**Editor's Note: The Daily has agreed to requests made by the panelists to remove their last names from the online edition of this article.
Four Iraq war veterans, also students at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, were on hand Apr. 11 to talk about their experiences in and opinions on the war.
The event, titled "An Evening with Iraq War Veterans," was sponsored by the Director's Leadership Council (DLC), which is affiliated with Tufts' International Relations Department, and the Institute for Global Leadership (IGL).
"It is our hope that an event such as this can help to clear our misunderstandings about the war in Iraq," moderator Neil Sood said.
The event's titular veterans - Jeff**, a captain in the United States Marine Corps (USMC); Ben, a captain in the United States Army; Josh, a captain in the United States Army; and Mike, a government official who came to Iraq as a civilian and worked with the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and the U.S. Department of State - served in different areas of Iraq and brought forth different views of the war.
Jeff, who was stationed until June of 2005 as an infantryman in the city of Talfar, helped to train the new Iraqi army so the country to could learn to defend itself.
"It was very difficult at first," Jeff said of training the inexperienced Iraqi army. "But after a while, those who really wanted to be there stayed there, and those who wanted to leave had left, and everything began to go much more smoothly."
Jeff said that an indicator of the advancement in training came in October of 2005, when Iraqi soldiers he trained led a successful attack that was accompanied by very little collateral damage.
Josh worked as a logistics officer for a Kuwait-based battalion, where he helped unload supplies from ships headed to Iraq. He spent the next several months in Mosul, Iraq working on logistics with troops in Talfar, and later was assigned to help coordinate between Iraqi and Polish troops.
"There were Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites in Mosul all at the same time, so there was a need for security" and a potential for trouble, Josh said. "Training was slow at first, but the Iraqis were proud of their homes and cities and wanted to defend them."
Mike, a civilian who worked with news companies and the CPA, provided a different perspective. He said that as an Arab-American, he could walk around freely, although "on the civilian side, things changed after the attack on the Hotel Rasheed" in October of 2003.
"My biggest feeling [about the war] was that we should take the politics out and make it a United States thing or a coalition thing," he said. "I feel like the Iraqis should step up and help to defend themselves."
Ben came to Iraq as part of a motorized infantry division. He was assigned to patrol the Mansur neighborhood of Iraq and also to work on community relations, including the Commander's Emergency Response Program (CERP), which diverted money from the Saddam Hussein regime to help rebuild schools and community buildings in Iraq.
The discussion was then opened for questions from the audience. When asked whether or not the United States should have gone into Iraq, the veterans expressed mixed feelings.
"Should we have gone into Iraq? I think yes, we should have," Josh said. "Did we do it for the right reasons? That question is much more unclear."
"Almost nine months later [since he left Iraq], I would like to have seen more progress over there," Jeff said. "I know that it is happening, but I wish that there were more."
Added Ben, "It seems that the United States' reason for going into the war has changed so many times, from 'Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and is ready to attack [the United States]' to 'Saddam was trying to obtain weapons, and had the intent to use them' to 'Saddam is simply a madman,' so a war like this is harder to justify."
Panelists were also asked whether media coverage of Iraq was fair.
"Let's face it, the media is a business, and death sells," said Mike, who worked with news companies in Iraq.
He said, however, that the media also highlighted human-interest stories to show that there was more to the war than just death and violence.
"I think that the media did a great job covering the Iraq elections [and other big events] when people like Dan Rather ... and Peter Jennings came over," he said. "But when the big names had gone, the coverage was not fantastic."
Ben felt that Iraqis may also have played a hand in the media coverage.
"The insurgents know time zones, and they know when to fire a mortar into the Green Zone in order to get on the 6:00pm news," he said.
Another questioner asked about the escalating violence and tensions between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq.
Jeff said that when he was serving in Talfar with the Iraqi army, there was only one mosque, and he was afraid that one of the groups might try to take it over. This scenario of conflict never played out, however.
"But these people are a tribal, nomadic people, so there is a possibility for tension between groups," he said.
