Spouses spend their time waiting, worrying
By CHRISTIAN HILL, The
Olympian (Wash.)
OLYMPIA, Wash. — Renee Stotz, 30, cancelled the home delivery of her newspaper to give her a reason to leave her home near Fort Lewis. Otherwise, she'd stick by the phone or computer, awaiting any communication from her husband, Garrett, a captain with the 547th Area Support Medical Company now in Iraq. "I really don't want to be out," she said. "Because what if he calls? I don't want to miss him. He can call my cell phone, but what if I don't have service wherever I'm at? What if I'm in the mall and I miss a call? It's upsetting to miss a call. It's devastating." The wait between calls and e-mails is particularly daunting for her and tens of thousands of other spouses as the Iraq elections draw closer. "All the insurgents, they're building up and they're going to try to do something to stop (the elections) and, unfortunately, our soldiers, many of them, are going to be in the way," she said.
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PART 3
By John Yaukey, GNS
 As Iraqi security gain
confidence, the Pentagon will gradually scale down the U.S. force size. The
hope is that this will reduce U.S. casualties, lower the American profile
in Iraq and start reassuring Americans that there is an end in sight.
PART 1
By John Yaukey, GNS
American and
Iraqi forces already are struggling with a full-blown insurgency that
has cost hundreds of lives. If the Iraq's Jan. 30 elections go badly and
its political landscape falls into chaos, Americans will be facing a
debacle that easily rivals Vietnam.
PART 2
By Gordon Trowbridge, Army Times
U.S. forces in Iraq constantly
confront enemies hiding among innocents, and innocents
stumbling into a fate they don't deserve. It's a war often fought in seconds
with some of its most important decisions made by young privates, not generals.
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