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Insight

Reflections of Soldiers in Iraq

Aired June 23, 2004 - 23:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


JONATHAN MANN, CNN HOST: Fighting a war they're wondering about. American soldiers in Iraq tell us about the doubts they didn't expect to have.
Hello and welcome.

The U.S. military is the most powerful force mankind has ever seen. Its wars tend to be quick and one-sided and it enjoys widespread support among the American people.

But if you've been anywhere near a newspaper or a television in recent months, you know that the occupation of Iraq has not been easy. The Pentagon describes it as a clear success, leading to a handover in June. The troops in the field have a different view.

On our program today, a glimpse of the war from ground level. Guy Raz begins our coverage from Najaf.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GUY RAZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Meet Sergeant Timothy Worline (ph), the warrior, and Timothy Worline (ph), the musician.

SGT. TIMOTHY WORLINE (ph), SOLDIER: I can't say that there wasn't a possibility of things turning out the way they have. I mean, obviously, it happened this way. Whether we were prepared for it or not, it's hard to say. We reacted. We did what we had to do.

RAZ: Just when it seemed things were winding down, all hell broke loose for Task Force 237.

WORLINE (ph): What happened at the end of March and April, I would have to say on my own part there is a tremendous feeling like the work didn't get done for a year. It had just been walked away.

RAZ: When Worline (ph) and his fellow soldiers rolled into Iraq last year, they believed they were embarking on a mission to protect America from weapons of mass destruction.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I guess I'm not as much of an idealist as I once was. Almost from the moment we crossed the border between Kuwait and Iraq the president said we're not going to stop until the Ba'athist Party is topped and Saddam's regime is out of power, which that kind of struck a chord. Wait a second. That's not why we were supposed to be here.

RAZ: Sometimes they were warriors, sometimes nation-builders, sometimes both at the same time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We get back from the mission and we're like, wow, maybe they don't understand what we're trying to do. But then you think, well, you know, maybe they really don't like us and maybe they really don't want us here.

RAZ: The schools they built, the money they handed out, the attempts to make friends with the locals and learn the customs, much of it became obscured by the violence and a determined enemy, the Mehdi Army.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The guys that we're fighting now, they're not fighting under the same agenda, you know, as Saddam was. They're not -- they're fighting for their say in this government. It's a little bit different fight. I don't necessarily feel that they're directly terrorist in the ways the al Qaeda and Taliban Army. You know, there were specific missions going on. And now these guys kind of popped up on us.

RAZ: In the ruins of a construction site, Task Force 237 setup shop in Najaf. They brought with them the things they could carry. Comic books and movies, novels and even philosophy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The idea that (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and the desire to be recognized by ones brother hit me that it was the flame around which we're all moths. I think that's largely the truth. It's not a pretty picture of humanity.

I think the vanity of the American Army, I think the vanity of the Mehdi Army, I think the vanity of everyone here has a lot to do with why we're here, what we're doing, why we're staying here and trying to democratize this country when really it's an uphill battle.

RAZ: Disillusionment often breeds reflection. These soldiers have seen it all from an unassailable perspective, unencumbered by spin and doublespeak.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Basically, I think they're playing a game that maybe shouldn't be played, but that doesn't -- I don't think that in any way lessens the sacrifices and the struggles of the men that have been here.

RAZ: Songs of brave soldiers with questions and doubts and unshakeable commitment to what they see as their ultimate responsibility, the responsibility to stay until the job is done.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can't just go into a country, shoot the hell out of it, kill the bad guys and then just leave and expect it tomorrow or the next day, a month or two, three years down the road that the same thing isn't going to happen again.

RAZ: Guy Raz, CNN, in Najaf, Southern Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MANN: We take a break now and then when U.S. troops get their chance the leave, the Iraqi soldiers they will be leaving behind.

Stay with us.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) for success, for Americans to say we've succeeded and to bring the troops home. At what point? People ask me this. I have no answer.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When it becomes an Iraqi fight and the Iraqis are prepared to take on the fight, they're prepared to join their security forces, we are prepared to arm and equip them to do it. I can't tell you how long that's going to take. It's dangerous.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MANN: Fallujah has always been a problem spot for the coalition. Now it's more of a problem spot for Iraqis. In an unprecedented arrangement, Iraqi Colonel Mohammad Latif (ph) assumed control of this city after a 14- day siege, an impasse set off by the murder and mutilation of four U.S. civilians.

Welcome back.

For a time, some Iraqis said that Fallujah had become probably the safest place in Iraq, but the United States has conducted two air strikes on the city in recent days, part of an effort to disrupt an ongoing suspected terror network headed by Abu Musaab al Zarqawi.

As the date for the transfer of power nears, things are not exactly going according to plan in Fallujah nor elsewhere in the country for that matter. The violence is escalating. Officials say the Iraqi forces will not be ready to take over on June 30.

As Christiane Amanpour found out, it's a tough balance for coalition troops training Iraqi forces, winning the hearts of the people and still fighting the enemy.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTL. CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Captain Jonathan Stark (ph) is leading a unit of the Arkansas National Guard into battle. It's the battle to win a few hearts here, a few there, and time is running out.

In full combat gear, cocking rifles and carrying plastic tricycles, here they are targeting the poor, those Saddam neglected.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a lot of friendly, wonderful people out here, but my enemy is out here too.

AMANPOUR: Back in their rooms, trying to relax between round-the- clock missions, these soldiers tell us sometimes they get dispirited.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's hard. It's hard for us to want to win their hearts and minds while they're shooting at us. If that makes any sense. It's every day, something. It's mortars, RPGs, small arms, looks. You drive down the street and people is flipping you off.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's frustrating to hear people displeased with what we're doing, not have confidence in us. I can tell you that a lot of our friends have shed their blood to make Iraq a better place.

AMANPOUR: Indeed, a mortar attack on their base killed one soldier and wounded six others, and so this is the exit strategy. Getting these new Iraqi forces onto the street.

"I'm very proud to be one of the new soldiers to serve this country," says Mohammad Nader (ph).

Preparing them to serve is the U.S. military's highest priority. The Pentagon has just sent in its star General David Butreas (ph), hoping he can work a miracle and fix the fact that 15 months into the occupation this force is still a work in progress despite the looming handover.

(on camera): It's the ICDC that will be vital come June 30, because they're the ones who are going to be deployed into the community, and so at this recruiting center American forces have stepped up their level of training.

(voice-over): They've gone from one to ten trainers, but still lack the basic gear.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They need more equipment, better equipment, everywhere from boots, the uniforms to proper weapons that function properly.

AMANPOUR: And in Fallujah, the attempt to handover to an Iraqi brigade has failed. A U.S. officer in the Sunni Triangle says Fallujah is totally controlled by a Taliban-like police force. "It's ugly there," he says.

And it's ugly in Baghdad too, with frequent attacks on recruiting centers and bases.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're trying. We hope to God we destroy those bastards.

AMANPOUR: But Iraqi forces are trying to keep up their moral. "There's not a weak heart among us," they chant.

Christiane Amanpour, CNN, Adamir (ph), Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MANN: Manpower has been a crucial question from the very start of the war when some prominent military experts at the Pentagon didn't put enough men in the field. Now as we've heard, the Pentagon is keeping some of the men and women there for longer than they expected. That's hardly helped morale.

Senior Pentagon correspondent Jaime McIntyre has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAIME MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The Army's blanket order standardizes what it's been doing for two years now, mandating soldiers assigned one-year tours in Iraq or Afghanistan serve the full year with their unit, even if their enlistment is up before then.

It's called "stop loss" and can add as much as 18 months to a soldier's time in uniform. The Army insists it's just common sense to keep combat units that trained together fighting together.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One of the worst things that we can do, and we've learned this from previous conflicts, is to basically some time during that unit's deployment, part of the team leaves. We want to make sure these teams are trained together so the person knows what the person on the right, what the soldier on the left, is going to do.

MCINTYRE: But critics, including some soldiers and their families, argue extending the time volunteers have to serve in a war zone is unfair and evidence today's Army is too small. It's becoming an issue in the presidential campaign.

JOHN KERRY, U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Our soldiers are stretched too thin. The administration's answer has been to put a Band-Aid on the problem. They've effectively issued a "stop loss" policy as a backdoor draft.

MCINTYRE: Kerry says if elected he'll add 40,000 more troops, roughly two Army divisions. But the Army argues that even if it had more divisions it would still want to use "stop loss" orders to delay the routine retirement of soldiers who are in the middle of a war.

And the Army says reorganizing its current 10 divisions into as many as 48 smaller, more deployable brigades, will spread the burden more evenly. Converting some under-used units, such as air defense, into high- demand specialties like military police will also help the Army end over- reliance on the National Guard and Reserve.

(on camera): No one here argues the U.S. military isn't stretched or that soldiers and their families aren't making big sacrifices, but amazingly there seems to be no mass exodus from the all-volunteer Army. Army officials say so far this year, they've met 100 percent of their recruiting goals and 99 percent of their retention goals. But those are numbers they watch carefully.

Jaime McIntyre, CNN, the Pentagon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MANN: We take another break, and then when we come back, the majority of Iraqis say they want U.S. troops to leave. Measuring the impact on U.S. morale.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's nice to come home to people who appreciate what we did.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It does mean a lot when you're over there and you don't really know how the American public feels about you, but when you come home and you can see the outpouring of gratitude, it's wonderful.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MANN: There's no more vivid reminder of the cost of war than a flag- draped coffin. Throughout history, fallen soldiers have been honored in elaborate state ceremonies, but those images are no longer seen in the United States. The Pentagon bans media coverage of coffins returning from Iraq and on Monday the U.S. Senate voted to uphold the ban.

Welcome back.

More than 840 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq, losses that are not huge by historical standards, but they are the highest troop casualties suffered by the United States since the Vietnam War.

Joining us now to talk about the numbers, their affect on morale and the way the news is being felt by the military is Robert Hodierne, senior managing editor of the "Army Times" Publishing Company, who was last in Iraq back in April.

Thanks so much for being with us.

We have been hearing reports from soldiers about the things that trouble them, that there was no weapons of mass destruction to be found in Iraq, that the war has not gone the way they expected, that they haven't been welcomed by Iraqis. At the same time, you can do similar interviews with other soldiers who say that they are proud of what they've done there and confident that they're doing the right thing.

Overall, is there any way to gauge the level of morale in the U.S. military in Iraq right now?

ROBERT HODIERNE, "ARMY TIMES": I think you can look at the numbers that Jaime McIntyre alluded to just a couple of moments ago about retention. If there were a serious morale problem, you would think the military would have trouble getting people to reenlist, and they don't appear to be having that problem.

Even in the very active, highly-deployed units, like the 101st Airborne and the 82nd. 82nd had a little softness in retention rates at the first of the year. They for the last quarter of 2003 missed their retention goals for the first time in 10 years, but they made up the difference and they're right on target.

So in that sense, if you're looking for an objective measurement, it's hard to make a case that morale is suffering.

MANN: Can you explain that? I'll as you, because, after all, soldiers in the Marines, in the Air Force, in the Navy, they're fighting a war. You would think that soldiers, military personnel in general, would be wanting to get away, get somewhere safe, when they had the opportunity.

HODIERNE: Well, a lot of these men and women enlisted in the military to fight wars, especially if they joined to become a paratrooper or ranger or one of the infantry outfits. As a number of them told me, we'd rather be here doing what we trained to do that be back at Fort Campbell or Fort Benning practicing.

MANN: OK. What about the National Guard and the Reserves, though? Because a lot of the men and women that we speak to in those branches of the miliary didn't really enlist to fight wars. If they did, they did so hoping that their time away from home would be much shorter, that the duty would be lighter, and they've been badly surprised.

HODIERNE: Well, I think they have been badly surprised. There is a very famous photograph that gets around of a National Guard truck with a sign in the window that says "One Weekend a Month, My Bleep," and I think that probably comes closer to reflecting the morale in the National Guard and the Reserve units.

But even there, incidentally, the ability to retain members of the Reserves and be able to recruit into it seems to be undiminished, so you would hypothesize that the morale would be worse in those units, but it's not driving people away from those services, and that's something, of course, the military is deeply concerned about. They're really concerned that they're going to break the reserve system and break the National Guard system. It doesn't seem to have happened yet.

MANN: You were in Vietnam. How does the morale of the troops in Iraq compare to that war?

HODIERNE: Well, it depends on what time, and it's a very good question, what time you look at in Vietnam. I first went over there in 1966, and the military then looked a lot like the way it looks today. That is to say it was almost all volunteers, very professional, the senior NCOs and the officers were all career people. They knew their job. Their morale was very high.

By the time you got to, say, 1968, '69, '70, when there was a large influx of very unwilling draftees and you had lost a lot of your senior people, your experienced people, either through injury and death or guys who were looking at a third tour in Vietnam and said enough of this, I'm getting out, then morale suffered a lot and that's what career officers in the military are worried about right now.

It's one thing to send a guy over there for one tour and two tours. It's that third tour when they really start getting the heat from their family, where they start saying, you know, this is probably more than I signed up for.

MANN: Let me ask you about that very thought in the light of the "stop loss" order. People who signed up for tours are finding they may be there a year longer than they expected. Once again, the retention rates attest to something, but that's got to anger and disappoint a lot of military people and a lot of military families.

HODIERNE: Well, interestingly -- I mean, it does. There are certainly people who have had their plans to enroll in college put off, people who had found jobs and taken jobs and even in some cases moved their families to where the job was going to be, have those plans shattered. They're not very happy.

A number of other people, you know, feel that, I joined the Army, I joined the Marines, I joined the Air Force, to do a job. And that was to defend my country, and they view what they're doing right now as doing the job they signed up for, and they are not as deeply unhappy as civilians like you and like I might think.

MANN: How popular or unpopular is the leadership in the Pentagon among the men and women in the field?

HODIERNE: I don't think there is any -- are you talking about the military eldership or the civilian leadership?

MANN: I'm talking about Donald Rumsfeld in particular. I'll tell you why. I read one media account that said he is deeply disliked by the officer corps and I'm reluctant to even bring that up, because that was just one media account. No telling if that's true or not. So maybe you could tell us.

HODIERNE: Well, we've heard the same sorts of things. You know, off the record, and it makes sense, if you think about it.

Secretary Rumsfeld came in with ambitions to remake the military, particularly the Army, that he thought of as too big, too lumbering, too inflexible, and that didn't please people who had made a career out of building the Army in particular that way.

And so to that extent, he suffers from some popularity problems in the upper reaches of the military. That's not very surprising. And, of course, Secretary Rumsfeld isn't a particularly diplomatic fellow in expressing himself. So that rankles some of the brass.

MANN: Robert Hodierne, of the "Army Times" Publishing Company, thanks so much for this.

HODIERNE: My pleasure.

MANN: That's INSIGHT for this day. I'm Jonathan Mann. The news continues.

END

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Aired June 23, 2004 - 23:00:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JONATHAN MANN, CNN HOST: Fighting a war they're wondering about. American soldiers in Iraq tell us about the doubts they didn't expect to have.
Hello and welcome.

The U.S. military is the most powerful force mankind has ever seen. Its wars tend to be quick and one-sided and it enjoys widespread support among the American people.

But if you've been anywhere near a newspaper or a television in recent months, you know that the occupation of Iraq has not been easy. The Pentagon describes it as a clear success, leading to a handover in June. The troops in the field have a different view.

On our program today, a glimpse of the war from ground level. Guy Raz begins our coverage from Najaf.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GUY RAZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Meet Sergeant Timothy Worline (ph), the warrior, and Timothy Worline (ph), the musician.

SGT. TIMOTHY WORLINE (ph), SOLDIER: I can't say that there wasn't a possibility of things turning out the way they have. I mean, obviously, it happened this way. Whether we were prepared for it or not, it's hard to say. We reacted. We did what we had to do.

RAZ: Just when it seemed things were winding down, all hell broke loose for Task Force 237.

WORLINE (ph): What happened at the end of March and April, I would have to say on my own part there is a tremendous feeling like the work didn't get done for a year. It had just been walked away.

RAZ: When Worline (ph) and his fellow soldiers rolled into Iraq last year, they believed they were embarking on a mission to protect America from weapons of mass destruction.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I guess I'm not as much of an idealist as I once was. Almost from the moment we crossed the border between Kuwait and Iraq the president said we're not going to stop until the Ba'athist Party is topped and Saddam's regime is out of power, which that kind of struck a chord. Wait a second. That's not why we were supposed to be here.

RAZ: Sometimes they were warriors, sometimes nation-builders, sometimes both at the same time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We get back from the mission and we're like, wow, maybe they don't understand what we're trying to do. But then you think, well, you know, maybe they really don't like us and maybe they really don't want us here.

RAZ: The schools they built, the money they handed out, the attempts to make friends with the locals and learn the customs, much of it became obscured by the violence and a determined enemy, the Mehdi Army.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The guys that we're fighting now, they're not fighting under the same agenda, you know, as Saddam was. They're not -- they're fighting for their say in this government. It's a little bit different fight. I don't necessarily feel that they're directly terrorist in the ways the al Qaeda and Taliban Army. You know, there were specific missions going on. And now these guys kind of popped up on us.

RAZ: In the ruins of a construction site, Task Force 237 setup shop in Najaf. They brought with them the things they could carry. Comic books and movies, novels and even philosophy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The idea that (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and the desire to be recognized by ones brother hit me that it was the flame around which we're all moths. I think that's largely the truth. It's not a pretty picture of humanity.

I think the vanity of the American Army, I think the vanity of the Mehdi Army, I think the vanity of everyone here has a lot to do with why we're here, what we're doing, why we're staying here and trying to democratize this country when really it's an uphill battle.

RAZ: Disillusionment often breeds reflection. These soldiers have seen it all from an unassailable perspective, unencumbered by spin and doublespeak.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Basically, I think they're playing a game that maybe shouldn't be played, but that doesn't -- I don't think that in any way lessens the sacrifices and the struggles of the men that have been here.

RAZ: Songs of brave soldiers with questions and doubts and unshakeable commitment to what they see as their ultimate responsibility, the responsibility to stay until the job is done.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can't just go into a country, shoot the hell out of it, kill the bad guys and then just leave and expect it tomorrow or the next day, a month or two, three years down the road that the same thing isn't going to happen again.

RAZ: Guy Raz, CNN, in Najaf, Southern Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MANN: We take a break now and then when U.S. troops get their chance the leave, the Iraqi soldiers they will be leaving behind.

Stay with us.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) for success, for Americans to say we've succeeded and to bring the troops home. At what point? People ask me this. I have no answer.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When it becomes an Iraqi fight and the Iraqis are prepared to take on the fight, they're prepared to join their security forces, we are prepared to arm and equip them to do it. I can't tell you how long that's going to take. It's dangerous.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MANN: Fallujah has always been a problem spot for the coalition. Now it's more of a problem spot for Iraqis. In an unprecedented arrangement, Iraqi Colonel Mohammad Latif (ph) assumed control of this city after a 14- day siege, an impasse set off by the murder and mutilation of four U.S. civilians.

Welcome back.

For a time, some Iraqis said that Fallujah had become probably the safest place in Iraq, but the United States has conducted two air strikes on the city in recent days, part of an effort to disrupt an ongoing suspected terror network headed by Abu Musaab al Zarqawi.

As the date for the transfer of power nears, things are not exactly going according to plan in Fallujah nor elsewhere in the country for that matter. The violence is escalating. Officials say the Iraqi forces will not be ready to take over on June 30.

As Christiane Amanpour found out, it's a tough balance for coalition troops training Iraqi forces, winning the hearts of the people and still fighting the enemy.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTL. CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Captain Jonathan Stark (ph) is leading a unit of the Arkansas National Guard into battle. It's the battle to win a few hearts here, a few there, and time is running out.

In full combat gear, cocking rifles and carrying plastic tricycles, here they are targeting the poor, those Saddam neglected.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a lot of friendly, wonderful people out here, but my enemy is out here too.

AMANPOUR: Back in their rooms, trying to relax between round-the- clock missions, these soldiers tell us sometimes they get dispirited.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's hard. It's hard for us to want to win their hearts and minds while they're shooting at us. If that makes any sense. It's every day, something. It's mortars, RPGs, small arms, looks. You drive down the street and people is flipping you off.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's frustrating to hear people displeased with what we're doing, not have confidence in us. I can tell you that a lot of our friends have shed their blood to make Iraq a better place.

AMANPOUR: Indeed, a mortar attack on their base killed one soldier and wounded six others, and so this is the exit strategy. Getting these new Iraqi forces onto the street.

"I'm very proud to be one of the new soldiers to serve this country," says Mohammad Nader (ph).

Preparing them to serve is the U.S. military's highest priority. The Pentagon has just sent in its star General David Butreas (ph), hoping he can work a miracle and fix the fact that 15 months into the occupation this force is still a work in progress despite the looming handover.

(on camera): It's the ICDC that will be vital come June 30, because they're the ones who are going to be deployed into the community, and so at this recruiting center American forces have stepped up their level of training.

(voice-over): They've gone from one to ten trainers, but still lack the basic gear.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They need more equipment, better equipment, everywhere from boots, the uniforms to proper weapons that function properly.

AMANPOUR: And in Fallujah, the attempt to handover to an Iraqi brigade has failed. A U.S. officer in the Sunni Triangle says Fallujah is totally controlled by a Taliban-like police force. "It's ugly there," he says.

And it's ugly in Baghdad too, with frequent attacks on recruiting centers and bases.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're trying. We hope to God we destroy those bastards.

AMANPOUR: But Iraqi forces are trying to keep up their moral. "There's not a weak heart among us," they chant.

Christiane Amanpour, CNN, Adamir (ph), Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MANN: Manpower has been a crucial question from the very start of the war when some prominent military experts at the Pentagon didn't put enough men in the field. Now as we've heard, the Pentagon is keeping some of the men and women there for longer than they expected. That's hardly helped morale.

Senior Pentagon correspondent Jaime McIntyre has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAIME MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The Army's blanket order standardizes what it's been doing for two years now, mandating soldiers assigned one-year tours in Iraq or Afghanistan serve the full year with their unit, even if their enlistment is up before then.

It's called "stop loss" and can add as much as 18 months to a soldier's time in uniform. The Army insists it's just common sense to keep combat units that trained together fighting together.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One of the worst things that we can do, and we've learned this from previous conflicts, is to basically some time during that unit's deployment, part of the team leaves. We want to make sure these teams are trained together so the person knows what the person on the right, what the soldier on the left, is going to do.

MCINTYRE: But critics, including some soldiers and their families, argue extending the time volunteers have to serve in a war zone is unfair and evidence today's Army is too small. It's becoming an issue in the presidential campaign.

JOHN KERRY, U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Our soldiers are stretched too thin. The administration's answer has been to put a Band-Aid on the problem. They've effectively issued a "stop loss" policy as a backdoor draft.

MCINTYRE: Kerry says if elected he'll add 40,000 more troops, roughly two Army divisions. But the Army argues that even if it had more divisions it would still want to use "stop loss" orders to delay the routine retirement of soldiers who are in the middle of a war.

And the Army says reorganizing its current 10 divisions into as many as 48 smaller, more deployable brigades, will spread the burden more evenly. Converting some under-used units, such as air defense, into high- demand specialties like military police will also help the Army end over- reliance on the National Guard and Reserve.

(on camera): No one here argues the U.S. military isn't stretched or that soldiers and their families aren't making big sacrifices, but amazingly there seems to be no mass exodus from the all-volunteer Army. Army officials say so far this year, they've met 100 percent of their recruiting goals and 99 percent of their retention goals. But those are numbers they watch carefully.

Jaime McIntyre, CNN, the Pentagon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MANN: We take another break, and then when we come back, the majority of Iraqis say they want U.S. troops to leave. Measuring the impact on U.S. morale.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's nice to come home to people who appreciate what we did.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It does mean a lot when you're over there and you don't really know how the American public feels about you, but when you come home and you can see the outpouring of gratitude, it's wonderful.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MANN: There's no more vivid reminder of the cost of war than a flag- draped coffin. Throughout history, fallen soldiers have been honored in elaborate state ceremonies, but those images are no longer seen in the United States. The Pentagon bans media coverage of coffins returning from Iraq and on Monday the U.S. Senate voted to uphold the ban.

Welcome back.

More than 840 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq, losses that are not huge by historical standards, but they are the highest troop casualties suffered by the United States since the Vietnam War.

Joining us now to talk about the numbers, their affect on morale and the way the news is being felt by the military is Robert Hodierne, senior managing editor of the "Army Times" Publishing Company, who was last in Iraq back in April.

Thanks so much for being with us.

We have been hearing reports from soldiers about the things that trouble them, that there was no weapons of mass destruction to be found in Iraq, that the war has not gone the way they expected, that they haven't been welcomed by Iraqis. At the same time, you can do similar interviews with other soldiers who say that they are proud of what they've done there and confident that they're doing the right thing.

Overall, is there any way to gauge the level of morale in the U.S. military in Iraq right now?

ROBERT HODIERNE, "ARMY TIMES": I think you can look at the numbers that Jaime McIntyre alluded to just a couple of moments ago about retention. If there were a serious morale problem, you would think the military would have trouble getting people to reenlist, and they don't appear to be having that problem.

Even in the very active, highly-deployed units, like the 101st Airborne and the 82nd. 82nd had a little softness in retention rates at the first of the year. They for the last quarter of 2003 missed their retention goals for the first time in 10 years, but they made up the difference and they're right on target.

So in that sense, if you're looking for an objective measurement, it's hard to make a case that morale is suffering.

MANN: Can you explain that? I'll as you, because, after all, soldiers in the Marines, in the Air Force, in the Navy, they're fighting a war. You would think that soldiers, military personnel in general, would be wanting to get away, get somewhere safe, when they had the opportunity.

HODIERNE: Well, a lot of these men and women enlisted in the military to fight wars, especially if they joined to become a paratrooper or ranger or one of the infantry outfits. As a number of them told me, we'd rather be here doing what we trained to do that be back at Fort Campbell or Fort Benning practicing.

MANN: OK. What about the National Guard and the Reserves, though? Because a lot of the men and women that we speak to in those branches of the miliary didn't really enlist to fight wars. If they did, they did so hoping that their time away from home would be much shorter, that the duty would be lighter, and they've been badly surprised.

HODIERNE: Well, I think they have been badly surprised. There is a very famous photograph that gets around of a National Guard truck with a sign in the window that says "One Weekend a Month, My Bleep," and I think that probably comes closer to reflecting the morale in the National Guard and the Reserve units.

But even there, incidentally, the ability to retain members of the Reserves and be able to recruit into it seems to be undiminished, so you would hypothesize that the morale would be worse in those units, but it's not driving people away from those services, and that's something, of course, the military is deeply concerned about. They're really concerned that they're going to break the reserve system and break the National Guard system. It doesn't seem to have happened yet.

MANN: You were in Vietnam. How does the morale of the troops in Iraq compare to that war?

HODIERNE: Well, it depends on what time, and it's a very good question, what time you look at in Vietnam. I first went over there in 1966, and the military then looked a lot like the way it looks today. That is to say it was almost all volunteers, very professional, the senior NCOs and the officers were all career people. They knew their job. Their morale was very high.

By the time you got to, say, 1968, '69, '70, when there was a large influx of very unwilling draftees and you had lost a lot of your senior people, your experienced people, either through injury and death or guys who were looking at a third tour in Vietnam and said enough of this, I'm getting out, then morale suffered a lot and that's what career officers in the military are worried about right now.

It's one thing to send a guy over there for one tour and two tours. It's that third tour when they really start getting the heat from their family, where they start saying, you know, this is probably more than I signed up for.

MANN: Let me ask you about that very thought in the light of the "stop loss" order. People who signed up for tours are finding they may be there a year longer than they expected. Once again, the retention rates attest to something, but that's got to anger and disappoint a lot of military people and a lot of military families.

HODIERNE: Well, interestingly -- I mean, it does. There are certainly people who have had their plans to enroll in college put off, people who had found jobs and taken jobs and even in some cases moved their families to where the job was going to be, have those plans shattered. They're not very happy.

A number of other people, you know, feel that, I joined the Army, I joined the Marines, I joined the Air Force, to do a job. And that was to defend my country, and they view what they're doing right now as doing the job they signed up for, and they are not as deeply unhappy as civilians like you and like I might think.

MANN: How popular or unpopular is the leadership in the Pentagon among the men and women in the field?

HODIERNE: I don't think there is any -- are you talking about the military eldership or the civilian leadership?

MANN: I'm talking about Donald Rumsfeld in particular. I'll tell you why. I read one media account that said he is deeply disliked by the officer corps and I'm reluctant to even bring that up, because that was just one media account. No telling if that's true or not. So maybe you could tell us.

HODIERNE: Well, we've heard the same sorts of things. You know, off the record, and it makes sense, if you think about it.

Secretary Rumsfeld came in with ambitions to remake the military, particularly the Army, that he thought of as too big, too lumbering, too inflexible, and that didn't please people who had made a career out of building the Army in particular that way.

And so to that extent, he suffers from some popularity problems in the upper reaches of the military. That's not very surprising. And, of course, Secretary Rumsfeld isn't a particularly diplomatic fellow in expressing himself. So that rankles some of the brass.

MANN: Robert Hodierne, of the "Army Times" Publishing Company, thanks so much for this.

HODIERNE: My pleasure.

MANN: That's INSIGHT for this day. I'm Jonathan Mann. The news continues.

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