The Costs of War: a reflection on eight years in Iraq

KALW originally aired this documentary on the 8th anniversary of the Iraq War. We republish it today in remembrance of the veterans and civilians whose lives were forever changed in the aftermath of 9/11.

HOLLY KERNAN: It was March 19, 2003:

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: My fellow citizens, at this hour American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.

The defense strategy was called “Shock and Awe”: the idea of using a spectacular display of force to intimidate a military opponent. The stated purpose of the invasion of Iraq was ousting leader Saddam Hussein – and finding his alleged stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.

PRESIDENT BUSH: The United States and other nations did nothing to deserve or invite this threat, but we will do everything to defeat it. Instead of drifting along toward tragedy, we will set a course toward safety. Before the day of horror can come, before it is too late to act, this danger will be removed.

After September 11, 2001, the United States launched what it called a “global war on terror.” In 2002, the U.S. was fighting in Afghanistan and accusing Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein of possessing weapons of mass destruction.

DONAL RUMSFELD: If someone is waiting for a so called smoking gun…

PRESIDENT BUSH: We cannot wait for the final proof…

RUMSFELD: …it is certain that we will have waited too long…

PRESIDENT BUSH: …the smoking gun…

CONDALEEZZA RICE: We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud...

PRESIDENT BUSH: …that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud...

The alarming rhetoric created both fear and a sense of urgency. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fueled the fire.

RUMSFELD: There are known knowns. There are known unknowns, but there are also unknown unknowns.

Inspectors from the United Nations were unable to determine if Iraq was mounting a chemical or nuclear threat.

RUMSFELD: There are known unknowns

Still, the political momentum grew. And on March 19, 2003, the U.S. and its allies began a massive bombing of Baghdad.

YARA BADDAY: I remember that day. It was probably one of the worst days of my life.

Iraqi American Yara Badday was 23 years old, living in Southern California with her parents and brother.

BADDAY: We were watching Al Jazeera, we were watching CNN, we were watching the different ways at that point. We had satellite, so we could watch side by side, how different the portrayal was and all of the meanings that can be construed from that kind of difference, you know?

PRESIDENT BUSH: …defend the world from grave danger…

The night vision cameras with the green and the bombing and the explosions, and it’s fuzzy, those pictures… 

CNN REPORTER: This is the much advertised shock and awe. The campaign that is supposed to not so much destroy Iraq as to destroy the will of Iraq’s leaders to resist – ‘This is what’s going to happen if you don’t surrender.’

BADDAY: They didn’t make much sense, those images. But…

PRESIDENT BUSH: …this danger will be removed…

BADDAY: … you just knew it was destruction. You don’t know what it means even. You don’t know when it’s going to stop. You don’t know when it’s going to get rebuilt. You can’t think of construction when you’re still dealing with the destruction of it all.

Iraqis would live with that destruction for years. Still, many celebrated the U.S. action. There was hope that ousting Saddam Hussein might bring about positive change.

BADDAY: My dad’s family in large part were killed by Saddam’s forces. Some of them were taken and by taken we don’t necessarily know what that means, whether they were killed or imprisoned somewhere.

Yara Badday’s family had opposed the Saddam Hussein regime for decades. So, she says the idea of an Iraq without the dictator in power was liberating.

BADDAY: For my dad and his peers, the other men in the community – a lot of them saw this as their opportunity. They were the ones who, who had been, who had struggled so much against that regime. Their life became characterized in opposition to that regime. So anything would have been better.

On December 13, 2003, U.S. troops captured Saddam Hussein.

PAUL BREMER: Ladies and Gentlemen, we got him.

BADDAY: I remember very vividly actually watching the capture of Saddam and when he was in the hole and those images, I think they were all on the news with his beard and he looked disgusting.

PRESIDENT BUSH: …this danger...

BADDAY: I used to grow up dreaming about killing him. (laughs) And now here he was, and I would think, what, if I had him face to face, what would I do with this man? What would I do, and I would think of the most horrendous ways to just hurt someone the way he’s hurt so many people. And I couldn’t think of anything, because it’s been done – everything he did … he can’t take that back. It’s done. It’s done.

On May 1, President George W. Bush gave his famous speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln, in front of a banner declaring “Mission Accomplished.”

PRESIDENT BUSH: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.

RICHARD BECKER: I did not believe for one minute that it was mission accomplished.

Richard Becker is the West Coast Coordinator of the peace activist group called the ANSWER Coalition.

BECKER: And the idea that was perpetrated by people like Paul Wolfowitz, who was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense at the time, that they would be throwing, that the Iraqis would be throwing chocolate and flowers at the occupying troops. I mean we just ridiculed that idea at the time.

PAUL WOLFOWITZ: These are Arabs, 23 million of the most educated people in the Arab world who are going to welcome us as liberators.

There was early jubilation, but it quickly gave way to chaos and widespread looting.

NEWSCAST: Images of looting at the national museum have shocked the world.

BECKER: And the fact that the, the U.S. occupation forces moved in dismantled the institutions of the Iraqi state but then did nothing to replace them in the short term made that not so surprising.

The power vacuum would eventually fan sectarian violence that erupted throughout the country.

GHAZWAN AL-SHARIF: The page turned 180 degree against me. In my country, translators are considered as a, we betrayed the country – that’s what they think. We are traitors.

Iraqi translator Ghazwan Al-sharif witnessed the change take place in his own life.

AL-SHARIF: When the invasion came, my people from Tikrit came to me to and told me to help them translate because the U.S. Army brought translators, but very weak, poor English translation. At that time, I had support from my people and from the U.S. Army, for sure, for perhaps a couple of months. And later on, they threatened me several times, they tried to kill me.

This air of suspicion was in full force when Marine Ryan Berg arrived in Iraq in 2004.

RYAN BERG: My name is Ryan Berg and I'm from Omaha, Nebraska.

He was stationed in Mahmudiyah in what was nicknamed the “Triangle of Death.”

BERG: We were struck by that name initially until we got our feet wet and began to patrol the neighborhoods. We did foot patrols and vehicle patrols mainly to show our presence that we were there. The mission was essentially that, to be a show of force, and to root out any bad guys in the area.

But that mission was becoming increasingly complicated. For many Iraqis, appearing to cooperate with the U.S. military put a target on their back. Places like police recruiting centers were frequently bombed. On one training day, Berg remembers searching Iraqi recruits when a man blew himself up, making everyone scramble for cover.

BERG: I was lying in the prone position on my stomach and a guy was trying to crawl into the base and I had my weapon pointing at him. There was a staff sergeant behind me – he was two ranks above me but he was a younger guy, I could tell. And I had my weapon pointed at this guy who was bleeding – at that point you don't know who's enemy, who's what. He told me to shoot him. And I, I’m not going to shoot this guy – he's crawling in, he's not strapped with explosives or pointing a weapon at me and that’s the point I flipped off safe.

And that was a memorable experience for me because he so easily said to shoot him.

Marine Ryan Berg served two tours of duty in Iraq. He says he saw his mission as protecting the Iraqi people.

But as the war continued, Iraqis increasingly viewed the Americans as an occupying force. Yara Badday traveled to her parents’ native Iraq to witness the conflict firsthand.

BADDAY: It seemed that a lot of the military that I encountered were suffering just as much as everyone else there. People were saying that priests were flying in airplanes, aircrafts full of priests were coming in just to speak with suicidal soldiers. American soldiers. That’s how desperate the situation was. I saw, I saw grown men cry.

Most of the service members in Iraq were male, but more women served in Iraq than any other U.S. war.

STARLYN LARA: There were times where you needed females to search other females, and you'd realize how very few there were to actually follow through with those and how sometimes it created a lot of friction with the Iraqis. They really weren't comfortable with a male searching a female, and the need for women to fulfill those roles.

My name is Starlyn Lara. I served active duty in the United States Army from 1995 to 2007.

Starlyn Lara served two tours of duty in Iraq. One of her missions was to infuse government money into the Iraqi economy around her base. This often included going to bargaining sessions with Iraqi civilians – but, she says, as a woman, she had to stay in the background.

LARA: I was just in the backseat, if you will, so a lot of my male counterparts had the opportunity to do the dialogue and of course we had interpreters communicating. But a lot had happened, and a lot of the people that we dealt with that were Iraqis learned English, very well to where they could interact with us, and negotiate, and bargain. They were adapting.

BRIAN WILLIAMS: (of MSNBC): A free national election has now taken place here in Iraq.

TIMES OF EARTH REPORTER: Millions of Iraqi defied insurgents’ threats to disrupt the elections and came out in force to choose a new Parliament.

ALEX CHADWICK (of NPR’s “Day to Day”): Elections officials estimate roughly 8 million of Iraq’s 14 million eligible voters did vote…

Marine Ryan Berg remembers witnessing democracy take shape in Iraq.

BERG: So we were patrolling around, and to see someone with the purple finger was kind of a moment that I knew was historically and politically important, that I took in but just didn't realize because I was there to protect mine and their life. So it was just a moment for me where I knew that my job was important.

NEWSCAST: As is usually the case here in Iraq, inside every silver lining looms a dark cloud. That greater turnout comes from the Sunnis, who massively rejected this constitution, and there are fears that this will further divide this country along religious and ethnic lines.

In February 2006, Iraq’s instability increased. The destruction of the holy Shiite shrine in Samarra marked the beginning of intense sectarian fighting that led to the most violent year for Iraqi civilians since the invasion.

AL-SHARIF: I was sitting in the first floor in the middle of the house and it was nighttime, and suddenly three big dynamites hit the house. The first bomb when you heard it, you say, “Oh God, it’s Americans again, bombing.” Because everyday, this is life.

But this time, it wasn’t an American bomb. Al-sharif says his house was attacked by Iraqis who considered him a traitor. He says his younger sister was wounded in the blast.

AL-SHARIF: I carry her to the emergency room and opened her hand and saw a cut from her ear towards her mouth, and I can see from her cheek, her tooth. And blood was, I was, you know, swimming with blood, her blood.

If I didn’t work for the U.S. Army or if I didn’t work as a translator, is this going to happen to me, to my sister, to my house? No, it’s not going to happen. So, yes, I do blame myself, but do I regret working for the U.S. Army? No, I don't regret that.

Al-sharif says he was forced to move to the U.S. Army base for his safety. And he says his family turned their backs on him.

AL-SHARIF: My father disowned me, he had to disown me in front of the people because you know, the safety of my sisters, my family. My mother kept on calling me by secret. She had to every time mention, “Quit working for the U.S. You have to stop, you have to stop.”

But Al-sharif didn’t stop. He continued to work for the U.S. Army, even though he says most soldiers viewed all Iraqis with suspicion.

AL-SHARIF: Most of them, they have zero trust on you. They don’t trust you, although they take your word, but they don’t trust you.

Distrust permeated the war, making it increasingly dangerous for Iraqis and American soldiers.

NEWSCAST: The Pentagon’s own Iraq update is sobering. Iraq’s violence is at its highest level in two years. Killings are way up, preventing civil war, now a top priority as gangs of killers run wild. Some Shia, some Sunni, all trouble.

In January 2007, President Bush announced a new military strategy that would be called “The Surge”. At least 20,000 additional troops would be deployed to secure the area around Baghdad.

PRESIDENT BUSH: These troops will work alongside Iraqi units and be embedded in their formations. Our troops will have a well-defined mission to help Iraqis clear and secure neighborhoods, to help them protect the local population, and to help ensure the Iraqi forces left behind are capable of providing the security that Baghdad needs.

Yara Badday remembers seeing soldiers inexperienced in combat on the streets of Iraq.

BADDAY: The guys who are driving the tank are just as scared as the people who are on the street! They don’t know who’s out there. I would see 18-year-old kids shooting their gun – kids! Eighteen-year-old kids – shooting a gun with their eyes closed! Because they were just doing it out of fear. I mean they’re 18-years-old. And you’re patrolling the streets as if you’re securing anything…

AL-SHARIF: “Stop. You have to stop.”

BADDAY: …you can’t even secure yourself.

Some U.S. troops were serving multiple tours of duty in Iraq, with surge-level deployment at 170,000. U.S. casualties totaled 902 in 2007, making the year of the surge the deadliest yet for U.S. soldiers.

JORDAN TOWERS: I landed in Fallujah in the daytime, but it looked like it was night. The reason it looked like it was night is because we were burning so much stuff, the ash just falling in the sky. It really did look like Armageddon.

In 2007, Jordan Towers was a 21-year-old Marine arriving in Iraq for the first time.

TOWERS: I felt scared all the time, and I think the Iraqi people felt scared all the time. And that combination right there is not something where either side is being set up for success.

Towers says he had doubts about his mission early on, but he and his fellow Marines never talked about the politics of war.

TOWERS: When I was on the ground, my goal was to make it back home alive and to do whatever it takes to come back home alive.

Towers says that survival-mode forced him to be on guard all the time. He says he liked going on patrol, but it was complicated.

TOWERS: I got care packages all the time from people back home who I didn't even know. So I’d take the candy out with me, put it in my pouch and give it to the kids. And that felt good. But, you know, at the same time, you have to keep in the back of your mind that you are in a war zone. And you definitely hear stories of kids running up asking for candy, and then throwing a grenade in a Marine's pouch. So someone gets too close to a patrol, you know I carried an M-16 with a grenade launcher attached to it. I didn't hesitate at all to point that in a kid's face to let him know, “Hey, you’re too close to us, stand back.” And that's not something, it just didn't feel right to me.

Towers’ duties included clearing land for military operations. He remembers an incident when his unit needed to secure a bridge for a supply line, so they bulldozed the surrounding area, killing a family’s goats.  

TOWERS: And there was a child there trying to speak with me, he was using hand gestures and noise, making the sound of a goat.

AL-SHARIF: “You have to stop, you have to stop...”

TOWERS: …to let him know that, “Hey, we have our food, our livelihood in there.” Of course I was there, relayed it to the lieutenant, and he didn’t seem to care. But this woman came out crying and yelling, just a typical Iraqi scene. It was chaos. And to me, it seemed so simple that this was avoidable. Like, we didn’t have to do this.

Marine Jordan Towers returned to civilian life in 2008, the same year Barack Obama was elected on a platform that included ending the war in Iraq. Soon after he took office in 2009, he made his campaign pledge official.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: So let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31st, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end.

TOWERS: You know, when Obama said the war in Iraq was over, I believed him at the time. I thought it was a good thing, I thought I could move ahead with my life, put this war behind me.

But the war’s effects promise to reverberate for decades to come.

BERG: I think that it’s most significantly whether or not we were supposed to be there or not, what kind of order is gonna come from the invasion, what kind of order is gonna occur.

Marine Ryan Berg says civilians in the U.S. have largely been able to ignore the war and might underestimate its toll.

BERG: And while Americans do have tough men and women over there. I think it should be known that the fight is much tougher than anyone can imagine, no matter the weaponry that we have.

It’s been eight years now since the war began. More than 4,400 servicemen and women have died. More than 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed and more than a million displaced.

And while the Department of Defense reports about 32,000 wounded in Iraq, researchers estimate more than 300,000 military personnel have filed disability claims.

LARA: Every single day a 19-year-old child is deploying and risking their lives for this cause, this purpose, this country. And this country’s political aspirations.

Army veteran Starlyn Lara wants the American public to remember that service.

LARA: So I think at the end of the day, there are still many, many service members who are volunteering to protect this country. But sometimes

I don’t think the public realizes what types of sacrifices they’re really making.

AARON GLANTZ: Even though President Obama declared that all combat troops left Iraq...

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Our combat mission in Iraq will end.

GLANTZ: …we still have 50,000 troops in Iraq. And when people shoot at them, they shoot back. And the war continues.

Aaron Glantz is a reporter and author of The War Comes Home. He says that America’s veterans are dealing with the repercussions of this ongoing war, here at home.

GLANTZ: Over a four-year period, over a thousand veterans under 35 died in the state of California. And it was three times the number of people who had died in the actual war during the same period.

TOWERS: My goal is to make it back home alive…

GLANTZ: And veterans of the military were twice as likely as people the same age to die of suicide. They were five times as likely to die in a motorcycle accident, twice as likely to die in a traffic accident.

TOWERS: …do whatever it takes to come back home alive.

GLANTZ: You know, these are people who came home from the war alive and are dying in our communities. And that shouldn't be happening.

All wars have costs. Even so, people find a way to move on with their lives.

AL-SHARIF: I moved to this amazing city, San Francisco.

Former translator Iraqi Ghazwan Al-sharif was granted refugee status in the U.S.

AL-SHARIF: So now I’m very lucky, very blessed, working as a cook in Project Open Hand in San Francisco.

He says he still dreams of returning to Iraq, and he carries vivid memories of his homeland.

AL-SHARIF: Good memories of Tikrit is remembering my father’s farm and the Tigres River, and the beautiful, beautiful agriculture we have. The green palm trees all over the city – that’s what I miss.

BADDAY: We were very progressive, and it doesn’t resemble anything you see today. But you would never know it, but you know, the healthcare system was among the foremost in the region. And the role of women at the same time was also, so there was a lot of things, people were formally drawn to Iraq because of its merits, because of its progress, because of its development.

Iraqi American Yara Badday also looks to the future.

BADDAY: My hope is, is placed more in the expression of people. Their day to day, the day to day people. You can talk about it in a really large scale, but until you see the human interaction from one to the other, a Marine to an Iraqi, a Sunni to a Shiite, a light-skinned Iraqi to a very dark-skinned Iraqi, like, whatever socioeconomic status you may have, you’re just people when you put them together, side by side. People are just people. And they are that way anywhere they go. So my hope is in that.

These are just a few of the multiple sides and stories to this ongoing conflict.

LARA: Every single day a 19-year-old child is deploying and risking their lives for this cause, this purpose, this country.

GLANTZ: And when people shoot at them, they shoot back. And the war continues.

AL-SHARIF: Do I regret working for the U.S. Army? No, I don't regret that. It’s basically what I wanted to do.

BADDAY: I dreamed of that day, every day of my adult life – that moment, I dreamt of that moment where Saddam would no longer be, have any power.

LARA: A lot of the people that we dealt with that were Iraqis learned English, very well to where they could interact with us, and negotiate, and bargain.

TOWERS: I was scared all the time, and I think the Iraqi people felt scared all the time…

BADDAY: I would see 18-year-old kids shooting their gun – kids! Eighteen-year-old kids – shooting a gun with their eyes closed!

BERG: I had my weapon pointed at this guy who was bleeding at that point you don't know who's enemy, who's what, and he told me to shoot him.

TOWERS: When I was on the ground, my goal was to make it back home alive and to do whatever it takes to come back home alive.

BADDAY: That’s how desperate the situation was. I saw, I saw grown men cry.

BERG: It was just the absurdity of the mission, I think actually connect to some of the problems in my relationships with authority and power now.

AL-SHARIF: “You have to stop, you have to stop.”

GLANTZ: When you come home from the war it's not the end of the story, it’s just the beginning of the next chapter of your life.

BADDAY: It’s not just news, it’s not a story – it’s your story.

“The Costs of War: a reflection on the war in Iraq” was written and produced by the team at KALW News, including Martina Castro, Chris Hoff, Seth Samuel and Ben Trefny. Special thanks to producers Ali Budner, Audrey DIling, Casey Miner, Erica Mu and Steven Short as well as all of the people who contributed their stories to this program