News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
The soaking rain Sisters has experienced for the past couple of weeks feels mighty good to McKibben Womack.
The young Marine - a native of Sisters - has just returned from a 6-1/2-month tour of duty in the baking sands and concrete blast furnaces of Iraq, where temperatures soared well above 100 degrees.
"145 degrees was the hottest day we had," Womack said, as a soft rain misted down.
Womack was deployed with A-114 Battalion, an artillery unit reassigned to military police duties running a detention facility in the chronic hotspot of Ramadi.
"The first three or four months we got mortared pretty much every day," he said.
Womack was not engaged in direct combat, but it was going on all around him as he processed Arab fighters captured as the Marines struggled for control of the streets.
His unit also handled prisoner transfer and release.
The young Marine learned enough Arabic to communicate effectively.
"We got pretty good at carrying on conversations," he said.
Womack said the nature of the prisoners was not what he had expected.
"They were very docile when they came in," he said. "We weren't prepared for that, because U.S. prisons usually have a tougher crowd."
Almost all of those detained had carried out attacks on coalition forces, Womack reported. That did not necessarily mean they were hardcore fighters.
"A lot of guys we captured would get paid by the insurgents to carry out attacks."
Many of these prisoners were very curious about life in America and they were often quite friendly to their guards. That friendliness could turn, though, Womack noted.
"You'd talk to them one dayand they'd just love you," he said. "Then they'd ask for glass of water, and it's a busy day, and they'd hate you because you're late."
Womack said there are straight jobs available to young Iraqi men.
"It's a big question whether they want the jobs or not," he said.
His unit handled a couple of fairly high-level detainees.
"We caught a couple of guys that were kind of ringleaders in the insurgency," he said. "They did a lot of the financing and stuff like that."
Womack said he thought there was some progress made in Ramadi during his tour. The daily mortar attacks had diminished to weekly shellings and the streets were more secure.
"When we first got there, Ramadi was pretty much a hotspot and anywhere you'd go in Ramadi you could get into a gunfight," he said.
By October there was about one IED (Improvised Explosive Device) attack a week and there were some neighborhoods where marines could enter homes and talk to residents.
Attacks were ramping up by the time Womack left as insurgents launched an offensive during the Islamic holy days of Ramadan.
"A lot of the people are afraid," Womack said. "So it's really important that we be out in the streets showing we really do care."
Womack believes the key to any success possible in Iraq must come from "understanding the Arab mindset."
He noted that Iraqis, long oppressed by the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein and now enduring three years of warfare, tend not to think much beyond the day-to-day. Not being future-oriented means that some Iraqis can make self-destructive decisions that appear reasonable at the time but don't give them much future.
Whether that mindset will change remains to be seen.
"The Arabs are a strong people if they can get behind something," Womack said. "It's just whether they can all get together, which is still up in the air."
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