This is a good article in the local paper about the Sheriff's dept criminal division commander who just got back from duty in Iraq.
His Iraq mission accomplished
41 year-old sheriff’s commander served 14 months in strife-torn
5/11/2006
By Tony Scott
A Sheriff’s Office commander has returned home after a 14-month U.S. Army stint in Iraq.
Phil Smith, 41, was called up to active military duty in February of last year, from the inactive reserves. The Montgomery resident is married with two children, ages 8 and 13, at home.
Smith joined the Army in 1982, and was discharged into the Individual Ready Reserves (IRR) in 1991 when he was hired by the Sheriff’s Office as a deputy. Working his way up the ranks, he was named commander in 2000.
While in Iraq, Smith was assigned to the Georgia-based 48th Infantry Brigade, as part of the 3rd Infantry Division and Multi-National Division-Baghdad. The area covered by the division was south and west of Baghdad, Smith said.
As a senior military police officer in that brigade, Smith joined the staff of the Provost Marshal General, updating the commanding general daily on his military police needs. Smith said he was able to also volunteer for various missions, but ultimately decided to stick to his military day job.
“I got to go out on missions; I got to pick and choose where I wanted to go,” he said. “At first, I volunteered for quite a few missions, which after a while I found out was really stupid. So I curtailed those activities.”
“Some of my missions were, to inspect some Iraqi facilities, like an interrogation facility, or a holding area, and I’d report those findings back to the general.”
Smith remains modest at describing his duties in Iraq.
“Nothing big, a bunch of staff briefings,” he said. “I got real good at things like PowerPoint. You have to give a lot of briefings; the general has to be totally aware of what’s happening in his battle space.”
Smith chooses to describe some of his experiences not as dangerous, but as “stressful.”
“There were some pretty stressful times,” he said. “Driving from Kuwait to Baghdad was pretty stressful. Like I said, I did some stupid things, and one of them was to volunteer to ride from Kuwait to Baghdad. Most of the brigade flew, but we had to move some vehicles up, so I volunteered for that convoy. Driving through downtown Baghdad was pretty stressful. Flying over Baghdad, of course, was stressful. It was fun at first, but then after you realize that helicopters get shot down or get blown up, it’s a little different story.”
Smith describes Baghdad as a medium-sized city, with “good sized 10 or 15-story buildings, housing areas - projects, whatever you want to call them, shops, traffic, crowded streets. Then you’ve got your suburbs. It branches out, just like if you were to take a helicopter ride from an urban area out to the suburbs. The density of housing dissipates a little bit and becomes farms. It’s interesting.”
The business of policing the streets in Baghdad is much different than in the states, Smith said.
“Policing over there is pretty radical, because the police have big targets on them,” he said. “I have witnessed them making traffic stops, but their policing is more anti-terrorism, quelling violence, not taking barking dog complaints or neighborhood complaints. It’s more high-strung.”
There are some safe areas, including “green zones” and military-only camps known as “contonment areas,” but Smith said simply driving the streets of Baghdad can be dangerous. Many civilians, young and old, can make money from joining the insurgency.
“When you’re out driving the streets, the byways and highways, what you have to realize is probably 90 percent of the people think that they can make more money by taking money from insurgents and doing deeds against the U.S., than we can provide them with jobs and economic reforms,” he said. “So why would they go out and dig a ditch for us, for $5 an hour, when for $250 all they have to do is put an explosive on a roadway and trigger it? So that’s a big problem. It’s economic gain over there; they see a lot of money the insurgency is dumping on them, versus what we can actually pay them to do the job.”
When the topic is broached about the political implications of the U.S. fighting in Iraq, Smith is careful.
“All I can tell you is, the intentions we have over there are excellent. The intentions are excellent, to help these people out, put them on the right track, get rid of a dictator, and all that’s great,” he said. “The only problem I have is, you have people here on welfare that we can’t take care of because we don’t have enough money, yet we’re spending billions just so an Iraqi can vote. That’s a political issue I have a problem with: even though I know what we’re doing over there is for the betterment of the country, the stability of the region, we need to look at our own home. It’s an ethical dilemma we deal with. But that’s a political view, not a military view.”
‘Made a commitment’
When Smith left home, he left behind a wife and two young children. Smith said he explained to his kids that he had a commitment to the military that he had to honor.
“I told them that a long time ago I had made a commitment to the armed services in our country,” he said. “We all try to instill different values in our kids. I tried to tell them, you know what, I made a commitment, it’s my word; you’re really nothing in this world without your word, and I had a commitment to the Army.”
He continued, “I imagine I could have fought it, which I understand a lot of people did. As a matter of fact, those IRR (Individual Ready Reserve) soldiers that were involuntarily mobilized never got prosecuted. Nobody got prosecuted. So in essence, I could have said, I’m not going, and I wouldn’t have had to worry about prosecution. But I hope we can teach our kids by leading by example, that you can’t say you’re going to do something, and then because you don’t like what it is then you back out of your commitment.”
Smith stressed that, unlike many of the young infantrymen, he had luxuries that allowed him to contact his family regularly.
“I was very fortunate to be on brigade staff, so I had a computer and a DSN (defense switched network) phone on my desk,” he said. “Once a week I’d make a call home, and I’d be able to write e-mails, so I was a little more fortunate than the young infantrymen out on the street, because I had certain privileges of the job. I was very fortunate to be in the position I was in. Lucky.”
Sitting in his office, Smith said he isn’t sure what his options are for the future. He knows he can’t be activated for at least one year, and he has 24 years of service so he said he could retire if he wanted.
“I’m just readjusting to this job and this life, so I haven’t really sat down and thought that out,” he said.
Smith said he kept track of local issues by reading web sites of newspapers back home, and also knew that his former post of commander of the criminal division was in good hands. Detective Sgt. Scott Koster was assigned to Smith’s position on an interim basis when Smith left last year.
“My biggest problem with Scott is, he does the job better than I do,” Smith said, half-jokingly. “Sometimes that’s intimidating to me, because when you come back and you’ve been gone a year, you’re kind of insecure about the job.”
He continued, “The Sheriff’s Office is a great place to work. The staff and everybody else here, throughout my entire time here, called my wife to make sure she was OK, e-mailed me, they’re just great so they made the transition easier and taken away those insecurities.”
Staying modest, Smith insists that he has “seen some neat stuff” but doesn’t “have much of a story.” He praised the young infantrymen patrolling the streets of Iraqi cities and raiding hideouts of insurgents. He stressed that they should be the ones who get the support of the American people.
“Those guys had the stressful jobs,” he said. “Those are the real heroes. The rest of the support staff, a few back here say we’re heroes but we know who the heroes are: it’s those guys who are there, and the people back home that support those guys. That’s the bottom line. If we ever lose that support here at the home base, over there would be hell. The support we know is here, makes it a lot easier over there.”
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