One of the biggest underlying problems in Iraq when it comes to the occupation is that we can not communicate with Iraqis. They do not understand our troops because no one is talking to them in their own language. Fear of the other side continues to jump to all time highs and nothing is being done about it. Dustin Langan was one of those linguists sent to Iraq, but he left because of the army's failure to implent an effective policy in opening up a dialogue on the streets. He told Radar Online that nothing got done over there because the people hired to do the jobs had nothing to do.
From Radar Online:
The lack of Arabic translators in Iraq appears to stem from a Bush Administration decision to outsource translation services to private contractors. Called "linguistic support," these companies, two of the largest of which are Titan Corporation and DynCorp International, have received billions of dollars to provide language interpreters to the Iraq reconstruction effort. But many of the supposed "translators" sent to Iraq were untrained, had poor language skills, or couldn't speak Arabic at all. In many cases the contractors appear to have conducted no screenings or interviews with prospective translators. And Titan Corporation interpreters are accused of involvement in two cases of prisoner abuse in Iraq and one case of espionage at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
For an inside look at the U.S.'s failure to communicate, Radar spoke with Dustin Langan, who worked as a translator in Iraq for defense contractor MZM Incorporated for 11 months between 2003 and 2004. Later, MZM's CEO at the time, Mitchell Wade, pleaded guilty to bribing then-Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA) in exchange for access to no-bid contracts with the Pentagon. Langan, for his part, worked as an interpreter for U.S. and coalition officials in Iraq at mass gravesites, in interview rooms of the doomed "de-Baathification" process, and throughout the city of Baghdad. He left Iraq in 2004, wrote a satirical novel based on his experience, and now works as a linguistics consultant in Barcelona, Spain.
Read the rest of the article for the entire interview. It provides good insight into the failures that linguists faced and the absurdity of hiring Iraqis off the street. Hundreds of Iraqis were hired simply for knowing some english. Langan said that knowing the two languages is hardly enough to act as a translator between to different worlds that were smashed into each other by Bush's decision to occupy Iraq.
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