New York Times July 4, 2003
Anger Rises for Families of Troops in Iraq
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
F ORT HOOD, Tex., July 3 Luisa Leija was in bed the other morning, she
recalled, when her 9-year-old daughter bounded in the room, saying,
"Mommy, mommy, there's a man in uniform at the door."
Ms. Leija, the wife of a young artillery captain in Iraq, threw on a
robe and took a deep breath. She dashed to the door, thinking: "This
is not happening to me. This can't be happening to me."
A soldier in full camouflage was on the doorstep. It was a neighbor
locked out of his house.
Ms. Leija is still upset. The panic has passed, but not the weariness.
Or the anger. Anger that her husband, Capt. Frank Leija, has not come
home yet, even though President Bush declared two months ago that
"major combat operations in Iraq have ended." Anger that the end of
that stage has not meant the beginning of peace, that the Army has
assigned new duties for her husband and his men that have nothing to
do with toppling Saddam Hussein.
And anger that the talk in Washington is not of taking troops out of
Iraq, but of sending more in.
"I want my husband home," Ms. Leija, a mother of three children, said.
"I am so on edge. When they first left, I thought yeah, this will be
bad, but war is what they trained for. But they are not fighting a
war. They are not doing what they trained for. They have become police
in a place they're not welcome."
Military families, so often the ones to put a cheery face on war, are
growing vocal. Since major combat for the 150,000 troops in Iraq was
declared over on May 1, more than 60 Americans, including 25 killed in
hostile encounters, have died in Iraq, about half the number of deaths
in the two months of the initial campaign.
Frustrations became so bad recently at Fort Stewart, Ga., that a
colonel, meeting with 800 seething spouses, most of them wives, had to
be escorted from the session.
"They were crying, cussing, yelling and screaming for their men to
come back," said Lucia Braxton, director of community services at Fort
Stewart.
The signs of discomfort seem to be growing beyond the military bases.
According to a Gallup poll published on Tuesday, the percentage of the
public who think the war is going badly has risen to 42 percent, from
13 percent in May. Likewise, the number of respondents who think the
war is going well has dropped, from 86 percent in May to 70 percent a
month ago to 56 percent.
Continued at: URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/04/national/04FAMI.html