ramadi in the western province, some 20 miles from Fallujah -- the site of last week's attack and mutilation of four United States defense contractors. ``My first impression was that the Iraqis were different from the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, and the Egyptians,'' said Duncan, who has made seven trips to Iraq. ``I was expecting the Iraqis to be like those folks, who didn't work. But the Iraqis worked very hard and they had a great deal of respect for authority and even for us. ``They're very smart and for the most part they worked as hard as anybody I've ever seen. It didn't matter how hot it got or how dirty it got, they worked very hard.'' Douthat said if machinery wasn't available, the Iraqis would do the job by hand. ``Like mixing concrete, they would pour a whole parking lot and mix it by hand,'' he said. On Wednesday, four U.S. contractors who worked for Blackwater Security Consulting were ambushed and killed in Fallujah, their bodies mutilated, dragged through the streets and hung from a bridge. Duncan said it wouldn't be fair to measure all of Fallujah by that episode. ``For the most part, the Iraqis that we met with and worked with daily, they wanted us to stay and they wanted our help and were glad that we were there. They were glad that Hussein was gone. There's no question about that,'' Duncan said. Douthat said he found the people of Fallujah to be ``the hardest to please.'' ``Some places we would put a little bit of money into a city or an area and everyone was joyous,'' he said. ``In Fallujah, we put money into the city and there would always be someone wanting more. It didn't seem to appease them as well as it did others. ``But there are good people that came out of Fallujah. The whole city is not that bad.'' For Duncan, the turning point in the war came in August when he began seeing a change in the attitude of the Iraqi people. ``We got to a point that we established some sort of ground, some rapport with the Iraqis and had established enough relationships with us, they were willing to work with us,'' Duncan said. ``We met people early on who would come up to us and say, `Thank you for being here and doing this,``` Douthat said. ``One Iraqi said that Saddam had his brother and two children killed because he said the wrong thing in public. We ran into that several times. We met people who had been tortured, had been imprisoned for years just for something they'd said.'' As for the media reports coming out of Iraq about the war, Douthat said the coverage has been focused and narrow. ``The only thing people want to see is explosions and the shootings,'' Douthat said. ``That's all the media is going to show. The biggest things aren't the shootings.'' ``To stand up an entire government, and have done this in less than a year. We've taken that country and stood it up to where they'll have a totally different government altogether.'' Both men commented on some of the positive actions being taken by coalition forces, from the 25 clinics established in the western province, to the creation of an engineering council, to bringing the country's water and power back online, to working to open and reopen numerous schools across the country. ``The time we spent with the 82nd Airborne, over $11 million we took from Saddam we re-appropriated back out into the country to get the water, power and schools going,'' Douthat said. ``You really don't hear that in the media.'' Duncan and Douthat said they see the need for the United States to be in Iraq. ``People in Iraq understand that we are the stability that's holding the country together right now,'' Douthat said. ``If we left it would be utter chaos.'' ``I think the American people need to get it into their minds that we're going to be here for the long run,'' Duncan said. ``We can't pull out and leave these folks. I firmly believe it was justified for us going in. You can never convince me that this man would not or has not tried to kill us already. He was a threat, especially after 9-11. He had the assets; the money and he had the power.'' thedailytimes.com