THE U.S. SOLDIER IS TIME PERSON OF YEAR : Soldiers glorified but not Bush Adm. for putting them in Iraq

"The magazine glorifies the soldiers but not the
Bush administration for putting them in Iraq...."

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THE U.S. SOLDIER IS TIME PERSON OF YEAR
9 minutes ago

By SARA KUGLER, Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK - The American soldier, who bears the duty of "living with
and dying for a country's most fateful decisions," was named Sunday as
Time magazine's Person of the Year.

The choice represents the 1.4 million men and women who make up the
U.S. military, which led the invasion of Iraq nine months ago and a
week ago captured deposed leader Saddam Hussein.

About 130,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq, with others deployed in
Afghanistan, South Korea and elsewhere.

The troops were singled out as the top newsmakers of the year because
"the very messy aftermath of the war made it clear that the mission
had changed, that the mission had not been completed and that this
would be a story that would be with us for months, if not years, to
come," Time Managing Editor Jim Kelly said.

The selection echoes 1950, the year the Korean War began, when the
magazine's editors picked the American GI for the cover, writing that
"it was not a role the American had sought, either as an individual or
as a nation. The U.S. fighting-man was not civilization's crusader,
but destiny's draftee."

The 2003 Person of the Year package, on newsstands Monday, features an
artillery survey unit from the 1st Armored Division to tell the story
of the American soldier.

The magazine's cover shows three of them — Sgt. Marquette Whiteside of
Pine Bluff, Ark., Sgt. Ronald Buxton of Lake Ozark, Mo., and Spc.
Billie Grimes of Lebanon, Ind., all members of Survey Platoon,
Headquarters Battery, 2nd Battalion in the 1st Armored's 3rd Field
Artillery Regiment, based in Giessen, Germany. Two Time journalists
embedded with the platoon were injured in a grenade attack this month.


The magazine glorifies the soldiers but not the Bush administration
for putting them in Iraq, calling troops "the bright sharp instrument
of a blunt policy," and leaving it to scholars to debate "whether the
Bush doctrine is the most muscular expression of national interest in
a half-century."

The justification for a U.S. military presence in Iraq has been widely
questioned, as coalition forces have found no weapons of mass
destruction, which President Bush had argued Saddam was stockpiling.

Guerrilla attacks against U.S. and allied forces stationed there have
escalated since May 1, when the president declared an end to major
combat. More coalition troops died in November than in any other
month: 104, including 79 Americans.

"A force intensively trained for its mission finds itself improvising
at every turn, required to exercise exquisite judgment in extreme
circumstances," the magazine said. "They complain less about the
danger than the uncertainty — they are told they're going home in two
weeks, and then two months later they have not moved."

The Pentagon has said it expects to reduce the number of American
troops in Iraq to just over 100,000 by May.

Time magazine knows the risks that the soldiers face first hand. On
the evening of Dec. 10, Time writer Michael Weisskopf's right hand was
blown off and photographer James Nachtwey was hit with shrapnel when a
grenade landed on their humvee as the platoon was stuck in Baghdad
traffic.

Grimes, the platoon's medic, treated the two journalists along with
injured members of her unit. Weisskopf is recovering at Walter Reed
Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and Nachtwey is back in New
York.

In 2001, when then-New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was picked as
Time's Person of the Year for leading the city's response to the Sept.
11 terror attacks, critics suggested Osama bin Laden should have been
featured as the top newsmaker.

Kelly said Saddam was not considered this year because "he was on the
losing side of this conflict," and it was unclear how much he was
leading the insurgency.

Last year, Time editors selected Coleen Rowley, the FBI agent who
wrote a scathing memo on FBI intelligence failures, and Cynthia Cooper
and Sherron Watkins, who blew the whistle on corruption at corporate
giants Enron and WorldCom.