Courage plentiful in Iraq

North County Times (North San Diego and Southwest Riverside County)
Tuesday, July 12, 2005

By Howard Kaloogian

BAGHDAD, Iraq —- Courage. You know it when you see it.

“Speaking truth to power” is thought of as courageous. Lt. General Abdul
Qader Jassim told Saddam Hussein that the Iraqi army could not withstand
the coalition forces arrayed against it in the mid ’90s. Then he spent
the next 7 years, 4 months and 10 days in an Iraqi prison until being
liberated by American troops in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Today he is the head of the Iraqi army. We met him in Baghdad. He talked
to us through an interpreter whose hands appeared scared from chemical
torture.

He described life in Iraq under Saddam as peaceful if you were part of
the regime. Otherwise it held no hope and no future for the average Iraqi.

He described how Saddam trained terrorists and sent them into Lebanon
and Israel and elsewhere; some are now returning to Iraq. He also
believed there were 4,000 terrorists in Iraq before the coalition invasion.

We would ask about “the insurgents” and he would correct us: We were
asking about terrorists who kill and maim Iraqi citizens. Terrorists
want to make people believe they will never be safe.

Jassim is building an army to defeat them and protect his country. In
terms of raw numbers, there are now more Iraqi security forces in the
country than coalition troops.

Col. Ben Hodges, director of Joint Operations, described his plan to
train that Iraqi army and rotate it into the responsibilities currently
held by the coalition forces. We met in Camp Victory on the grounds of
Saddam’s Water Palace.

So far, he has closed 18 coalition bases throughout Iraq, giving
security responsibility for those territories fully to the Iraqi army.
There are 91 bases yet to go.

Benchmarks along the way toward complete Iraqi control include the
referendum on the constitution this October followed by the December
election of its representatives. But the terrorists learned from the
January election that those events would push them away from power.

Everyone is bracing for more terrorist activity, more disruption of
daily life and more indiscriminate death. Who is the enemy? Both men
agreed, its Al Qaeda in Iraq. The same enemy that exploded bombs in the
London transportation system; the same enemy that attacked America on 9/11.

Securing the borders so that terrorists don’t continue to return to
their training ground is another benchmark of Iraqi sovereignty.
Smugglers on those borders have been moving goods and people for
thousands of years. To end it now the Directorate of Border Enforcement
is staffing forts to keep the uninvited out.

Col. Hodges has trouble understanding anyone who claims to support the
troops but not the war; he does not believe that possible. The negative
characterization from some in America that this process of transfer
isn’t happening fast enough, or not at all, that it’s a “quagmire”
doesn’t seem to impact the Army, but he believes it does give support
and hope to the enemy.

What will it take to overcome all these challenges? Courage. The Iraqi
and Coalition forces have it in abundance. Tomorrow we will test our
courage as we go out on patrol.

—- Former Assemblyman Howard Kaloogian lives in San Marcos. He is
visiting Iraq with a group of radio talk show hosts.