May 2, 2004
THE TROOPS
National Guard Officer Offers Criticism of Bush's Iraq Plans
By ANTHONY RAMIREZ

National Guard officer from Manhattan who recently returned from combat in Iraq delivered the Democratic Party's response to President Bush's radio address yesterday, saying that while progress was being made in Iraq, the American effort was poorly planned and poorly executed.

The officer, First Lt. Paul Rieckhoff, spoke in a radio spot usually reserved for members of Congress and political figures.

"The people who planned this war were not ready for us," he said in his address. "There were not enough vehicles, not enough ammunition, not enough medical supplies, not enough water."

Lieutenant Rieckhoff's address was broadcast on the first anniversary of Mr. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech and came directly after the president's weekly radio address.

Lieutenant Rieckhoff, a 1998 graduate of Amherst College and former president of the student government there, is a registered Democrat. He approached the Democratic Party about his concerns about the war, but has not yet decided whether to endorse Senator John Kerry for president. He is one of only a few nonpolitical figures to deliver the Democrats' response, said a Kerry campaign official

In his remarks, recorded in Manhattan, Lieutenant Rieckhoff said two images kept replaying in his mind: the scrolling list of war dead and Mr. Bush's April 14 news conference in which he said he would "stay the course."

"Well, it is time for a change," Lieutenant Rieckhoff said in his address. "Our troops are still waiting for more body armor. They are still waiting for better equipment. They are still waiting for a policy that brings in the rest of the world and relieves their burden."

In an interview after his address, he said he was speaking as a private citizen who wanted to convey the mixed situation in Iraq.

"The Iraqi people are making progress and the American military is helping them make that progress," he said. "But at what cost to the American military and what cost to the American people? I'm not sure that our country is better off now. I'm pretty sure that our military is not better off now."

He said he was speaking out because he felt American soldiers in Iraq, many of them working-class people or immigrants, were not being heard. "Not too many people from Amherst in the military," he said, adding, "these are the guys who are stuck interpreting foreign policy on a corner in Baghdad in Arabic."

Lieutenant Rieckhoff returned from Iraq in February but said he still kept in touch through e-mail and telephone calls with his unit: Company B of the Third Battalion, 124th Infantry. "I got an e-mail from a guy who used to be in my platoon recounting to me a story about an R.P.G. round that came through the center of his Humvee and blew apart a kid next to him." An R.P.G. is a rocket-propelled grenade.

As part of a light infantry unit, his men did not use heavy armored vehicles, Lieutenant Rieckhoff said, but they still needed transportation. Two men in his unit whom he described as a former car thief and a former mechanic happened upon a fleet of Land Rovers and Nissan sport utility vehicles that they requisitioned.

"So we ripped doors off them to roll around Baghdad," he said. "We were like the A-Team, and the kids put on Eminem on the stereo."

But there were some 500 soldiers in his battalion and only two or three armored Humvees. The soldiers "would pretty much drew straws as to who was going to ride in the armor who was going to ride in the other ones."

He said he did not know for sure what he planned to do in the near future, but would probably apply to graduate school in public policy. But if he is called back to Iraq again, which could be as early as June, he would serve again, he said. "If I get the call tomorrow, I'm going."




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