NYT: Captain’s Journey From Hope to Just Getting Home

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/world/middleeast/19captain.html?hp&ex=1163912400&en=67a1f1d2a105c7f4&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Capt. Stephanie A. Bagley and the military police company she commands arrived in Iraq in December 2005 brimming with optimism about taking on one of the most urgent tasks in Iraq: building a new police force.

Now, as the 21st Military Police Company approaches the end of a deployment marked by small victories and enormous disappointments, Captain Bagley is focused on a more modest goal.

“I just want to get everyone home,” she said. In the past several weeks, Captain Bagley, 30, barred her troops from foot patrols in the most violent neighborhoods and eliminated all nonessential travel. “I’m just not willing to lose another soldier,” she said.

The local police force in her region, as in much of Iraq, remains undertrained, poorly equipped and unable to stand up to the rigors of this conflict. It offers little resistance to the relentless Sunni Arab-led insurgency and has at least partly come under the sway of wily Shiite militias. Casualties are high, morale is low and many police officers do not show up for work.

Captain Bagley, a West Point graduate and the daughter and granddaughter of military policemen, said she has come to realize just how little she and her unit knew when they arrived, and just how much was stacked against their success. The company’s challenges crystallized in a moment late last month during a routine assignment.

[Ilsa]

1. Thanks for posting. My husband was telling me about this article

early this morning, and I came here to see what DUers were saying about it. I am reminded of what an American General said: the problem in Iraq is that we want this more than they do. And Bagley, bless her, realizes the real job is to keep her soldiers safe until we can get them the hell out of there.