The Globe & Mail has a great piece on Chief Wiggles. It's not even about Operation Give, either, but about another campaign he ran, to free wrongly-imprisoned Iraqi generals. Here are some excerpts:
Mazin, a handsome, dark-haired, compact man in his 40s, has the proud bearing of a career officer. A Western-trained pilot, he loves his country, and, like many Iraqis, has been waiting since 1991 for someone to finish the job of getting rid of Saddam. He kept his distance from the inner circle that ran the army. On the first day of the war, he got behind the wheel of his military vehicle, drove it slowly toward the Americans, and surrendered himself and all his men.It was a huge risk. He knew his family could be killed by Saddam's loyalists. He spent a month in the POW camp before he had any word of them, or they of him.
Chief Wiggles belongs to Utah's 141st Military Intelligence Battalion. He is tall and lanky, pale-skinned, pale-haired, sentimental and kind. In his spare time he runs a toy drive for Iraqi kids. Until July, his main job was to debrief Mazin and the 13 other generals who had surrendered at the beginning of the war.
He talked with each of them for days and days. Gradually he began to build a fragile sense of trust. He got them news of their families, and arranged for the families to visit. He dropped by to see them most nights in the pen. As time went on, some of the talk got more personal. He and Mazin spoke about their families, their hopes, their fears, their faith. Both men are religious; both are passionate about ridding Iraq of a great evil and making it a better place. They found much common ground.
The generals thought they'd be sent home quickly, and Chief Wiggles thought so too. They had surrendered immediately, just as the Americans had urged them. They had been completely co-operative, and many wished to continue working with the Americans. It was clear they weren't Saddam's men; they'd had little or no choice about serving in his terrible regime. And yet, long after the rest of Saddam's army had disbanded and been sent home, nobody in the U.S. chain of command was willing to let the generals go.
The irony of their fate sat hard with them. They'd trusted the Americans, and now they were being punished for it. Chief Wiggles was dismayed. "These are highly educated men, with special skills and abilities, prime candidates for positions in the new government and the new military," he wrote in his on-line diary. "But what we have done with them since is a travesty."
Through internal channels and by raising awareness here in America, Wiggles eventually got guys like this freed.
Gotta love it. You should read the whole thing.
Dean, I wish it were the Boston Globe that this article appeared in; however, it's the Globe and Mail from Canada. The writer has some very good, positive articles on Iraq. Of course, she's there and right in the midst of things. Do a search on the site and you will find her other articles.
D'oh! Thank you! I've corrected the article--I was on auto-pilot, obviously. Thanks!