The Lion of Babylon is the title of my novel about the Iraq war.
Read about my memoir on the Iraq war, Messages from Babylon. You can read an excerpt from the book here.
I am now working on a new novel about my experiences as an emergency manager in southern Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina. You are invited to review the new Hurricane Katrina web pages on my site.
A retired Army Reserve Colonel working as an emergency manager in a disaster prone state writes about Iraq, Katrina and getting ready for the next Big One.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Repatriation from Haiti
Since the day after the Haiti earthquake January 12 I have pulled 10-12 hour shifts at Florida's State Emergency Operations Center. Why? First, its my job. Second, the state had a mission to support the repatriation of U.S. citizens from the disaster afflicted island.
Repatriation is a federal mission, initiated by the Department of State, and funded by the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In the federal plan, which I read in haste for the first time last week, HHS establishes an agreement with a state agency designated by the Governor (in this case, the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF)) to care for U.S. citizens returned to the United States due to war or natural disaster. When required, DCF loans these citizens the money to get some food, a hotel or an airplane ticket home.
At first, HHS told us that the State would not be required to perform this repatriation mission. That illusion ended last Thursday night when we received a phone call from HHS at 5 PM that a flight was due into Miami in 2 hours and we were needed to be on hand in case any citizens needed our help.
Since then, we have provided assistance to over a thousand citizens, and we expect to continue this mission for several more weeks.
- Curtis Whiteford, at his desk in his office in the Hotel Babylon, Al Hilla, Iraq -
"Curtis Whiteford, a former colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves, was sentenced today to five years in prison for his participation in a wide-ranging bribery conspiracy in Al-Hillah, Iraq." I knew Curtis Whiteford and worked with him while I was in Iraq. I have written about this wide ranging and complex incident previously, in February 2007, August 2008 and June 2009.
"Whiteford, 53, of Deweyville, Utah, was charged in a 25-count indictment unsealed on Feb. 7, 2007, along with former U.S. Army Lt. Col. Debra M. Harrison, former U.S. Army Reserves Lt. Col. Michael Wheeler, and civilians William Driver and Seymour Morris Jr., with various crimes related to a scheme to defraud the Coalition Provisional Authority-South Central Region (CPA-SC) ... According to testimony at trial, Whiteford and Wheeler conspired from December 2003 to December 2005 with at least three others--Robert Stein, at the time the comptroller and funding officer for the CPA-SC; Philip H. Bloom, a U.S. citizen who owned and operated several companies in Iraq and Romania; and U.S. Army Lt. Col. Bruce D. Hopfengardner--to rig the bids on contracts being awarded by the CPA-SC so that more than 20 contracts were awarded to Bloom. "
I worked with Whiteford, Harrison, Hopfengardner and Wheeler at CPA-SC for five months, from October 2003 to February 2004. Debra Harrison worked for me during the period that I was there. To my knowledge, her crimes were committed after I left Hillah (she remained behind in Iraq until July 2004). I had no idea Debra or any of these other people were conspiring to defraud anyone.
Debra Harrison, federal register # 60327-050, is currently residing in a minimum security federal prison in Alderson, West Virginia. Her projected release date is November 17, 2011.
There was a lot of money, cash money, being passed out all over Iraq during this period. The banking system didn't work. No one accepted credit cards. Checks were out of the question. All of the reconstruction contracts were done as drug deals, with bags of cash (American dollars) handed over, moved about and stored. I read military situation reports about the movements of truckloads and planeloads of cash.
I wasn't in on the money side of the business. My good friend Leo Rivera passed out a lot of cash during the same period while he was in Tikrit with the 4th Division. There was cash around, but I didn't see it, touch it feel it or smell it. And I didn't want to.
Had I known that there was any criminal activity I would have reported it immediately. But I didn't know about it. By virtue of the rank Curtis Whiteford held, the oath that he took and the daily interactions that I had with him over a five month period, I had faith and confidence that Curt was executing his job as Chief of Staff properly.
Boy was I wrong.
(Debra Harrison giving bottled water to some Iraqi children)
I spent ten months of my life living on or adjacent to the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon, so when an editorial on that topic appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday, I took an interest. Entitled Myths of Babylon, by MelikKaylan, the article made the case that the American and Coalition forces had not damaged the ruins of the ancient city, as had been widely reported in the media.
I remember reading these newspaper accounts when they appeared. I thought that these media reports were inconsistent with my own observations at the time. I went to the area in and around the ruins many times, and I don't recall that they looked any different when I left than when I had arrived. In fact, as the article points out, upon arriving in Babylon in April 2003, the Marines extended their perimeter in order to protect the ruins from looters, who were hauling donkey cart loads of artifacts away daily.
The man most instrumental in encouraging the Marine Commander to preserve the ruins from the looters was Emilio Marrero, a Navy Captain and the Chaplain for the First Marine Expeditionary Force. Chaplain Marero recounts these events in his memoir, A Quiet Reality, which was just published last April. Drawing on the Chaplain's book, and an interview with the author, Mr Kaylan casts doubt on the media accusations that the U.S. and Coalition forces had damaged the site.
I remember the Chaplain very well. He hosted a very moving Memorial Day ceremony in our mess hall on the banks of the Shatt-al-Hillah canal, recounted in my own memoir of the events of that time, Messages from Babylon. A Marine helicopter had crashed into the canal a few days before, killing the crew. Worse, a Marine infantryman on guard duty nearby had jumped into the canal in an effort to save the crew, and drowned himself. It was probably one of the most moving ceremonies I had ever attended, and Chaplain Marrero deserves some of the credit for that.
I intend to put the Chaplain's book on my Xmas list.
On Monday I will be attending and speaking at the International Association of Emergency Managers 57th Annual Conference, held at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando. I will be presenting with a friend from the Salvation Army, Jeff Jellets. The title of the program is "Introducing the New Road Map for mass feeding operations."
Sound exciting? It is. What has happened is almost a revolutionary change in the area of emergency management that I work in, and I am proud to have played a part in making it happen.
One would think that the responsibility for feeding and sheltering (mass care) the survivors of a disaster would be a top priority for emergency managers. It isn't. At the local level, the city and county government level, this task is handed over to voluntary agencies like the Salvation Army and the American Red Cross. At the state level, little emphasis is given is given to mass care coordination.
And as long as the disasters aren't big, this way of doing business doesn't cause any obvious problems. Not knowing anything different, no one complains. But when the disaster gets big, this way of doing business breaks down, and the problems float into public view, like something old and rotten dislodged from the bottom of the lake.
The best example of this was Katrina. Yes, I know, the media have continually told us that it was all Bush's fault. Multiple volumes have been published detailing the mistakes that were made. I know, I read them all. But an important systemic problem that was revealed by Katrina, but one that was little discussed in the aftermath, was the lack of adequate coordination at the state level between the government and the mass care voluntary agencies.
The Red Cross and Salvation Army deal with hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny disasters nationwide every day. Unless you were affected by the disaster, you don't notice that these agencies are even there. Untill your apartment complex catches on fire, and you find yourself standing in the parking lot in your pajamas, a blanket around your shivering shoulders. If you have family to call to help you out you're okay. If you don't, you must rely on the Red Cross, who arrive with hot coffee, some toiletries, a change of clothes, and a voucher for a hotel.
In a flood, a tornado, or even a wildfire, things get more complicated, but the voluntary agencies have the organizational skills and experience (you should talk to some of these people; you would be amazed at what they can do) to pull in resources from out-of-state or across the country. But what happens if the Red Cross and the Salvation Army and the Southern Baptists and the Adventists send everything they have and it's still not enough? Then you have what happened in Katrina. And the Red Cross got blamed because they didn't send enough, even though it wasn't their fault.
Who's fault was it? I happen to believe that not everything that happens in this world is some body's "fault." What bothers me is that I saw this mass care coordination problem before Katrina, I saw it from the inside of the disaster during Katrina, and I am distressed to say that the problem still has not been totally resolved nationwide since Katrina.
On Monday, Jeff Jellets and I will explain to whoever wants to listen a first big, and important step that has been made to resolving this coordination problem. Hopefully, somebody will be there to listen.
"Mr. Obama owns the war in Afghanistan. He bought it, on credit," says Kori Schake, an associate professor at the United States Military Academy, in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. During his campaign for office, the President said that Afghanistan, and not Iraq is where we should be fighting. Now, with bad military and political news coming in from the Afghan front, the President is hearing advice that says that he shouldn't have to pay the bill.
According to the New York Times, Obama is listening to suggestions of a new strategy in Afghanistan promoted by that great military strategist, Vice-President Joe Biden. Biden's strategy for Afghanistan, like his previous strategy for Iraq, is nothing but retreat by another name. Biden wants to pull back from the counterinsurgency strategy that succeeded in Iraq and focus a much reduced U.S. military and political effort on attacking Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Biden's strategy is the wrong one not only because it is based on a flawed set of assumptions (which it is) but because it signals a lack of will on the part of the West to fight The Long War. Regardless of how such a new strategy would be sold to a dissatisfied, war-weary American public, a fanatical, nihilistic enemy, sworn to our utter destruction, would view it and promote it to their followers as a (another) great victory for their cause.
Eventually, this victory and our utter defeat in Afghanistan will become obvious to the World. Responsibility for this defeat will lie solely with the man who made the decision, President Barack Obama.
Sometime in the last two years (I can't remember exactly when) Craig Fugate, the current Administrator of FEMA and the former Florida Director of Emergency Management, had an epiphany. I never asked him where his blinding flash of the obvious came from, but I suspect that examining the preliminary results of our catastrophic planning project had something to do with it.
Florida's catastrophic planning project, some of the best money that FEMA has ever spent on disaster preparedness, forced everyone in the emergency management community in Florida to look at how we would deal with a truly catastrophic emergency. The planning project was scenario based, and the scenario they picked was truly terrifying: an enormous Category Five hurricane impact in southeast Florida. They called the storm Hurricane Ono, as in Oh, No!
We quickly realized that as good as we are (and we're pretty good) this scenario would leave us beyond overwhelmed. The bottom line is that there are too many people (6.5 million) sandwiched into a narrow strip of land between the Everglades and the Atlantic Ocean. From the first time that I received a briefing on this scenario I realized that there was no way that we could feed and shelter all these people under the conditions specified in this scenario. Almost immediately I began a campaign, over the objections of a number of people, including Craig, that we had to evacuate a large number of these people because we couldn't take care of all of them where they were. After eighteen months I won the argument.
The big lesson from this argument, and from others in other emergency management disciplines, was that we couldn't overcome the multiple, complex problems that arise in a catastrophic event without the help of the public. That was when I started hearing people use the word survivor where they normally would say victim. I found out that Craig had banned the word victim from all written and oral communication in the Division of Emergency Management. I am sure that he did the same thing when he took over at FEMA.
The concept that Craig was trying to promote was simple and obvious. In this case, as in many others, words do matter. The word "victim" conjures up the image of someone beset by disaster, helpless to respond. The word "survivor" implies the person in question has been dealt a severe blow, but is doing his/her best to pick up their life, and maybe even help out a neighbor.
Craig has been been talking about survivors at every opportunity since he took over FEMA. The man knows what he is talking about. Don't talk about victims of a disaster unless they are deceased. If everyone else is not a survivor, they at least need to act like one. If the Big One ever comes to south Florida the emergency management community will need a lot of survivors to help us out. We can't do it all.
