Posted on 08/05/2003 5:29:43 PM PDT by Ragtime Cowgirl
AS more Australian soldiers prepare to leave Baghdad, Major Penny Cumming is grateful she reached the Iraqi capital in time to see the receiving end of the punishment dished out by coalition forces.
The Australian army lawyer spent the war advising coalition commanders on the legality of their bombing targets in Iraq, and says she will leave Baghdad this week satisfied the coalition respected the rules of war.
"Coming to Baghdad has helped me to confirm in my own mind we did our job properly and that the whole effort was worthwhile," she said.
"It has been amazing to see the results from ground level, and to talk to Iraqis about their lives under the Saddam regime. It's one thing to sit in headquarters a long way away and discuss targets, but here I've driven past those destroyed buildings and said, 'Well, that's what happens – it makes a bit of a mess'.
"It's been a real eye-opener but I'm convinced it was a successful targeting campaign. From a legal perspective, I'm very confident collateral damage was kept to a minimum and the laws of war that applied were applied very strictly."
Interviewed by The Australian at coalition headquarters in Qatar in March before hostilities began, Major Cumming explained her role was to make sure commanders knew how their targeting decisions fitted with Australia's interpretation of the rules of war. At times that interpretation differed from the view of the US military, which tended to have a broader definition of acceptable military targets.
"We have slightly different views of our legal obligations, so the three countries of the coalition (the US, Britain and Australia) had to make joint decisions," she said in Baghdad as she prepared to leave Iraq.
"The old joke is that if you have three lawyers you will get 50 different legal opinions and, yes, we certainly had our differences. Sometimes it was harder than others but we always worked out our differences."
One of the many Australian soldiers whose six-month stints in and around Iraq are coming to an end, Major Cumming, who is based at Enoggera in Brisbane, is desperate to see her three sons Ben, 5, Nicky, 4, and Tom, who turned two while she was away.
Ben had asked her to carry his stuffed rabbit with her "so I wouldn't forget him".
"I'm happy to say that Blue Bunny has been quite happy living here in Baghdad but he is now looking forward to going home and being reunited with Ben," she said. "And I'll be pretty pleased to get home too.
"The whole experience has been hard but it has given me a lot more personal confidence. We spend our time training for it but to actually go and do it and feel you have done a good job is a different thing. I think I have got an inner confidence now that will stay with me."
LOL! One of the few sensible comments I've seen about the whole thing!
damn straight, skippy.
I forgot to credit Aussie blogger Tim Blair - http://timblair.spleenville.com/ - for linking this story, and for holding the VLWC press accountable down under.
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