The voice of some in Iraq
Bill Ardolino interviews Iraqi soldiers:
INDC: What do you think of the American presence here? How do you feel about the Americans, and has this feeling changed over time?
Mohaned F: “We work well with them. The MiTT team teaches my soldiers something new every day. We have classes with them.”
Mohaned N: “I wish to keep the US here because it is good for us. We can learn new things every day, and if we work together a long time, it will be good for the Iraqi Army.”
Jabbar: “I want the US to stay a long time. We need weapons, we need training we want to work with the Americans for a very long time.”
INDC: How do you view Iraq’s future? What do you think is going to happen here?
Jabbar: “We have a good future.”
Mohaned N: “It will be good.”
INDC: OK, let me ask one more time: do you have any idea who the insurgents are? Who are the people you are fighting?
Mohaned N: “In the past, some people work for Saddam Hussein, like his intelligence service or the Fedayeen Saddam. These people hate the new army because they can’t join the new army. But we are different than them – we hate the terrorists, we hate these people. And we want to build our country.”
INDC: How did you feel about the execution of Saddam Hussein?
Mohaned N: “He’s been in custody for years so this was a long time coming. He hurt a lot of people.”
INDC: What would you tell the American people if you could tell them anything?
Mohaned N: “Tell the American people we need the US Army here. We want to work with them for a longer time. And in the future we can say that we have built the Iraqi Army together.”
It has puzzled us why the US government has not tried to use effectively ordinary voices from people in Iraq in a constant media campaign to show that Iraqis want Americans there. Not to do so seems inept.