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Iraq Memories Cast in Bronze

Rich Galen

Friday April 8, 2005



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  • Air Force Lt. Col. Claudia Foss and I were contemporaries in Iraq. She got there about two weeks after I did, and left about three weeks later.

  • At an award ceremony yesterday at Scott Air Force Base outside of St. Louis, she was awarded a Bronze Star for her extraordinary work.

  • In the citation which accompanied her Bronze Star it was noted that she had fearlessly traveled throughout Iraq meeting with citizens into whose hands the sword of democracy would soon be thrust.

  • Claudia was a member of a remarkable group of American and British planners who helped the Iraqis take their first baby steps toward the elections which were held this past January 30.

  • Those elections directly led to the announcement this week that a transitional government was well on the way to being formed. A transitional government being formed will lead to a constitution being written. A constitution being written will lead to the election of a permanent legislature. A permanent legislature will signal the true beginning of a free Iraq.

  • The Bronze Star was presented by Lt. Gen. John Baker but it was earned on the roads of Iraq, in convoys leading to the cities and towns to which LTC Foss and her team traveled, preaching the gospel of democracy to people for whom democracy was no less foreign than the English they spoke.

  • But the passion with which they preached it helped the translators deliver not just the words of democracy, but the meaning of democracy.

  • Following the official presentation, I told the Air Mobility Command Public Affairs staff this:
    There were - and are - a large number of brave men and women in Iraq. They did - and do - follow orders and go into dangerous situations and perform their duties with efficiency and skill.

    There were a somewhat smaller number of brave people who were tactically proficient. They deployed brave people in such a manner as to give them the best possible chance to get in, conduct their mission, and get safely back out.

    There were still fewer brave and tactically proficient people who could construct strategies to gain the necessary battle advantage. Those who, for instance, could order the tacticians to design an attack on specific sites in Mosul to distract an enemy from a larger operation planned for Fallujah.

    But the rarest person in Iraq was the brave, tactically proficient, strategist who had the creativity to understand the nature of what we were trying to accomplish, and the vision to comprehend the outcome even when that outcome, far over the horizon, was concealed from the rest of us.

    Such a person is LTC Claudia Foss, recipient of the Bronze Star Medal.

  • On Wednesday night I was the guest of the Fox folks at the annual Radio & TV Correspondent's Dinner in Washington. A reporter at my table asked me if I ever doubted the outcome in Iraq.

  • "Never," I said. "It was harder than I thought it would be, but I never doubted it would work."

  • President Bush was supposed to attend the dinner, but the death of Pope John Paul II moved the duty to Vice President Cheney who got off the best line of the night:
    "I only found out a couple of days ago I had to be here and be funny."

    Loooong pause, followed by the deadpan delivery of;

    "I'm not into funny."

  • A reporter covering the Pope's funeral quoted a spokesman for the Italian railroad saying, "If everyone tries to leave from St. Peter's station at the same time, it will be the end of the world."

  • A friend asked, in an e-mail, if I could imagine an Amtrak person saying that.

  • I wrote back that an Amtrak guy would have said: "If everyone tries to leave from St. Peter's station at the same time, it will be the end of � my shift."

  • On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A Mullfoto of LTC Foss with her Bronze Star and me. Hey! One out of two ain't bad. Also, a link to the dot-mil page showing the criteria for the award of a Bronze Star Medal.

    --END --
    Copyright © 2005 Richard A. Galen

                                                                       

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