Reporter's Harrowing Account After Stint With Iraqi Military

Knight Ridder Reporter Files Harrowing Account After Stint With Iraqi Military
Aya Kawano
By E&P Staff
Published: October 13, 2005 12:45 PM ET

NEW YORKIn a remarkable report published widely Thursday, Tom Lasseter, longtime Knight Ridder correspondent in its Baghdad bureau, reveals what he learned as possibly the first American journalist to embed with an all-Iraqi military operation in the war -- and it isn't pretty.

Lasseter writes that "a week spent eating, sleeping and going on patrol with a crack unit of the Iraqi army" (the 4,500-member 1st Brigade of the 6th Iraqi Division) suggests that the Bush exit strategy of turning over military control to the Iraqis "is in serious trouble. Instead of rising above the ethnic tension that's tearing their nation apart, the mostly Shiite troops are preparing for, if not already fighting, a civil war against the minority Sunni population."

Indeed, the soldiers he traveled with are "seeking revenge against the Sunnis who oppressed them during Saddam Hussein's rule."

American commanders often refer to the 1st Brigade as a template for the future of Iraq's military, and sometimes they operate on their own, other times with American firepower taking the lead. But Lasseter notes that increasingly "they look and operate less like an Iraqi national army unit and more like a Shiite militia."

John Walcott, Knight Ridder's bureau chief in Washington, D.C., told E&P today: "Tom long ago began asking the U.S. military in Baghdad for an embed with an all-Iraqi unit that was operating independently of American forces, with its own base and area of operations, but he never got a response. In the course of other reporting, he'd gotten to know some of the leaders of the 1st Brigade of the 6th Iraqi Division, and they invited him to come and spend some time reporting with them. The U.S. military wasn't involved in setting up Tom's embed, and the Iraqi brigade was managing its own operations."

Previously, Lasseter and other American reporters, such as Tony Shadid and Steve Fainaru of The Washington Post, have arranged similar embeds through the U.S. military, and in those cases the Iraqi units they covered were under U.S. operational command and on maneuvers with U.S. troops, Walcott said.

After documenting one bloody incident, Lasseter quotes the brigade leader, Brig. Gen. Jaleel Khalif Shwail: "These people in Amariyah are cowards. I swear, I swear I'll have revenge." A U.S. military official tells Lasseter: "We never intended to create a Shiite army," the official said. "Clearly, one of our number one concerns going forward ... is sectarianism ... that revenge mentality."

Lasseter also details the horrific deaths and wounds suffered from sniper fire in insurgent-led towns. He quotes the response of a Shiite sergeant: "Just let us have our constitution and elections in December and then we will do what Saddam did -- start with five people from each neighborhood and kill them in the streets and then go from there."

Another sergeant tells him: "Your country had to have a civil war. It will be the same here. Everything in this world has its price. In Iraq the price for peace will be blood."
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E&P Staff ([email protected])

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