Journalist Joseph Galloway
He is military affairs correspondent for Knight Ridder's Washington bureau. He was a war correspondent in Vietnam and co-authored the national bestseller (with Lt. Gen (ret.) Hal G. Moore) We Were Soldiers Once... and Young: Ia Drang: The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam. He was the only civilian decorated with the medal of valor for his actions during the Vietnam war, rescuing wounded soldiers under fire in the Ia Drang Valley. Galloway also covered the first Gulf War. Recently Galloway was special consultant to Secretary of State Colin Powell. Galloway is also co-author of the book, Triumph Without Victory: The Unreported History of the Persian Gulf Conflict.
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DATE March 26, 2003 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A⨠TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A⨠NETWORK NPR⨠PROGRAM Fresh Airâ¨â¨Interview: Joseph Galloway, military affairs correspondent forâ¨Knight Ridder newspaper, discusses the risks of the militaryâ¨campaign in Iragâ¨TERRY GROSS, host:â¨â¨This is FRESH AIR, I'm Terry Gross.â¨â¨My guest, Joseph Galloway, is military affairs correspondent for Knight Ridderâ¨newspapers. He reports that the risks of the military campaign in Iraq areâ¨becoming increasingly apparent, and some current and retired militaryâ¨officials are warning that there may be a mismatch between Secretary ofâ¨Defense Donald Rumsfeld's strategy and the force he has sent to carry it out.â¨â¨Galloway also helped train the Knight Ridder reporters who are embedded withâ¨the military and is editing some of their work. Galloway has covered severalâ¨wars, including Vietnam and the Gulf War of '91. He's the co-author of theâ¨book "We Were Soldiers Once...and Young," about the first major land battleâ¨the Americans fought in Vietnam. It was also the bloodiest. Galloway was theâ¨only civilian to receive a Medal of Valor from the Army for Vietnam.â¨â¨I spoke with him earlier today and asked him to describe some of theâ¨Pentagon's optimistic predictions that have not come true.â¨â¨Mr. JOSEPH GALLOWAY (Military Affairs Correspondent, Knight Ridderâ¨Newspapers): Well, there was great expectation that I think was encouraged byâ¨the administration, by the political leadership in the Pentagon that as soonâ¨as the American forces crossed the Iraq border, there would be uprisingsâ¨against Saddam Hussein throughout the country, that Republican Guard Divisionsâ¨would throw down their rifles and stick up their hands, that this was going toâ¨be quick, cheap, bloodless, and you know, maybe we would even beat theâ¨100-hour war of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. And these things have not come toâ¨pass. Some things have changed in Iraq in the last 11 years, 12 years sinceâ¨the last time.â¨â¨GROSS: Things that you think might have lead to overly optimisticâ¨predictions?â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: Well, things that have changed with the Iraqi people. Duringâ¨that time we have maintained an embargo on that country that has led to aâ¨great deal of privation amongst the peoples, not starvation necessarily butâ¨certainly harder times. And far from making them angry at Saddam Hussein, Iâ¨think it's made them angry at us, and so the attitude is different. And theâ¨outcome has been different as well, you know, the things that were counted onâ¨just haven't come to pass.â¨â¨GROSS: So you think the embargo and the resentment it created against Americaâ¨is one of the reasons why we're not being universally greeted as liberators.â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: Precisely, and not just in Iraq; this is something that isâ¨throughout the Arab world. We're hearing talks now of Iraqis who escaped theâ¨country turning around and coming back and saying as they cross the border outâ¨of Jordan, `I'm going back to fight the Americans.' And reports too ofâ¨volunteers in other Arab countries who say, `We're going there to fight theâ¨Americans as well.'â¨â¨GROSS: Say a lot of that happens; say a lot of volunteers from otherâ¨countries come to Iraq to fight the Americans. What implications might thatâ¨have?â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: Well, you could have implications for a guerrilla war thatâ¨drags on no matter whether we eventually succeed in cracking the hard nut thatâ¨is Baghdad itself and that's the main target of our attack right now. Itâ¨gives rise to some nightmare scenarios for post-war Iraq and keeping the peaceâ¨and keeping the many ethnic groups and tribal groups and religious groups fromâ¨going at each other's throats. You know, I'm more afraid of the post-war thanâ¨I am of the war, and the war itself is scary.â¨â¨GROSS: Now you report that there are some current and retired militaryâ¨officials who are warning that there may be a mismatch between Rumsfeld'sâ¨strategy and the force he sent out to carry it out. What's the mismatch?â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: The mismatch is that in Mr. Rumsfeld's version of the planâ¨there were these expectations of quick success, of the southern Iraq Shiitesâ¨rising up against the Ba'athist regime and greeting us by throwing rose petalsâ¨at our tanks, and this has not happened. Mr. Rumsfeld has also embraced aâ¨rather revolutionary new way of warfare that has not been tested. He thoughtâ¨in the beginning that we could do this with 60,000, as few as 60,000 troops.â¨He thought that you would have such precision strikes from the air that youâ¨would have--you send in teams of special forces operators like you did inâ¨Afghanistan, and it would give you a quick success. And that overlooks aâ¨whole lot of facts about Iraq, about the fact that they have a pretty largeâ¨army that is equipped with armor, that they have a great number of theseâ¨Saddam Fedayeen who really are thugs who've been armed and many of themâ¨fighting in civilian clothes.â¨â¨So the plan was shaped in such a way that Mr. Rumsfeld did not listen to hisâ¨military advisers who kept saying, you know, we need a larger force. We needâ¨another armored division. You know, we're not certain that we're going toâ¨give the approval that you think we're going to get from Turkey to open aâ¨northern front with an armored division up there. What that means on theâ¨ground is that we are very, very light. We have an Army division that hasâ¨gone up the left side of the Euphrates River; we have a Marine columnâ¨advancing on the right side. But we bypassed these large pockets of Iraqisâ¨who are not surrendering, in fact, they're resisting. Now whether, you know,â¨there's some question--Saddam's strategy was to put these Fedayeen and someâ¨tough Republican Guard veterans in places like Umm Qasr, Nasiriyah, andâ¨stiffen the resistance, make it so that even those who wanted to surrenderâ¨couldn't because if they looked like it, they get shot, the old Soviet method.â¨â¨What this means, in fact, is that the Marine supply lines go through the edgeâ¨of Nasiriyah, and each column has to fight its way through. This is not goodâ¨when your supply lines are not secure. Normally you would send in an armoredâ¨Cavalry squadron to secure those routes, to screen your flanks and defendâ¨against this kind of attack so that your fuel and your ammunition and yourâ¨food can go forward to the front line trace. And we're having problems withâ¨this right now, and we've had problems with it ever since we did this. Soâ¨things are not going exactly according to Mr. Rumsfeld's plan.â¨â¨GROSS: Now you're saying that your sources tell you that Secretary of Defenseâ¨Donald Rumsfeld didn't listen to the military when the military told Rumsfeldâ¨what it needed. Who did the secretary of Defense listen to in deciding whatâ¨kind of strategy we needed?â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: Well, he was listening to Air Force officers who were tellingâ¨him that we can do this from the air, that the air is now--the munitions areâ¨now so precise, and they are, but that we will be the decisive factor in thisâ¨war, that we will run a campaign of `shock and awe' that will paralyze orâ¨decapitate the Iraqi leadership. And this has not come to pass. We shockedâ¨them and we awed them and they kept working. We made an attempt to take outâ¨Saddam Hussein himself in the first moments of the war and that failed. So heâ¨listened to his air people who always oversell, have ever since Claireâ¨Chenault in World War II, that wars can be won from the air. And what we knowâ¨from history is that they cannot. You have to put your young men on theâ¨ground with rifles in hand if you want to seize and hold territory. Youâ¨cannot do it from the air. All that we...â¨â¨GROSS: What about the first Gulf War? That was a pretty successful airâ¨campaign.â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: Well, it was a pretty successful air campaign, but it was alsoâ¨six weeks long. We had no preparation this time. It all started on the sameâ¨day. Bang, all of the air and the attack across into Iraq. So you had notâ¨the six weeks of preparation. And I would also point out that in the lastâ¨Gulf War, the Air Force focused on strategic targets around Baghdad, inâ¨Baghdad, to almost the exclusion of the targets that the ground generalsâ¨wanted hit. They had to beg for it. And I must tell you, I rode with theâ¨24th Mechanized Infantry all the way to the Euphrates River the last time.â¨And we captured two airfields and the Air Force had said, `You have no worriesâ¨there, we've hit those places.'â¨â¨Well, we rolled onto those airfields, and sure enough, all of the hard hangarsâ¨had a three-foot hole in the top of them, and the insides were scrambled, butâ¨there were no aircraft in there. The aircraft were a couple of hundred metersâ¨out in the sand camouflaged very well. And our tanks killed a lot of MiGs.â¨And so I'm telling you that the Air Force did not deliver even as well as itâ¨was portrayed the last time.â¨â¨GROSS: You know how at the very start of this war the military bombed theâ¨target of opportunity that was, they believed, a bunker that was sheltering,â¨among other people, Saddam Hussein, members of his family, leadership of theâ¨regime. How much did that rearrange plans to your knowledge of how the warâ¨was supposed to start?â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: Well, it kicked things off. That and the fact that theyâ¨started blowing up the oil wells in the southern Rumailah oil field, advancedâ¨things by probably 12 or 24 hours. The ground attack had to kick off early toâ¨stop what was happening in the oil fields. And you had hit that bunker, butâ¨intelligence officials now tell us that we didn't hit the house next to thatâ¨bunker. And that, in fact, Saddam and his family and the top leaders wereâ¨sleeping in the house, not in the bunker. So we missed them.â¨â¨GROSS: One of the amazing things about that is that Saddam was actually in aâ¨house that was--was it just next door to the bunker that we bombed?â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: Just next door to the bunker apparently.â¨â¨GROSS: Well, we came so close, but it also says that, gee, how precise areâ¨those weapons, if they're that precise that they take out the bunker and leaveâ¨standing the house next door, or at least not totally demolish the house nextâ¨door?â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: Right. You know, they are precise. We are not dropping dumbâ¨bombs. Everything we are dropping now is precision-guided munitions, andâ¨intelligence said they would be in the bunker and we took out the bunker.â¨â¨GROSS: My guest is James Galloway, military affairs correspondent for Knightâ¨Ridder newspapers. He reported on the war in Vietnam and the Gulf War. We'llâ¨talk more after our break. This is FRESH AIR.â¨â¨(Announcements)â¨â¨GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Joseph Galloway. He's militaryâ¨affairs correspondent for Knight Ridder newspapers. He's been reporting onâ¨the war as well as helping to edit the embedded reporters. He covered theâ¨Vietnam War and the first Gulf War and is the co-author of the book "We Wereâ¨Soldiers Once...and Young."â¨â¨One of the things I've read--and tell me if this checks out with what you'reâ¨hearing--is that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, in planning this war, listenedâ¨to some of the exiles who he was working with and that their analysis of whatâ¨would happen in Iraq if we went to war is proving to be very different fromâ¨the reality of what we're facing.â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: Well, that's quite correct. He did. He listened to twoâ¨sources that were suspect. One were the Iraqi exiles. Exiles often don'tâ¨have much of a clear picture of what's happening in their home country, andâ¨their expectations and hopes are just that. They hope for the best; they hopeâ¨that they can get us to go take their country back for them. We also saw thatâ¨the people in the Pentagon were listening to Israeli intelligence who wereâ¨saying much the same thing. If you invade, the Republican Guard willâ¨surrender in droves and this is going to be an easy campaign. And at the sameâ¨time they're listening to this, they are not listening to the CIA and theâ¨Defense Intelligence Agency who were providing much more sober analysis andâ¨much less of a rosy scenario. So it may be a case of listening to what youâ¨wanted to hear as opposed to what the truth was.â¨â¨GROSS: Give us a picture of what you think is happening behind the scenes nowâ¨in the Pentagon. Is there a lot of finger-pointing now?â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: Well, if you watched the briefings yesterday and Presidentâ¨Bush's appearance at the Pentagon, you saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Generalâ¨Myers, the chairman, talking about, `Everything's fine, you know. We're notâ¨short of people, they're flowing off the airplanes. Hour by hour our force isâ¨growing, and everything in the plan is fine and it's all going well.' Andâ¨that's exactly what I would expect them to say.â¨â¨GROSS: But you're talking to people behind the scenes. What picture are theyâ¨giving you about what's really happening behind the scenes?â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: Well, what they are saying is that this is a much tougher jobâ¨and that we are trying to do it on the cheap in terms of strength, in terms ofâ¨the number of units that ought to be on the ground, in terms of the fact thatâ¨we have no reserve. The 4th Mechanized Infantry, which was supposed to landâ¨in Turkey, is still sitting--the personnel are all still in Ft. Hood, Texas.â¨Their equipment has been on ships for the last five weeks floating off theâ¨Turkish coast, and only recently did they head them toward the Arabian Sea.â¨They had to pass the Suez Canal, and the equipment is probably 10 days awayâ¨from landing in Kuwait. Now they will move the personnel, but the personnelâ¨won't be able to do anything until their equipment gets there, it's off-loadedâ¨and so forth. That division should have been on the ground and fighting fromâ¨the first day, and it is the closest reserves that we have.â¨â¨GROSS: You've written, `not since Vietnam and Secretary of Defense Robertâ¨McNamara have we had a secretary of Defense and his closest civilian advisersâ¨demonstrate so thorough a contempt for the council of America's militaryâ¨leaders.'â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: That's correct. This has been a drumbeat out of the Pentagon.â¨From the day they arrived, they have embraced the theory that the Army isâ¨outmoded, that heavy divisions are not needed, that the air power now is soâ¨precise and we have all of these new weapons and the new tactics, that this isâ¨going to revolutionize the war is fought and that you don't need an armoredâ¨division to fight with anymore. That's old-fashioned they say. That's Coldâ¨War technology. Well, it is, but sometimes, like right now, it's needed. Andâ¨they have done their best to get rid of what they need right now.â¨â¨GROSS: How difficult has it been to get military insiders to talk with youâ¨about their concerns and their reservations about how this war is being foughtâ¨and what kind of armor they have, what kind of weapons they have and how manyâ¨troops they have to fight it?â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: Well, not very difficult at all because there are people whoâ¨are genuinely upset over the fact that we have committed our forces in a very,â¨very high-risk plan. And many of the assumptions of that plan are not comingâ¨true, have not come true, which leaves us at a much higher risk. We have onlyâ¨now begun to approach Baghdad, and the plans for taking Baghdad itself areâ¨themselves revolutionary. And they are based on a plan that assumesâ¨everything will go well, that we will be able to strike so swiftly andâ¨decapitate the regime and the very best, highest-level targets by sending ourâ¨forces into the heart of Baghdad and isolating those particular areas whereâ¨those headquarters are located and then going through there with infantryâ¨companies taking them out.â¨â¨Well, this is good, but it assumes a lot of things. It assumes that the Airâ¨Force can keep the Republican Guard divisions, who are in a ring outsideâ¨Baghdad, from pulling back into the city and laying traps. It assumes thatâ¨the population is not going to take a rifle, an AK-47 and a B-2 rocket and goâ¨out there and get involved. It assumes that the Saddam Fedayeen and theâ¨Ba'athist thugs are not going to be able to take part in this thing. And it'sâ¨risky beyond all measurement.â¨â¨GROSS: I'm going to ask you to speculate here, but why do you think someâ¨military insiders would be willing to share their doubts with you at a timeâ¨when the military is usually doing its best to seem as confidant as possible?â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: Well, because those doubts and concerns are very real. Andâ¨they have some fear that if this thing goes wrong, if the casualties are much,â¨much higher than anticipated, that Rumsfeld will turn around and blame themâ¨and say, `this is your fault; you didn't ask for enough.' Well, they knowâ¨that's a lie, and that is enough reason to say their concerns, to speak thoseâ¨concerns now.â¨â¨GROSS: Joseph Galloway is military affairs correspondent for the Knightâ¨Ridder newspapers. He's also the co-author of "We Were Soldiers Once...andâ¨Young," about a battle in Vietnam which he covered. We'll talk more in theâ¨second half of the show.â¨â¨I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.â¨â¨GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with Joseph Galloway,â¨military affairs correspondent for Knight Ridder newspapers. He spent 22â¨years as a foreign and war correspondent for UPI and nearly 20 years as aâ¨senior editor and senior writer for US News & World Report. He reported fromâ¨the battlefields of Vietnam and the first Gulf War. He's the co-author of theâ¨book "We Were Soldiers Once...and Young" about the first major land battleâ¨the Americans fought in Vietnam. The book was adapted into a film starringâ¨Mel Gibson.â¨â¨Galloway reports that military sources tell him that Donald Rumsfeld's warâ¨strategy is based on predictions that don't fit the reality the Americanâ¨military is facing.â¨â¨I'm wondering, you're delivering some not very good news to us about how theâ¨military is unprepared for what they're facing and how there's disagreementâ¨behind the scenes in the Pentagon. And I wonder how you feel about reportingâ¨information that can get some Americans to lose confidence and feel moreâ¨insecure and if how you feel about it isn't formed at all from yourâ¨experiences reporting on Vietnam?â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: Well, first off, Terry, I want to say that I never said ourâ¨military is unprepared. They are magnificently prepared. I think we have theâ¨finest military in the world. And I go out among soldiers all the time. Iâ¨see them training. They work hard six days a week, 12, 14 hours a day. Andâ¨nobody knows it in this country. They are magnificently prepared. There'sâ¨just not enough of them in the plan. They didn't send enough to do the jobâ¨with safety. You know, we are now marginal in some areas where the doctrineâ¨says we would be stacked up, we would have more than we need, because--youâ¨know, there's an old Russian proverb, in fact, that says you'd rather haveâ¨five divisions too many than one division too few. And I don't have a problemâ¨talking about the fears and the deficiencies in our planning process. I hopeâ¨that this will lead to some swift corrective action, that we will move nowâ¨those things that should have been moved two months ago. It is an on-the-edgeâ¨situation.â¨â¨GROSS: Is your reporting now informed at all by your experiences in Vietnamâ¨as a reporter?â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: Well, your reporting is always informed by what you have seenâ¨before, and Vietnam--you know, God help us. I hope that we are not goingâ¨anywhere near that scenario. But we are starting with the secretary ofâ¨Defense, who reminds me a great deal of Robert Strange McNamara, the aptlyâ¨named.â¨â¨GROSS: Now you are working with the embedded reporters who are writing forâ¨Knight Ridder papers, and you helped place them and you helped prepare themâ¨for facing battle. How do the rules that the Pentagon has laid down for theâ¨embedded reporters in this war compare to the rules that you faced when youâ¨reported in Vietnam?â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: Well, until this moment, Vietnam was the most openly coveredâ¨war in the history of our country. You showed up. You signed an agreement,â¨very simple operational security rules, that you would not reveal troopâ¨movements while they were under way, that you would not reveal actualâ¨casualties in a battle while the battle was still under way, simple thingsâ¨like that. You got your press card, and you were free to go anywhere youâ¨wished in the country, cover any unit, stay as long or as briefly as youâ¨wished. You were free. I said that that was the most openly covered war toâ¨this point.â¨â¨This one is breaking new ground. The fact that the military leadership andâ¨the civilian leadership opened it up and embedded 740 media with all of theâ¨units involved--air, land, sea--that there are reporters riding with theâ¨Cavalry units at the head of the charge and reporting as they go--you haveâ¨seen the images on television, you've seen the pictures in your papers, you'veâ¨read their dispatches. It is breathtaking. It is breathtaking. And we areâ¨seeing more of a war than we have ever seen before.â¨â¨GROSS: I want to ask you about your experiences in Vietnam for a moment. Youâ¨were the only civilian decorated during that war. What did you do to beâ¨decorated?â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: Well, I belatedly was given a Bronze Star with V, the only oneâ¨the Army gave a civilian during the entire war, for rescuing a wounded soldierâ¨during the Battle of Landing Zone X-Ray, an event that, in fact, is portrayedâ¨in the movie "We Were Soldiers," which was released last year, a very shockingâ¨friendly fire incident where a napalm cannister exploded almost in the middleâ¨of the command post. And a young engineer specialist that I had talked toâ¨earlier was engulfed in the flames, and a medic and I both jumped up and ranâ¨toward him. And the medic was shot through the head and killed, and I got toâ¨him and helped bring him back to the medics. But he was so badly burned thatâ¨he died the following day.â¨â¨It's interesting, for years I looked for his widow and baby daughter, who wasâ¨born just a few days before he was killed. Couldn't find them, but the movieâ¨brought them out and brought them to our reunion last Veterans Day. And I hadâ¨the opportunity to sit down and talk to them for a long time.â¨â¨GROSS: That must have been good to finally meet her.â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: It was. I think it was a healing thing for both of us, for allâ¨of us.â¨â¨GROSS: My guest is Joseph Galloway, military affairs correspondent for Knightâ¨Ridder newspapers. He reported on the war in Vietnam and the Gulf War. We'llâ¨talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨GROSS: My guest is Joseph Galloway, military affairs correspondent for Knightâ¨Ridder newspapers. He's a former war correspondent for UPI and former seniorâ¨editor and writer for US News & World Report. He reported from Vietnam andâ¨the first Gulf War.â¨â¨Some of the embedded reporters that you're working with, for them, this isâ¨their first war. Do they ask for your advice about whether they should comeâ¨to the rescue or whether they should just kind of hang back and be theâ¨observer-reporter?â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: You know, I wrote a three-page memo to all of them with,â¨basically, common sense advice on what to carry and how to conduct yourselfâ¨and what you do if there's a sudden attack. And I concluded that by tellingâ¨them, `You know, it's OK to be a human first and a reporter second. It's OKâ¨to lend a hand in an emergency: to help carry the wounded, to bring water toâ¨the soldiers. Whatever seems the right thing to do, do it because your fateâ¨is inextricably bound up with theirs.'â¨â¨GROSS: You actually carried a gun during part of the Vietnam War. What ledâ¨you to arm yourself?â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: Well, what led me to arm myself was experience. I had beenâ¨inside the Special Forces camp at Plei Me in October 1965, and when it wasâ¨under siege from a regiment of North Vietnamese, it was a very close-run thingâ¨and we weren't sure that any of us were going to survive. The camp commanderâ¨was a famous fellow, then Major Charlie Beckwith, who later would go on toâ¨found the Delta Force and lead the abortive raid into the desert in Iranâ¨trying to rescue our hostages. And when I arrived there, Beckwith looked atâ¨me and he said, `You know, I have no vacancy for a reporter, son, but I need aâ¨corner machine gunner and you're it.' And he put me on a machine gun and toldâ¨me what to do and who to shoot, and I was given basically no choice. I had noâ¨ride out of there, and so I did as I was ordered.â¨â¨And when I was leaving there, Major Beckwith said, `You don't have a weapon.'â¨And I said, `Well, in spite of what you've made me do for the last three days,â¨technically speaking, I'm a non-combatant.' And he looked at me and he shookâ¨his head, and he said, `Technically speaking, son, there's no such thing inâ¨these mountains. You need a rifle. Sergeant Major, get this man a rifle.'â¨And I had that rifle on my shoulder three weeks later when I went into Landingâ¨Zone X-Ray, and there, and only there, during the rest of my time in Vietnamâ¨did I use that weapon.â¨â¨GROSS: What did you use it for?â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: And only in the direst of circumstances.â¨â¨GROSS: What was the circumstance?â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: Well, we were seemingly about to be overrun by the enemy. Andâ¨I thought that I had no choice for my own safety and survival and the survivalâ¨of those around me.â¨â¨GROSS: So you shot.â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: I did.â¨â¨GROSS: How would you feel...â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: And no apologies.â¨â¨GROSS: Yeah. How would you feel if one of the embedded reporters that you'reâ¨working with now was carrying a gun?â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: You know, it was recommended by the Pentagon that they not doâ¨so. And, however, the situation in some instances recently has gotten soâ¨dicey that one of our female reporters was offered a pistol and told that sheâ¨needed to do a turn guarding the perimeter.â¨â¨GROSS: And what happened?â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: Well, she turned the pistol down. She said she didn't know howâ¨to operate it, and she wouldn't be much good on guard.â¨â¨GROSS: How do you think the volunteer Army, the professionalized Army,â¨compares to the Army of the draft era?â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: Well, the Army today, the kids today who serve in the ranks andâ¨the NCOs, are much more sophisticated than they were in 1965. They have aâ¨whole different set of skills. They have a whole different way of looking atâ¨the world. They're another generation or two removed. But at heart, aâ¨soldier is a soldier. They're fine. They're much better trained. Their armsâ¨are much better. But in their hearts, they are the same as those fineâ¨soldiers, draftees, who marched into the Ia Drang Valley, some of them withâ¨less than a week left on their tour of duty, and died there.â¨â¨And, you know, in one of his famous misstatements, Secretary Rumsfeld wasâ¨asked about a proposal that we return to the draft for the military. And heâ¨said, `Oh, they're useless basically. They're just a waste of money andâ¨time.' And by so doing, he offended every Vietnam veteran, draftee, and everyâ¨draftee who ever served this country well. He had to apologize and quiteâ¨rightly.â¨â¨GROSS: Our stated goal is to, you know, find the weapons of mass destructionâ¨and, quote, "liberate the people of Iraq." If we have to fight urban warfareâ¨in Baghdad, that risks endangering civilians because it's urban warfare.â¨That's one of the awful problems of urban warfare. Could you speculate aâ¨little bit what it might mean if we're fighting urban warfare and a lot ofâ¨civilians are killed because it's hard for them to escape the battle?â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: If we are forced into urban warfare in Baghdad, the casualtiesâ¨will rise exponentially amongst civilians, amongst our soldiers and amongstâ¨their soldiers. Fighting for a city is a blood-bath situation. You know,â¨look in history. Look at Stalingrad. Thousands upon thousands upon thousandsâ¨were ground up in a meat grinder battle that lasted six months, and virtuallyâ¨just leveled the city. The last time we fought war for a city was Hue in theâ¨Tet Offensive in 1968, and the Marines eventually, in four weeks' time, tookâ¨the city back from 10,000 of the enemy. But when they were done, the city wasâ¨about 18 inches tall; it was a pile of rubble.â¨â¨You know, our military planners don't want that. They want to do, you know,â¨more or less surgical strike into the heart of the city and glop off the headsâ¨of their political and military machines and get out, and then let it allâ¨collapse. But that's so optimistic. That's so almost Pollyannish that it'sâ¨highly worrisome. Once you go in, things may not happen as you think theyâ¨should, and if you get bogged down and have to fight for that place block byâ¨block, house by house, I think the American people will be shocked at theâ¨casualties.â¨â¨GROSS: You report today that if it does come down to urban warfare inâ¨Baghdad, that we'll be relying on intelligence, including people on the insideâ¨of Saddam Hussein's regime, to tell us what the strategy is, where the keyâ¨people are. How much intelligence do you think we have like that? Do youâ¨think that we're well-armed with insiders in Saddam Hussein's regime that canâ¨help inform us?â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: I don't know how well-armed we are. I know that we must haveâ¨some sources--you know, remember that someone targeted Saddam Hussein for us,â¨someone inside, and I have to assume high up, put the finger on this block,â¨this house, this is where they will be. And we came within a hair of gettingâ¨him. So I assume we have some of that. I also assume that we will beâ¨infiltrating Special Forces operators, CIA operators, other intel forces whoâ¨will help us pinpoint what we need to know. That's what they're counting on.â¨â¨GROSS: Now what about the embedded reporters that you're working with. Wouldâ¨you want them to be there for urban warfare if it comes to that, or do youâ¨think it's too dangerous and that they should get out?â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: No, I think if you have gone with the unit to the gates of theâ¨thing, and they are going in, you should go with them. You know, the risksâ¨increase very greatly, but you signed on knowing that there were risks, andâ¨you don't quit at the last minute and sit back and look through binoculars. Iâ¨think you go on in with them.â¨â¨GROSS: Did you ever consider becoming an embedded reporter yourself for thisâ¨war?â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: Oh, you know, I'm an old fire horse, and when the bell goes offâ¨I start dancing in my stall and leaning forward in my foxhole. But, you know,â¨first of all, I'm 61 years old, and basically that's too old to go runningâ¨with the 19-year-old kids in an armor column. And second of all, my lovelyâ¨wife, Karen, said, `You can't go. I lost my father in one war. I'm not goingâ¨to lose my husband in another.' And I have to respect that.â¨â¨GROSS: Thank you so much for talking with us.â¨â¨Mr. GALLOWAY: Oh, a pleasure, Terry.â¨â¨GROSS: Joseph Galloway is military affairs correspondent for Knight Ridderâ¨newspapers. He's the co-author of the book "We Were Soldiers Once...andâ¨Young," about a major battle he covered in Vietnam.â¨â¨Coming up, Maureen Corrigan reviews the new memoir "The Only Girl in theâ¨Car."â¨â¨This is FRESH AIR.â¨â¨* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *â¨â¨Review: Kathy Dobie's memoir "The Only Girl in the Car"â¨TERRY GROSS, host:â¨â¨Bookworms are often reserved people, but as journalist Kathy Dobie describesâ¨in her new memoir, "The Only Girl in the Car," her early love of reading gaveâ¨her a sense of possibility that was missing from her life.â¨â¨MAUREEN CORRIGAN reporting:â¨â¨Talk about first impressions being fickle. After reading the opening chaptersâ¨of Kathy Dobie's memoir, "The Only Girl in the Car," which describe herâ¨childhood in Hamden, Connecticut, and the personalities of her parents andâ¨five siblings, I thought the book was mildly interesting, especially givenâ¨that Dobie explores my own home turf of growing up Catholic in the 1960s andâ¨'70s. By the time I finished it, however, "The Only Girl in the Car" hadâ¨gained the stature of an important book, the way other women'sâ¨autobiographies, like Anne Moody's "Coming of Age in Mississippi" and Kateâ¨Simon's "Bronx Primitive" are important, not just for the forcefulness ofâ¨their individual life stories, but for what they add to the collectiveâ¨storehouse of information about the truth of different women's lives.â¨â¨No other memoir I've ever read has described a girl's coming of age with suchâ¨frankness about sexual desire and sexual humiliation. "The Only Girl in theâ¨Car" also dramatizes how the seismic changes of the 1960s left a lot ofâ¨adolescent girls, like Dobie, stranded without a reliable road map tellingâ¨them how to act as young women, what new pitfalls to avoid, what old socialâ¨boundaries they could realistically hope to transgress.â¨â¨In the early '70s, Dobie's stay-at-home mom was still a lady in the 1950sâ¨mode. But contemporary music and pop culture were telling the teen-aged Dobieâ¨to be a cool hippie chick without hang-ups, like Peggy Lipton on "The Modâ¨Squad." What Dobie discovered, however, and what "The Only Girl in the Car"â¨vividly documents, is that free love was still pretty much a male onlyâ¨adventure. Yearning for the intimacy and attention that was hard to come byâ¨in her large family, the 14-year-old Dobie began dressing in tight jeans andâ¨halter tops, and replacing her mother's vision of her with the gaze of men andâ¨boys. Displaying herself one afternoon on the front lawn of her parents'â¨house, she reels in a 30-something loser driving by in a car. That night, sheâ¨meets this guy to go to the movies, and with a steely resolve, loses herâ¨virginity. What follows is a whirlwind of sex with different rowdy boys, mostâ¨of whom frequent the town's teen center.â¨â¨One of the most touching scenes in this memoir is when Dobie recalls how oneâ¨evening four black boys who hang on the outskirts of the otherwise all-whiteâ¨center ask her to go on a car ride with them, not to have sex, but to warn herâ¨that she's getting a reputation and keeping treacherous company. A short timeâ¨later, she goes on another car ride with four other boys, three she thoughtâ¨were friends, one she thought loved her, and they gang bang her. Dobie admitsâ¨she must of whispered the word `OK' before the horror began, because, afterâ¨all, that's what those boys expected of her. The boys of course brag aboutâ¨that night they spent with `Dobie the dirt bag,' and she becomes the town'sâ¨teen pariah.â¨â¨That's another precious aspect of this autobiography, the way it dramatizesâ¨the rigid, categorical thinking inherent in adolescent culture. Dobie,â¨according to the logic of teen-aged Hamdon, got what she deserved. When sheâ¨courageously tries to bluff things out and return to the teen center, she'sâ¨literally stoned by the virginal girlfriends of the boys who had sex with her.â¨Other boys, strangers, see her in a crowded park and surround her, cursing andâ¨throwing money at her. Here's how Dobie explains their twisted rationale.â¨â¨(Reading) `They didn't know me, but I knew them, knew they were still virgins,â¨and because I had gone again and again to the place they hadn't yet been, theyâ¨hated me, even as they envied the boys I had sex with. I knew too that itâ¨gave them as much pleasure to hurt a girl, to poke her and see her twitch, asâ¨it would to make love to her. Either way, they would feel more like men whenâ¨they were done.'â¨â¨A love of reading partly got Dobie into this nightmare, because books gave herâ¨a sense of possibility that the real world couldn't fulfill. Literature alsoâ¨saved her. A high school English teacher confirmed Dobie's nascent sense ofâ¨herself as a writer, and she eventually made it to college in New York City.â¨I mentioned that '60s icon Peggy Lipton from "The Mod Squad" earlier, but theâ¨woman of the age whom the teen-ager Dobie really resembles is Janis Joplin,â¨another sexual rebel who tried to claim boys' adventures as her own, andâ¨psychologically and physically paid a horrible price. Janis more than evenedâ¨the score through her music. For Dobie, writing well is the best revenge.â¨â¨GROSS: Maureen Corrigan teaches literature at Georgetown University. Sheâ¨reviewed "The Only Girl in the Car" by Kathy Dobie.â¨â¨(Credits)â¨â¨GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.