Jobless Iraqi soldiers issue threats

"Our objective in de-Baathification was quite clear - it was to go after people at the core of Saddam Hussein's ugly regime," he said. "It was not to go after people who joined the army merely to feed themselves."

Most dismissed soldiers, however, say that they had no choice but to join Hussein's military - and are now feeling let down by what they read in the Pentagon's promises.

Men shout to get their complaints in, each with a more pained story than the next: Large families at home that need to be fed, brothers who were tortured and killed for defecting from Hussein's army. In their eyes, they should be appreciated for the fact that thousands of soldiers simply walked off the job. Instead, they feel they've been penalized.

"If we had wanted to fight, we could have fought. But we just put down our weapons and walked away, not from fear, but to let the Americans save us from an unjust regime," says Mr. Amee.

Bremer said that some soldiers could be accepted into the New Iraqi Corps. And some former soldiers could be rehired for a $7 million program aimed at putting people to work on reconstruction tasks.

But no one in the top four tiers of any military or party-run organization can serve again, according to de-Baathification guidelines.

Iraqis here argue that only senior military officers who were loyal to Hussein should be kept out. But how to determine who ho wanted to defect - and who cut off the ears of defectors? Those who are demanding their jobs back say they had no choice but to serve in the military, and all say they were just part of the regular army, quite low in the pecking order compared with Hussein's Republican Guards and other elite branches.

"When you've had 35 years of Saddam's regime, you have to be really careful with allowing people back in," says Naheed Mehta, a spokeswoman for the CPA. "Some of the people really suffered under the military."

Many Iraqis are also incensed at the thought of the occupation powers recreating a military that would be a tenth of its original size. "I heard Mr. Bremer say we would have about 40,000 - but our Army was 400,000," says Maj. Ahmed Lutfi. "We still need to have the full Army to be deployed all over our country."

The frustration of the dismissed officers comes at a moment when US soldiers have been suffering almost daily attacks on their posts. The Iraqi Assistance Center, a wing of the coalition forces designated coordinate with humanitarian assistance and NGO projects, said in a briefing paper this week that they could expect "spectacular" attacks on coalition-related targets the next 30 to 45 days.

But Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, commanding general of the Coalition Joint Task Force 7, said at a press briefing Wednesday that he was seeing progress in security in Iraq. The targeting of US forces, he said, was random and unorganized.

He acknowledged, however, that the dismissal of the army added thousands of men to the ranks of unemployed, increasing public anxiety. "There is a large segment of unemployed Iraqis," Mr. McKiernan said. "The challenge we face is to make sure there's a source of income."

Page: 1 | 2