WMWG Part 11; 2003

2003...

·         2 months after the 9/11 attacks, the president and his officials starting going after Iraq to try and take down Saddam Hussein.

·         February 5^th 2003 ... Secretary of State Colin Powell went to the United Nations to make the president’s argument for invading Iraq. Said Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction and had conspired with al-Qaeda to carry our terrorist attacks against Americans.

·         March 2003 ... Pat and Kevin are flown to an airfield outside of Ar’ar, Saudi Arabia.

·         “I hope this war is about more than oil, money and power, I doubt that it is. If anything happens to Kevin, and my fears of our intent in this country prove true, I will never forgive this world.” – Pat Tillman (Krakauer Location 3100).

During this down time before the invasion of Iraq, Pat got his hands on some of Emerson’s writings and started going through them like wild fire. It hurts my heart to know a life such as this was taken and no one had the decency to tell the truth about it!

·         March 20^th 2003 ... 3 dozen Tomahawk missiles leave warships in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea to target Baghdad, Iraq.

·         “My heart goes out to those who will suffer. Whatever your politics, whatever you believe is right or wrong, the fact is most of those who will feel the wrath of this ordeal want nothing more than to live peacefully.” – Pat Tillman (Krakauer Location 3143).

·         March 23^rd 2003 ... A convoy of the Army’s 507^th Maintenance Company, unknowingly entered Nasiriyah. I military town in Iraq. Fedayeen militia fighters (Iraq’s militia) attack the convoy. One of those was Pfc. Jessica Lynch. Iraqi sources told Marines that she was being held at Saddam Hospital and 8 days later an operation was set into motion to rescue her. Pat and Kevin were part of this operation. Media went crazy over the rumors of the story, that she “had fought to the death, killing many Fedayeen fighters” When in actuality her humvee crashed and she was captured.

·         Jim Wilkinson – arranged for the reporters to interview sources about Jessica Lynch’s story since he was the “perception manager” for the Iraq war in the Bush Administration.

“Wilkinson was the president’s man on the ground at U.S. Central Command headquarters in Qatar, controlling and carefully shaping info about the war disseminated to the international press... Wilkinson simply sowed a little misinformation where it would have the most impact, sat back, and watched his fabrication go viral, propagated by the media frenzy that he knew would ensue.” (Krakauer 3311).

·         Cheney reported that he thought the Americans invading Iraq would be greeted as liberators. Wilkinson’s job was to divert attention away from negative parts of the war, to continue to help market the war for support.

·         When Jessica Lynch was captured, Marines were advancing to Nasiriyah, to cut off its bridges. When they got there they found the 507^th Maintenance Company and had to take their wounded to safety while trying to seize the bridges and hold off the Fedayeen fighters. A total cluster of confusion, especially when the communications were shut down by a number of reasons.

One of the reasons this happened was because the troops were told that the population of Nasiriyah were Shiite Muslims that hated Saddam and they would see the Americans as liberators. This was not the case.

(In 1991 the ‘first’ Bush led the Shia Muslims to believe the U.S. would support them if they rose up against Saddam. We actually did nothing and many Shia were murdered. Deep seated hatred for Americans grew, I’m sure.)

One of the Companies of Marines was mistaken for the enemy and were being attacked by an American jet aircraft, an A-10 Warthog.

I need to revisit my analysis of World War II, the Vietnam War, and now this war. When the government LIES to their people of course they wouldn’t be getting any future war support. Even if Wikinson was just going by orders, it’s hard to accept that he lied about one of our wars. And not giving the troops going into Nasiriyah the proper information (Like, how could no one in the CIA or any other intelligence agency not know Nasiriyah was a military town? We can fabricate facts about weapons of mass destruction but we can’t find out any tangible evidence about the places we’re sending our boys to die?) Before sending them ultimately to death.

“When the military is confronted with the fratricidal carnage that predictably results, denial and dissembling are the time-honored responses of first resort.” (Krakauer 3628).

·         March 28^th, 2003 ... General Tommy Franks ordered an inquiry to what caused the casualties in Nasiriyah. The investigation was completed a year after it started, but eyewitnesses were never interviewed, and video shots from the cockpits of the Warthogs went missing after the incident.

·         April 9^th, 2003 ... The capital of Iraq fell to American forces. Pat and Kevin stayed in Baghdad for 5 weeks.

·         May 1^st 2003 ... Rumsfeld had a news conference where he announced that ‘major combat activity’ in Afghanistan had ended because the ‘bulk of this county was secure’. But really the Taliban and al-Qaeda were just regrouping.

·         May 15^th 2003 ... Kevin and Pat returned home and began preparing for Ranger School.

·         November 28^th 2003... Pat and Kevin received their Ranger tabs and were promoted to specialist.

“It was becoming apparent that the war in Iraq was not turning out a predicted. Increasingly, critics of the administration were comparing it to Vietnam.” (Krakauer Location 3939).

Bin Laden used the invasion to his advantage, since the American occupation in Iraq enraged Arab men enough that they joined the ranks of al-Qaeda.

·         December 2003 ... Pat’s football agent tried to pull some strings to get Pat an early honorable discharge since he had already served in a war zone – So he could get him back to playing football – but Pat refused to do it.