Posted on: Sunday, February 15, 2004

Governor helps say goodbye to troops

By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer

Gov. Linda Lingle, fresh from a trip to Washington and Iraq, was a guest last night at the Pacific Army Reserve Banquet at the Hilton Hawaiian Village.

Nearly 1,300 Army reservists, half of them dressed in the desert camouflage uniforms they will wear when they deploy during the coming weeks to Iraq, sat at the red and white tables, some with their spouses beside them, and toasted their country and their fallen comrades.

"It's a sad but happy occasion," said Renae Glover, decked out in an evening dress and sitting beside her camouflage-clad husband, Sgt. 1st Class Gaytan Glover.

Before the dinner began, Lingle met with reporters to show slides of her trip, which she said she had taken, along with five other governors, two of them Democrats, at the request of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

The intent of the trip was to "do everything we could to de-politicize" the mission to Iraq, she said, and it began and ended in Washington where the governors were "briefed and debriefed" by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.

Wolfowitz also took the group in to see the president, who told them: "Whatever your perceptions are, that is what I want you to go out and talk about," Lingle said.

She said the soldiers she met during her two days in Iraq, which included a few Hawai'i residents, "understand clearly that they are over there fighting terrorism and making sure they don't have to fight it at home."

The Iraqi citizens she met when the military escorted them into the streets were pleased that the old regime had ended, she said, and she said didn't think it was true that the people of countries in the region thought of America as a terrorist state.

She also said that although her staff had said earlier in the week that she was in Honolulu when she had, in fact, departed on her trip to Washington and Iraq, the ruse had been undertaken for security measures was not indicative of deception in her administration.

"I think you are making a mountain out of a mole hill," she said. "You can believe me because you always have, and there is no reason not to now."

After the press conference, Lingle joined the reservists in the Coral Ballroom, where Renae and Gaytan Glover were taking their seats at a more distant table.

Renae and the five Glover children flew over from Hilo so that Renae could attend the banquet with her husband, and the children could tell their father goodbye. They had seen little of Gaytan since he began training for the trip a month and a half ago.

He'll be gone for 18 months. She'll miss him, Renae said.

Gayton said his main concern was for his family.

"I've just got to make sure my family is squared away," he said. "I've gotta know that, and I do."

Laina Suiaunoa and Patricia Seumanu, soldiers from American Samoa who will deploy with the Hawai'i guardsmen, said they had a message for loved ones left behind:

"Support us," Suiaunoa said.

"Be strong," said Seumanu. "Be positive, and have faith. We will be back."

Reach Karen Blakeman at 535-2430 or kblakeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.