"Enough is enough"

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times, June 15, 2003

IN THE FIELD | THIRD INFANTRY DIVISION
Anxious and Weary of War, G.I.'s Face a New Iraq Mission
By STEVEN LEE MYERS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 14 ? Sgt. Jaime A. Betancourt was there in March when a 
taxi loaded with explosives killed four of his company's soldiers at a 
checkpoint. He was there in April when his battalion seized the road out of 
the international airport and Saddam Hussein's army made its last desperate 
defense.

He was there later that month when his company, part of the First Brigade 
of the Army's Third Infantry Division, crossed the Tigris River and began 
to restore order in Baghdad's eastern half as chaos threatened to unravel 
the victory the brigade had helped win.

He is still here today, enduring infernal heat and fetid quarters in the 
ransacked headquarters of Iraq's Interior Ministry, as much of the Third 
Infantry Division remains in the city it helped conquer, interacting with 
people it once saw as the enemy.

"I think that was the most scary thing ? trusting civilians, especially 
after the car bomb," Sergeant Betancourt, 21, said, referring to the taxi 
bombing, the worst single attack against the brigade's troops, on March 29, 
near Najaf, about 85 miles south of Baghdad. "We didn't want nothing to do 
with these people anymore."

As he stood guard at a hospital, as he enforced curfew at checkpoints, as 
he patrolled streets once again bustling with Iraqis, even the children 
terrified Sergeant Betancourt, who appears barely older than a child himself.

"At the end," he said, "it was like, `Get that kid away from me.' "

It was not supposed to end this way for the brigade's 5,000 soldiers, who 
were accompanied by a reporter during the war and again this month in 
Baghdad. After fighting their way from the Kuwaiti border to Saddam 
International Airport in three fierce weeks, they believed that the war ? 
or at least their part of it ? was over.

Six months after arriving in Kuwait and almost three months after entering 
Iraq, they were ready to go home. Then they discovered that, at least from 
a soldier's-eye view on the ground, there seemed to be no American plan for 
a postwar Iraq.

The mayhem that followed the collapse of Mr. Hussein's government on April 
9 has thrust them into a new mission: keeping peace, even as their weary 
minds and bodies are still at war.

"You call Donald Rumsfeld and tell him our sorry asses are ready to go 
home," Pfc. Matthew C. O'Dell, an infantryman in Sergeant Betancourt's 
platoon, said as he stood guard on Tuesday. "Tell him to come spend a night 
in our building."

Two months after surging into Baghdad, the First Brigade's soldiers have 
found themselves enmeshed in yet another war ? less intense, perhaps, but 
still exhausting, still perilous and, at times, still psychologically 
taxing. Some are haunted by the deaths they caused ? and suffered ? and 
have sought counseling. All are tired and hot and increasingly bitter. 
Morale has plummeted as sharply as the temperature has risen.

Last Saturday night, Sergeant Betancourt's company sent a Humvee and an 
armored personnel carrier on a mission to fix the satellite phone their 
company had bought in Baghdad. As they were returning, someone threw a 
grenade from an overpass. It exploded only a few feet away, rattling but 
not seriously wounding two soldiers.

"If it had been a split second earlier, it'd have been bad," Staff Sgt. Ray 
B. Robinson, a squad leader in Sergeant Betancourt's company, said. 
"They're killing us."

He added later, "Enough is enough."

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/15/international/worldspecial/15ARMY.html


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