The Department of Justice recently
organized a team of legal experts, including judges, prosecutors,
defenders, and court administrators, who spent 90 days in Iraq assessing
the state of Iraqi law and their legal facilities. Circuit chief judges
were contacted by DOJ for the names of individuals who might be willing
to serve as members of the team. Among those invited from the Judiciary
were Judge Gilbert Merritt from the Sixth Circuit, Judge Stephen M.
Orlofsky in the District of New Jersey, Judge Don Walter from the
Western District of Louisiana, Clerk of Court (Luther) Dan Thomas
from the Northern District of Georgia, Barry J. Portman from the Federal
Public Defenders' Office in the Northern District of California, and
Richard Coughlin from the Federal Public Defenders’ Office in
the District of New Jersey. The team would recommend ways to restart
the country’s justice system. All participants were required
to undergo a four-day “deployment processing,” at a U.
S. military base before leaving for the Middle East. From initial
reports, this involved breakfast at 4:00 a.m., four-to-a-room accommodations,
multiple immunizations, briefings on the Uniform Code of Military
Justice, Rules of Engagement, Customs and Laws of the Theater (Middle
East), Red Cross Assistance, Staff Judge Advocate’s Briefing
on Legal Matters, and lots of anti-terrorism briefings. They also
were issued gear, including a Kevlar helmet, Kevlar body armor, chemical/biological
suits, a gas mask, sleeping bag, and several sets of long underwear.
Next stop, Iraq. Following is a report by Judge Don Walter, a recently
retired federal district judge from Shreveport, LA. He was asked by
the US Dept. of Justice to go to Iraq to help them restore their judicial
system. He has made several reports of this type since going there.
I thought you might like reading it.
Remarks
by Judge Don Walter: I
really am not into public speaking as I am sure you are about to find
out. But my adventures in Iraq taught me something that I would very
much like to share with you. I have been fortunate over the past five
or six years to ghetto such exotic places as Bosnia, Jakarta, Indonesia,
and Morocco. But, Iraq is my swan song. First, I am too old for such
adventures, and second, Charlotte (my wife) won't let me.
In mid-April, I got a call from
DOJ asking if I would be willing to go to Iraq for up to three months
to evaluate the justice system and make recommendations. When I went
home, Charlotte said without a pause, “how could I possibly
tell you, no?”
Let me begin with a disclaimer,
I was in Iraq for fewer than 40 days, I was in Baghdad for a little
over three weeks and in the three provinces of the far south for two
weeks. I am limited in what I saw and heard. Needless to say, the
opinions are my own. I want to make it clear that, initially, I vehemently
opposed the war. The team of 12 that went to Iraq was to access the
judiciary and to make recommendations for the future. We were sent
too soon and without sufficient planning and forethought. Accordingly
we were forced to play our part by ear. Ultimately, we were successful.
No thanks to the civil authorities in Washington or Iraq.
We were divided into four teams.
We were the southern team: Mike Farhang, an AUSA from Los Angeles,
Harvard Suma Undergraduate, Harvard Law Review, Linguist, 5 languages
including Arabic; Rich Coughlin, Federal Public Defender from New
Jersey, who abandoned his wife and 23 month old daughter to volunteer
for this; and me. We were accompanied by an interpreter and protected
by what I called our “minders," four Iraqis well-armed with
9mm hand guns and AK47’s. During the first two weeks, we talked
to a few hundred Iraqis and interviewed about 60 judges. Our help
came from our Danish colleagues and the First Armored Division (UK),
not from the civil authorities — OPCA, Office of the Provisional
Coalition Authority, (formerly ORHA), Ambassador Bremer’s group.
Despite my initial opposition to
the war, I am now convinced, whether we find any weapons of mass destruction
or prove Saddam sheltered and financed terrorists, absolutely, we
should have overthrown the Bathists, indeed, we should have done it
sooner. What changed my mind?
When we left mid June, 57 mass
graves had been found, one with the bodies of 1,200 children. There
have been credible reports of murder, brutality and torture of hundreds
of thousands of ordinary Iraqi citizens. There is poverty on a monumental
scale and fear on a larger one. That fear is still palpable. I have
seen the machines and places of torture.
I will tell you one story told
to me by the Chief of Pediatrics at the Medical College in Basra.
It was one of the most shocking to me, but I heard worse. One of Saddam’s
security agents was sent to question a Shiite in his home. The interrogation
took place in the living room in the presence of the man’s wife,
who held their three month old child. A question was asked and the
thug did not like the answer; he asked it again, same answer. He grabbed
the baby from its mother and plucked its eye out. And then repeated
his question. Worse things happened with the knowledge, indeed with
the participation, of Saddam, his family and the Bathist regime.
Thousands suffered while we were
messing about with France and Russia and Germany and the UN. Every
one of them knew what was going on there, but France and the UN were
making millions administering the food for oil program. We cannot,
I know, remake the world, nor do I believe we should. We cannot stamp
out evil, I know. But this time we were morally right and our economic
and strategic interests were involved.
I submit that just because we can’t
do everything doesn’t mean that we should do nothing. We must
have the moral courage to see this through, to do whatever it takes
to secure responsible government for the Iraqi people. Having decided
to topple Saddam, we cannot abandon those who trust us. I fear we
will quit as the horrors of war come into our living rooms. Look at
the stories you are getting from the media today. The steady drip,
drip, drip of bad news may destroy our will to fulfill the obligations
we have assumed. WE ARE NOT GETTING THE WHOLE
TRUTH FROM THE NEWS MEDIA.
The news you watch, listen to and
read is highly selective. Good news doesn’t sell. 90% of the
damage you see on TV was caused by Iraqis, not by US. All the damage
you see to schools,hospitals, power generation facilities, refineries,
pipelines and water supplies, as well as shops, museums, and semi-public
buildings (like hotels) was caused either by the Iraqi army in its
death throes or Iraqi civilians looting and rioting. The day after
the war was over, there was nearly 0 power being generated in Iraq.
45 days later, 1/3 of the total national potential of 8000 MW is up
and running. Downed power lines are being repaired and were about
70% complete when I left. There is water purification where little
or none existed before... this time to everyone. Oil is 95% of the
Iraqi GNP. In order for Iraq to survive, it must sell oil. All the
damage to the oil fields was done by the Iraqi army or looters. The
14 story office building of the Southern Iraq Oil Company in Basra
was torched by Bathists, destroying all of the books, records and
computers of the company. Today, the refinery at Bayji is at 75% of
capacity. The crude pipeline between Kirkuk and Bayji has been repaired,
though the Bathists keep trying to disrupt it.
If we are doing all this for the
people, why are they shooting us? The general population isn't. By
my sample, 90% are glad we came and the majority doesn’t want
us to leave for some time to come, but there are still plenty of bad
guys - the Bathists who lived well under Saddam. The thugs of the
old regime still hope to return to power, and there are plenty of
them, mostly located in Sunni areas. Then too, Saddam, in the Ramadan
amnesty, let every murderer, butcher, rapist and violent criminal
loose on his own people. There are interests, including organized
crime, with a desire for anarchy and profit. There are disruptive
forces from Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria.
We saw poverty on a scale that
I have never witnessed except in pictures of Haiti. I saw one little
girl: she was slender, very pretty, about five or six years old, in
a tattered dress with a broad red hem, part of which was torn and
dragging in the dirt. She would touch her heart and make hungry gestures.
She was duplicated a thousand times during the journey. The poverty
in Iraq is a sharp contrast to the lives of Saddam and his sons. Saddam
alone, not counting Ouday and Qusay and the leading Bathists, had
43 palaces. We are using several for civilian government. The one
where OPCA is located is the main republican palace occupying over
2,000 acres. It is a monument to narcissism, four 25 foot tall heads
of Saddam decorate the front of the palace, and his portraits and
statues are everywhere. We went to a second palace by the airport.
It is surrounded by a lake which was created by diverting the Euphrates
water which limited agricultural irrigation downstream. His palace
in Basra was used by him only once I am told. Basra functions fairly
well except for the power. There are six lines into the city, but
it does not have a standard power grid. Saddam used power and other
essentials as a method of punishing a city of three million! He would
cut power for days to punish them. When I tell you the temperatures
there, you will understand how bad that was. I am told that in high
summer, it will hit 155 degrees, even 160! He has made no investments
in this area which is overwhelmingly Shiite. He has few friends there.
Consequently, it is easier for the Brits to govern, unlike Baghdad.
And they are doing a good job of it. They are doing it at the moment
by using pre-war personnel, perhaps contrary to Bremer’s de-Bathification
order. The problem with Bremer’s policy is that it removes almost
all of the people who ran the country. The Brits have been pragmatic:
they have largely left the judges and police in place and are removing
them as they see the need and they are able to train and replace the
bad ones. That was our problem in Haiti, we trained a police force
but did not put the judiciary in place so that the jails just filled
up and then overcrowding forced criminals out. And the Haitian police
have largely quit. (Ouday had a solution to overcrowding, when he
received a complaint of overcrowding, he went to the prison and personally
shot every third prisoner.) We want to keep Iraq a secular state,
and that will present some difficulties as there is no real concept
of separation of church and state in Islam. Attaturk was a true revolutionary
where this was concerned. The tribal and sharia (religious) courts
are functioning, and if we don’t get a move on, they will replace
the civil and criminal courts. I find
it difficult to explain how differently they think. I remember telling
Mike, “I don't think we are on the same page with this fellow.”
Mike said, “Don, I am not sure we are in the same library.”
For a large percentage of the Iraqi
people, and they are most adamant, family and tribe are everything,
religion and state are one and the same. That they don’t understand
us is our biggest problem in the Middle East. They perceive our way
of life as a threat to theirs,... and it is. They fear the modern
world is about to run over them, destroying family life as they know
it, educating and freeing their women, forbidding honor killing...
coca colas, jeans, lack of parental respect and respect for the old
ways and religion. And to defend their way of life and their religion,
they will die with the same fervor with which the Christians marched
to the lions. In their fear of western life, some will fight and kill
us; but I remain convinced that the majority want a secularsociety
and the best that the west has to offer.
We are not hated by everyone. Of
the hundreds I talked to, the overwhelming majority thanked us for
being there. Hundreds of adults and children on the roads waved and
smiled as we passed by. We went to the law school with about 300 students,
about ten of whom were female. There we were, three Americans and
they wanted us to fix their school and they thought we could. They
thought Americans could do anything. They were like children expecting
the genie from the bottle to immediately gratify their needs. The
law students were the finest example of hope that I encountered. They
told me that the future was theirs and that they needed and wanted
our help. I believe we should be paying more attention and giving
greater effort to restoring higher education. These law students are
the immediate future. When we met with them a week later, they had
formed a protective association, a bus for transportation, found a
disused grammar school for classes, and got their assistant dean to
round up some professors who were teaching them. Still they need help
and I am trying to get some help for them from our law schools. LSU
has refused, Seton Hall and Rutgers have promised to help; I have
not contacted Tulane, Loyola or Southern yet.
Upon returning to Baghdad, I went
to the Ministry of Justice to review the situation in the south. I
took advantage of the situation and said the following: “I have
read a little of your history. I know you are a proud people who have
risen from the ashes in the past, so I must tell you that I am saddened
and disappointed. I have talked to hundreds of you over the past five
weeks, almost everyone educated and privileged. What I have heard
is what you want from us, how the Americans have to fix this and give
you money and equipment, protect you from your own. The only adults
planning on the future were those law students in Basra who had lost
everything — their books, their desks, their records, their
school. And they were doing something about it on their own. You need
to do some of these things for yourselves. If you are depending on
us to do everything, you are going to be sadly disappointed.”
I got a few nods from the judges, but the translator said to me: “Thank
you. I have been waiting for someone to tell them that.”
Our soldiers, God love them and
keep them; they smiled every time I got a chance to talk to them.
They want to come home, but I did not hear one word of complaint nor
a question as to why they were there. This is boring, HOT, dirty,
and dangerous work. They stand in 120 plus degrees in full body armor.
They are amazing. Their entertainment was largely self-generated;
boredom doesn’t stop when they stand down. Write a letter, send
a note or email; send a book, cd, tape, or magazine; do something.
