Bonney Lake’s former administrator returns with stories of hope and courage
Published 4:05 pm Thursday, April 30, 2009
By Dennis Box, The Courier-Herald
"The Iraqis are bright, ethical, hardworking people. All they need is a chance," Dave Weitzel said with a friendly smile over a cup of coffee after returning from five months in Iraq.
In the comfort of a warm restaurant, he recalled the last five months of high-speed caravan trips across Baghdad, "they told us to always keep our windows up or we might get a grenade in our lap." Bullet-proof vests, steel helmets and nightly gun fire were par for the course. Contrasting the hour-by-hour danger was the joy of working with the local Iraqi people trying to rebuild their country after 30 years of Saddam Hussein's rule. "Every Iraqi has a horror story - a brother, father, sister, cousin, someone taken."
Weitzel was a city administrator for Bonney Lake from 1998 to 2001. Through his 58 years, Weitzel has worked as a city manager, public safety director, health department director, university professor, and earlier in his career, he built a city - Silk, Colo.
When the International City/County Management Association went looking for a few good people to teach the Iraqis city administration and how to set up a local government, Weitzel was an easy choice. He went into training in July and left for Iraq in August.
"When I first left I was skeptical about the war," Weitzel said. "Now I'm sure. I really feel strongly about the Iraqis."
From August until his return Dec. 21, Weitzel worked with the Iraqis in various cities all over the region teaching them how to set up a local government.
"There was no local government," Weitzel said. "Everything was controlled from Baghdad. A soccer game in Al Kut was controlled and organized by Baghdad. Electricity came from Baghdad, so if Saddam was unhappy, the electricity was turned off."
In cities like Al Kut, Basarah and Baghdad, Weitzel set up classes and lectures on management training and ethics, "There was no need for management skills when Saddam was in power. Ethics training was jail and torture," he said.
Every Iraqi he met had a story about the atrocities of the Saddam Hussein regime. The young man whose father was taken in the night. A neighbor turned him in for the $50 reward. The man went to the jail and found his father and a high-school friend also imprisoned. The friend told him to bring money and he could keep his father alive. The man dropped out of school and drove a taxi making weekly payments. He was one of the more fortunate, after two years his father was released.
A handicapped man who worked as an interpreter for Weitzel told him Hussein's men let him live because they enjoyed laughing at him. But his friend, who was too beautiful for them, and not a proper Ba'athist, was fed into a shredder.
Weitzel visited a Ba'athist prison with torture hooks on the ceiling - three wires for hanging people and one connected to an electric outlet. Flesh, he said, still hung on the wall.
"The hair on the back of my neck just stood out. The Iraqi man with me had to leave. We could feel it. I said a prayer and left," Weitzel said.
The decades of tyranny have left deep scars, but Weitzel noted something else in the people. "The last 30 years have made genuine heroes of these people."
Besides his classes and lectures, Weitzel helped rehabilitate schools and set up soccer games. He gave away countless soccer balls, but and carried home with him a story of hope and caution.
"I've come to realize first hand any society is susceptible to tyranny," Weitzel said. "Bad guys thrive in a vacuum. People will believe what they are told if an elite few has control. The key for Iraq is the constitution. Their future depends on their new constitution and the rule of law. They're good people. I was impressed with every Iraq coalition member I met. I was very inspired by their courage."
Dennis Box can be reached at dbox@courierhearld.com
