Truths from Iraq

I am so happy about the news of the ceasefire agreed for Sadr City between the Sadrists, the Iraqi army, and the Americans.
May it hold! May it be extended to the whole country!
Meanwhile, I read with huge interest this piece in Sunday’s WaPo, by Steve Fainaru, a reporter who’s been embedded with a Marines unit for a while now. Though he seemed a little unquestioning of the official line earlier, here’s some of what he had in today’s piece:

“Sometimes I see no reason why we’re here,” [Lance Cpl. Carlos] Perez said. “First of all, you cannot engage as many times as we want to. Second of all, we’re looking for an enemy that’s not there. The only way to do it is go house to house until we get out of here.”
Perez is hardly alone. In a dozen interviews, Marines from a platoon known as the “81s” expressed in blunt terms their frustrations with the way the war is being conducted and, in some cases, doubts about why it is being waged. The platoon, named for the size in millimeters of its mortar rounds, is part of the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment based in Iskandariyah, 30 miles southwest of Baghdad.
The Marines offered their opinions openly to a reporter traveling with the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines during operations last week in Babil province, then expanded upon them during interviews over three days in their barracks at Camp Iskandariyah, their forward operating base…
“I feel we’re going to be here for years and years and years,” said Lance Cpl. Edward Elston, 22, of Hackettstown, N.J. “I don’t think anything is going to get better; I think it’s going to get a lot worse. It’s going to be like a Palestinian-type deal. We’re going to stop being a policing presence and then start being an occupying presence. . . . We’re always going to be here. We’re never going to leave.”

And there’s much more:

Several members of the platoon said they were struck by the difference between the way the war was being portrayed in the United States and the reality of their daily lives.
“Every day you read the articles in the States where it’s like, ‘Oh, it’s getting better and better,’ ” said Lance Cpl. Jonathan Snyder, 22, of Gettysburg, Pa. “But when you’re here, you know it’s worse every day.”
Pfc. Kyle Maio, 19, of Bucks County, Pa., said he thought government officials were reticent to speak candidly because of the upcoming U.S. elections. “Stuff’s going on here but they won’t flat-out say it,” he said. “They can’t get into it.”
Maio said that when he arrived in Iraq, “I didn’t think I was going to live this long, in all honesty.” He added, “it ain’t that bad. It’s just part of the job, I guess.”
As a reporter began to ask Maio another question, the interview was interrupted by the scream of an incoming rocket and then a deafening explosion outside the platoon’s barracks. Pandemonium ensued.
“Get down! Get down!” yelled the platoon’s radio operator, Cpl. Brandon Autin, 21, of New Iberia, La., his orders laced with profanity. “Get in the bunker! Get in the bunker now!”
Members of the platoon raced out of their rooms to a 5-by-15-foot bunker, located outside at the end of the one-story building. The dirt-floor room was protected by a low ceiling and walls built out of four-foot-thick sandbags. Once in the bunker, several Marines lit cigarettes, filling the already-congested room with smoke.
“The reality right now is that the most dangerous opinion in the world is the opinion of a U.S. serviceman,” said Lance Cpl. Devin Kelly, 20, of Fairbanks, Alaska.
Lance Cpl. Alexander Jones, 20, of Ball Ground, Ga., agreed: “We’re basically proving out that the government is wrong,” he said. “We’re catching them in a lie.”
…
The Marines acknowledged that the elusiveness of the insurgents was frustrating. “You don’t really know who you’re fighting. You’re more or less fighting objects,” said Elston, the lance corporal from New Jersey. “You see something on the side of the road. It blows up.”
But the Marines said their frustrations run deeper. Several said the Iraqi security forces who are supposed to ultimately replace them were nowhere near ready and may never be.
…
Asked if he was concerned that the Marines would be punished for speaking out, [Cpl. Brandon] Autin responded: “We don’t give a crap. What are they going to do, send us to Iraq?”

H’mm. The whole of the piece is worth reading.
I wonder what kind of advice Rumsfeld is going to take back to Washington after his visit to Iraq?