120 Pounds of Determined GI, Packing a .50-Caliber Wallop

April 22, 2005 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Dispatches with U.S. soldiers in Iraq

Baghdad, Iraq – A small striped bird sang atop a palm tree as Spec. Crysti Cason sat beneath it wiping dust off her weapon: a .50-caliber machine gun that fires hundreds of bullets a minute. She’s like a bird, too – 5-feet-4, 120 pounds, her gun nearly as big as she is. The soft-spoken 22-year-old from southwest Chicago is determined not to lose her head in hair-trigger moments of truth. She proved steady in a tough situation last week, facing down a potential suicide bomber.

Cason finds herself back in Iraq, at a camp south of Baghdad with the Colorado-based 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, in part because of a movie: “G.I. Jane.”

She saw a preview of the film with friends about six years ago and went back to watch it alone. “I know it’s just Hollywood,” Cason said, but actress Demi Moore’s character, a woman making inroads toward combat, inspired her.

She joined the Army at 17 as a high school junior. Back then, as a student council member and drama club president, she’d been aiming for theater school in New York.

Her father agreed to sign a waiver.

He’d served as a “tunnel rat” in the Vietnam War, parachuting into jungles and creeping into the underground mazes where guerrilla commanders directed attacks and where reconnaissance required muddy, often bloody, hand-to-hand fighting.

He can’t bring himself to talk the horrors of what happened in those tunnels. But one day with him in Chicago, looking through a box of memorabilia including his identification tags, his daughter spotted papers – his DD214 military record.

“I said, ‘Hey, Dad, can I see this?”‘

He let her read. She began to understand a bit about his service record.

In the Army, superiors assigned her to property-book duties – accounting work. She excelled. But from her opening interview on, she pressed the question: “When am I going on a mission?”

That flummoxed superiors. “I thought, ‘There might be something wrong with this kid,”‘ said Chief Warrant Officer Michael Hayes of High Point, N.C., who was in charge of the records unit.

“We said, ‘Hold it. Let’s do the property accountability work first.”‘

Yet they couldn’t help but notice what happened when she took her mandatory target practice at Fort Carson. She knocked down targets flawlessly. Her scores ranked excellent.

And in November 2003, she volunteered to go to Iraq. She manned guns there as the regiment adapted under fire for widely varied duties. Cooks became guards. Guards went out on patrol.

When Cason returned from Iraq, she began practicing more with the .50-caliber machine guns. Now, she’s one of the few women in the Army to emerge as a top gunner.

One day, her father visited. He had caught wind through colleagues in the record-keeping section – which remains his daughter’s primary duty – that she’d been angling resolutely to work as a gunner.

Her father didn’t object, Cason said. “I think he’s proud. He said he hoped I wouldn’t have to experience something like he did and not want to talk about it.”

There are fewer than 300 women serving in the 3rd ACR. Pushing against the barriers hindering women from serving in combat positions, Cason takes some flak.

Fellow gunners sometimes kid her about how the gun is almost as big as she is.

She flips it back. “I’m like, ‘Why am I with a bigger gun than you?”‘

Mostly, fellow soldiers are proud, calling her “high-speed.” Seeing a soldier so determined “feels good to me,” said Sgt. Tracy Williams, 28, of El Paso.

A few days ago, commanders picked Cason to man the gun in a rotating turret, providing the crucial heavy firepower defense of a major convoy rolling through Iraq’s deadly “Mixing Bowl,” a high-traffic area where remote-control and suicide bombers target U.S. troops.

It was uneventful for the most part. Until one of those hair-trigger moments: A light-colored van was following the convoy too closely, with a single male driver. It fit the profile for a potential suicide bomber.

Cason rotated the turret to face him. Her sergeant barked into her radio headset: “Stop that vehicle. Do what you gotta do.”

Her moment.

She raised her hand, motioning for the van driver to slow down, back off.

She leveled the barrel. She curled her finger, poised to fire warning shots in front of his tires, as trained, if the driver didn’t slow down.

He did, and the incident ended uneventfully.

“I don’t find fame or glory in shooting or harming people, especially if they are innocent,” she said. “I was relieved.”

Telling Friend From Foe

April 19, 2005 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Dispatches with U.S. soldiers in Iraq

Hillah Province, Iraq – The red sedan sat by the side of the road. An Iraqi man in a white robe and black “eqale” headband hunched over the hood as U.S. troops approached in four Humvees.

Col. H.R. McMaster, riding shotgun in one, was on his radio trying to arrange a meeting with troops to the south. It fell to Sgt. Matt Hodges, 28, of Union City, Miss., to check out the car.

Some soldier always has to go first, plant gutsy steps forward and find out whether an Iraqi encountered on patrol is a friend or foe.

Commanders say positive mixing with Iraqis is crucial for the United States to build understanding and win over those who otherwise might support anti-U.S. forces.

But actually making that first contact here – an area south of Baghdad where insurgent attacks are frequent – still is risky for soldiers who must venture out from their armored vehicles.

The patrol had begun with 20 or so troops from the Army’s Colorado- based 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. At base camp, Capt. David Olsen, 31, of Baltimore had given the latest intelligence as they stood in the dust by their loaded Humvees. High- altitude sensors had spotted a suspicious cluster of Iraqi vehicles by a river.

“It’s been real quiet the last 12 hours,” Olsen had said, “which makes me worry.”

An hour out of base camp in the 90-degree heat along Iraq’s main north-south highway, Hodges strode resolutely across the asphalt in full battle garb toward the red car. Fellow troops held back traffic three soccer-field lengths away. Sgt. Gene Braxton, 25, of Fayetteville, N.C., backed up Hodges.

Also walking slowly toward the vehicle was a contract Iraqi-American interpreter whom the troops call “Uncle.” He asked not to be identified in this report for fear his relatives in Iraq could be targeted.

The Iraqi man in white stood, and Hodges said “As- salaamu laykum (peace be upon you),” touching his right hand to his chest – a gesture of respect. Uncle addressed the Iraqi as “Haji” (pilgrim).

The Iraqi said, “It might be the carburetor.”

Hodges: “Is there anything we can help you with?”

Iraqi: “If you will allow me, I’m just going to try to start the car and leave.”

Hodges: “Have you seen anybody suspicious around here?”

The man’s black-clad wife peered out from inside the sedan, a Toyota, and a younger woman cradled a small boy in the back seat. They were Shiite farmers, Uncle said.

Iraqi: “No, we haven’t seen anybody around here.”

Hodges: “There are a lot of explosives along this road. Would it be OK if we look inside your car?”

The wife and the woman cradling the boy got out. The man raised his hands toward the hot sun, frustrated, imploring.

Hodges: “Would you like any water?”

Iraqi: “No, thanks.”

Braxton opened the trunk. The man then reached in and grabbed a white sack and emptied it on the pavement.

Two empty plastic soda bottles fell out, along with a shop light with no bulb and a tire jack.

McMaster now approached. “As-salaamu laykum,” he said, touching his plated chest. The Iraqi man returned the gesture and then complained about the intrusion, his voice rising. U.S. soldiers had stopped him before, he said.

McMaster: “I apologize. It’s a very confusing situation because of the terrorists.”

Iraqi: “But why? I am a family man.”

McMaster: “Our apologies.”

Iraqi: “We can’t do anything. We complain only to God.”

McMaster: “Inshallah (God willing), we shall have peace here.”

The troops would encounter two more apparently broken-down vehicles on this patrol. Each time, Hodges, with Uncle, approached.

“If you don’t interact with people, it’s hard for them to understand your intentions,” McMaster said. “In order to succeed here, we have to connect with the Iraqi people. We need to understand their grievances.”

Putting a Name On War

April 19, 2005 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Dispatches with U.S. soldiers in Iraq

Baghdad, Iraq – During their first tour of duty in Iraq, Sgt. 1st Class Chris Joseph and his tank crew named their M1A2 Abrams “Allah My Ass.”

A supervisor nixed that as culturally insensitive.

Joseph and crew renamed it “American Oppressor,” which passed muster, and churned through the desert on missions near the Syrian border.

Now as the U.S. occupation enters its third year and the emphasis shifts toward helping Iraqis maintain and govern their own country, the soldiers call their tank the “Angry Beaver.”

It growled in the dust recently amid dozens of other tanks lined up in a camp south of Baghdad – a superpower show of heavy force in an area where remote-control bombs target troops.

From a distance, the tanks look hard, uniform, impersonal.

Yet soldiers delicately have stenciled black letters along barrels of tank guns. “American Muscle.” “Adrenaline Rush.” “Albert Taco.”

The naming “makes it yours – same as you name your favorite pet,” Staff Sgt. Nicholas Curnell, 32, of Charleston, S.C., said while sorting gear with members of the “Angel of Death” crew he commands.

Soldiers are naming things all around as the Colorado-based 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment begins a second deployment away from their families and friends.

Some soldiers name their guns. Sgt. Andrew Gieseke, 23, of Kansas City, Kan., calls his M-4 assault rifle “Laura,” after a former girlfriend.

“She was a heartbreaker. This baby’s a heartbreaker,” Gieseke said, slapping the butt. “I associate the two.”

Also hanging from his shoulder: a shotgun labeled “My Boomstick.”

One soldier even names dustpans, brooms and a fly swatter. It started at basic training in Kentucky, said Spec. Wesley Vanbruaene, 27, of South Bend, Ind.

“In the Army, you need to mark everything, or somebody will take it,” he said.

Here he named the fly swatter Doug E. Fresh.

“You’ve just got to try to make it fun because everything here sucks. That’s why I started doing it here,” he said.

Rows of tents – surrounded by sandbags – show increasingly personal touches. Seven Apache attack helicopter pilots recently declared theirs “The Purple Palace.”

They’ve hooked up three video-gaming consoles, four televisions, including one with a 29-inch screen, seven laptop computers, air conditioning, and carpet salvaged from contractor trash heaps.

And now, Chief Warrant Officer Roger Wood, 34, of Los Angeles lifted a white blanket to show off a couch.

“Look at this,” Wood said, gesturing at regal dark upholstery. “I mean, for the desert, this is a nice couch.”

Soldiers in neighboring tents call it a “Taj Mahal,” and “a mini Wal-Mart electronics store.” The pilots take pride.

“You have to,” said Chief Warrant Officer Larry Wilson, 33, of Winchester, Va. “We’re here for a year. A situation is always what you make of it. It’s not going to be home, but at least you can make something out of it.”

Back by his tank, Angry Beaver commander Joseph recalled how “my wife came up with the name.”

“We were just sitting on the couch watching television” with their two sons – a cartoon featuring two hostile beavers. His wife suggested that might work for his tank.

And in the open back of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle named Albert Taco, one crew member hunched over his helmet, painting intricate tan camouflage splotches as Staff Sgt. Carlos Richardson, 37, of Nogales, Ariz., the crew chief, climbed through.

Richardson remembered how, during an early morning motor-pool meeting at Fort Carson, he and fellow Apache Troop tankers were trying to come up with good names.

Their Bradley carries TOW missiles, depleted uranium- coated bullets the size of fire hydrants, and explosive rounds with the punch of five grenades.

Military tradition requires that tank names begin with the same letter as the troop name.

“But a name starting with a vowel is really hard. We came up with ‘Al Capone.’ Somebody had that. And there’s already ‘American’ this and ‘American’ that.”

As they chewed on all this, they also were chewing breakfast burritos and tacos from Albert Taco, their favorite place, southeast of Colorado Springs.

That solved it.

A little humor like that can build spirit – which is essential, Richardson said.

Regimental superiors, too, want to build esprit de corps. But they also worry that too many names and labels could help enemies track troop movements.

Commanders have been discussing whether to paint over the names on tank guns, or at least prohibit stenciled logos, Command Sgt. Major John Caldwell said.

“It won’t take the insurgents long to figure out who’s who if we aren’t careful,” he said.

Working, Waiting, Worrying

April 15, 2005 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Dispatches with U.S. soldiers in Iraq

South of Baghdad, Iraq – Hot gravel crunching beneath their boots, Pfc. Nicholas Sauceda and seven fellow soldiers gathered around the broken engine of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle on Thursday afternoon. They ran their fingers over the metal searching for an oil leak.

Their eyelids hung heavy after a nighttime mission that had them grinding along roads in gun-mounted Humvees outside their camp here, in an area military commanders say has experienced increased attacks on U.S. troops by insurgents – up to 72 a day.

Sauceda and crew are among up to 5,200 Colorado- based troops in the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment starting their second stint in Iraq. As they gathered around the Bradley, they could have been catching up on sleep, but the soldiers – scouts trained for a variety of duties, including providing security for regimental commander Col. H.R. McMaster – prefer just about anything, including engine repair, to sitting behind sandbags on their rickety green cots.

“I just want to get it through with,” said Sauceda, 21, of Phoenix. “And the busier we are, the faster it goes by.”

With the possibility of running across improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, never far from their minds, and with occasional bursts of small-arms fire and mortar thuds in the distance, some of the troops have modest goals for this tour in Iraq.

Spec. Arturo Lopez, 20, of Mission, Texas, said: “Just hope I don’t get blown up.”

Here for about a month, Sauceda has already written five letters, used up eight 550-minute phone cards, and mailed a Kuwaiti blanket and ring to his fiancée, Megan Blanton, 19, a first-year student at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

“It’s not like we don’t want to think about home,” Sauceda said. “But it makes the time pass harder when you’re always thinking about home.”

So they worked. It was hot. They wore T-shirts, no flak vests, as they picked over the Bradley’s engine. About halfway between northern Kuwait and Baghdad, the vehicle broke down at night. At dawn, Pfc. Reed Monson, 20, of Boise, Idaho, noticed a shiny black pool beneath it and, when he checked the oil level, found the engine was dry. A truck hauled the Bradley into camp here.

Now Capt. David Rozelle, 32, the company commander, wanted it fixed. Rozelle stood in the shade of a shipping container, watching. He lost his lower right leg when a Humvee he was riding in set off a land mine his first time in Iraq, in June 2003 in the western Anbar province.

After a few months back at Fort Carson with his wife and toddler, Rozelle became the first amputee to return for a second tour in Iraq. When his war is over, he’s slated to go to work at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

That’s the future. Today, he needs his soldiers to find the leak.

Sgt. Erik Houghton, 34, of Massillon, Ohio, spotted the tear. “In the hose, sir, to the oil filter,” Houghton called to Rozelle.

Rozelle: “That’s easy!”

Houghton: “Can you find me one, sir?”

Rozelle sent him to base aviation mechanics. “Take them this hose. They can make a new one.”

“Crescent wrench,” said Staff Sgt. Jeff Marjerrison, 28, of Widefield, south of Colorado Springs, moving to disconnect it from the engine.

Marjerrison and Monson muscled bolts loose, then sliced open an empty drinking water bottle and caught more black oil.

The aviation mechanics couldn’t make a new hose right away. That meant one less Bradley Fighting Vehicle for now. The 3rd Armored Cavalry has about 125 Bradleys, along with 120 or so main battle tanks and more than 40 helicopters.

Meanwhile, the troops turned to gearing up Humvees for another convoy through a hot zone known as “the mixing bowl.”

Gunner Pvt. 2 Martin Gaymon, 19, of Brooklyn, N.Y., welcomed the upcoming mission even as he reread a prayer card. He’d be out front on this one.

“As long as you are doing something, you feel like, the reason you are out here, it’s worth it,” he said as they headed out Friday morning. “I’d rather be out on a convoy.”

Sauceda would be driving a hardened Humvee behind him.

“I just want to get it done,” he said. “Get back in here with everybody alive.”

Patrolling Iraqis Lethal Mixing Bowl

April 15, 2005 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Dispatches with U.S. soldiers in Iraq

Hillah Province, Iraq – Rolling out on a reconnaissance patrol through Iraq’s deadly “Mixing Bowl,” Pvt. Martin Gaymon tucked two white prayer cards inside his bulletproof vest.

They give added “protection,” he says, against the remote-control bombs that worry the Colorado-based soldiers of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.

Before the sun set on Saturday night, the 19-year-old hip- hop music fan from Brooklyn, N.Y., would earn a medal for extending that protection to his fellow soldiers.

The Mixing Bowl area south of Baghdad, named for the melange of traffic and people driving and wandering about, looms as one of the most dreaded hot spots in Iraq. Here, in this high-traffic gnarl of roadways and dust pits littered with metal debris, Iraqi fighters and suicide bombers, sometimes drugged, have killed dozens.

U.S. commanders call controlling the area a priority in putting down the insurgency. They’re regularly sending out 20-soldier, four-Humvee patrols like this one Saturday to find out who’s planting the remote-controlled improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. These often are mortar shells wired to cellphones.

Grinding along in one of the Humvees, Gaymon and his crew moved cautiously from their base camp. They clicked in their ammo clips as the sergeants pressed radio receivers to their ears. Gaymon scanned fields of blowing grass and palms from atop a Humvee in a rotating turret. He gripped a .50-caliber machine gun.

The soldiers saw barefoot boys waving, farmers bent near ancient Mesopotamian canals, small birds singing, a few cattle grazing. Here and there along roadways, men squatted by apparently disabled cars watching the troops pass.

Through the double-paned clear glass from his armored Humvee, Command Sgt. Maj. John Caldwell, 44, saw a black sedan parked on the side of the road facing traffic. He waved to a family inside. Eight or so tiny hands in the back seat waved back while a veiled mother looked out silently.

“When I wave, and they wave back, that’s a good deal,” Caldwell said.

The troops stopped periodically, checking suspicious debris, studying Iraqi vehicles.

In the middle of the Mixing Bowl, parked U.S. tanks provided support for 30 Iraqi national-guard soldiers atop an overpass.

Caldwell spotted one U.S. tank gunner who had taken off his helmet. He launched his 250-pound ex-Alabama State linebacker’s frame at the gunner.

“Hey!” he shouted – just the start of an enthusiastic warning to the gunner not to let down his guard or remove his protective equipment.

He later explained that “energizing” troops this way, “is a matter of saving lives. … Something can go bad here any second.”

On his gun, Gaymon stayed alert even as the hours wore on. “Run the gun, scan” is how he describes his existence out here. And in the 90-degree-plus heat, he spotted it – a green box the size of a footlocker hidden in a heap of concrete rubble. Red wires ran from the box.

“Whoa,” Gaymon shouted down to the crew in the Humvee.

Staff Sgt. Jeff Marjerrison, 28, of Widefield broke in on the radio keeping the Humvees connected. He alerted the others and the convoy stopped.

The troops then stopped traffic and called in an explosives disposal team as Iraqis leaned out of their windows to watch.

As Gaymon and crew headed back to their base camp, the bomb exploded, detonated remotely. No one was hurt.

In camp, the regiment commander, Col. H.R. McMaster, called them to join him after an intelligence briefing. He put a hand on Gaymon’s shoulder – “a powerful man, owns the regiment,” Gaymon later said he was thinking – and pinned a green commendation medal on his uniform.

Gaymon then went back to work, repairing fuel leaks and cleaning his gun.

“I guess one of them could have got blown up,” he said. “Hope we can find all the IEDs before someone gets hurt.”

GIs Find Shelter in Faith

April 15, 2005 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Dispatches with U.S. soldiers in Iraq

Babil Province, Iraq – Every patrol down bomb-laden Iraqi roads is an act of faith for many of the soldiers here. They carry laminated “Soldiers’ Psalm” cards and pray for protection before rolling out in dusty Humvees from base camp.

They jam a tent chapel for religious services.

In the mess hall, some bow their heads before eating.

On cots, others stroke rosary beads.

The pre-patrol prayers in particular give comfort, says Pfc. Thouen Yen, a Cambodian-American father of three who escaped the Khmer Rouge killing fields as a boy. Poised beside Humvees with fellow troops of the Colorado-based 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment recently, Yen, 31, silently reread the psalm’s promise that God will keep them safe from all hidden dangers.

Superior weapons and high-tech equipment are sometimes useless against suicide bombers and remotely detonated blasts targeting troops. Over the past week, the Colorado-based soldiers found 25 roadside bombs. They pre-emptively set off 21.

The others damaged three Humvees, but so far, no one has been hurt.

“We live by faith every day,” Yen said. “Hopefully, we’ll all come back.”

Before heading out to a risky high-traffic area Tuesday, Yen and his crew prayed together.

Four versions of the Bible, downloaded into a pocket computer, help Spec. Clayton Palmer, 21, of Broomfield, study passages when he has spare time. Palmer and Spec. Oscar Prado, 32, of Milwaukee, bowed their heads Sunday in the mess hall. Heartbroken about the death of his 15-year-old Alaskan malamute, Nikko, shortly before he left Fort Carson, Prado reckoned that “my faith is going to be tested here.”

“The first time we were in Iraq, I relied on God. This time, I’ll rely on him more. The first time, we weren’t under mortar alert the way we were this week.”

Kneeling in a tent converted into a chapel, Sgt. David Rivera gave thanks that he had survived another week. He prayed for his wife and daughter back in Fayetteville, N.C. He prayed for the U.S. mission of regaining control in Iraq when some Iraqis want troops to go home.

“There are so many things the insurgents have now,” Rivera said. “They are getting smarter. They are looking for new ways to harm us. You know they are out there. Death could touch you any time.”

Some things he doesn’t tell his wife “because I don’t want her to worry about me,” said Rivera, whose duties include driving fuel trucks. And so he just prays.

Gripping his assault rifle while rolling past Iraqi farms, Yen gazed out sympathetically at farmers, their veiled wives and their children “who may have no food or shelter.” He wished he could help them.

A refugee who settled in North Hollywood, Calif., Yen grew up worshiping in the Buddhist and Hindu traditions. He and his father fled Cambodia in 1979 and “now I must give my life” in service to the American people who embraced him and his family, he said.

Looking out through thick Humvee windows at Iraqis, “I have a profound sadness,” Yen said. “But I also hope the situation is getting better for these people here and that we all can go home in one piece.”

High Noon in Latin America: U.S. Targets “Lawless” Areas

December 5, 2004 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Counter-Terrorism, Security

A war on rebels and drug cartels in Colombia has left the U.S. an unpopular symbol of authority in a region where violence is becoming rampant.

Puerto Colón, Colombia – Here at the edge of the Amazon jungle, chain-saw scalpings, death threats and bodies floating down the river signify a spreading lawlessness that U.S. officials say terrorists could exploit.

But an emerging new military-led response is controversial.

The lawlessness grows from the U.S.- backed war on Colombian rebels and drug cartels – which has cost taxpayers $3.3 billion over the last four years, the third most expensive war behind Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Even my 4-year-old daughter has seen dead people,” migrant barmaid Maria Giron, 22, said recently at this southern outpost. Marauding militias “cut off heads,” and teenagers “go into the violence because there’s no work for them. It’s growing. There’s no end to it.”

Now people and violence spill into neighboring Ecuador, and U.S. military commanders are pressing proxy armed forces to confront what they call a new “war on terrorism” challenge across Latin America.

They’ve identified the pulsing green Ecuador-Peru border region, where oil workers already clash with indigenous groups, as one of several “ungoverned spaces.”

Kidnappings, dealing in drugs and arms, and killings are becoming common here. Military officials say areas like this could give criminals and anti- U.S. terrorists a foothold to destabilize governments and plot attacks against the United States and its allies.

Gruesome stories

The emerging U.S. military strategy for ungoverned space seeks to assert control through armed force. In Ecuador, U.S. officials have trained and equipped some 7,000 troops to create a bulwark against rebel- held southern .

The idea is “to lay a foundation so that we don’t have to use a pre-emption strategy,” said Army Col. David McWilliams, spokesman for U.S. Southern Command, which runs operations in Latin America.

Nobody is planning first- strike action to take out threats in Latin America, McWilliams said, and U.S. soldiers also will do humanitarian work.

Yet some Latin American leaders – remembering U.S. military interventions in Chile, Guatemala, Nicaragua – say military-led “war on terrorism” action may only make matters worse.

Here in the Ecuador jungle, farmers, refugees, soldiers, priests and local officials tell sometimes-gruesome stories of violence and worsening economic conditions. They call for economic help – not armed force – because families who relied on coca field work now have nothing to fall back on. Without alternative crops and access to markets that pay fair prices, they say, law and order will be precarious.

On Nov. 12, just down the San Miguel River that marks the Ecuador border, militiamen carrying lists of suspected rebel sympathizers massacred at least three villagers at the Colombian town of Afilador, villagers and authorities said.

One man’s hands were tied and his skull sawed open. Bodies were dumped in the river. Some authorities estimated more than 20 people were killed; Colombian officials last week were still investigating. The victims are among tens of thousands of civilians killed in ‘s40-year civil war.

The war pits Marxist rebel guerrillas against U.S.-backed government forces and right- wing paramilitary militias – irregular fighters originally hired by landowners for protection. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe says he’s dismantling the militias.

Yet across ,they still attack, sometimes using chain saws to spread fear in rebel-held areas, according to Colombian officials and Ecuadorean Catholic priest Edgar Pinos.

After the massacre, Pinos, 52, went near the scene, to the Ecuadorean side of the river at Puerto Mestanza, where Afilador villagers had fled. Drunken men were dancing with girls in a blue bordello as Pinos arrived.

The killers, too, crossed the river and threatened Ecuadoreans, said Luis Francisco, 54, a father of three whose wife was cooking at the bordello. “They said we are guerrillas. We’re not. We’re just people who are here to work.”

The threats “affect you psychologically,” a shopkeeper said, asking that her name not be printed. “Everybody’s afraid. You try to live your life, not one side or the other, neutral.”

Frayed nerves

Outside her shop leaning back in a chair, Colombian farmer Fermin Mejias, 40, a coca field cutter, said a boatman he knew and a woman were among the dead he saw in the river.

“The way we are now, it’s not going to get any better,” he said. “People are coming into our towns. It scares you. You don’t know who the people are. You don’t know what they are going to do … On top of this, the United States is spraying crops. They aren’t just spraying the coca. They are spraying our crops.”

Farther inside Ecuador, killings, kidnappings and pipeline attacks fray nerves in Lago Agrio, an oil boomtown and provincial capital where U.S.- equipped Ecuadorean troops patrol the main street in groups of seven. Oil companies that see Ecuador as a potential major supplier have been unable to work easily.

In 2001, armed bandits nabbed 10 oil workers and held them for 141 days, executing Ron Sander of Missouri, before employers met ransom demands. U.S. Embassy officials advise against travel in the area.

Non-U.S. oil workers said gangs attack pipelines to steal etherized “white gas” that “narcogangs” use to turn coca leaves into cocaine. A smuggled tank of white gas sells for $120 on the side of the river, Lago Agrio Police Chief Hugo Cadena said.

This year, Lago Agrio had 70 firearms murders, police statistics show. Most involved Colombians killing Colombians – who increasingly cross into Ecuador for relaxation and supplies, Mayor Maximo Abad said. And hundreds of returning Ecuadorean coca field workers worsen the strain of 25 percent unemployment, Abad said.

“We need help from the United States to improve the quality of life. If we could get food, not arms, that would be welcome. But if we have more soldiers, more arms, more efforts by the United States to fortify the military presence, the results won’t be effective. Violence generates more violence. Many arms. Many battles. Many drug deals. And the terrorism does not end.”

U.S. officials say they intend to work cooperatively with Latin American governments – on humanitarian as well as military missions – to control ungoverned spaces. Among other spaces they cite: the tri-border intersection of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, and jungle parts of southern Panama.

The fear is that enemies could set up bases, exploit lax control and use well-established drug routes to smuggle weapons and terrorists into the United States.

In Ecuador, U.S. special forces troops have trained a brigade for jungle operations. U.S. supplies include food rations, fuel and 200 vehicles – Humvees and 5-ton trucks.

The United States may supply night-vision goggles, said Army Col. Kevin Saderup, military group commander at the U.S. Embassy in Ecuador’s capital, Quito.

It is “very narrow to believe that something that happens in Ecuador doesn’t harm the United States,” Saderup said, referring to how “the Taliban and al-Qaeda took up station” in Afghanistan. “Just because something is happening in a faraway place doesn’t mean you shouldn’t worry about it.”

U.S. ignites opposition

Indeed, the jungle here is dense, and the 400-mile Ecuador border is porous. Crossing in a motorboat costs $1; families have relatives on both sides. Cargo moves freely. Even in Quito, a 40-minute flight over snowcapped volcanoes, international travel is relatively unrestricted.

“There are organizations that use Ecuador as a base to smuggle people from other countries into the United States,” said Ecuadorean immigration Maj. Gilbert Orozco, chief of an 11-member enforcement team.

But U.S. officials have not given hard evidence of anti-U.S. terrorists taking root in Latin America.

And from Tierra del Fuego to Tijuana, U.S. military overtures ignite opposition.

At a recent security summit in Quito, defense ministers from Brazil, Argentina, Chile and elsewhere balked at U.S. efforts to create a multinational armed force for .

“The problems that faces are problems that has to resolve,” Ecuadorean Defense Minister Nelson Herrera said at a news conference beside U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

U.S. military aid to Latin America is increasing – nearly surpassing nonmilitary aid this year, government data show.

For ,this year’s $551 million for military/police work is more than triple the $150 million in economic and social aid.

Ecuador this year received $44 million for military/police work, versus $38 million for economic projects.

An estimated 240 million of Latin America’s 600 million people live in extreme poverty, and frequent peasant uprisings in Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay and elsewhere have shaken governments.

Weak government control in jungle areas “doesn’t necessarily mean larger roles should be played by armed forces. That could be counterproductive … It is like assuming there will be conflict,” said Gaston Chillier, an Argentinian human rights lawyer at the Washington Office on Latin America, a think tank critical of U.S. policy.

“A more effective way to address this is to encourage a full government presence – not just military – and have clear policies for development. Otherwise, you are escalating the violence.”

Some U.S. officials agree that work to counter poverty is crucial.

“Could we do more? Sure. My fear is we are going to be cut,” said Ray Waldron, director of the U.S. Agency for International Development in Ecuador.

On the other hand, those advocating butter over guns must accept that violence can get in the way, Waldron said.

“There has to be some rule of law. There has to be some security.”

In Ecuadorean jungle communities, owners have put land up for sale. Teens try to leave. Tenants such as Blanca Barragan, 55, and Gilberto Gomez, 60, who raise bananas, corn and chickens, wonder how they’ll survive. They’re constantly wary of the militiamen and rebels who pass their fields.

“Maybe some people give them water. You don’t know who they are. The militias can say they are guerrillas. They say ‘hello,’ and you don’t know who they are. I try not to say anything.”

Neighbors “have left, those who know they are being looked for,” Barragan said. For everyone the militiamen kill, “they are paid. They kill whole families.”

The impact of violence

Five years ago, Colombian refugee peanut farmer Edilson Rodriguez, 33, fled with his family into Ecuador after armed men slaughtered nine in the town where they had electricity, a refrigerator and television.

Now, he has hacked out subsistence life as a squatter – no electricity, pollution from a nearby oil well tainting water his kids use to wash, and a peanut harvest that would earn him $5.60.

Real security requires “a fair wage” for “a product that could be exported to the United States,” he said.

Instead, he hears radio reports of massacres that dismay him – “It’s getting worse day by day” – as does U.S. intervention.

“You know what you are doing? You are aggravating the situation. You are making it more complex. Now, there are going to be more people coming out of .There’s more fighting. Instead of investing in armies, you need to invest in industry.”

For some refugees, the impact of violence is such that they may never go home.

Heavy-set truck driver Eduardo Suares, 42, sobbed uncontrollably inside a fenced refugee compound in Ecuador one recent night as his brain-damaged daughter, Maria, 14, patted his back trying to console him.

In April, rebels had hijacked him on his way back from a run to Cali. He drove silently – “thinking they’d kill me out in the middle of nowhere” – when government troops attacked, firing at his blue Chevy C-70. He ducked, swerved, and “when I looked in the mirror, I saw two dead guerrillas.” Then one with a patch over his eye and a woman in high rubber boots accused him of siding against them.

A report he filed to Colombian police gave details of what happened and of how, 15 days later, other rebels came to his house asking him to work for them. He refused. And in September, somebody slipped a note ordering him killed, stamped with a rebel commander’s seal, under the family’s front door.

Suares fled south through rebel-held territory in the back of a friend’s truck hiding under apples and passion fruit, crossing to Ecuador. His family fled later.

Now, after presenting themselves to United Nations representatives, begging to be resettled overseas, they were cooped up in this compound unable to work, insects humming, generator kicking out periodically. Suares was convinced rebels in Ecuador would hunt him down and kill him and his wife and children.

“It’s not good here. We feel in danger.”

He couldn’t sleep, barely ate.

No proclamations of progress in mattered, he said. And though he supported the current crackdown on rebels, he’d never go back even if it ends.

His daughter Maria needs medicine, he said. Recently, she had a violent seizure that left several teeth chipped.

He stared out into the night and just cried, terrified, “waiting for somebody to help us.”

U.S. Arms Deals Elude Required Security

September 26, 2004 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Counter-Terrorism, Security

Lax oversight in the rush of exports since 9/11 has raised the specter of weapons landing in the hands of America’s enemies.

Washington – The United States is failing to safeguard much of the
highly sought weaponry it sends abroad – from assault rifles to
sophisticated combat technology, a review by The Denver Post
concludes.

Lax oversight of weapons exports opens the door for adversaries to
get their hands on lethal missiles, assault guns and components for
larger weapons systems, sources say.

Homeland Security agents recently have uncovered plots to divert
night-vision lenses to Iran, fighter-jet parts to China, grenade
launchers to Colombian guerrillas, nuclear triggers to Pakistan,
and more.

And despite internal warnings, government-sanctioned sales worth
more than $10 billion a year continue spreading more weapons
worldwide.

Congressional leaders responding to The Post’s review are promising
legislation. Among the problems that caught their attention:

Tens of thousands of arms deals aren’t fully reviewed, nor are
weapons inspected abroad as required under the U.S. Arms Control
Export Act to prevent diversion or misuse.

When government officials do review arms deals, they find
increasing problems – including diversions to at least one criminal
and several hostile nations. Nearly one in five arms deals checked
last year – 76 out of 413 – had such problems.

Homeland Security agents investigating illegal dealing say
sophisticated weaponry probably already has reached adversaries.
Total arrests for illegal arms dealing doubled from 62 in 2002 to
125 last year. Customs agents last year made 665 seizures of arms
worth $106 million.

The problems grow from a core dilemma. On one hand, the United
States long has relied on arms exports to support private defense
contractors and to get allies to support U.S. foreign policy goals.
On the other, uncontrolled weapons mean a more dangerous world at a
time when terrorist activity is increasing.

“At a time when many consider the greatest threat to our national
security to be terrorists getting their hands on weapons of mass
destruction, I am extremely concerned that the U.S. government is
not doing enough to make sure that we ourselves are not the source
of any weapons that may be used against us either domestically or
against our citizens, soldiers or allies abroad,” said Sen. Dianne
Feinstein, D-Calif., ranking member of the subcommittee on
terrorism and homeland security and member of the Select Committee
on Intelligence.

Feinstein will work on legislation that will “close some of the
loopholes that allow American technology and products to get into
the wrong hands,” she said.

“Simply put, the way business is done now, we have no way of
knowing if much of this technology – including advanced computers,
telecommunications and information systems, lasers, toxins, and
even certain nuclear material and technology, and the like – has
been diverted or is being misused,” Feinstein said.

Defense, Commerce and State department officials responsible for
regulating what goes where acknowledged deficiencies.

Bush administration foreign policy has created pressure to move
weapons quickly to allies, overwhelming controls, Air Force Lt.
Gen. Tome Walters, head of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency,
said in an interview before his retirement in July. The agency is
charged with facilitating sales to foreign governments as well as
making sure weapons aren’t diverted or misused.

“A big problem” is the lack of inspectors to keep track of
weapons, Walters said. “And that’s the challenge … the manpower. …
Our system is not designed to do this.”

Diversions exposed by limited reviews raise the possibility of more
diversions not detected.

“I am not comfortable at all,” said Greg Suchan, deputy assistant
secretary of state for defense trade controls.

Even some defense industry leaders – traditional advocates for
relaxing controls – now favor a safer approach.

“A lot of the health and strength of the U.S economy is based on
exports, and it is going to be for some time. But we’ve got to find
a way to manage those exports in a fairly uncertain world,” said
Bob Bauerlein, a former Air Force undersecretary who now serves as
Boeing’s vice president for international operations.

U.S. arms in high demand

Senior Bush administration officials defended the status quo. U.S.
small arms “have not been the weapons that end up in the hands of
child soldiers,” said Lincoln Bloomfield, assistant secretary of
state for political-military affairs. And accelerated sales since
Sept. 11, 2001, will help in the war on terrorism, he said. “Most
of the major arms exports the U.S. does are to armed forces who are
going to do things we want them to do.”

Today, more and more countries – from booming East Asia to the
volatile Middle East – are seeking advanced items for their
arsenals.

And the United States is by far the world’s leading arms supplier,
with annual industry sales topping $300 million and government
sales topping $13 billion last year – a figure expected to reach
$13.8 billion this year, government data show.

In Colorado, some 300 companies are registered to export military
technology – mostly dual-use items that have commercial as well as
military uses. The State Department lists 4,000 companies
nationwide. Names are kept secret.

All deals are supposed to be screened – with congressional
oversight to make sure Defense, Commerce and State department
officials do their jobs. But government documents and interviews
with senior officials, arms control experts, industry lobbyists,
and consultants reveal a systemic failure to control weapons
exports as required by law.

Eye on portable missiles

Consider the case of Stinger shoulder-launched missiles – which the
United States supplies to at least 17 countries, including Egypt,
Israel, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Experts agree that if any U.S.
weapon must be controlled, this is it.

One man can carry a 40- pound, heat-seeking Stinger and, with a bit
of training, shoot down a jumbo jet up to 3 miles away as high as
15,000 feet. In the past 20 years, shoulder-

launched missiles have hit at least 40 civilian planes around the
world, causing crashes and deaths, security analysts estimate. In
November 2002, terrorists firing two Russian-

made shoulder-launched missiles almost hit a Boeing 757 airliner
chartered to evacuate Israeli tourists from Kenya.

Thousands are beyond U.S. government control, according to a study
released in May by the Government Accountability Office, the
investigative arm of Congress.

The Defense Department office responsible “does not know how many
Stingers have been sold overseas,” it said. “Records on the
number and destination of Stingers sold overseas are incomplete,
unreliable and largely in hard-copy form.”

The study followed an August 2000 GAO study that identified similar
problems – which defense officials had promised to fix.

Stinger missiles still move out. A Defense Department spokesman,
who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Army has sent out 237
this year and is in the process of sending 249 more. He declined to
say where.

Overall, State and Defense department regulators last year approved
more than 49,500 deals involving all types of weapons without full
review – let alone monitoring and inspection abroad, documents
show. Arms deals are screened by staffers who process electronic
applications but generally lack time and expertise to conduct
detailed investigations of buyers and sellers. Even in cases where
an application is flagged for closer scrutiny, the most detailed
reviews seldom involve inspections.

Still more deals, involving dual-use technology, were approved
without full review at the Commerce Department. A GAO study
released in March found Commerce officials conducted inspection
visits for only 1 percent of 22,490 sales of missile-related
technology they approved between 1998 and 2002.

The GAO also addressed dual-use technology sent to
government-designated “countries of concern” such as China, India
and Russia that are supposed to receive extra scrutiny. Of 26,340
approved dual-use sales during that period, 7,680 involved
countries of concern. Commerce officials reviewed 428, or 5.6
percent, of those, according to another GAO study. It concluded
that the government “cannot ensure that dual-use items exported to
countries of concern are not misused or diverted.”

Congressional leaders are considering action to deal with “lagging
oversight,” said Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., a member of the Senate
Armed Services Committee.

“It seems incongruous to say one of the primary purposes of the
war on terrorism is to make sure weapons of mass destruction don’t
get into the hands of evildoers, and then not to enforce our own
safeguards on weapons sales,” Nelson said.

Probes uncover trouble

When the government does scrutinize arms deals, it finds trouble.

Last year, State Department officials charged with overseeing
private-company deals selected 413 for more careful review, though
still not inspections to verify where weapons are and how they are
used.These targeted reviews found irregularities with 76, or 18.4
percent, of those deals. That’s the highest percentage ever, up
from 11 percent, or 50, of the deals reviewed in 2002, State
Department documents said.

The 413 reviews interrupted a plan to move firearms to a criminal
in Central America, sales of helicopter parts to a hostile country,
and misuse of electronics and communications equipment sent to
Asia, records show. Details were omitted.

The findings indicate more weapons may have slipped through in
deals not reviewed. At a recent industry conference in Colorado
Springs, Suchan, the State Department’s chief regulator, appealed
to defense companies for help. He urged senior managers to make
sure their companies police themselves and voluntarily disclose
violations.

State Department supervisors said 32 inspectors – including
contract employees – must process applications for some 50,000
commercial arms deals each year.

At the Defense Department, officials couldn’t say how many
inspections they may have conducted or what they found. Instead,
Walters, the chief overseer, described how after Sept. 11 he faced
pressure to speed up sales.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld “was frequently getting phone
calls from the king of Jordan, from folks who were in countries
that were friends of ours that were close by Afghanistan, close by
Iraq. We needed their help, and they needed things,” Walters said.
“The spotlight was really turned on us to work faster and to
provide things, to help Jordan if Jordan needed equipment, to help
Pakistan.”

Weapons on the loose

Now evidence is mounting that weapons likely are reaching
adversaries including terrorists – via legal and illegal channels.

In Iraq, customs agents picking through stockpiles recently found
much U.S.-origin weaponry and dual-use technology – evidence for
“at least 40 cases involving U.S. companies or people that we
suspect of exporting illegally to Iraq,” Homeland Security
spokesman Dean Boyd said.

And across the world “there is all sorts of material out there … a
lot of things we don’t have any control over,” Boyd said.

Agents last year opened nearly 3,000 new criminal investigations of
suspected illegal arms deals.

In June, a Jordanian man accused of trying to sell fighter-jet parts illegally to China pleaded guilty in Los Angeles. In May, a federal grand jury in Philadelphia indicted a former television journalist from Houston accused of illegally selling night-vision lenses to Iran.

In April, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested a
Florida businessman on charges of attempting to purchase more than
6,000 machine guns, grenades, grenade launchers and pistols,
weapons worth nearly $4 million, and send them to the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia – a group the government labels as
terrorist.

In January in Denver, immigration agents arrested a South African
man on charges he illegally exported nuclear trigger devices from a
company in Massachusetts, via South Africa and the United Arab
Emirates, to Pakistan.

Spreading insecurity

The failure to control weaponry presents a major threat to U.S. and
global security, according to critics who question the use of
weapons exports as a tool of foreign policy.

“What we’ve done is spread insecurity around the world,” said
former U.S. Sen. Tim Wirth, who also served in the State Department
and now runs the United Nations Foundation.

Arms control advocates contend the rise of terrorism requires
stricter control at home – as well as internationally through
better treaties.

Americans “have to be certain who they are shipping arms to,”
said Wade Boese, research director for the Arms Control
Association, a Washington think tank. “If there is any blind spot,
any place arms slip through cracks, they can reach terrorists.”

But many defense industry leaders oppose increased regulation. They
argue weapons exports are essential even if there are risks. And
some regard arms control as a political tactic at best.

“You can’t control technology,” said retired Air Force Lt. Gen.
Larry Farrell, president of the National Defense Industrial
Association. “There are going to be weapons. There are going to be
people who wish other people trouble.”

Terrorists have shown they can harness even ordinary technology to
kill Americans, Farrell pointed out.

And inevitably today’s cutting-edge weaponry “will be discovered
somewhere else,” he said. “It’s just the way people are. … You’ve
got to protect yourself.”

U.S. Arms Deals Elude Required Scrutiny

September 26, 2004 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Pakistan-Afghanistan Borderlands, Security, U.S. Role in the World

Lax oversight in the rush of exports since 9/11 has raised the
specter of weapons landing in the hands of America’s enemies.