A brief email exchange.
Subject: U.S. Senate Request
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 13:00:50 -0500
From: Holly@Holly’s Senate email address.gov
To: Alamanach@Alamanach’s email address.com
Alamanach,
Frank C— passed along your contact information. I work for the U.S. Senate Democratic Policy Committee under the leadership of Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senator Byron Dorgan. The DPC has hosted several hearings exposing waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq. I am gathering background research on this topic and am interested in speaking with you about your experiences in Iraq as a contractor. If you have stories to share regarding waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq please contact me at 202— or email me at holly—@dpc.senate.gov. I look forward to hearing from you and learning about your experience in Iraq.
Regards,
Holly T—
U.S. Senate Democratic Policy Committee
http://democrats.senate.gov/dpc/
p: 202—
f: 202—
419 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
.
Subject: Re: U.S. Senate Request
Date:Sun, 17 Feb 2008 22:56:50 -0500
From: Alamanach@Alamanach’s email address.com
To: Holly@Holly’s Senate email address.gov
Holly,
Yes, I know Frank. We went through processing together in Houston, and later we worked together for a few months in Fallujah. He’s a good friend. I worked in Fallujah from July 2004 to July 2005. When Frank told me there was a senator concerned about crooked contractors in Iraq, I told him I probably couldn’t be of much help. If I had known that this involved Senators Reid and Dorgan, I would have explained that to him a little more clearly.
There is a profound irony in what you are asking from me. It is going to take me a little while to draw that irony out, but it hinges on the truth that when a man sees evil and does nothing, he becomes a part of it. The sort of waste, fraud and abuse you are describing is a crime, and I would have been legally obligated to report it at the time.
The sort of waste and abuse that there is in Iraq, the sort of stories I would be able to tell you, are all coming from the other side. It’s not the kind of thing I think you are interested in hearing about, but you should be. And if you are not interested, then I am concerned for you, personally, Holly.
I was there the day Iraq held its first elections. The United States held a presidential election just a few months previously, and both countries saw similar levels of voter turnout. In Iraq, this was profound, because the insurgents had stated explicitly that they would kill anyone who tried to vote. I happen to have a photo of one of the posters the insurgents put up to scare people off. The photo and the poster’s translation are attached. An excerpt from the poster makes its message abundantly clear:
To anyone who desires to stand in the lines of death to participate in the elections; he must bear the consequences of his actions, and they will be heavy; he cannot imagine what will happen to him and his family because he participated in this Crusade of conspiracy which aims to occupy the land of Islam… we have prepared for every polling center a car bomb… Those who vote think they will escape from our hands, we will follow them as their shadow till we cut their head and the heads of their children. EXCUSED IS HE WHO WARNED…
Back home, the Democratic Party has a history of standing up for disenfranchised voters, and this is a laudable thing. But voters in the U.S. do not have to brave the threat of mass extermination. When Iraq was faced with the bluntest form of voter disenfranchisement we could imagine, where was Harry Reid? Where was Byron Dorgan? Military troops and civilian contractors from around the world stood by the Iraqi people and protected their right to vote. But I’m not aware that your bosses did anything.
The poster mentioned beheadings, and beheadings have been a very common abuse. I know of a Turkish contractor who ventured out to try and procure some laundry soap on the local market. (Think about that sentence for a moment, because its implications are profound. I have seen Senator Dorgan, on the floor of the Senate, rail against waste by telling anecdotes of contractors who wantonly abandon new vehicles rather than fix them, or requisition overpriced hand towels just for the reckless thrill of spending money. His anecdotes do not describe the Iraq that I knew. In the Iraq that I knew, there were days we had trouble coming up with basics like laundry soap. It’s not like we could hop down to the store for supplies. Everything came in by truck convoy, and insurgents make careers of stopping truck convoys. So we weren’t extravagant with what we had; we couldn’t afford to be. Ask Frank whether he had the tools and equipment he was supposed to have, and he will corroborate this.) This Turkish contractor should not have needed to leave the base, but the words “should” and “war” are rarely compatible. So he went out for laundry soap. Though just a common laborer, the insurgents captured him, and beheaded him. Is that an abuse, Holly? Will you be having hearings for him?
This Turkish contractor had a boss, and that boss happened to be a friend of mine. He had to call the man’s family and give them the bad news. I am told that he spoke with the man’s five-year-old son. When told that Dad was dead, and not coming home, the boy said, “Sir you have to change that—I need my dad here.” I have a five-year-old myself, Holly. I don’t know whether you have any children, but when you’re a parent, stories like this one hurt when you hear them first hand. And in the face of that kind of pain, what is a contractor to do? I wanted to get my hands on the monsters that had done this, I wanted to take out my pain on the people who had orphaned that poor little boy. But there was nothing I could do; I was a civilian, not a soldier. I wasn’t armed with a gun, at my most lethal I was armed with a clipboard. The only thing I could do, the only thing any of us could do, was to keep plugging away at our jobs, and hope that we weren’t next.
One day, some people from my own company were next. An insurgent infiltrated the Army base at Mosul, made his way inside the mess tent during the midday meal, and blew himself up. Four of our guys, along with others, were killed. This left Mosul without—among other things—a quality inspector. That was the job I was doing in Fallujah, and I volunteered to take that man’s place.
I want you to think about that, too, because I was volunteering to fill the shoes of a dead man. Would you have the backbone for something like that, Holly? Would you have the nerve to step into the spot that just got another man killed? I hardly know a thing about you, but I don’t think you do. I don’t think you do because these stories I’m telling can’t be anything new for you—you research this stuff for a living, for crying out loud. You know as well as I do who the bad guys are here; they are the insurgents who want to turn Iraq into a tyrannical theocracy. They are evil men. You know it, I know it, even Senators Dorgan and Reid know it.
Why, then, do you carry water for men who insist on standing on the wrong side of history? If the Senators’ intent was simply to improve oversight on contractors, I would be all for it; genuine waste, fraud and abuse are a drag on our war effort, and aid our enemies. But that is not their intent. (They might try to claim it is, but that is imagination-land, and I’m not in any mood to play along.) Their intent is to hamper this war any way that they can, apparently to improve their own political capital somehow. To that end they have you going after contractors, because contractors are vital to our military’s functioning. Coming back to that irony I mentioned at the top, they see evil being done, and they are a part of it.
And you’ve become a part of it too, Holly. As I say, I hardly know anything about you, and I doubt you’re a sinister person (most people aren’t). But in your drive for a prestigious career, you have wound up working on the side of evil. (That is what causes me to doubt that you’d be willing step into a dead man’s shoes. I hope I’m wrong, but what I know of you makes you look like the sort who’d rather stay in Washington and let me and Frank take the risks; you’re not a principled, take-it-to-the-wall sort.) And I’m concerned for you Holly, because 1) what will it profit you to conquer the world if you have to let evil lay waste to that same world in the process? and 2) what good is a career if it costs you your character? Don’t compromise your principles, Holly, not for Harry Reid and Byron Dorgan.
If the Senate has specific questions on particular thing I may have seen or know, I am at your service. But if people just want me to dish dirt as part of a cynical hatchet job, you know where I stand. I hope you will choose to stand with me.
I AM THE ALAMANACH 
Wow…
This is heavy stuff. Sir Al, I have a few questions:
1. What was your primary motivating factor for being in Fallujah in the first place?
2. Weren’t you terrified of just being there at all?
3. Were you at any point in support of the war?
4. Would you say that US foreign policy has made a bad situation in Iraq worse?
5. Why do you think Americans voted in Bush a second time?
Curious,
Xeno
Xenlogic, thanks for weighing in. By the numbers:
1: My country was at war, and I wanted to do my part. It turned out that the money was very good, although I didn’t find that out until later. A lot of contractors were there (are there) primarily for the money, but most of them are motivated to a greater or lesser degree by patriotism as well. I met maybe two contractors who were dead-set against the war, and were working over there anyway. I don’t have any respect for that; those people can be bought.
2: I was frightened by the idea, and once it was all over, I think I was slightly surprised to have actually survived it. But while I was actually in country, I was amazed at how at-home I felt. It is always the case that any of us could die at any moment, but over there this reality is much more explicit, and this awareness changes people’s behavior for the better. I miss the place.
3: Yes, pretty much from the beginning, throughout the whole thing, and right up to the present moment. I realize many people hold the opposite opinion, and I’m okay with that; we all have to call it as we see it. I support the war for more reasons than I could summarize here, but I could give my reasons their own post if people like.
4: No. When Iraqis find out I was a contractor, I am still amazed at the enthusiasm and gratitude they feel towards our efforts there. I had one Iraqi expat tell me that the Iraq invasion would surpass walking on the Moon as America’s greatest contribution to humanity. Meanwhile, we are fighting (and beating– ever so slowly beating) al-Quaeda on a battlefield very far from our own home. That’s much better than fighting them here.
5. Kerry was unelectable. He tended to say preposterous things that undercut his own credibility, and I was disappointed when the Democrats made him their nominee.
Sir Al,
1. Did you know about the Nick Berg decapitation before or after you went to Fallujah?
2. When you say you miss the place, what exactly do you mean? That you would go back?
3. Why do you think people oppose the war in Iraq? I oppose it because it appears to me that the war is doing more harm than good and that it’s just a ruse for capitalisig on the oil reserves there for the US of A. Ofcourse, I’ve never been there, and there’s a pretty good chance that CNN and Faux News is telling us a load of crap (which I’m pretty sure you’ll confirm for me). Your thoughts on this please.
4. Do you actually believe that Bush went to Iraq to pre-emptively stave off Terrorism?
5. Bush says a lot of preposterous things that undercut his credibility and he got elected. I was disappointed when he won. Twice. Do you think the 4,000+ soldiers that have died in Iraq was worth not electing Gore or Kerry?
6. Do you think the 2000 elections were fair?
Your thoughts plz.
1. I’d have to look up which one Nick Berg was. He might have happened while I was there. I knew about the four contractors hung from a bridge before I went.
2. I have family commitments that might pose a problem but otherwise, yeah, I’d go back. But Fallujah has quieted down considerably since I was there, thanks greatly to Operation Phantom Fury. Pre OPF, Fallujah was the Wild West; few rules, lots of danger, vitally important work to do, and incredible camraderie. Post-OPF, the nincompoops started filtering in, and reality’s petty rules followed close behind them. I cherished the freedom we had when operating under the gun, and I used that freedom to buck up my co-workers’ morale. Once things started tightening up with greater safety and more rules, camraderie degraded and I wasn’t able to help people as much. Life is like that. For me personally, I’d rather live with the danger and have the freedoms that come with it. (Most people would opt for the safety, which is why the suburbs are so bland and impersonal.) If you’ve never had the chance to operate outside of civilization’s physical boundaries, then it might take some imagination to understand what I’m getting at.
3. For the reasons why some people oppose the war, I must refer you to those people; I’m not going to argue their case for them. The oil argument doesn’t hold together. Back in 2003, if we had wanted oil, it would have safer (and almost as easy) to pick a fight with Venezuela instead. They have loads of oil, they are nearby, and they don’t have suicide bombers. The press is very good at getting things wrong. They will give you only the negative, all the negative, and none of the positive. I have seen two separate cases (all of Iraq being just one case) in which none of the good news gets through, and the outside world thinks apocalypse has come, when really there was just a localized catastrophe. Did you know that the U.S. installed a modern sewage treatment facility in Fallujah? It was the city’s first; previously, all waste had gone straight into the Euphrates. The civilian engineers doing that project had to go outside the wire on a daily basis, and a lot of American lives and money were risked on a project that was soley for the benefit of the local Iraqis. Stories like that don’t get reported, for some reason. Al-Quaeda doesn’t do that kind of thing. Al-Qaeda barbeques little children and serves them up on a bed of rice. Literally.
4. Yes, and in the long-term, it is a brilliant move. For al-Qaeda, the entire war (beyond just the conflict in Iraq) is very much a patriotic, identity-based movement. They want to see Islam dominate the cultural world as it did in the twelfth century. The Baghdad caliphate is a big part of that cultural history, and so Iraq has special meaning for them. Now, if we can get a western-style democracy functioning somewhere in the Middle East, especially in a historically important place like Iraq, it will go a long way toward persuading other countries in the region that they can be democracies, too. (We have already seen this in Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution.) In the long term, this will be vital for ending terrorism, because such democracies don’t breed terror. (Democracies tend not to go to war with each other, either. Bush has been reading Natan Sharansky’s “The Case for Democracy”, a book I highly recommend. (Sharansky’s a liberal, btw.)) Pre-invasion, Iraq was well-poised to become such a democracy. The Ba’ath Party is a communist movement, and from it Iraq’s people are already accustomed to a vague separation of church and state. Strategically, there could hardly have been a better target in the war on terror than Iraq.
There is some speculation that Bush had it in for Saddam due to the assassination attempt on Bush’s dad. I never found this very plausible, but whatever– I’ll concede the possibility. It doesn’t change all the other reasons for taking Iraq.
5. No, I think the 4,000+ soldiers that have died in Iraq are worth all the other 9/11s that haven’t happened because we are fighting the enemy in his backyard rather than ours.
6. Yes.
Al,
Let me say that I have earned the deepest level of respect for you, man. Honestly. For the first time, I’m actually seeing this whole thing from a whole different perspective. Now I understand why anyone would support Bush – however questionable the reasoning.
I respect you because of your bravery and because of your ability to see through the fog of chaos and see the good in a situation that most people (me included) could not possibly fathom. I believe that propensity exists irrespective of whether or not Bush existed. I never quite understood the rationale of engineers that would go into such a situation of chaos to help the helpless. I never understood why anyone would risk their life like that. It just looks crazy to me. But what do I know?
To be brutally honest with you, to go on a certain death suicide mission to help the helpless sounds a lot like what Jesus did. For what greater love there is, than when a man should lay down his own life for his friends, right? I just hope that the laying down of life has the right motivation behind it, or else it wouldn’t be comparable to what Jesus did.
One thing still bothers me though:
Saddam Houssein, for all the human atrocities he committed, was a mortal enemy of Al Quaeda. The latter couldn’t have invaded Iraq until it was destabilized by the US invasion. Al Quaeda wasn’t in Iraq before Bush got there. So I still have a hard time accepting that Bush went to Iraq to stop Al Quaeda – especially since they were never there in the first place.
So, how does one explain that one? We have one of two conclusions:
1. Bush went to Iraq to capture the state for political/economic reasons. Al Quaeda came along and gave him justification for an initially unjustified war. So now, the original motives no longer matter.
OR
2. As you suggested, He went there to fight a war on terror that had nothing to do with the country itself, using that country as the battle ground, inviting the enemy there to fight, thus allowing thouands of innocents to die in the process – completely ignoring the collateral damage along the way.
Only one of these conclusions seems rational. From what you’re saying, it seems like it’s more the latter. That one is worse than if he had just gone there to capture an Oil state. That’s basically saying that America is so powerful and so arrogant, that they can pick any country they want to fight a war on terror, invite the enemy in to fight, and ignore the collateral damage.
Please tell me I’m wrong. I want to be wrong.
First of all, thanks for the compliment.
As for Bush’s motives–
He didn’t forsee that things would play out the way they have. We know this from the “mission accomplished” stunt on the aircraft carrier; he honestly thought back then it was over, and now he has pie on his face.
Iraq’s Ba’ath Party was overthrown in about six weeks. In that sense, the mission really was accomplished, and Iraq was actually a quiet, peaceful place for a little while. But there was a grave error made in the troop levels, they really were too low. Too short-handed to properly secure the borders, the coalition forces were unable to prevent every jihadist within a thousand miles of the place from coming in and stirring up trouble. This insurgency was an unintended consequence, even if it did have the benefit of shifting the battle away from home. It sucks for the Iraqis, no question. But the only people who intended it to happen were the insurgents.
As for al-Qaeda not being there in the first place– taking out al-Qaeda (and all of Islamofascism, really) by creating a democracy in Iraq is very much a long-term strategy. It will take generations to have full effect. The more immediate reasons for going into Iraq were Saddam Hussein’s violations involving the whole WMD thing. Whether he had them or not, he was constantly playing cat-and-mouse with the inspectors, and doing everything he could to make the world believe he secretly had these weapons. This was in violation of the sanctions, which called for him to be open and cooperative.
Also, Saddam revelled in being a thorn in the side of the U.S., and such a distraction could no longer be afforded after 9/11. Was he on al-Qaeda’s side? No. Could he be trusted not to take advantage of the U.S.’s preoccupation with al-Qaeda by creating major problems while we were busy elsewhere? No again. If the U.S. was going to make further moves against al-Qaeda, it first had to clear the field by neutralizing the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.
I still fail to understand why Saddam Hussein was more important than Bin Laden.
I’m not aware that anyone ever said he was. If your front door is smashed in and your basement is flooded, both problems will have to be attended to.
To encounter mortality at such proximity and proximity might change one to become faithful. Now I know where you’re coming from. I imagine myself going through that Quantum Leap experience, and being in the shoes of an Iraqi woman, and I cower at the thought of it. Reading this post made me aware also of how truly sheltered my world is.
It’s easy for these politicians to dig dirt and waste, for callous reason of political gains, while ignoring the fact that many lives are wasted in that part of the world. It’s disgusting.
Salute for sending Holly this letter. May I know what she wrote in response?
I found it disgusting too, hence my response to Holly. I don’t know what (if any) effect it may have had; I never heard from her again.
I just started reading your blog, Alamanach. I am glad that you wrote to Holly and posted this letter here. It leaves me speechless. The atrocities that play out as we live a comfortable existence in the US is a dichotomy to what you saw in Iraq. Again, senseless and disturbing to the me. Thank you for stepping up and going to take the man’s place, for it shows that you have the courage do what is right, even in the face of terror, and to defy the the tyrannical insurgents…and for the 5-year old orphan.
Thanks, Helga!
My blog has the readers with the coolest names. I don’t know why, it just does.