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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.