Army general sees more stability in Iraq

THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN ^ | November 23, 2005 | PETER ROPER

[mdittmar]

After five months on the job, the commander of the Army Corps of Engineers in Iraq said that nation is turning a corner in the U.S.-backed effort to establish a democracy there and American patience would be rewarded in the next year.

"In my experience, 99 percent of the Iraqi people want us there to keep providing stability for the time being - regardless of what Iraqi or American political leaders might say about a timetable for withdrawal," Brig. Gen. William McCoy Jr. said Tuesday.

"It's already beginning to happen, but you are going to see more Iraqi troops taking on the job of fighting the insurgents and it's my own feeling that Iraq will be very different a year from now," said McCoy. The 54-year-old general is home in Pueblo for Thanksgiving, visiting his wife, Jill.

McCoy acknowledged that Americans are concerned about the growing number of U.S. soldiers killed - more than 2,100 have died - and thousands wounded.

"It's very hard to lose the soldiers we've lost in the fighting," McCoy acknowledged. "I've had to bury five soldiers before I went to Iraq. But in each of those cases, the widows and the families all thought their loved one was doing the right thing. In my heart, I believe we're doing the right thing for the Iraqi people."

McCoy's job in Iraq is to keep working down a list of 3,200 construction projects - building schools, wastewater treatment plants, electrical generators, police stations, hospitals and such - to create a new infrastructure in Iraq, improving the basic quality of life for Iraqis. It's a $20 billion program and the Army has completed more than 1,500 projects and has either finished or is at work on 2,900 sites.

Like other U.S. efforts in Iraq, insurgents have targeted the Army Corps projects as a way to disrupt reconstruction. McCoy said more than 70 Iraqi contractors have been murdered by insurgents for working on Army Corps projects.

"Most Iraqis want a better life, they want stability," he said. "The insurgents are foreign fighters and a few rejectionists - people who still believe Saddam Hussein can come back to power somehow, believe it or not."

The big infrastructure problems are providing electricity, clean water and jobs for Iraqis. Although insurgents keep sabotaging electrical lines into Baghdad, McCoy said that city is now getting 12 hours of power each day. He said that all of Iraq will be getting that much power in the next year.

"That's a huge difference from Hussein's regime, when Baghdad was the only city that had electrical power," said McCoy. "Hussein didn't care about the rest of the country, but we are providing power everywhere. Not all the time, but everywhere."

Similarly, the Army Corps is creating sewage and clean water systems in towns and villages that never had either before. "You don't wonder why Iraqi children have so many health problems when you see them walking down streets where there is raw sewage running," he said.

McCoy said the $20 billion construction program the Army Corps is overseeing is just a fraction of Iraq's needs. The World Bank put the cost of Iraq's development needs at $100 billion, he said.

What McCoy said he finds heartening is a growing anger and resentment among Iraqis toward the insurgents and the violence they inflict on everyday citizens.

"We recently finished renovating a school and no sooner were we finished than the insurgents came and murdered the two teachers," McCoy said tersely. "The local people understood that was nothing more than the insurgents trying to prevent their children from being educated. That's why I believe that al Qaida is going to realize one of these days that it has lost the fight in Iraq."

McCoy said the U.S. goals in Iraq are simple but difficult - establish a democratic, accountable government that Iraq can defend on its own and not have the country become a haven for terrorists.

"The new Iraq isn't going to look like the United States. But I think it can be a functioning democracy in that it's tolerant of the various religious and ethnic factions that make up the country," he said.

McCoy has been in the Army for 31 years and is the son of a career Army warrant officer. He expects to be in Iraq another seven months and probably longer. Pueblo became his adopted hometown after he met and married his wife, Jill, here in 1983. He has been selected for promotion to major general in the near future.

McCoy is hopeful and confident that Iraqis want their new government to succeed, if for no other reason, so U.S. soldiers will leave.

"We forget that these things take time. (West) Germany did not elect its own government after World War II until 1956," he said. "Yet, we've pushed the Iraqis into conducting elections and adopting a constitution just 2 years after the war. The country is moving forward at a very fast pace."

[kellynla]

More good news!

If folks would remember the problems after WWII;
the troops in Iraq are doing an exemplary job!

Semper Fi,
Kelly

[gov_bean_ counter]

ESSAYONS!!!

[shield]

Our Troops have excellent training....they're doing an outstanding job. God Bless each and every one of them. ;o)

[MEG33]

Great report..Thank you for the good news!

[Names Ash Housewares]

Excellent. Spread the news!

[Steve_Seattle]

"We forget that these things take time. (West) Germany did not elect its own government after World War II until 1956," he said. "Yet, we've pushed the Iraqis into conducting elections and adopting a constitution just 2 years after the war. The country is moving forward at a very fast pace."

This bears repeating, even among conservatives. Iraq is still not a done deal, but we forget that - despite all the "quagmire" talk - things have been moving very fast when compared with similar situations in recent history. I think Iraq might be closer to stability than Kosovo, Clinton's great triumph. (And no one in the MSM asks whether Clinton had an adequate post-war plan, or even a coherent idea of what the war was supposed to accomplish. It was basically a PR stunt intended to impress the kind of people who flew the planes into the Twin Towers; needless to say, it didn't work.)