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Engel: ‘I’ve seen so many ugly things’
Four years into the fighting soldiers were starting to feel like they were caught in the middle of somebody else’s war.
February 9, 2007: Roadside Bomb
VIDEO DIARY: An IED just exploded next to our vehicle. Inside here, it still smells like gunpowder. Luckily, we were able to drive through it and no one in this convoy was injured, but uh, we’re still assessing, checking if there are any other bombs in this area.
What’s shocking is that I was talking to the other guys and they all felt very lucky to have survived this attack, but all of them have been through this kind of experience before. It happens almost every day in this neighborhood and a lot of the soldiers are asking why?
SGT. COPELY: “It’s pretty much almost a lost cause. I mean it seems like nothing we do, is doing any good. The sectarian violence, we can’t stop it. Every country goes through a civil war, so maybe it would be better for them to have a civil war and hash it out and then help them after that.”
VIDEO DIARY: So, this is the new shopping mall where they are now going to set up a...
It smells like crap, literally, in here. The Iraqi soldiers have been going to the bathroom in these empty rooms.
And this is the new uh home for a platoon of soldiers and they are going to be living in this for a year, trying to uh stand between the Sunnis and Shiites.
PFC JASON TALBOT: “They’ve just got to hash it out for themselves, but it’s a complicated issue, I’m not really knowledgeable, I just know that they’re fighting, I don’t want to get in the middle, but if that’s the way I am told to go, it’s the way I’m going to go, you know?”
VIDEO DIARY: Where does this go? How much longer does this war go on? This strategy of US troops trying to keep the two sides apart, pushing them back. You could do this for years; you could do this for decades even.
I think there are four stages of stress that people go through covering the war in Iraq. The first one is; I’m superman. Nothing can happen to me. Second one is; hey, this is dangerous. I might get hurt over here. Third stage; I’ve been over here a long time. I’m pushing my luck. I’m probably gonna get hurt over here. And the fourth stage is: I’ve used up all my 9 lives. I’m gonna die in this conflict.
I’m definitely in stage 3. And maybe some days, I’m stage 4.
VIDEO DIARY: I got very lucky today. It could have been much worse. Had that IED just been a few feet closer to where I was sitting in the vehicle. I may not be here right now. And you wonder, am I gonna keep doing this? One of these IED’s eventually is going to tear through the vehicle.
The war and coverage of the war over time has become much more political. Especially as criticism in the United States has intensified. The soldiers here understand that criticism. They hear it. And they take it personally. They don’t want anyone declaring all of their hard work to be a failure. That means what they’ve been doing, what they’ve been dying for, has been for nothing.
ENGEL: “A lot of people at home now say, love the troops, hate the war. Does that argument work with you guys?”
SOLDIER: “No, if you’re going to support us, support us all the way, support the war. Uh, if not, go along with your lives and we’ll take care of it here. You can’t support, you know, the troops and not what we are doing over here. Cuz people are dying. You know what I’m saying? You may support—‘Oh, we support the troops,’ but you’re not supporting what they do, what they share and sweat for, what they believe for, what we die for. It just don’t make sense to me. If they don’t think we’re doing a good job, everything that we’ve done here is all in vain.”
But in 2007 there was a new general in town, David Petreaus and he brought in 30,000 extra troops, President Bush’s surge
Petreaus had two new strategies. One to build more small bases all over Baghdad. Spreading the troops out so they could patrol more neighborhoods.
U.S. commanders say the key to the new security plan in Baghdad is presence, putting troops back on the battlefield and keeping them here as long as possible.
The other change was to sit down and negotiate with former insurgents.
Even paying the men who used put bombs in the roads to man checkpoints and rebuild destroyed buildings
And it started to work. Violence dropped 70 - 80 percent for the first time in years. Markets were filling up. I saw children back at amusement parks.
Personally, the greatest change, a Chinese restaurant opened up just a few blocks from the bureau. It was actually pretty good.
For the soldiers, it was huge morale boost. To see finally, things were getting better.
“People are waving at us. They are giving us information. You see them out on the streets, now. You don’t see the dead bodies on the streets like we did before.”
“I do believe at our level we are definitely winning the war “
ENGEL: “do you think we’ve reached a turning point? Do you think we’ve reached a point of no return?”
PETRAEUS: “we have repeatedly said that there are no lights at the end of the tunnel. We certainly aren’t dancing in the end zone or anything like that. You can see the considerable progress that’s been made in this area and this is representative of many areas but there is still a good bit to go.”
VIDEO DIARY: It feels like almost the war is starting over again. but I think the political will back home is no longer going to allow them to stay here for the years that most soldiers and commanders believe is necessary if they are really going to try and improve security in this city
April 4, 2008: Sadr City Gun Battle
I’m still here because this story is no way over.
I was with troops in Sadr City. They were building this wall to pen in Shiite militias.
And as they put up every single slab of concrete, they were under constant gun fire, from snipers and rpg’s, it lasted five hours
They fired the Bradleys so much cannon smoke filled the air.
They’ve had to fight to put up every inch of this wall. They call this intense urban fighting.”
But this one very brave soldier had the worst job. He had to climb up a ladder, totally exposed and unhook each slab of concrete. We could literally hear the incoming rounds hitting the ground, hitting the wall behind us.
ENGEL: It’s pretty intense out here, is this what it’s like every day.
SOLDIER: This is is nothing, you should have been out here about 6 days ago.
VIDEO DIARY: After a big fire fight like that you start to think it’s been over five years now and the soldiers are still getting into close quarter fights and I didn’t expect that at all and you start to think aren’t there Iraqi forces that could be doing this?
And for many, the scars of this conflict simply will not heal.
I remember this boy, Ahmed, he had his leg blown off while selling pickles by the side of the road. His mother couldn’t afford a prosthetic limb. He was alone almost all of the time and would play this video game on his cell phone and had to drag himself around the house.
For Ahmed and many Iraqis, there’s been no support from the government or any international aid agencies. His mother said she’s spent all of her savings on his four operations.
When he was lucky his brother would carry him outside and he is just one of thousands of people who’s lives have been affected by this war
Ali, my old friend finally decided he had had enough. He moved to Sweden he paid a smuggler all of his money to get him out of Iraq.
He’s doing fairly well; he’s struggling to learn Swedish. Lives by a lake, has some friends but he can’t find a job, feels totally trapped and out of place
PAUL NASSAR: “I decided to leave because life is Iraq was getting intolerable. In my dreams I find myself back in Baghdad, and back at my job. Here, I feel like my life is on hold, like I’m not living.
But other refugees have it much worse, one of the saddest stories I’ve covered was at a nightclub in Syria. It was full of these little Iraqi girls. They were so young, we couldn’t even show their faces and they were dancing on a stage for money.
A few years ago, this area on the outskirts of Damascus was just desert. Now it’s packed with dozens of nightclubs. Each one with 50 to 100 young girls, most Iraqi refugees, forced into the sex trade to support their families.
They seemed like they were in a trance and would just circle and circle this stage all night and it was just disgusting to watch them on this stage being showered with money
The war has changed everything in the region
ENGEL: “Fifteen minutes ago, Saddam Hussein was brought to the execution chamber, led to the gallows and then executed.”
The last words he heard on the gallows were the guards taunting him, yelling out the name of an Iranian backed militia leader.
And then to celebrate, the government had a little party showing off Saddam’s body.
I watched the same government then greet the Iranian president like a hero, with a full honor guard and a band. It was clear that Iran now had tremendous influence in Iraq.
In the spring of 2008, I had the chance to ask President Bush how he felt about what has happened.
ENGEL: A lot of Iran’s empowerment is a result of the war in Iraq. How do you feel that Iran is; its position in the world is rising because of your actions in Iraq?
PRESIDENT BUSH: See, I’m not so sure I agree with that. That’s a premise I don’t necessarily agree with. As a matter of fact, I think Iran is troubled by the fact that a young democracy is growing in Iraq. You know, this notion about somehow if Saddam Hussein were in power everything would be fine in the Middle East is a ludicrous notion.
ENGEL: You still view Iraq as a success? Because on the ground it looks very bleak; people still want to leave the country, and people are...
PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, that’s interesting you said that’s a little different from the surveys I’ve seen and a little different from the attitude of the actual Iraqis I’ve talked to, but you’re entitled to your opinion. What you’re watching is an Iraqi government take care of extremists in their midst so that a democracy can survive. And it’s essential that the democracy survive for our own security, as well as the stability of the Middle East.
After five years, i went back to the Palestine hotel, back to my old room. It had been destroyed by a truck bomb
VIDEO DIARY: “I wonder if I look much different”
There’s been a bomb blast near the hotel and it’s damaged the hotel significantly. This whole entire floor has been abandoned. Everything has been covered in a thick layer of dust.
Here we are again, here we are again. I don’t know why, I didn’t expect it would be so emotional to be back here, but uh, five years later so much has changed for me, for this country, for this room, uh
One of the bigges changes is five years ago when I was watching shock and awe, the world wanted to know what was going on. Any kind of detail, picture, sound that we could get out of Iraq, the world wanted to hear and see. Now the world has moved on and people don’t want to hear about Iraq anymore.
So many people want to just forget about this war but its consequences are going to be felt for a long time
But I’m still here and that’s good for me
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