Warrior & Healer
GIMC doctor’s time in Iraq gives him new outlook on the war, media’s coverage

Warner Anderson, an Army doctor, leaves for a job with the Pentagon as the Director of Medical Civil Military Operations for the Department of Defense. Anderson has received three Bronze Stars, a Purple Heart and Legion of Merit medal in his military career. [Photo by Brian Leddy/Independent]

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — Dr. Warner “Butch” Anderson is now heading to a new assignment — working in the Pentagon as head of the U.S. Defense Department’s humanitarian relief efforts.

Anderson, who has worked for the past several years in the emergency room at Gallup Indian Medical Center, already has two tours of duty in Iraq under his belt, during one of which he was shot twice.

His new job won’t put him in danger, but it is one that will require a lot of traveling and more time away from his wife, Ruth, as he coordinates American efforts to help people around the world whenever a disaster — such as a major earthquake or tsunami — occurs.

But he has learned since becoming a doctor in 1980 that one goes where one is needed, no matter how far it takes you or how risky the assignment.

Anderson’s adventures in Iraq began in January 2002 when he was reactivated in the Army Reserves. He thinks this decision put him on a list and even though civilian employees working for the Public Health Service are never called up for service during a war, he could see how his background as a special forces qualifying doctor would take him to the top of the list as the United States was preparing to invade Iraq.

So in April 2003 he found himself heading into Baghdad after the invasion took place with the responsibility of directing public health efforts.

As he headed into the city for the first time, he watched as the Iraqi people, some carrying American flags, rushed up to the American soldiers laughing and beaming with joy.

“I thought this must have been like my dad felt as he entered Paris after liberating it during World War II,” he said.

But he saw some things that sickened him.

Before deciding to become a doctor, he pursued a career in anthropology and he watched in shock as Iraqi citizens looted the city of its cultural treasures and destroyed much of the area’s cultural heritage.

As soon as he arrived in Iraq, his days and most nights, were taken up with the assignment of improving the county’s public health services.

So on April 27, 2003, he was traveling outside the Green (or safe) Zone to meet with the county’s ministry of health.
But as his convoy headed for the meeting, they suddenly discovered that traffic stalled as they reached an area where the six-lane road became four lanes. Gun fire erupted.

“It was so crowded with people that we couldn’t tell at first where the shots were coming from,” he said.

It turned out that a Syrian terrorist had decided to make a political statement that day with his guns and attacked the convoy. Anderson would kill “a bad guy” that day but in the process he would be shot twice — once in the shoulder and then near the ribs — for which he would receive a Purple Heart. The four other men in the convoy would also be injured but none would die that day.

This wasn’t the last time during his two tours of duty in Iraq that he would find himself in danger.

Once, he said, on a mission in Sadr City, he was providing medical backup for an Iraqi military unit that was investigating reports that a local mosque was being used as a bomb-making site. While mosques have a major religious significance to the Iraqi people, once weapons were placed in the building, it no longer had any religious significance, he said.

The insurgents had posted a guard on top of the building and when he saw the Iraqi soldiers, the guard decided to try to escape and jumped to the next building. He didn’t make it; instead the insurgent fell three stories — about 40 feet — to the ground.

Once he was no longer a threat, it became Anderson’s duty to provide the man with medical attention and he had the man brought to his Humvee where he was attached to an IV and then Anderson and his men had to travel through 12 miles of hostile territory to get the insurgent to the nearest hospital where he could be treated.

His time in Iraq, he said, has given him the experience that most Americans lack in considering this country’s role in that country and while his position with GIMC has required him to be nonpartisan, it doesn’t mean that he has to keep his feelings about the media’s role in this war to himself.

His feelings is that both the print and the television medium has been selected in what they report to the American people.

For example, everyone knows from news stories that no one has discovered any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But Anderson said he read the reports from the groups that looked for the WMD and didn’t find any.

But these reports did state that during interviews with top Iraqi military leaders, all said that Iraq had the capability to start producing nerve gas within two weeks if it wanted to.

But the news media, he said, prints what it wants to and too much of what it prints is critical of the war effort to the point where Anderson feels that the government’s only solution in future wars if it wants positive coverage is to “subcontract everything to the New York Times.”