By Scott Cendrowski

The State News

Ken Reed had been through the Iraq experience before.

A soldier in the Persian Gulf War, Maj. Reed was on the field, but this time around he was giving the orders.

Reed supervised a group of eight civilian engineers as part of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. They worked mainly on projects at Balad Air Basein Northern Iraq, but sometimes traveled with the Marines to gather reconnaissance information on bridges throughout Iraq.

During his time, Reed also worked with a host of Iraqi citizens on the base.

"Everybody portrays the Iraqi people as hating Americans, but I can't tell you how many Iraqi workers that I talked to were jubilant we were there," the 1987 MSU mechanical engineering graduate said. "They were very grateful for the things we've been doing over there.'

Reed said Iraqis would talk about life under Saddam Hussein's regime and the atrocities of living in a "Big Brother" environment.

"In a conversation with one of the guys, he said they would send people to houses on a monthly basis to talk to normal citizens and find out what they were saying," Reed said. "If kids would say anything bad about the government, they'd go back to the parents and put them in jail."

He said a man told him Iraqis had to be very careful what they said to their children because the teachers would turn parents in.

But in addition to working construction on the base, Reed convoyed to gather information on bridges in Iraq.

"Basically, we'd have an initial safety briefing about what happened in the past 24 to 48 hours," he said. "You'd have to make sure people come beside you, because quite often, someone could block you out, or have a bomb in the car. But the main threat is a roadside bomb."

They would put sandbags on the floor of the Humvees to prevent bomb fragments from coming through the floor, Reed said.

He said too many misconceptions in the media cloud the truth in the war-torn nation.

"You're not constantly in fear, which is what everybody thinks - it's just not the case," he said. "It's like us sitting right here now, is what we'd be like at work.

"Everybody thinks of (Iraq) on a macro level. But it's that one child that comes to the front gate that we bring in and give medical treatment, or when we bring toys to the kids at school."