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=The Iraq story: how troops see it= By [|Mark Sappenfield] | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor BROOK PARK, OHIO – Cpl. Stan Mayer has seen the worst of war. In the leaves of his photo album, there are casual memorials to the cost of the Iraq conflict - candid portraits of friends who never came home and graphic pictures of how insurgent bombs have shredded steel and bone. Yet the Iraq of Corporal Mayer's memory is not solely a place of death and loss. It is also a place of hope. It is the hope of the town of Hit, which he saw transform from an insurgent stronghold to a place where kids played on Marine trucks. It is the hope of villagers who whispered where roadside bombs were hidden. But most of all, it is the hope he saw in a young Iraqi girl who loved pens and Oreo cookies. ANDY NELSON - STAFF || Get all the Monitor's headlines by e-mail. [|Subscribe for free]. || Like many soldiers and marines returning from Iraq, Mayer looks at the bleak portrayal of the war at home with perplexity - if not annoyance. It is a perception gap that has put the military and media at odds, as troops complain that the media care only about death tolls, while the media counter that their job is to look at the broader picture, not through the soda straw of troops' individual experiences. Yet as perceptions about Iraq have neared a tipping point in Congress, some soldiers and marines worry that their own stories are being lost in the cacophony of terror and fear. They acknowledge that their experience is just that - one person's experience in one corner of a war-torn country. Yet amid the terrible scenes of reckless hate and lives lost, many members of one of the hardest-hit units insist that they saw at least the spark of progress. "We know we made a positive difference," says Cpl. Jeff Schuller of the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, who spent all but one week of his eight-month tour with Mayer. "I can't say at what level, but I know that where we were, we made it better than it was when we got there." It is the simplest measure of success, but for the marine, soldier, or sailor, it may be the only measure of success. In a business where life and death rest on instinctive adherence to thoroughly ingrained lessons, accomplishment is ticked off in a list of orders followed and tasks completed. And by virtually any measure, America's servicemen and women are accomplishing the day-to-day tasks set before them. Yet for the most part, America is less interested in the success of Operation Iron Fist, for instance, than the course of the entire Iraq enterprise. "What the national news media try to do is figure out: What's the overall verdict?" says Brig. Gen. Volney Warner, deputy commandant of the Army Command and General Staff College. "Soldiers don't do overall verdicts." Yet soldiers clearly feel that important elements are being left out of the media's overall verdict. On this day, a group of Navy medics gather around a table in the Cleveland-area headquarters of the 3/25 - a Marine reserve unit that has converted a low-slung school of pale brick and linoleum tile into its spectacularly red-and-gold offices. Their conversation could be a road map of the kind of stories that military folks say the mainstream media are missing. One colleague made prosthetics for an Iraqi whose hand and foot had been cut off by insurgents. When other members of the unit were sweeping areas for bombs, the medics made a practice of holding impromptu infant clinics on the side of the road. They remember one Iraqi man who could not hide his joy at the marvel of an electric razor. And at the end of the 3/25's tour, a member of the Iraqi Army said: "Marines are not friends; marines are brothers," says Lt. Richard Malmstrom, the battalion's chaplain. "It comes down to the familiar debate about whether reporters are ignoring the good news," says Peter Hart, an analyst at Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, a usually left-leaning media watchdog in New York. In Hit, where marines stayed in force to keep the peace, the progress was obvious, say members of the 3/25. The residents started burning trash and fixing roads - a sign that the city was returning to a sense of normalcy. Several times, "people came up to us [and said]: 'There's a bomb on the side of the road. Don't go there,' " says Pfc. Andrew Howland. Part of the reason that such stories usually aren't told is simply the nature of the war. Kidnappings and unclear battle lines have made war correspondents' jobs almost impossible. Travel around the country is dangerous, and some reporters never venture far from their hotels. "It has to have some effect on what we see: You end up with reporting that waits for the biggest explosion of the day," says Mr. Hart. To the marines of the 3/25, the explosions clearly do not tell the whole story. Across America, many readers know the 3/25 only as the unit that lost 15 marines in less than a week - nine of them in the deadliest roadside bombing against US forces during the war. When the count of Americans killed in Iraq reached 2,000, this unit again found itself in the stage lights of national notice as one of the hardest hit. But that is not the story they tell. It is more than just the dire tone of coverage - though that is part of it. It is that Iraq has touched some of these men in ways that even they have trouble explaining. This, after all, has not been a normal war. Corporals Mayer and Schuller went over not to conquer a country, but to help win its hearts and minds. In some cases, though, it won theirs. Schuller, a heavyweight college wrestler with a thatch of blond hair and engine blocks for arms, cannot help smiling when he speaks of giving an old man a lighter: "He thought it was the coolest thing." Yet both he and the blue-eyed, square-jawed Mayer pause for a moment before they talk about the two 9-year-old Iraqis whom members of their battalion dubbed their "girlfriends." The first time he saw them, Mayer admits that he was making the calculations of a man in the midst of a war. He was tired, he was battered, and he was back at a Hit street corner that he had patrolled many times before. In Iraq, repetition of any sort could be an invitation of the wrong sort - an event for which insurgents could plan. So Mayer and Schuller took out some of the candy they carried, thinking that if children were around, perhaps the terrorists wouldn't attack. It was a while before the children realized that these two marines, laden with arms to the limit of physical endurance, were not going to hurt them. But among the children who eventually came, climbing on the pair's truck and somersaulting in the street, there were always the same two girls. When they went back to base, they began to hoard Oreos and other candy in a box. "They became our one little recess from the war," says Mayer. "You're seeing some pretty ridiculous tragedies way too frequently, and you start to get jaded. The kids on that street - I got to realize I was still a human being to them." It happened one day when he was on patrol. Out of nowhere, a car turned the corner and headed down the alley at full speed. "A car coming at you real fast and not stopping in Iraq is not what you want to see," says Mayer. Yet instead of jumping in his truck, he stood in the middle of the street and pushed the kids behind him. The car turned. Now, Mayer and Schuller can finish each other's sentences when they think about the experience. "You really start to believe that you protect the innocent," says Schuller. "It sounds like a stupid cliché...." "But it's not," adds Mayer. "You are in the service of others." For Mayer, who joined the reserves because he wanted to do something bigger than himself, and for Schuller, a third-generation marine, Iraq has given them a sense of achievement. Now when they look at the black-and-white pictures of marines past in the battalion headquarters, "We're adding to that legacy," says Schuller. This is what they wish to share with the American people - and is also the source of their frustration. Their eight months in Iraq changed their lives, and they believe it has changed the lives of the Iraqis they met as well. On the day he left, Mayer gave his "girlfriend" a bunch of pens - her favorite gift - wrapped in a paper that had a picture of the American flag, the Iraqi flag, and a smiley face. The man with the lighter asked Schuller if he was coming back. He will if called upon, he says. Whether or not these notes of grace and kindness are as influential as the dirge of war is open to question. But many in the military feel that they should at least be a part of the conversation. Says Warner of reaching an overall verdict: "I'm not sure that reporting on terrorist bombings with disproportionate ink is adequately answering that question."
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 * ON DUTY: Lt. Richard Malmstrom, battalion chaplain.
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http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1128/p01s02-usmi.html

MANILA – Filipino ex-cops and soldiers are among the growing number of "mercenaries" recruited to provide security in Iraq, a UN report said. The UN report, which will be presented next month, warned that methods used by private western security companies do not prepare recruits for the conflict. The strain, the report warned, could place recruits "in a situation where they can violate human rights because they are armed."
 * || More Filipino mercenaries fighting in Iraq ||  ||

Private security guards employed by western companies make up the second highest number of armed forces currently posted in Iraq, after the US military but ahead of the British troops, according to Jose Luis Gomez del Prado, the head of a UN workgroup on the use of mercenaries.

Many of the recruits stem from former police and military forces in the Philippines, Peru and Equador, according to the workgroup, which recently conducted missions to the latter two countries. “They are trained quickly but not prepared for armed conflict situations," Gomez del Prado said. “They are sent there, they receive M16 [assault rifles] and are placed in very dangerous areas like the Green Zone [in Baghdad], convoys and embassies," he added. While the recruits sometimes carry out important and honorable tasks like protecting humanitarian organization convoys, they are also “in a situation where they can violate human rights because they are armed," according to the UN expert. “At least 160 companies are operating in Iraq. They probably employ 35,000 to 40,000 people," Gomez del Prado said on the sidelines of a second workgroup session in Geneva last week. More than 400 of these private employees have died in Iraq since 2003, putting their casualties below the number suffered by US armed forces but ahead of British military deaths, he said. “And a lot more have been injured.’ The workgroup is scheduled to deliver a report to the UN Commission for Human Rights next month emphasizing concerns over mercenary recruitment methods used by US companies like Triple Canopy and Blackwater. While Americans and Europeans working in war zones for private security companies often make as much as $10,000 (7,600 euros) a month, Peruvians doing the same job seldom make more than $1,000, and their working rights are often violated, Gomez del Prado said. “The contracts they sign often hide things that aren’t clear. The original is in English, which most of them do not speak," he said. The recruits are entitled to the labor rights applied in the country where the company hiring them is headquartered, but the UN expert pointed out that it is hard to imagine “a poor Peruvian filing suit in an American court." The number of private security companies working in war zones like Iraq has exploded in recent years, with one private security employee for every four US soldiers currently stationed in Iraq. That number is up from one private security guard for every 50 US soldiers who took part in the first Gulf war in 1990/91, Gomez del Prado said. He is alarmed at the legal vacuum in which these companies operate, pointing out that their activities are not actually covered by the strict definition of mercenaries given in the 1989 International Convention against the Use, Recruitment, Financing and Training of Mercenaries, signed by 28 countries.

http://manilamaildc.net/article1817.html || ||

WASHINGTON D.C. – Even while the community was still mourning the death of Abay,a Filipino American soldier at the US Naval Hospital here last month, another Filipino American soldier was reportedly killed by a roadside bomb while he was on patrol in Tibu Falria.Killed was Sergeant Richard V. Correa, 25, a squad leader in the US Army, was killed early this month, according to a report Sunday in the Honolulu Star Bulletin."
 * || Another Filam soldier is killed in Iraq ||  ||

The anti-war website said he died of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near their position during a dismounted patrol. He was assigned to the 2nd Batallion, 14th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), from Fort Drum, New York.

Correa left his hometown of Lingayen, Pangasinan in the 1990s for Honolulu where he stayed with his cousin, Mae Correa Acosta Myhre, and pursued his studies. He first joined the Air Force and assigned to Florida before moving to the Army in 2004.

His parents, sisters and a brother are still residing in Pangasinan where his body will be brought and laid to rest. In November 2006, another FilAm, Army Staff Sgt. Richwell A. Doria, 25, died in Kirkuk after being struck by small-arms fire during an air-assault mission. The anti-war website ttp://www.antiwar.com/casualties/ estimated that 3, 495 American soldiers have died since the Iraq war began on March 19, 2003, of which 2, 883 died in combat. The number of injured Americans was placed officially at 25, 549 as of June 3, 2007.

Correa obtained his US citizenship in November 2006. The Star Bulletin quoted his cousin, Mae Myhre from Honolulu, as saying that Correa considered the grant of his American citizenship a fulfillment of his dream, and a stepping stone to attaining his ultimate goal of being a member of the US Army’s elite Delta Force. Myhre said she grew up with Correa grew up in the Philippines and considered him her brother. She said becoming a citizen was a prerequisite for Delta Force. But Correa has died before he could be a Delta Force member.

Correa had also planned to marry his fiancée, Corey Dell of Florida, in December after returning from Iraq. They met four years ago when he was stationed in Florida as a mechanic in the Air Force.

Correa was deployed to Iraq in August 2006. He was expecting to return to Honolulu this coming August, but had his tour extended to October or November. “He want(ed) Honolulu to be the place to stay when he retires,” said Myhre. “He loved Hawaii. He was dreaming of buying a house at North Shore.” According to Myhre, Correa always loved the military. “He’s that person who wants action all the time. He wants to have that honor, like a hero," she said. Although crushed by Correa’s death, she found comfort knowing that her cousin died chasing his dream.

“He died happy,” she said. “He’s in love with the military — that’s what he wants. He wants to serve his country. ... He served his mission in life." A news release from the US Army said Correa completed the Army Ranger course, the Combat Life Saver Course and Airborne School. He was a squad leader in the 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), based in Fort Drum, New York. http://www.manilamaildc.net/article2264.html

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