Excerpts from the story:
“What Iraq looks like on TV, and what Iraq is like for the 130,000 troops living here, sometimes feels like two different realities.”
“Our stories aren’t the sexiest,” says the 432nd Civil Affairs Brigade commander, Gary Beard. “But what we do will build the success of this country.”
“Welcome, welcome to our school,” chants a line of 7-year-old girls in Arabic at the Abu Ghuraib Primary School, which the 490th Civil Affairs Battalion took under its wing to restore after it was badly looted postwar.
The now-bright-blue school has new equipment and new electrical wiring that feeds bright bulbs by the teachers’ blackboards.
As each soldier walks through the entrance to the official ribbon-cutting, the girls chant louder in Arabic, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Inside, headmistress Ibistam Mahdi cuts a yellow ribbon, and thanks the men through a translator.
“For the 350 girls here, it is a lot better,” Mahdi says.
“I go out every day,” says 432nd Civil Affairs Battalion Sgt. Bill Belongea. “I have not had to raise my weapon yet. It’s not as bad as the media portrays it.”
“We’ve got a lot of good things going on, but when I went home (on leave), people were just like ‘We never hear that stuff,’ ” said Civil Affairs Pvt. Amy Schroeder. “That’s what makes the families worry.”
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Link:
http://www.knoxstudio.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=IRAQ-REALITY-12-05-03&cat=II
Tiny Link:
http://tinyurl.com/yhgs
———> End of links
In the end, the naysayers will eventually have to admit the success of operation Iraqi Freedom.
