WinchesterRon

Marines' odd role: making Baghdad function

By Dexter Filkins and John Kifner

THE NEW YORK TIMES

BAGHDAD - U.S. Marines said Saturday that they were shifting their focus from fighting to trying to put this capital back in running order.

Their aim is to restore electricity, running water and other city services and, above all, to stop widespread looting and restore a sense of security.

"Civil affairs is our first priority now," Capt. Joseph Plenzler said, describing an unfamiliar role for the Marines.

His declaration came as looting continued in many areas of Baghdad and after U.S. troops discovered evidence of plans for suicide attacks against them.

At the same time, a force of several thousand Marines prepared for further military action. Commanders said they were set to move north toward Tikrit, the tribal home of Saddam Hussein and a suspected last-ditch holdout of several senior members of his regime. The city is about 100 miles north of Baghdad.

In the capital, Marines found scores of black leather vests stuffed with explosives and ball bearings at a school and showed them to reporters. And U.S. forces in western Iraq stopped a busload of men who had $650,000 in cash and a letter offering rewards for the killing of U.S. soldiers.

In the evening in central Baghdad, a fierce firefight broke out in an area that had been considered secure for several days.

Outside the central Palestine Hotel, where hundreds of foreign journalists are based, Marines traded fire with Iraqis in a palace across the Tigris River. The Iraqis appeared to be an overlooked pocket of resistance in a building thought to have been cleared.

Elsewhere in the city, a Marine was shot and killed at a checkpoint outside a medical facility by a man carrying a Syrian identification card, Central Command said. The Syrian man was killed by Marines while a second attacker fled.

Tank and machine-gun fire resounded in the streets, and Marines rushed to pull back television camera operators. The Marines briefly took up positions behind concrete barriers at an intersection.

The shooting and the threats in the capital, as well as the preparations to take Tikrit, illustrated the military difficulties confronting American forces as pressure grows on them to turn their attention to ending the looting and bringing a measure of order to occupied areas of Iraq. For now, the twin problems - military and civilian - appear to be placing severe strains on the limited U.S. force in Baghdad.

But in a potentially important breakthrough, the top Iraqi scientific adviser, one of 55 people on America's most-wanted list of Iraqi leaders, surrendered to U.S. forces, German television reported.

The officer, Lt. Gen. Amer al-Saadi, chief Iraqi liaison with U.N. weapons inspectors before the war, surrendered in Baghdad.

Up to now, U.S. and British forces have not found the weapons of mass destruction that the Bush administration accused Saddam of having in the months before the fighting began. The accusations formed a central part of the administration's argument for war.

Saadi could provide important information on this, but he said as he surrendered that he felt "in no way guilty" and accused the United States of attacking without reason.

In Baghdad, by late afternoon, there were already signs of the Marines' changed mission. A 24-year-old second lieutenant, Ron Winchester, was playing his role in the new orders, leading his platoon from Company C on a patrol through the streets and stopping to recruit supporters along the way.

"We want to help you," he told a knot of men on the sidewalk, arranging a community meeting for later in the evening in a parking garage. "We want to help you stop the looting."

Each platoon leader, he explained later, is to become a "mayor" of a sector, whose role will include the recruitment of at least four local helpers who will be paid about $10 a day. A platoon leader is usually a second lieutenant in his first assignment as an officer.

"The Marine Corps has never done anything like this before," Winchester said. "I have no training. But the Marine Corps is flexible."

Asked how much of a briefing he had been given, he shrugged and said, "about a two-minute one. That's how this war has been."

The Marines face a daunting task. Electric power is out. Telephones do not work. Much of the city is without running water. Hospitals have been looted of the few medical supplies they had.

In meetings over the last few days, Marine civil affairs officers have been talking to Iraqi technical workers from various ministries, trying to understand how to get the city's infrastructure functioning.

On Saturday morning, a radio broadcast urged all municipal workers to go back to work.

One result was a crowd of hundreds of men outside the Palestine Hotel, where the Marines have set up a civil affairs office. Clamoring for jobs in any future city administration, the crowd became so big that extra Marines had to be assigned to handle it, keeping them from stopping looting at a hospital.

Inside the hotel, a long line of men gathered to be interviewed by Marine and Army civil affairs officers for possible jobs.

"A combat force does not know how to run a city, but a city knows how to run itself," Maj. Andrew Petrucci said. "We want to be creating an overall secure area in which we can set priorities of power, sanitation, water, medical, fire and police services."

The main difficulty, however, is that this is a city of 4.5 million. The Marines here number only about 20,000, and combat operations continue.

Meanwhile, in Kirkuk, a vital northern oil city taken from Iraqi forces, Kurds, Arabs and ethnic Turks began working on a cooperative arrangement to govern without the ethnic strife threatening to flare in the post-Saddam era.

Kurdish fighters who took over the city said they would yield to the Americans once enough of them arrived to secure law and order.

Looting diminished Saturday in another northern city, Mosul, a day after pro-Saddam defense forces dissolved and U.S. forces moved in. A Mosul hospital reported 10 people had been killed in Arab-Kurdish violence that broke out as control of the city changed hands.

U.S. officials said Saturday that the first humanitarian flights had arrived at Baghdad's international airport since the American takeover - two transport planes with 24,000 pounds of medical supplies from the Kuwaiti government for Baghdad hospitals.

* The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This appeared in a Baltimore newspaper: Annapolis Capital

Sports comment: At Navy, they give everything

Commentary by Joe Gross, Sports Editor

The football game went on. Ron Winchester wouldn't have it any other way.

Young men who would one day be fighting bravely to keep our country free, battled last night against their football opponents from Duke University. Winchester would have been proud.

Navy won a somewhat ragged game, but it was a win. Winchester would have been happy with that.

Four years ago Winchester was a starting offensive tackle for the Naval Academy football team. He wasn't as big as some who played his position for Division I-A schools.

But his heart was bigger than most. He was one of those kids who gave everything on the football field. He played as hard as he could. He did everything to the best of his ability.

On Thursday or Friday somewhere in Iraq, First Lt. Ron Winchester, USMC, was killed.

The players on the Navy team might have dedicated the game to him, even though only a couple of the players and a few of the coaches knew him. They didn't do that because they weren't told of Winchester's fate until after the game.

They couldn't have known that they played the type of game that would have epitomized Winchester's style of play. The young man who was a starter on the Navy teams of 1999 and 2000 was the ultimate scrapper during seasons when good things were few and far between for the Midshipmen.

A lot of things went wrong for Navy last night, but they scratched and clawed and rebounded from their mistakes to emerge with a 27-12 victory. It didn't come easy. Ron Winchester would understand that. Not much came easy to the teams on which he played.

The 1999 Navy team was considered by some to be successful when it finished 5-7. The Midshipmen fell to a 1-10 record in 2000.

The 2001 graduate learned a great deal about adversity during the years he played on the Navy football team. He learned how to come back from the woes of the games. He learned how to look to bigger and better things in life.

And, despite the less-than-satisfying records of the football teams, Winchester was extremely proud to have been at the Naval Academy and proud to have given his all as a standard bearer on the football field.

And after those Navy teams defeated Army in the classic service academy rivalry games in each of those seasons, Winchester stood tall.

The graduate of Chaminade High School in Mineola, N.Y., was equally proud to be a United States Marine. If he had his way, he would want to deliver the message to the players who wore Navy football uniforms last night that they were on the way to more important battles.

He might have told them that the fumbles and missed tackles and every other thing that went against them last night meant little in the grand scheme of things. He also would have told them how proud he was that they were able to win that game.

Word reached the Naval Academy on Friday that Winchester had been killed. As with every Naval Academy graduate who loses his life in the service of our country, the news was hard to accept.

Even though giving a life is one of the sacrifices that comes with serving after graduating from the Naval Academy, word that such a thing has occurred always comes as a shock, a crushing blow. It is tantamount to losing a family member, even for those who never knew the victim.

It was noteworthy last night that the young man carrying the flag while leading the Navy players onto the field before the game, was Tyson Stahl, a senior tackle whose brother Hoot Stahl was also a Navy player who is presently serving in Iraq.

Hoot Stahl played on the Navy teams with Winchester. It might have been difficult for his younger brother to play the game knowing about his brother's friend.

Naval Academy football players pay attention to "their team" no matter where they go in the world, no matter where they are serving, no matter the peril in which they are existing. Navy football means that much to them.

Last night's game would have made Winchester a happy young man, even though he had to be in battle-torn Iraq while it was going on. But he never had the chance to enjoy the season-opening victory over Duke University.

Winchester, Navy offensive tackle, Class of 2001, was killed while serving in the capacity he dreamed of doing during his years in Annapolis. He was the epitome of a Navy athlete, the exemplar midshipman.

Winchester's fate is something that faces every young man and woman who chooses to attend the Naval Academy. They are young people with great courage, young people of valor who know they are faced with the supreme sacrifice if they are successful at the Naval Academy.

Winchester made that sacrifice and today the hearts of the Navy football players are with him.

Our prayers go out to Winchester's mom Marianne, who still lives at Rockville Center, N.Y. She knows her son would have wanted the game to go on. She knows her son would have been thrilled by Navy's victory.

***

jgross@capitalgazette.com

Published September 05, 2004, The Capital, Annapolis, Md.