PEP, November 2006: Arming the Army.

Sr. sewage Treatment Worker John Quinn served as a vital link in the delivery of food and weapons to troops in the field.

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

Serving in Qatar and Iraq, U.S. Air Force Reservist John Quinn has put in two tours in the war in the Middle East.

A technical sergeant, Quinn worked at airports, loading and unloading food and weapons for the troops on the front lines.

At home, Quinn is a Sr. Sewage Treatment Worker and member of Local 1320 who works at the Dept. of Environmental Protection plant at Hunt’s Point in the Bronx. As a Reservist, he is assigned to Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, N.Y.

A soft-spoken man with a wry sense of humor, Quinn joked that he worried more about getting sunburned that being shot at while serving in the Iraq desert. In more serious moments, he recalled how Iraqi insurgents used to launch mortar shells into the military base near the city of Tillil, 120 miles southwest of Baghdad. At night, he and his fellow soldiers were sometimes roused from their sleep by reports of imminent attacks.

“Whatever your job was, you tried to get it done fast without mistakes and to do it safely,” Quinn said. “You didn’t want anyone to get hurt while working.”

Tower of Babel
At the base, Quinn worked day-to-day with members of the multinational coalition serving in Iraq. “It was the Tower of Babel,” said Quinn, who did cargo work, including a lot of paperwork and computer time with a Japanese counterpart.

Isolated on a military base in a foreign country, Quinn said the military men and women there developed a camaraderie. While striking up new friendships and spending time with fellow Reservists from New York, Quinn said he also found his own refuge by soaking up as many as three paperback books a week and by communicating with friends at home via e-mail.

In an interview, Quinn, who also was called up after 9/11, suggested that there was an inevitability about the Iraq War.

“There is a price for everything, like the way we live,” he said. “If we weren’t there, chasing them, they would be here throwing things. They’ve proved that.”

Yet Quinn also views the unending conflict with a critical, even cynical, eye. He thinks the 9/11 attack “was an excuse to go in and invade.”

“You don’t think we need the oil?” said Quinn, who pointed out that President George W. Bush’s family is closely linked to oil interests. “That’s why we are there — oil and Israel,” an apparent reference to the motives of a group of neoconservative Republicans who reportedly used 9/11 to press Bush to get rid of Saddam Husseinand restructure the Middle East to promote democracy and guarantee the U.S. access to oil.

While at the airbase in Iraq, Quinn devoted some of his time to training Iraqi soldiers in transportation work. He recalled that several of the group disappeared when they heard they would soon be sent to Baghdad — apparently spooked by the escalating violence in the capitol.

“Life is so hard for these people,” said Quinn, telling how one of the Iraqis said the insurgents had snuffed out an uncle because he was working with the U.S. occupation forces.

Quinn said he doubted that the U.S. would ultimately be able to rebuild Iraq into a stable democracy. “You have foreigners coming into where you live,” Quinn said. “It’s only natural that they would be upset. We are trying to push a different political system down their throats.”