Don't Leave Us in the Middle of the Road

This Iraqi man featured in the Stars and Stripes is truly an amazing story of the perseverance and courage many Iraqis are displaying to aid the US forces in Iraq:

Standing on the dusty outskirts of Qaim, Hasoon watched with mounting fear as a wall of American tanks and armored vehicles bore down on him. “I was so scared I could not translate for 10 minutes,” Hasoon said.

The interpreter watched nervously as a wiry officer with a shaved head stepped from one of the vehicles and strode toward him. The officer, Lt. Col. William T. Dolan, then commander of the 1st or “Tiger” Squadron of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, grabbed the interpreter’s hand and pumped it heartily.

“It was not a normal handshake,” Hasoon recalled. “It was a GREAT handshake. It made me feel good.”

From that moment on, Hasoon — or “Alf” as the Americans call him — became an unlikely figure in Tiger Squadron’s colorful history, and a loyal friend to the unit. Over the next three years, he would become the only translator to work for the squadron before and after an eight-month stint at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, and quite possibly the only detainee there to be given a going-away party by its guards.

Mr. Hasoon was wrongly imprisoned in Abu Graib and released, but despite his experiences he eagerly decided to work for the US Army again. His comments below reflect the opinion of many Iraqis I spoke with on my tour in Iraq:

Some soldiers were surprised that Hasoon would come back to work with them after all that he’d been through, but Hasoon said he never gave it a second thought.

“When I come out, I say I want to be with the Tigers,” Hasoon said.

“Everything else, I have forgotten. I have no Iraqi friends. Who put me in detention? It was Iraqis who said things about me. It wasn’t the Americans.”

While Hasoon said he worries about what will happen to him when Tiger Squadron returns to the U.S. in several months, Radliff and Reilly said they were trying to figure out a way to get Hasoon to the States, at least for a visit.

For his part, Hasoon is thrilled by the idea of visiting America. His dream, he says, is to meet with President Bush.

“I want to tell him this: Don’t leave us in the middle of the road like your father did in ’91. If you leave Iraq now, the rivers will be red. They will be red from blood,” he said. “This is the price for freedom. The Iraqis and the Americans are paying for it now, but one day we will be like brothers.”

The important thing to remember is that there are many Iraqis just like Mr. Hasoon out there working and fighting against the Islamo-facists for a better future for Iraq despite what the media or the Democratic Party wants you to believe. In Iraq I used to run convoy security missions for fuel trucks coming out of Turkey and this allowed me the opportunity to travel to many places in Iraq and meet a variety of people. Many people I met wanted us to stay and thanked us for coming. Our convoy of fuel trucks used to stop at restaurants along the routes to eat and we never had to buy a meal because either someone in the restaurant or the owner himself would provide the food for our platoon for free.

One man I met told me that he hoped that the US would annex Iraq and make Iraq a US territory like Puerto Rico because Iraq’s neighboring countries would never let them live in peace if they pursued democracy. This man was wrong about the US making a Iraq a territory, but he was right about Iraq’s neighbors not letting them live in peace. However, this time I don’t see the US leaving Iraq in the middle of the road.