Dahr Jamail: Low Morale Has U.S. Troops in Iraq Pretending to Patrol

[marmar]

from IPS News Service:


Low Morale Has U.S. Troops in Iraq Pretending to Patrol

By Dahr Jamail, IPS News. Posted October 26, 2007.


Morale among US soldiers in the country is so poor, many are simply parking their Humvees and pretending to be on patrol, called "search and avoid" missions.


New York -- Iraq war veterans now stationed at a base here in upstate New York say that morale among US soldiers in the country is so poor, many are simply parking their Humvees and pretending to be on patrol, a practice dubbed "search and avoid" missions.

Phil Aliff is an active duty soldier with the 10th Mountain Division stationed at Fort Drum. He served nearly one year in Iraq from August 2005 to July 2006, in the areas of Abu Ghraib and Fallujah, both west of Baghdad.

"Morale was incredibly low," said Aliff, adding that he joined the military because he was raised in a poor family by a single mother and had few other prospects. "Most men in my platoon in Iraq were just in from combat tours in Afghanistan."

According to Aliff, their mission was to help the Iraqi army "stand up" in the Abu Ghraib area of western Baghdad, but in fact his platoon was doing all the fighting without support from the Iraqis they were supposedly preparing to take control of the security situation.

"I never heard of an Iraqi unit that was able to operate on their own," said Aliff, who is now a member of the group Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). "The only reason we were replaced by an Iraqi army unit was for publicity."

Aliff said he participated in roughly 300 patrols. "We were hit by so many roadside bombs we became incredibly demoralized, so we decided the only way we wouldn't be blown up was to avoid driving around all the time." .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/66160/

[mwb970]

1. That's exactly what I would do!

I guess I would be a "phony soldier".

[Igel]

3. But he isn't.

I think he's just misleading.

IVAW member, yes, but not just a member: An officer, the secretary.

And while all the information he gives is from 7/06 and before--remember the infamous NIE from 8/06 saying that Anbar was lost, it would only get worse, and there was no out whatsoever?--everything's present tense, giving the impression that it's current facts, not stale facts. Citing the 8/06 NIE as entirely "current information" would be as accurate.

What you're left with is an decent picture of what he saw and how he interpreted it--impressionistically, of course, because we're left to generalize from a couple of individual observations to the entire force in the area.

Now, the WaPo article also included interviews with folk from the Sadriya neighborhood of Baghdad. But after having been fed "historical present tense" verbs, it's hard to take the tense information seriously in those quotes and there's no indication as to when those interviews were given, or even that a microscopic view of one area of the city (showing long-term decline but short-term improvement) is pertinent.

Hence my problem with the article, both its first posting, its fifth posting, and the current posting. You know something was bad, but you don't know how bad, and you have no information from Aliff as to what's happened in the last year ... but you think you do. You know something's better but still bad in Sadriya, but when that was and how things are trending, you don't know--but you know that tired soldiers see no point in what their limited perspective provides. (Then again, I think pretty much everything's pointless in the long term because either an asteroid will hit the earth or the earth will be in the sun's outer layers, so perhaps I have a bit too expansive a view on how to view things.)

[rodeodance]

2. I SENT THE THE WH COMMENT line HERE:

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