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Iraqi Orphan Who Helped U.S. Troops Starts New Life Here (the best kind of story)
AP ^ | October 20, 2004 | Joe Ruff

Posted on 10/20/2004 2:59:59 AM PDT by Former Military Chick

BOYS TOWN, Neb. — An Iraqi orphan credited with helping U.S. troops capture insurgents in Baghdad started a new life Tuesday at Girls and Boys Town, the storied home for troubled youngsters.

Wearing a Girls and Boys Town windbreaker and holding a plastic American flag on a stick, “Johnny,” 16 — the nickname U.S. soldiers gave him — said he was happy to be in the USA.

“Everything's OK,” Johnny said. “Real cool.”

Soldiers in Baghdad encountered the boy living on the streets and discovered that he knew a lot about the people behind insurgent attacks in the city, said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Brian McKiernan, commander of the 1st Armored Division's 4-27 Field Artillery Unit.

McKiernan said Tuesday that he took Johnny into the unit as a janitor in September 2003 and the boy learned some English. The boy eventually helped U.S. troops apprehend more than 40 insurgents and seize several weapons caches, McKiernan said.

“He came to identify with the soldiers and admire them,” McKiernan said. “He is a unique individual with a lot of heart, very loyal.”

After learning that his unit was going to be transferred to Germany, McKiernan contacted Girls and Boys Town about helping the boy. McKiernan feared that insurgents could target Johnny for helping the Americans.

“I thought if we could give him a better lot in life, a fresh start, it would be worth it,” McKiernan said.

Johnny arrived in the USA on Monday and ate a McDonald's hamburger — his first American meal. At Girls and Boys Town, he will live with a couple who have seven other orphans and two of their own children.

For privacy reasons, Girls and Boys Town would not disclose the boy's name.

Although Johnny had little schooling in Iraq, he said he wants to get a high school diploma and join the U.S. Army.

The Rev. Edward Flanagan founded Boys Town in 1917 as a home for wayward boys. It was depicted in a 1938 movie starring Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney.


TOPICS: Front Page News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: boystown; iraq; iraqichildren; tips; troops
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What a wonderful story to wake up to. Please share.

He wants to join the US Army, do I need to say more?

1 posted on 10/20/2004 2:59:59 AM PDT by Former Military Chick
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To: blondee123; Jet Jaguar; Gamecock; Kathy in Alaska; broadsword; FairOpinion; ONETWOONE; ...

Absolute good news **ping**!! Good morning!

What a young man, he would like to join the US Army! Need I say more about this article?


2 posted on 10/20/2004 3:04:53 AM PDT by Former Military Chick (REALLY REALLY Ticked OFF in the heartland)
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To: Former Military Chick

BTTT !!


3 posted on 10/20/2004 3:05:00 AM PDT by musicman
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To: Former Military Chick

Not sure if this is the same boy, but I read a story a few months back about this boy or another boy who actually turned in his father and then went to live with the troops on a base in Iraq. One of his surrogates at the base who eventually came back to the U.S was trying to get him over here. I'll try to find the story.


4 posted on 10/20/2004 3:05:56 AM PDT by beaversmom (Michael Medved has the Greatest radio show on GOD's Green Earth)
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To: musicman

Good morning and thank you for the post. Pass this along to all you know, including your local networks.


5 posted on 10/20/2004 3:05:58 AM PDT by Former Military Chick (REALLY REALLY Ticked OFF in the heartland)
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To: Former Military Chick

You are VERY welcome !!....(and gee, I guess this reply takes this BTTT for the "morning" FR crew !!!)


6 posted on 10/20/2004 3:10:28 AM PDT by musicman
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To: musicman
Good news should continue to go back to the top! I was just thrilled to post it.

In the event you would like to see one of the other good news articles (there were a few last night, not in the MSM) here is the link To Our Soldiers ! :)

7 posted on 10/20/2004 3:14:05 AM PDT by Former Military Chick (REALLY REALLY Ticked OFF in the heartland)
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To: Former Military Chick

Thanks for the ping, what a wonderful story, it shows how great our soldiers are and how much they care.


8 posted on 10/20/2004 3:16:18 AM PDT by rotundusmaximus
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To: rotundusmaximus

Glad you did not mind the ping. I thought it was just a wonderful article, good news. Something missed in the main stream media. Would like to change that.


9 posted on 10/20/2004 3:34:37 AM PDT by Former Military Chick (REALLY REALLY Ticked OFF in the heartland)
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To: Former Military Chick
" In the event you would like to see one of the other good news articles (there were a few last night, not in the MSM) here is the link To Our Soldiers ! :)

...and thanks for the "To Our Soldiers" link, which is now bookmarked !!

10 posted on 10/20/2004 3:35:31 AM PDT by musicman
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To: Former Military Chick
Girls and Boys Town

I have been following his story, but I am concerned that his location within the US has been disclosed. While he is in a good place, He is still a target and his enemies have already shown that they don't stop at slaughtering innocent boys and girls like sheep.

11 posted on 10/20/2004 3:42:44 AM PDT by Dutchgirl (Professional Journalism "Can you smell what a crock they're cookin'?)
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To: beaversmom

Teh boy who turned in his father is a different one.

Troops named that one "Steve-O"

Apparently "DAddy" killed the kid's mom and a sibling.

AND was a Baathist.


12 posted on 10/20/2004 3:43:18 AM PDT by tiamat ("Just a Bronze-Age Gal, Trapped in a Techno-World!")
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To: Dutchgirl

While I understand your concern I have a feeling he will be just fine.

He is getting the best type of coverage. He is loved and cared for and folks will be looking out for him.

They have not given his last name, but, there are a few items I might not have given, I have faith it will be alright.

Great post though.


13 posted on 10/20/2004 3:44:50 AM PDT by Former Military Chick (REALLY REALLY Ticked OFF in the heartland)
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To: Former Military Chick

Please ping me with a good article anytime :) The MSM is too busy to report good news!


14 posted on 10/20/2004 3:45:19 AM PDT by rotundusmaximus
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To: Former Military Chick

Great story! I just with the AP would stop calling them insurgents. They're TERRORISTS!!!


15 posted on 10/20/2004 3:48:53 AM PDT by libertylover
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To: tiamat
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1234336/posts

Yes you are right different boy--I thought it might be. Didn't find the story I read a couple of months back but found an updated story from this month. Looks like this boy is now over here too. Hooray for both these boys. Here's an updated story of Steve-O:

Promise made, promise kept
Fort Wayne.com/ AP ^ | 03 October 2004

Posted on 10/03/2004 5:05:13 PM MDT by Lorianne

Iraqi boy proved to be unlikely informer, even turning in his father

FORT CARSON, Colo. – First Sgt. Daniel Hendrex was getting ready to leave the war when he went to see the Iraqi teenager one last time. He roused the boy from sleep and gave him his floppy camouflage hat and a promise.

Stay safe, Hendrex said. We will do what we can to get you out of here.

The 13-year-old clutched the hat and held out his arms. They hugged, teary-eyed. And then Hendrex was gone.

It had been four months since the skinny, street-smart Iraqi blurted out to American soldiers at a border checkpoint in Husaybah, Iraq, that he wanted to turn in an insurgent – his father.

The 100 soldiers of Fort Carson, Colo.-based Dragon Company, 1st Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, had seen informants before. Some were helpful, but many just wanted reward money.

Something was different about this one, though. He was willing to turn in his own father.

With that one decision, the teenager’s life, so full of horror and abuse, would change forever, and so would the lives of the soldiers around him.

He became an informant, giving the soldiers the best information they had yet. He ate with them, slept next to them, dressed like them.

They protected him like a brother. And now they were leaving him.

‘Steve-O’s’ story

He was known as “Steve-O” to the soldiers; the Army keeps his real name confidential, to protect him.

He grew up in Husaybah, a town of about 100,000 near the Syrian border. The oldest of his three brothers and two sisters, Steve-O and family lived in a small, dirt-floor house.

His father was once an army captain in the Republican Guard, the core of the Iraqi military. His father beat him, and Steve-O’s body bears the scars. His left eye is misaligned, a result of his father kicking him in the head.

Once, his father took a red-hot spoon and pressed it on top of Steve-O’s left hand. “My father,” the teen said, rubbing the scar.

After the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003, his father led a 40-man insurgency group. The beatings, Steve-O said, got worse, and his father became withdrawn.

“He would sit by himself. If I would go talk to him, he would hit me, beat me up,” Steve-O said through an interpreter. “He wouldn’t let anyone come near him.”

His father wanted him to fight the Americans. Steve-O, who only has a third-grade education, tried to run away to Fallujah, was caught and reluctantly accompanied his father on four missions.

He couldn’t bring himself to fire the AK-47 his father had given him, so he would hide and watch American soldiers passed by him. They didn’t seem so bad. He had seen soldiers giving candy to Iraqi children, and they had never done anything to him.

He knew he couldn’t tell his father that. So he would empty the ammunition from the rifle and tell his father he shot Americans.

“My father was very happy. He was very pleased. He gave me money,” Steve-O said. Steve-O feared for his life and those of his brothers and sisters.

One day in December, Steve-O told his family he was going to Syria to find work. Instead, he walked to the border checkpoint, where Dragon Company was stationed, and said he wanted to turn in his father.

He told them he had information on a 40-man insurgency cell and knew where a weapons cache was. First, he asked to be arrested, so no one would suspect he was a traitor.

The soldiers, not sure what to think, complied, handcuffing the teen and putting a sandbag over his head. The tank company was the only U.S. force in the area and was being attacked up to 10 times a day. The soldiers were understandably leery.

“My thought was, he very well could be setting us up for an ambush,” said Capt. Chad Roehrman, 29. “That’s always one of the concerns – they’re baiting us into something.” Steve-O started naming names, and some matched names on a wanted list the soldiers had.

Maybe Steve-O was the real deal. Either way, they would find out during the raid that night.

Two tanks and two Humvees carrying about 20 soldiers headed out into the town. Steve-O rode in a Humvee, wearing fatigues the Army lent him and a black ski mask so he wouldn’t be recognized.

The teen was nervous. Briefly, he wondered out loud about his father. When they arrived at Steve-O’s house, his father and a Syrian man were there, along with Steve-O’s mother and siblings. Both men were blindfolded and arrested.

The teenager pointed to an empty lot next to his home, and the soldiers and Steve-O started digging. Rockets, grenades, a land mine and a weapons system were all there.

“It was great intelligence,” said Hendrex, 35. “What it really did was validate Steve-O’s story.” Steve-O was legit.

Connecting the dots

A few days later, Steve-O, who slept on a cot on base, asked to see his mother. He went home in the morning, but quickly returned and told soldiers his mother had been beaten. She told her son she had a week to turn him over to an insurgent or his family would be killed.

“She said, ‘They know it was you and you’re the one who turned everybody in,’ ” Hendrex said the teen told him. Go back to the Americans, Steve-O’s mother told him. She knew what would happen to him if he stayed.

Several days later, Hendrex was going through pictures of captured insurgents while Steve-O sat nearby. Steve-O casually looked at the computer screen and said he knew the person. He did it repeatedly, naming insurgents as Hendrex clicked through the pictures.

Steve-O had connected the dots. He seemed to know everyone in the town, what they did and where they lived. He knew from the highest levels to the lowest. His father had taken him to numerous insurgent meetings, and Steve-O had soaked up everything he heard.

“He knew who was bad and who wasn’t,” Hendrex said. “He probably ID’d that day 20 people.” Other soldiers were still skeptical.

“How much can he really know?” wondered Sgt. Roy Johnson, 31. But, as they would come to find out, Steve-O would become their most successful informant.

Steve-O was barely 5 feet tall then, and in the crowded Humvee, he rode between the legs of the gunner, peeking out the window. He went on 20 missions and raids with his new American friends, several times coming under attack. “Mujahadeen! Mujahadeen!” he would yell, tugging on the pants of the gunner when he saw an insurgent.

He spoke only Arabic, so a translator usually traveled with him. The squadron that was usually attacked up to 10 times a day was now only attacked two to three times a week.

On one raid near his mother’s home, soldiers stopped to give her money. They told her to take her children and leave Husaybah the next day. Eventually, about 40 insurgents were caught by Steve-O identifying them and the soldiers comparing the information to their own.

Steve-O was happy living with the soldiers. They were all he had. The Americans were getting to know the Iraqi teenager so willing to help them. They taught him to play football and English words for “cot” and “blanket.” They watched movies together, played video games and wrestled.

Steve-O still wore his too-big fatigues, just like the soldiers, and even got his dark hair cut like them. He was eager to help the cooks, take out trash, and sweep floors.

The soldiers couldn’t help but smile at his big, silly grin. “He was one of us,” Roehrman said.

In late February, while on a mission near Steve-O’s home, the teen wanted to make sure his mother and siblings had left.vSteve-O stayed in the Humvee while Hendrex went inside.

The tiny, three-room house had been ransacked. Rotten food was on the stove and furniture was overturned. An uncle said Steve-O’s mother had been shot in the stomach, killed by the same insurgent who threatened to kill the family. The children, he said, had made it to Fallujah.

Early the next morning, Hendrex took Steve-O and the translator outside base headquarters and told the teenager his mother was dead. Steve-O tried to keep his emotions in check, but tears rolled down his face. Hendrex embraced the teen and cried with him.

Surrogate father

By late March, Dragon Company was preparing to hand off the area to Marines. Hendrex and Roehrman, now with another company, were trying to figure out what to do with Steve-O. Hendrex hoped to bring him to the United States.

They contacted the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait, inquiring about political asylum, humanitarian parole or relocation to another country, but Steve-O’s options were running out.

Dragon Company was going home to Fort Carson, and he would have to stay behind. The Marines agreed to take care of the teenager, but that was only temporary.

Hendrex told him: “We have to leave, but we will not forget you. I will try until the end of my days to get you out of here. Do not lose faith in us.”

Hendrex, a 14-year Army veteran whose wife is pregnant with their first child, was close to Steve-O, always making sure he was with him. He was his protector, a big brother, even a surrogate father to the teen.

He promised to get him out of Iraq, and gave him his floppy hat with “Hendrex” stitched in the back, in English and Arabic. Keep it, he said, until we see each other again.

Hendrex didn’t know whether that would happen. Steve-O stayed with the Marines, but didn’t go on any more missions because it was too dangerous. “You have this emptiness because you left one guy,” Hendrex said.

Once back in Colorado in April, Hendrex contacted congressmen, the office of the secretary of defense, the Army surgeon general’s office, news reporters, anyone who would listen.

Months passed without word.

Special parole

Steve-O trusted Hendrex, the man he calls “my brother,” and believed he would come for him.

“I’ve been with them for so long,” said Steve-O, who dreams of joining the U.S. military and becoming a doctor. “These guys never lie to me, they never hurt me.”

Finally, Hendrex learned Steve-O would be granted a special parole to come to the United States for a medical evaluation and intelligence debriefing. Beyond that, the military is reviewing options. Several Arabic-speaking families have volunteered to adopt Steve-O, and Dragon Company has been raising money for his education.

Steve-O’s father remains in jail, as does the man who is accused of killing his mother. The teen doesn’t know the fate of his brothers and sisters.

Just weeks ago, Hendrex got the call he had waited for six months. He traveled to Frankfurt, Germany, and met Steve-O as he stepped off the plane, clutching Hendrex’s hat.

The next night, before Steve-O went to the East Coast for his evaluation, the soldiers of Dragon Company gathered at the Colorado Springs Airport to welcome the teen who had done so much for them and had become part of their company.

He was 14 now, and had grown taller and more muscular. But here he was, in America, flashing that infectious smile. The last member of Dragon Company was finally home.

16 posted on 10/20/2004 4:07:40 AM PDT by beaversmom (Michael Medved has the Greatest radio show on GOD's Green Earth)
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To: beaversmom

Aw, thanks!

I was wondering whether or not the troops got that kid out: now i know!

Love your handle, BTW!


17 posted on 10/20/2004 4:19:36 AM PDT by tiamat ("Just a Bronze-Age Gal, Trapped in a Techno-World!")
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To: Former Military Chick

I hope someone adopts him. He deserves the very best.


18 posted on 10/20/2004 4:22:18 AM PDT by nmh (Intelligent people recognize Intelligent Design (God).)
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To: Former Military Chick; Ragtime Cowgirl; The Mayor

Good news ping!


19 posted on 10/20/2004 7:05:18 AM PDT by TXnMA (If your highest virtue is tolerance, then you have no others.)
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To: Former Military Chick

Hey, thanks for another good news ping! I thought this was the "Steve-O" story myself, but I see from other postings this is a separate case. Good news all the same! :)


20 posted on 10/20/2004 8:10:56 AM PDT by DTogo (U.S. out of the U.N. & U.N out of the U.S.)
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