By Scott Wright

Congressman Mike Rogers was in town last week, and agreed to sit down with me for a few minutes last week and tell me a little about his trip to Iraq and answer a couple of questions I posed to him in an editorial which appeared in this space on Aug. 15.

I think a lot of Rep. Rogers, and I was not disappointed by the candor he exhibited when he sat down with me last Tuesday morning prior to a town hall meeting at the Cherokee County Administrative Building in Centre. There was none of the style of rhetoric similar top the drivel the head of his Republican party is so fond of emitting. I feel like I got the straight dope from the congressman, good and bad. He may be a Republican but he doesn't talk like the Republicans -- i.e., George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, etc. -- you hear on TV and in the newspapers spouting the standard spiel about the war in Iraq. Much unlike the president and his lemmings, you get straight answers from Mike Rogers.

Rogers visited Iraq earlier this month and spent a large portion of his time in what he called "the danger area," which is the middle-western portion of the country known widely in the press as the Sunni Triangle.

Rogers said the soldiers told him it's not the Iraqi people carrying out roadside attacks in Iraq like the one that killed 14 Ohio National Guard members earlier this month. He said the soldiers told him the porous Iraqi-Syrian border is the point of entry for foreign insurgents who are causing the majority of the madness and mayhem people see and hear about on the news every night.

"The insurgents are primarily ideologues from Syria and Saudi Arabia coming through and into the Sunni area of the country where they have some friendly folks they can join and use that area as a launching pad for their attacks," he said.

Rogers said he was surprised to fly over one particularly desolate area of Iraq near the Syrian border and asked a soldier about how the people who lived there were able to survive.

"The soldiers told me the people were scratching it out; some of them have goats or sheep, but most of them have gotten by trying to help smugglers get into the country."

Rogers said he asked the soldiers how these simple people are capable of constructing intricate and delicate explosive devices and then carrying out attacks against American troops.

"They're not, he told me," Rogers said of the soldier. "He said they're not capable, that these are very sophisticated explosives that are being detonated with garage door openers and key bobs, and that these people have never seen a garage door, much less a garage door opener."

Rogers said soldiers and other military officials on the ground in Iraq believe the ongoing negotiations over a new Iraqi constitution are vital to putting and end to those attacks.

"Frankly, I had not realized how critical how this constitutional election was until I went over there and I heard it from the troops everywhere I went," he said. "If this constitution is submitted to the people later this year -- if the legislative group can agree on it -- that will be the back-breaker for the insurgency because they rely on that ability to come in now and work with the Sunnis, hide in their houses, help them launch these attacks. If the Sunnis buy-off on this constitution ... all the sudden, they have a piece of the action, they're helping run the country and they've got no reason to help these terrorists come over and mess up the country."

The morning after Rep. Rogers told me those words, stories began appearing in the news that Sunni and Shiite factions in Iraq are beginning to fight among themselves over details of the new constitution. As a result, a tenuous situation has gotten even more tenuous, and progress with the negotiations over the new proposed constitution have basically ground to a halt. Still, the Bush administration has their blinders on. The White House released a statement the following morning claiming the Iraqis are "making progress towards democracy."

Rogers, sans blinders, said if the details of the new constitution can be hammered out, he's hopeful troops can begin to come home "sometime next year." But he said he believes there will be American soldiers in Iraq for a long time and he indicated that the reality of that fact is not being told to the American people like it should be.

Blah, blah ... Huh? An honest assessment from a Republican regarding the war in Iraq?

I told you, folks. Mike Rogers is not your typical Republican. And thank the Lord for that.

"I agree that there could be some better fleshing-out of the picture, of what we're really dealing with over there," he said. "But if the constitution is ratified we can hope for a significant draw-down of troops next year -- if the constitution is ratified."

Plenty out of line, don't you agree? But he kept talking, and I didn't stop him. Unlike the standard garbage the administration tosses at the people from the Halls of the White House, Rogers offered a blunt assessment of the realities of the Middle East.

"They've been fighting over there since the beginning of time, they're still going to be fighting at the end of time," Rogers said. "We just have to make sure they aren't a threat to our national security."

He added: "That's a slow process."

When I wanted to know if our troops are getting the armor they need, and if their morale is any better than it was in October 2003 when Rogers last visited, he told me what he saw.

"The biggest surprise was that troop morale was much higher, because deployments are shorter in length now and the troops are being told when they will get to come home. That was a big difference and changed their feelings about being deployed."

Rogers said the troops are much more adequately protected now than two years ago, as well.

"Humvees and trucks are being armored," he said. "I went to see that being done in one location and they are doing a great job with that and it is making a difference."

I also wanted to know what Rep. Rogers thought about what Army Corps of Engineers whistleblower Bunnantine Greenhouse called a Halliburton-led effort to illegally extract millions of dollars from the American people through exclusive contracts and blatant overcharging for services such as meals, fuel delivery and housing for troops in Iraq.

"Anytime there's waste in government contracting it's a concern to Congress," Rogers said.

He said he had never heard Mrs. Greenhouse or her accusations, but he added: "I'm not at all surprised by the scenario you just described as something that realistically could have happened. It's not acceptable and those kinds of things, when the light of day is shined on them, we stop them."

Rogers said he has noticed that congressmen on both sides of the aisle are genuinely concerned about the amount of money that is being spent in Iraq.

"More importantly, we want to make sure we're spending it wisely so our troops have what they need," he said. "Anything that reduces that funding stream takes away from their ability to effectively fight the war in Iraq."

I swear, if George W. Bush would step up to the microphone in the White House press room and say something like what Mike Rogers looked right at me and said last Tuesday morning, I wouldn't despise the commander in chief half as much as I do. Granted, I still wouldn't like him very much.

Mike Rogers, on the other hand, I like just fine.
 

Scott Wright is a member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and an award-winning member of the Society of Professional Journalists. He is a native of Cherokee County.