But Franks liked the idea that bringing a pool reporter along on his seven-hour foray would help shine the spotlight on the troops in the field. He takes every chance to deflect attention toward them. When a soldier asked to have a picture taken with the general, Franks replied: “Why would anyone want a picture of me? I’m an old ugly son-of-a-(expletive),” reported John Broder of The New York Times, the chosen reporter who was the eyes and ears for the rest of the press corps back at Central Command.
Franks had always planned to visit Iraq–it was just a matter of when. Monday the weather was right and so too were security conditions. That’s his M.O. as a commander: visiting troops on the battlefield. “I love them. I actually love them and it’s good for me to see them in the environment in which they’re doing what we’re asking them to do. It’s very uplifting,” he said. Not only did he get the “eyes on” version of events on the ground, but he sent a message around the world that Southern Iraq at least was well on its way to being completely under coalition control. Soon the combat camera footage of children and adults waving and giving a thumbs up to his nine-vehicle convoy (Franks rode in a Humvee with blacked out windows through An Najaf) will be streaming across TV screens. But despite his protestations, Franks was the star of the trip. “Showtime!” Franks shouted jokingly and maybe a bit self-consciously as he walked down the ramp of the C-130 in Numaniya.
Franks came across as “a simple soldier,” in his own words. He didn’t come to the Army as a General’s son or a West Point grad. He started his military career with the 9th Infantry Division in Vietnam. He is comfortable carrying his 9mm Beretta tucked in the small of his back, as he did Monday, and joking around with the guys. He poured water on one of his bodyguards who fell asleep on one of the Kevlar-reinforced helo flights. He greeted those he met with manly slaps on the arm and big hugs. Franks speaks militarese when he discusses “prosecuting” the war and he shares that tough guy ethos. “You (expletive) people are winning a war here. Thanks for what you are doing,” Franks told an Air Support Element backstopping the British troops he visited in Az Zubayr. If he talks like a soldier, he also doesn’t talk like one. In Numaniya, where he visited the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force–known as the MEF–he concluded his four-sentence address by saying, “That’s all the speech I have. God bless all of you.”
But his visit was not all ah shucking and bucking up the troops. Some of it was, he said, “quite actionable.” During his briefing with the 101st Airborne, he heard about a one-star Iraqi general they had captured who had 21 binders chock full of enemy information. The general provided the names of people likely to act as suicide bombers in the area as well. His reception in An Najaf also seemed to convince him that the tide was changing more quickly than he thought. He knew the people weren’t turning out for him–they couldn’t even see him through the blacked out windows. And it wasn’t the children that struck him. “As I saw in my days in Vietnam, they applaud the large military machinery and all that,” Franks said. It was the adults, who were cheering coalition forces–just like they had hoped two weeks ago. But he also cautioned, “Every one of these towns is different.”
In Numaniya, Franks acquiesced and posed for photos with some Marines. “Keep beating up those reporters!” one shouted. “We love it.” But with the good press Franks is getting out of his trip, he might put up less of a fight over letting reporters cover him.
