Notebook: A War That Can't Be Forgotten

Lara Logan Reflects On 5 Years Of Strife In Iraq, And Hopes No One Loses Interest In The War

(CBS)  This reporter's notebook was written by CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan.

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About ten days into the U.S. invasion, the air above Baghdad was thick and dark with plumes of black smoke rising from oil fires lit by Iraqi fighters, to mask targets on the ground from U.S. warplanes.

But it seemed to make little difference. The earth thundered with deep, roaring explosions, one after another….and fires rose up from the ground around us.

The promised U.S. “shock and awe” campaign was well underway.

And we were heading directly into the chaos. The road swarming with human traffic that was coming towards us as we headed into Baghdad - the people going in the opposite direction: Iraqis desperately fleeing their city, afraid for their lives.

Fighting with them for space on the crowded road, was an impressive march of military hardware - Iraqi artillery on the move. Thousands and thousands of heavy artillery pieces being carried away….to disappear somewhere else or be destroyed.

I was forced out of the capital the day U.S. bombers made their way towards Baghdad. Now just as the sun dropped from the sky in a brilliant orange glow behind the black smoke, I was back with colleague Firas Ibrahim who had made the journey possible.

Like so many other Iraqis, he shared no love for Saddam Hussein. But he also shared a passion for his country, a fierce national pride - and a terrible fear of what or who would replace the Iraqi dictator.

In the months before the invasion began, that was the question most often heard on the streets - and most oft repeated - even from Iraqis who hated Saddam Hussein: Who will be next?

In the years that followed, that question would be posed again and again - but this time, with the answer:

“Look what we have now - a hundred Saddam’s, a thousand of them or more," Firas said. "Who can save us from this?”

It was with great sadness, that I looked out of the window one day in the CBS bureau as my colleague Firas gestured towards the ancient Tigris River. It was during the time of increasing ethnic violence between Iraqi’s majority Shiites and the Sunnis.

I had asked Firas what would happen if the U.S. pulled out, and that was when he pointed to the river.

“That water will run with our blood - with Sunni blood,” he said quietly, his voice soft but firm with conviction.

A lot has changed since that moment. Many Sunnis - and many Shiites - have died, along with Kurds, Turkmen - even Iraqi’s minority Christians. Tens of thousands - no one knows for sure how many because there is no reliable body count.

I have watched the war ebb and flow, giving most of the past four years to its gruesome battle rhythms’, watching Iraqi society disintegrate before my eyes.

It starts with a family caught in a U.S. air raid during the initial invasion. I made it to the hospital to find the three children, all with more then 80 percent burns over their bodies. Their parents had been killed in the blast, they were all to follow. But it would be two agonizing weeks before the last of them - a little girl no more than eight years old - succumbed to her wounds.

That image is no less or more disturbing than looking into the eyes of a 19-year-old corpsman, (the navy word for medic), as he describes for me his first four hours on the ground in Ramadi, just west of Baghdad, three years later:

“We were hit by an IED and in the chaos, we shot up a vehicle coming towards us really fast. But when it stopped we found an Iraqi mother with four of her children inside. We couldn’t save our guys because the humvee was on fire and we couldn’t get to them so we just had to listen to them scream as they burned to death - and they just kept screaming,” he told me.

“Then we realized we’d shot the mother and her children. I was doing mouth-to-mouth on an eight-month-old baby as its mother died in my lap. Then the two-year-old died, and then the baby died in my mouth. It was the worst four hours of my life.”

I knew as I looked at that boy, that in spite of his uniform and his weapon and his soldierly smile, he was just a damaged young kid who would never look at the world the same way again.

It’s a look that shadows many young faces here, both U.S. and Iraqi. The suffering has left no one untouched. You cannot walk down a street in Baghdad and find a home now that has not known death. And fear.

In our office the cleaner has lost a brother to a death squad, and another to kidnapping. One local producer has lost a brother - executed - and has two more brothers in prison. We lost another local producer when he was taken by a death squad and executed. We had to send another out of the country after he was taken hostage in the south of the country. Still another local producer left after his father was kidnapped and executed. Our drivers have all had family members murdered, many of them multiple losses - mothers, fathers, uncles, sisters, brothers.

The list goes on. And on.

It is a reason to keep coming back and covering the war. It is a reason to care even when it feels like the rest of the world has stopped caring.

And there is another reason. Around 150,000 U.S. soldiers, airmen and sailors. Not to mention tens of thousands of contractors doing jobs in the name of U.S. forces or the U.S. government or the U.S. cause.

It is unconscionable to me that any American, if faced with this reality, would honestly say they do not care to know about what their military is doing in Iraq. I cannot believe that if they saw even one soldier wounded, watched him drop right in front of them without even the whisper of a sound as blood spurted from his injury and the bullets kept coming, crackling through the air as others rush to his aid - I cannot believe they would say they do not care.

I want them to imagine what it looks like, when you walk past the chaplain’s office in the main U.S. hospital in the Green Zone, not long after a unit has come under major attack.

I remember walking past such a line one day, after a unit I’d embedded with often in Baghdad suffered their worst single day of losses: nine soldiers killed and more injured, including three quadruple amputees.

First I walked past the emergency room where the survivors were crowded waiting for news. I walked past the operating theatre where blood was rushing under the door and into the sterile corridor, now trampled with dusty boots.

There is a look that soldiers get after they have survived a fight, swollen with the wounds of battle. And there is a look they get after losing their friends, after realizing the fight for life is over and nothing more can be done. Wearing the blood of their comrades, wearing the beaten look of the defeated, they slowly begin to mourn. Mourning that will be allowed only for a moment, before they head out back into battle and survival means you must move on.

But for the time they stood in line to see the chaplain, for that moment still in shock as the reality slowly set in, unable to hide the raw pain as they wept with faces buried in filthy sleeves, or staring straight ahead, dazed. Muffled cries escaping every now and then. Eyes hollow or swollen. Some holding back still. All broken.

You don’t forget faces like that, grief that sears your soul. You lower your head as you pass, feeling unworthy.

Just like you don’t forget the firm grasp of a young man, as he grabs hold of your hand from his hospital bed and stares you down, talking fast like any eager young kid. You can’t explain why you expected his handshake to be weak, just because you’re looking at the stump that used to be his leg. But you do. You’d never expect you could lose a leg and still be 19-years-old and still be so strong.

It makes no sense. It’s just that way.

I have to believe that anyone who could see the suffering up close, would never say they’d lost interest in this war.

Anyone who could go to an Iraqi hospital, and see the terrible conditions or the families desperately trying to help a loved one in the mayhem after a blast. Or see the young girl who’s lost her whole family and both her legs and isn’t yet 14-years-old.

Five years on the truth is that Iraq’s leaders have failed their people. Just as the U.S. has failed here - time and again.

But that doesn’t mean the world has to fail the Iraqi people - again - by forgetting about this war.

And Americans cannot fail those fighting in their name. No matter what they feel about the war.

In fact it seems that those opposed to it have an even greater reason not to let the country forget.

[havilandw]

Lara Logan,

Thanks for all you do to keep us informed. Thanks for telling the truth.

[havilandw]

Lara Logan,

Thanks for all you do to keep us informed. Thanks for telling the truth.

[havilandw]

Lara Logan,

Thanks for all you do to keep us informed. Thanks for telling the truth.

[forthepeopl1]

BEFORE VOTING FOR THIS MAN know just who and what you are voting for... It is now time for Senator John McCain and his implementation of the John Boyden, Esq. plan to "disappear" the Navajo of Arizona, so as to profit from the sale of Coal under their land, to be brought to Justice for criminal violation of the United States own Human Rights Laws, in a pattern of behavior that mirrors that of NAZI GERMANY and it''''s Genocide of the Jews of Europe.. Along with him, officials of the Department of the Interior Bureau of Indian Affairs who arranged to embezzle the licensing money paid in by Peabody Western Coal, supposedly for use to help the Navajo, but embezzled anyway, along with officials of the Bureau of Land Management and Mines, who manipulate the wildlife rights of American Indians every year, so as to reduce their number, concentration and ability to prosper by living off the land. In the most BRAZEN coordinated effort of Genocide in History, corrupt public officials are literally murdering the Navajo of Arizona and converting their lives and their lands into instant personal gain, by selling them off under the table to mining industry and the Power Industry. In Arizona, John McCain claims there is a "Range War" going on in the Black Mesa. please go to this site and find out what mcshame is www.Acsa.net/cain2004.org

[wilwerdjk]

Thank You Lara. I''m proud of you. John

[texmexmack]

Always look at the data and methodology before you believe a poll, and I mean both sides, right and left. Try to see if the results of the poll match the reality on the ground. It''s obvious that in any poll, a small number of people are sampled and the results of their responses are extrapolated to the population at large.

Does the breadth and depth of the antiwar movement reflect the strength it would have if roughly two thirds of all Americans opposed the war?

Also, Navy medics that serve with the Marines are not "corman", it''s "corpsman".

[ljb6599]

The Irag War,what a disaster!! Bush has led us into a quagmire worst than Vietnam.Even if you were against the war from the beginning like I was you can see that there are only bad and worse solutions to end it.I can see a small light at the end of the tunnel with the correct leadership which in my opinion does include John McCain.He wants to continue the war strategy.To end this we will need an intelligent person with strong diplomatic skills.He or she will need to somehow convince mant of our allies whom did support this war that we need help to get out. With the right leadership I think this can happen,however I wonder if the American people will have patience.

[shortyinmo]

How can anyone believe any "poll" you read in the paper or see on tv?! They are just as biased as the media. Everyone knows FOX NEWS leans right just like everyone knows CNN leans left. There is no more unbiased journalism, no more just reporting the facts every thing you see and hear is tainted.

As I have posted before the same people that want the US to pull out of Iraq are the same people who want us to send troops into the Sudan. What is the difference? Really, there is/was genocide in both places, abuse of people and use of terror in both places, and so on and so on.

As for the New Orleans comment-give me a break! How could you not notice it? It was shoved in your face 24/7 every day for months. Guess what there are a lot of people who have lived through terrible flooding including people here in this state and we didn''t get 1/4 the coverage. Disgusting.

This country has turned into a bunch of whinning little snots. They depend on the goverment to give them everything, and think they are entitled to everything. They want everything fair and equal and peaceful. Get off the crack and notice this isn''t the 70''s anymore. If you can''t work for it tough, let''s have a little more self responsibility and so on. If you really believe that we need to get out of Iraq let''s stop being the world police, the feeder of nations, bank of the world and so on. Every man for himself----what a bunch of cry babies.

[pepperwood2]

How could this happen! 3 AM call to Whitehouse - Oct 3 1993 - Muslim extremists attack US Troops in Mogadishu, Somalia. 18 killed 90 wounded

Clinton''s response: withdraw troops
President Clinton decides to cut his losses, but declares that American troops are to be fully withdrawn from Somalia by March 31. The hunt for Aidid is abandoned, and US representatives are sent to resume negotiations with the warlord.

Builds Confidence of Muslim militants to take further action in Africa, Middle East, Europe & USA.

[excoachken]

With his "So?" comment, perhaps it is time for a new addition to our everyday language in the United States. When someone going through a tragedy is overlooked as if the are not worthy of attention of the person passing by, I suggest we start calling that circumstance being "Cheyneyed." It would reflect the feeling of those 63% who are intelligent enough to recognize the endless feeling of loss over this war, while being ignored by the arrogant fools who are in charge. Those in New Orleans got "Cheyneyed," as did those in Walter Reed, as have so many others under this regime.