News roundup: 

*Bill Ardolino of The Long War Journal takes his readers along on a night patrol with U.S. soldiers and members of a Baghdad neighborhood watch called Sons of Iraq:

Co-founded seven months ago by local leaders and members of the 82nd Airborne, the Al Sadria branch of the neighborhood watch is composed of about 250 members who are paid by and coordinate with American units. The branch is responsible for a series of predominantly Shia neighborhoods in central Baghdad that include part of the Shorja Market. Though leader Faris Abdul-Hassan refers to his group as “the first Shia Awakening” against criminals and terrorists, he refuses to hire anyone with sectarian allegiances.

“We want to put mental health professionals with our small-unit leaders,” Navy Surgeon General Vice Adm. Adam Robinson said. “We think if we can train them there. Tere’s a real synergy that can come. We can be there to help with treatment, training and surveillance.”

I stopped for a while and I saw many Iraqi Army cars riddled with bullets. I saw troops deployed everywhere I looked: on the roof of every high building, every road intersection, occupying government offices that before were occupied by political factions.

I was shocked when I saw traces of the fight, which was clear on the buildings close to the main streets.

As an Iraqi from the south who knows exactly what was going on, with the militias controlling everything in particular cities or ports, I did not expect that the Iraqi forces – which are majority Shia - would be able to confront the militia influence.

There was a new feeling. I had never seen before the Iraq Army, without hesitation, accusing the Mahdi Army of being involved in all the disorder there.

One of the soldiers told me: “The Mahdi Army are a group of criminals, they will destroy everything if we don’t stop them.”

In the past, I have never seen soldiers dare to say anything about them. I felt the reign of fear is broken, and that is it. Exactly the same feeling as when the Baathist regime fell.

*Military.com recently posted an article taking a look at the rise in per capita income within military communities:

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could be behind the jumps in income, according to experts. Combat pay and re-enlistment bonuses for professional soldiers, combined with the activation of National Guard and Reserve units, put more money in the bank accounts of personnel shipping out of Fort Bragg, said David G. Lenze of the U.S. Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis, which issued the income data.

When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, among the seven-hundred-odd journalists who embedded with combat units were few who were familiar with the military in any intimate way. To many critics, especially those with military experience, this revealed itself in the press’s coverage of the war, which they felt often missed the mark when it came to explaining the hows and the whys of the fight, as well as the mundane realities of military life and culture.

...from that first impact, among many on the roof, the mood was scarcely one of cool detachment, or at least not as cautioned as it might have been by the longer-term implications of what we were seeing. Part of it, no doubt, was the air show — the sheer, astonishing, overwhelming demonstration of power, more like an act of God than man, unleashing in those watching from the roof something approaching awe.

• 28% of the public is aware that nearly 4,000 troops have been killed in Iraq over the past five years.
• Nearly 50% think the number of U.S. deaths is 3,000 or fewer.
• 23% of the public think the number of U.S. deaths is higher than 4,000.
• In earlier surveys nearly half of the respondents recalled the correct number of deaths.
• In 2007 the median of Iraq-associated news stories was 15% of all news stories.
• During the last week in January, 36% of those surveyed said they were most closely following campaign news; 14% the stock market; 12% the death of Heath Ledger; and 6% the war in Iraq.
• And, as the Associated Press quotes the survey director: "All education levels in the recent survey were similarly uninformed."

The four-day event will bring together veterans from across the country to testify about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan - and present video and photographic evidence. In addition, there will be panels of scholars, veterans, journalists, and other specialists to give context to the testimony. These panels will cover everything from the history of the GI resistance movement to the fight for veterans' health benefits and support.

The veterans are not against the military and seek not to indict it – instead they seek to shine a light on the bigger picture: that the Abu Ghraib prison regime and the Haditha massacre of innocent Iraqis are not isolated incidents perpetrated by “bad seeds” as the military suggests, but evidence of an endemic problem. They will say they were tasked to do terrible things and point the finger up the chain of command, which ignores, diminishes or covers up routine abuse and atrocities.

Other veterans, and vet bloggers, aren't thrilled with this event. A group called "Stop the Slander," described as a "coalition of concerned veterans, family members, and friends," has even published a guide for reporter's covering IVAW.  The guide warns journalists that claims made by IVAW may be untrue.  The guide even provides an acronym to follow of questions to ask:

D: Date(s) – When did the incident occur?
U: Unit(s) – What military units were involved?
P: Personnel – What are the names of the participants and witnesses?
E: Event(s) – What exactly happened exactly where?
S: Signature(s) – Was this reported at the time or later and were reports, affidavits or depositions signed, or will they now be signed?

Veterans For Freedom blogger, Mark Seavey, took his own critical look at the IVAW's preparations for the Winter Soldier event, but in the end wrote that both sides of the debate should be heard -- without unnecessary contest or debate:

I think it speaks well of IVAW that they expect all testimony to be true and verifiable.  And there will plenty of eyes there to ensure that.  Hopefully we can all say our piece, discuss our views and then go home with no violence on anyone’s part.

 

The term "Winter Soldier" is derived from Thomas Paine's passage intended to motivate George Washington's troops suffering at Valley Forge:

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

On Wednesday the New York Times began a new blog written by correspondents in the paper's Baghdad bureau. The blog is billed as a chance for readers to discover stories from Iraq that lay beyond the spatial and stylistic constraints of traditional newspaper stories. Thursday's post offered up a great look at a story that's become vastly underreported as the war continues: the American soldier. Politics, sectarian strife, diplomacy, and infrastructure concerns have all but superseded any meaningful embedded coverage, in the mainstream media at least.

Enter Thursday's post: a look at how a unit of Army soldiers spend their nighttime moments when the work day is through. This passage is very telling, and right on. Nighttime, in those last minutes before a soldier falls asleep, is virtually the only moment he or she has alone:

For these soldiers, the day is spent as one — one platoon, one mission, a single role for each soldier with a collective goal to make the operation work.

I have found that something unique happens when you are with soldiers at night.

Then, when the job is done and there is no more light to work by, they can finally rest. While some choose to sleep, some play video games, some eat and some simply think. The only time they can disband from one another is at night. When the closest thing to quiet and privacy comes, they take it.

For a wonderful series of accompanying photographs click here.

The fifth anniversary of the start of our war in Iraq is a little more than a month away. There will be retrospectives looking back to those early days of shock and awe, in addition to news analysis and the nation's self-reflection. Even a month out from the anniversary, conversations about the upcoming day seem to revolve around the same theme: "can you believe it's already been five years?"  It is a sobering thought.  And even if you believe in the war, or are staunchly at odds with its premise, five years is a unit of time to view not so much in length, but in the various phases that occurred.

The summer of 2003, as I saw it, was a honeymoon period. The optimism for Iraq's future still ran high (at least in some circles), and at the same time I could see questionable expressions on the faces of Iraq's citizens as we patrolled past them. No one knew how it would all play out. Personally the fragile tensions that held together a shaky peace ended on November 12, when a suicide bomber destroyed the building in An Nasiriyah that at one time was my platoon's headquarters.

Homecoming was also different. There were no VA scandals, or talk of PTSD, or advocacy groups comprised of Iraq veterans. We simply came home and quickly immersed ourselves back into civilian life. To watch how that has changed is to examine the evolution of the war in Iraq and on the home front. To ask a veteran about his or her experiences in Iraq yields not an overall glimpse into the war, but an occasion to see just one phase of it. This is what needs to be remembered as the anniversary coverage begins. I remember seeing soldiers entering Iraq July 2003 and feeling bad for them. They'd missed the defining war of our generation. They would spend a few months in post-invasion mopping up, and go home on the tail end of the operation. Of course, the irony in this cannot be overstated.

We have enough perspective over five years to eschew generic "looks back" for a more nuanced analysis of how our country has fared over this time. It must be broken into phases: the invasion, the time surrounding 2004's battle for Fallujah, the grinding years of 2005 and 2006, the Abu Ghraib and Haditha investigations, and the controversial surge plan that's brought us to this point. At home the fascination with the invasion's pyrotechnics has given way to simply reading of the daily casualty figures ticking away over the news wires. There's also the trends in media coverage to consider, the heightened focus of home front veterans issues, and how artistic mediums have sought to portray the war and inform us.

Looking back on the fifth anniversary means not so much seeing what happened, but understanding how we got to where we are today, and how driven we are to look at Iraq not simply as a war, but as a series of distinct eras.

“They may be out there, but there’s not many of them out there. Okay? … If you know where there's a veteran sleeping under a bridge, you call me immediately, and we will make sure that man does not do it.”

DAVID LETTERMAN: Tell me a little bit about your feud with Bill O'Reilly. Now there's a tough guy. He's been on the show a couple of times. And he's a tough guy. What's going on there? What's at the core of the feud?

JOHN EDWARDS: Well, the core of the feud is I've been talking about homeless veterans and the fact that we have a couple hundred thousand homeless veterans who have no place to sleep at night. They're either in shelters...

LETTERMAN: It's embarrassing, isn't it?

EDWARDS: It's incredibly embarrassing for America. Huge moral issue facing the country. And he kind of went on his show and said that I was exaggerating, making it up. And I think he got a lot of correspondence, a lot of homeless veterans have been calling in.

LETTERMAN: Well, you know what I've noticed about Bill O'Reilly — and he's a marvelous communicator. But he's not — he doesn't really care much about telling the truth.

As Laura Ingraham might say, tedious. Edwards and Letterman could not care less about the truth unless it fits into their far-left vision of the world. Using homeless veterans to make a dishonest political point is wrong. That's one of the reasons Edwards is going nowhere in his campaign. The man simply cannot be trusted.

Recently the Associated Press reported on an interesting program giving wounded Marines and Navy Corpsmen job placement in the film industry.  Working with the Wounded Marine Careers Foundationgives these vets hands on training in the various aspects of filmmaking--even the camera equipment can be modified to suite any injuries the vets may have.  As the center's co-founder Kev Lombard tells the AP, the idea for the program came out of his own project:

Lombard came up with the idea for the foundation's Wounded Marine Training Center for Careers in Media program after being asked by a friend in the military nearly two years ago to document the stories of wounded veterans at military hospitals.

"It wasn't our story to tell. It was theirs," he said. "So I said how about we teach them to tell their own story."

Throughout the story we follow one young wounded Marine who's filming a mock scene of helmets atop inverted rifles set as battlefield memorials to those killed.  If movies about Iraq will continue to be made in the future, his lens offers an idea of just how valuable these aspiring filmmakers may be:

Frey focuses on the helmets, which sit near a box of blank ammunition. For a moment he considers taking pictures. But then he decides against it, saying later that the scene didn't look real.

On Monday we took a look at the fallout over a New York Times article looking at recent war veterans who have committed murder. Some critics said this article perpetuated the myth of "wacko" veterans returning from war. Additionally, a lack of comparison to murder rates among the civilian population was said to unfairly highlight the 121 veterans mentioned in the article. At the time of my last post most of the criticism seemed to be stemming from the online community.  By today, however, we've seen this wave of thought reach the mainstream press. 

In yesterday's New York Times the op-ed page printed letters from readers reacting to the story. Some excerpts:

CON:

Your article about veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars who have committed or been charged with murder perpetuates the myth about crazed war veterans.  You note that in researching “homicides involving all active-duty military personnel and new veterans for the six years” after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, there have been 349 cases.  There are more than 1.4 million Americans on active duty. Philadelphia, a city with a similar population, alone had 392 murders in 2007.  As a veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan, I find articles like yours do a disservice to America’s combat veterans by shaping a public perception that they are damaged people, prone to violence.

PRO:

It was simply not manly to seek psychiatric help during and after Vietnam. In my own case, I suffered for some 40 years. After all the nightmares, sleepwalking, waking myself up with my own screams and causing my near relatives anxiety and fear, a police officer introduced me to a talk group of Vietnam veterans at the local V.A. hospital...You are never the same when you return from combat. The American people must therefore be absolutely sure of the engaged war because of the terrible things war does to the psyches of those soldiers. It may be worth it, but only if the objectives of the war are worth it...Deep down, those images and sounds never go away. I am happy that today the military has recognized the humanity and manhood of those who seek help.

A five-month saga pitting the right-wing blogosphere against The New Republic ended yesterday when, in a nearly 7,000-word article, editor Franklin Foer said he could no longer stand by narratives his magazine had published written by a soldier serving in Iraq. The soldier, Scott Thomas Beauchamp, wrote what many had considered questionable pieces for the magazine regarding the behavior of his comrades during their Iraq tour. In one controversial entry, Beauchamp describes an exchange between troops as they notice a disfigured woman in the chow hall:

Man, I can't eat like this," he said.
"Like what?" I said. "Chow hall food getting to you?"
"No--with that f*cking freak behind us!" he exclaimed, loud enough for not only her to hear us, but everyone at the surrounding tables. I looked over at the woman, and she was intently staring into each forkful of food before it entered her half-melted mouth.
"Are you kidding? I think she's *** hot!" I blurted out.
"What?" said my friend, half-smiling.
"Yeah man," I continued. "I love chicks that have been intimate--with IEDs. It really turns me on--melted skin, missing limbs, plastic noses ... ."

Soon after "Shock Troops," the piece that contained this anecdote, was published in July, conservatives questioned the accuracy of the reporting--and lambasted The New Republic for the unsubstantiated "anti-war" message of its stories. Foer quotes Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol as saying:

But what is revealing about this mistake is that the editors must have wanted to suspend their disbelief in tales of gross misconduct by American troops. How else could they have published such a farrago of dubious tales? Having turned against a war that some of them supported, the left is now turning against the troops they claim still to support."

While criticism for The New Republic has continued over the past five months, almost equally vehement is criticism of Foer's recent article.  Bob Bateman of Media Matters highlights his belief Foer waited too long into his lengthy article to actually give his position on Beauchamp.

An occasional series highlighting some of the most thoughtful and informative combat reporting throughout America's history at war.

Today's Best in War Reporting comes from the legendary combat correspondent Ernie Pyle at the Italian front in WWII.  With a simplicity of words and observations, Pyle manages to knock you over as he writes of the moments surrounding a young company commander's death.  In his words you can almost hear his own exhaustion as he holds back tears.  It begins:

AT THE FRONT LINES IN ITALY, January 10, 1944 - In this war I have known a lot of officers who were loved and respected by the soldiers under them. But never have I crossed the trail of any man as beloved as Capt. Henry T. Waskow of Belton, Texas...I was at the foot of the mule trail the night they brought Capt. Waskow's body down. The moon was nearly full at the time, and you could see far up the trail, and even part way across the valley below. Soldiers made shadows in the moonlight as they walked. Dead men had been coming down the mountain all evening, lashed onto the backs of mules. They came lying belly-down across the wooden pack-saddles, their heads hanging down on the left side of the mule, their stiffened legs sticking out awkwardly from the other side, bobbing up and down as the mule walked.

The narrative continues as Pyle evokes an almost bizarre scene as Capt. Waskow's body is removed from the mule and placed with the other bodies of U.S. soldiers.  The empathy with which Pyle treats this moment is a grim foreshadowing of his own future in the war.  Like Capt. Waskow, Pyle was loved universally by the troops; and like Capt. Waskow, Pyle would not make it home from the war alive.  He was killed the following April by sniper fire on one of the Japanese islands. 

As Capt. Waskow's men begin to pay their last respects, Pyle manages to convey how even their short remarks are far more emotional than they might seem on the surface.

One soldier came and looked down, and he said out loud, "God damn it." That's all he said, and then he walked away. Another one came. He said, "God damn it to hell anyway." He looked down for a few last moments, and then he turned and left.

Another man came; I think he was an officer. It was hard to tell officers from men in the half light, for all were bearded and grimy dirty. The man looked down into the dead captain's face, and then he spoke directly to him, as though he were alive. He said: "I'm sorry, old man."

Then a soldier came and stood beside the officer, and bent over, and he too spoke to his dead captain, not in a whisper but awfully tenderly, and he said:

"I sure am sorry, sir."

But, of course, the soldiers (and Pyle) must get ready to continue fighting the next day.

After that the rest of us went back into the cowshed, leaving the five dead men lying in a line, end to end, in the shadow of the low stone wall. We lay down on the straw in the cowshed, and pretty soon we were all asleep.

Witnessing the moments he described Pyle showed that at a moment when his own emotions may have dominated his thoughts, his ability to step back, observe, and convey never left his writing.

Though we talk a lot about the term "PTSD," rarely is it personified in the way it is in this incredible series of audio slide shows in the Los Angeles Times focusing on Marine James Blaker Miller.  Miller's face became an iconic image of the Iraq war when he was photographed during the battle of Fallujah, a cigarette dangling from his mouth.  Since then, he's struggled deeply with what he experienced during that time, contemplating suicide and going through a divorce.

In a highly personal and moving article the photographer, Luis Sinco, recently wrote of his own efforts to help Miller.  I urge you to take the time to watch the slide shows and read Sinco's words.

"The American war on Saddam Hussein exploded tonight in a ferocious display of precision bombing and cruise missile strikes that blasted the heart of the Iraqi ruler's power with a spectacular opening bulls-eye on his most forbidding palace and continued with at least 100 more devastating volleys in the first two hours."