Post a Comment        E-mail To A Friend        Join The List

Jeff Emanuel On The State Of The Iraq War

by Stephanie Allerdice
11/05/2007

Eighteen people showed up for a speech given by a University of Georgia alumnus who spoke on Thursday night in the Student Learning Center about his experiences in Iraq and the current state of the war.

Jeff Emanuel, before attending UGA, served in the U.S. Air Force from 1999 to 2004 as a tactical air controller. He was assigned to combat duty in Iraq where he was a part of the task force that rescued PFC Jessica Lynch.

Emanuel came to UGA in 2004 and majored in Classics, with an emphasis on classic archaeology. He later returned to Iraq as an imbedded reporter with the Army Infantry and other units.

He is a regular writer for The Weekly Standard, and has been published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Wall Street Journal.

Emanuel spoke of his experiences as an imbedded reporter and how he views the current state of Iraq. He said the war has basically been going nowhere for the past four years and that the election of Gen. David Petraeus as the commander of the Multinational Force-Iraq will bring change to the way we are fighting this war.

The new plan for Iraq is a counter-insurgency strategy, which basically means that the U.S. forces would move back out into the areas that could not be secured by the unprepared Iraqi troops, said Emanuel.

About 50,000 soldiers in Iraq are charged with securing the country, which is about the size of California and has 27 million people. Emanuel said he does not think that is enough to secure the country.

However, there is a bright side. Iraqi people are realizing, “that if you don’t shoot the American soldiers they will build you hospitals and roads," said Emanuel.

The Iraqi people are afraid of the terrorists in Iraq. They are risking their lives and the lives of their families if they help the U.S. troops, but some of them are brave enough to risk it, said Emanuel.

As a reporter, Emanuel says he does not think the news from Iraq is filtered. He says what we see in the news is what he saw when he was with the infantry.

The Security Studies Student Association presented the speech. Samantha Meek and Mark Smith head the group.

“We went to Israel and our visit was cut short by a terrorist attack”, said Smith, “that is why we wanted to host Emanuel.”

Name
Email
URL
Body
Are you human?