US soldiers shy from battle in
Iraq By Dahr Jamail
WATERTOWN, 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."
"So we would go find an open field and
park, and call our base every hour to tell them we
were searching for weapons caches in the fields
and doing weapons patrols and everything was going
fine," he said, adding, "All our enlisted people
became very disenchanted with our chain of
command."
Aliff, who suffers from
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), refused to
return to Iraq with his unit, which arrived in
Kirkuk two weeks ago. "They've already lost a guy,
and they are now fostering the sectarian violence
by arming the Sunnis while supporting the Shi'ites
politically ... classic divide and conquer."
Aliff told Inter Press Service (IPS) he is
set to be discharged by the military next month
because they claim his PTSD "is untreatable by
their doctors".
According to the
Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the number of
Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans seeking
treatment for PTSD increased nearly 70% in the 12
months ending on June 30.
The nearly
50,000 VA-documented PTSD cases greatly exceed the
30,000 military personnel that the Pentagon
officially classifies as wounded in both
occupations.
VA records show that mental
health has become the second-largest area of
illness for which veterans of the ongoing
occupations are seeking treatment at VA hospitals
and clinics. The total number of mental health
cases among war veterans increased by 58%; from
63,767 on June 30, 2006, to 100,580 on June 30,
2007, according to the VA.
Other active
duty Iraq veterans tell similar stories of
disobeying orders so as not to be attacked so
frequently.
"We'd go to the end of our
patrol route and set up on top of a bridge and use
it as an over-watch position," Eli Wright, also an
active duty soldier with the 10th Mountain
Division, told IPS. "We would just sit with our
binoculars and observe rather than sweep. We'd
call in radio checks every hour and say we were
doing sweeps."
Wright added, "It was a
common tactic, a lot of people did that. We'd just
hang out, listen to music, smoke cigarettes, and
pretend." The 26-year-old medic complained that
his unit did not have any armored Humvees during
his time in Iraq, where he was stationed in
Ramadi, capital of the volatile al-Anbar province.
"We put sandbags on the floors of our
vehicles, which had canvas doors," said Wright,
who was in Iraq from September 2003 until
September 2004. "By the end of our tour, we were
bolting any metal we could find to our Humvees.
Everyone was doing this, and we didn't get armored
Humvees in country until after we left."
Other veterans, like 25-year-old Nathan
Lewis, who was in Iraq for the invasion of March
2003 until June of that year while serving in the
214th field artillery brigade, complained of lack
of training for what they were ordered to do, in
addition to not having armored Humvees for their
travels.
"We never got training for a lot
of the work we did," he explained. "We had a white
phosphorous mortar round that cooked off in the
back of one of our trucks, because we loaded that
with some other ammo, and we weren't trained how
to do it the right way."
The "search and
avoid" missions appear to have been commonplace
around much of Iraq for years now.
Geoff
Millard served nine years in the New York Army
National Guard, and was in Iraq from October 2004
until October 2005 working for a general at a
Tactical Operation Center.
Millard, also a
member of IVAW, said that part of his duties
included reporting "significant actions", or
SIGACTS, which is how the US military describes an
attack on their forces.
"We had units that
never called in SIGACTS," Millard, who monitored
highly volatile areas like Baquba, Tikrit and
Samarra, told IPS. "When I was there two years
ago, there were at least five companies that never
had SIGACTS. I think 'search and avoids' have been
going on there for a long time."
Millard
told IPS "search and avoid" missions continue
today across Iraq. "One of my buddies is in
Baghdad right now and we email all the time," he
explained, "He just told me that nearly each day
they pull into a parking lot, drink soda and shoot
at the cans. They pay Iraqi kids to bring them
things and spread the word that they are not doing
anything and to please just leave them alone."
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