State lawmakers gain insights in Iraq
BOISE – Three members of Idaho’s congressional delegation met with Iraq’s prime minister in Baghdad over the weekend, offered encouragement to Idaho Guard members serving in Kirkuk and shared a transport plane with the bodies of three U.S. soldiers killed by roadside bombs.
“We were there when they loaded them on the plane,” said a somber U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson. The delegation flew with the bodies on a C-130 transport plane from Baghdad to Kuwait City.
“It was humbling and tearful, and it brought the reality home,” said Sen. Larry Craig.
Craig, Simpson and U.S. Rep. Butch Otter traveled to Iraq over the weekend, leaving Washington, D.C., on Friday. They spent Saturday in Baghdad, where they met with Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and other officials and were briefed by U.S. generals. On Sunday they were in Kirkuk, where hundreds of Idaho National Guard members are deployed. Today the group will visit injured American soldiers at a hospital in Germany.
The three weren’t joined by Idaho’s other senator, Mike Crapo, because Crapo has just completed radiation treatments for a recurrence of prostate cancer. His office said he’s doing well and expects to visit Iraq before the end of the summer.
The Idaho officials, who spoke by telephone from Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Monday, said they came away from Iraq with a strong sense of hope.
“It’s given us some insights that I think we can take back to our jobs in the U.S. Congress,” Otter said.
All three said they were impressed with the work of U.S. citizen-soldiers in Kirkuk, including those from Idaho, to help rebuild water, sewer and power systems and set up new courts and judicial systems. “They were very positive and excited about what they were doing,” Craig said.
He said there have been “tremendous accomplishments” in Iraq, “from formation of a new government to the stability that is growing in each one of the communities and the different ethnic sectors of this most interesting nation.”
Simpson said he saw a sign painted on a bunkered wall as he left a U.S. base that said, “What have you done today for the Iraqi people?” That, he said, “really I think tells you the goal of our military there, which is, how can we help the Iraqi people establish freedom?”
The Idahoans’ visit came during a string of bombings, ambushes and other violence that followed the naming of Iraq’s new government on Thursday. Though they wore body armor and helmets at times, they said they weren’t close to any of the attacks.
“We were not aware of a lot of that that was going on, in all fairness,” Craig said. “What most people forget is that Iraq is a country the size of the state of California, and that Baghdad itself is a multimillion-population city. So it is a widespread city, and while there are acts of violence … we did not experience any of it.”
He added, “The day before we arrived, they had just announced the new Cabinet. There were numerous acts of violence.” But he said officials there said they see progress; attacks were “less effective and actually killed or injured fewer people than … in the past.”
Simpson said al-Jaafari told the group he didn’t understand why American media reports focused so much on the failed search for weapons of mass destruction when to him, “the issue was the human rights violations and the sheer horror that this tyrant (Saddam Hussein) was to the Iraqi people.”
“The Iraqi people are a little afraid that Saddam Hussein might come back,” Simpson said, adding that that’s understandable since Saddam ruled the country for more than three decades. “They’re starting to understand that we mean what we say.”
Craig said the progress in Kirkuk is obvious, and there’s been less violence there than in Baghdad. “They’re investing in their government, and they’re investing in their community, and they’re pointing out the bad guys,” he said.
He added, “We are so phenomenally proud of our men and women in uniform from Idaho. They are there; they are spirited; they feel good about what they’re doing. They are so tremendously excited about the support they get from the home state.”
Asked if he agreed with recent reports from Iraqi officials that the “back of the insurgency … has been broken,” Otter said, “When it’s all said and done, the military can aid that, but the military can’t do it.”
“You can blow people up with the military, you can shoot people, you can imprison them and everything else, but once you change the mindset to their belief system that the old system was no good and the new system offers them freedom, offers them human dignity, that’s what’s going to break the back,” Otter said.