Reservist on 3rd tour of duty KIA: Single Mother

[Moses]

Monday, June 27, 2005, 12:00 A.M. Pacific



Iraq war claims first woman from Washington state

By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter


Naval Reservist Regina Clark already had done two tours of active duty since 9/11, and friends thought it unfair that this single mom from Centralia should have to leave behind an 18-year-old son and serve again.

But in February, Clark packed her duffel bags and headed for Iraq, where she worked at Fallujah checkpoints conducting security searches on Muslim women.

"She wanted to retire — but she really didn't have the choice," said Sherry Haubrick, a longtime friend of Clark's.

Thursday, Clark, 43, was one of six U.S. troops killed by a suicide bomber who attacked a convoy returning from Fallujah checkpoint duty, according to U.S. military officials. The bombing also resulted in 13 wounded, including 11 women, according to a statement released from the Marine base called Camp Fallujah.

Clark is the 101st member of the armed services with ties to Washington state killed in the Iraq war, according to a Seattle Times database. And she appears to be the first Washington woman to die in the war.

Even in a war that has increasingly put women into peril, Clark did not seem likely to be thrust into frontline duty outside the walls and wire of U.S. military bases.

In civilian life, Clark worked for more than 10 years at the deli and bakery at Fuller's Market Place in Centralia before tackling a new job as a state corrections officer, according to Haubrick.

Clark lived with her son, Kerry Clark, who graduated from high school last year. Regina Clark's mother, Mellita Fountain, has occupied a mobile home on the same tract of land.

In the Naval Reserve, Clark, a petty officer first class, was slotted as a mess-hall cook. And preparing food was a big part of her duties in earlier deployments in 2001 and 2003, according to Haubrick.

But this year, as she arrived in Iraq, the Marines, in an effort to be culturally sensitive to Muslim women, sought to find U.S. women to do the checkpoint searches, according to a Marine press release.

Fallujah has been one of the most treacherous towns for U.S. troops and was the focal point of a major U.S. offensive last fall that sought to flush out insurgents. But in a phone call a few weeks ago with her mother, Clark did not talk about the dangers of her job.

"She talked about a new woman friend she had made from Tennessee, and how she hadn't had a shower in five days," Fountain said. "She was so happy that I had sent a bunch of baby wipes."

Fountain and Kerry Clark learned about the death Friday when Navy officers in white suits came to the homestead. By Saturday, as The Chronicle in Centralia published several stories about Clark, television reporters converged on the property.

Asked what he would do now, Kerry Clark told KING-TV, "I don't know. I'm going to have to figure that out. That's the hard point. I've got friends. Thank God."

By yesterday, Kerry Clark was unavailable for comment, having flown to New York to appear on a television show, Fountain said.

Regina Clark centered much of her life on her son, according to friends. She was born in Germany but raised in the United States. She joined the Navy and married a fellow sailor, but they separated when Kerry Clark was still a little boy and he was raised by a single mother, according to Fountain.

Though Regina Clark was a sailor through and through, friends say that as Naval Reserves mobilized post-9/11, Clark felt a conflict between her duty as a mother and her duty to serve.

Clark believed strongly in America's responsibilities as a superpower and didn't hesitate to go on her first two deployments, which each lasted six months or less, according to Fountain.

While she was gone, Fountain and friends helped look after her son.

Upon her return from her second deployment in 2003, Clark resumed work at Fuller's deli but said she was disturbed by some of the things she had seen. She talked about retiring from the military, according to Haubrick, who worked with her in 2003 at the deli.

"She said she didn't feel like herself anymore, and for Regina, that takes a lot — she was very happy-go-lucky," Haubrick said.

Clark's third deployment initially was supposed to begin last year, before her son's high-school graduation, Haubrick said.

But Clark was able to work a deal to postpone that deployment to this year and to take on the assignment that landed her in Fallujah, which would be her last deployment before retirement.

As Clark prepared to depart for this final round of duty, she still strongly supported the U.S. mission and President Bush, according to Fountain.

"I have a feeling that we shouldn't have been there, and made a remark about President Bush," Fountain said.

"She said, 'That's my leader and commander in chief you're talking about.' " [Note: military personnel are prohibited from criticizing Bush, and her comment should be understood in this light, not as an endorcement of Bush-- they are, however, allowed to criticize Cheney or Rumsfeld, and this is what they do-- but it is code for Bush himself]

Hal Bernton: 503-292-1016

[Moses]

March, 2003

Open letter to Maria Cantwell, US Senator

Dear Senator Cantwell:

Some time ago, you voted to give President Bush authority to take military action against Iraq. We are writing you today to ask you to reconsider your position, and even take part in action to rescind that authority. We think this is reasonable and responsible. In our opinion:

1. There is lack of credibility for the war endeavor. We were attacked in a shocking and unforgivable manner on 9/11. However, that attack has been firmly linked to Bin Laden, a terrorist of Saudi/Afghani origin.

* After heavy attacks on Afghanistan, we left off attacking that country, and moved on to Iraq --- even though no links between the two have been confirmed, despite many arrests and interrogations.
* At first, the Bush administration seemed firmly in support of the United Nations inspectors. Now that the inspectors have not found anything, the Bush administration is anxious to move on to war anyway, on the basis of NO EVIDENCE. In fact, in a true Alice in Wonderland statement, Donald Rumsfeld is quoted in Newsweek magazine (1/27/03) as follows:


"The fact that the inspectors have not yet come up with new evidence of Iraq’s WMD program could be evidence, in and of itself, of Iraq’s noncooperation."

2. The terrorist threat is being used to reverse our long-standing trend to eliminate nuclear weapons in warfare.

* The President has prepared war plans that include the use of nuclear weapons as a part of the arsenal, greatly reducing the restraint that has been developing over decades, to avoid a nuclear confrontation.
* Early on, President Bush has called certain nations "evil." Would this not be provocation for a country to go on the defensive, or from the defensive to aggressive?
* The United States used spent nuclear (radioactive) materials in Iraq and there is every expectation that this will continue.

3. We believe that the Administration has put us, the United States, out by ourselves as the aggressors while the rest of the world looks on in consternation and fear. The decades of careful work that former administrations and statesmen have accomplished is being washed away.

Laws, treaties, agreements, organizations and shared values have gained us respect and have furthered the cause of humanity. But more important, these works have earned us respect and have bound us to other nations, which protects us better than any weapon system ever could. All this is being lost.

4. We feel that the Administration has set us up to truly receive the wrath of terrorists. As many in Europe have pointed out, we have never seen the effects of war on our own soil. If we continue to attack Islamic nations, we may see a serious backlash. There is a good model to examine in the Israeli /Palestinian situation. It doesn’t matter that the Palestinians have been defeated and have nothing compared to the Israelis. The Palestinians are desperate, and will sacrifice themselves; just as terrorists could do to us, once the Islamic nations of the world begin to look upon us as an oppressor.

5. Under the guise of protecting us from terrorism, the Administration, through the Patriot Act, is turning our country into a police state. People (even American citizens) have been arrested, put in jail with no rights of habeas corpus. How many of those hundreds have been found to have any connection to terrorists? Other rights, such as privacy, are being eroded.

6. Under the guise of national defense, President Bush has asked congress to approve, without testing, a missile defense system that many respected experts (for example, the Union of Concerned Scientists) have said will never work, and indeed has never functioned well under testing.

If this is not bad enough, our insistence on a star wars defense system is probably seen, by nations such as China and Russia, as a method of developing first strike nuclear capabilities, thus stimulating development of nuclear arms capability around the world. This is tragic to behold, after all the work that has been done to attain SALT and other non-nuclear agreements.

In summary, we feel that events are running contrary to American principles and values. We see our President looking everywhere for demons that we are not at all sure exist, but his behavior is putting us all at great risk, both in the immediate future, and perhaps for generations. We see decades of good work, by this and many nations, being destroyed.

We do not understand why Congress has closed its eyes to these dangers and given this President unprecedented powers (not given to him by the constitution). Please consider changing your stance toward this issue and help avoid this unnecessary war.

Michael Kaill and Sandra Harold