WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-YCQM - Maj. Gen. Michael Dubie, Sgt. Forest Glodgett - May 8, 2011

YCQM - Maj. Gen. Michael Dubie, Sgt. Forest Glodgett - May 8, 2011

May 8, 2011 -- Vt. National Guard Maj. Gen. Michael Dubie and Sgt. Major Forest Glodgett join Kristin Carlson and Darren Perron to discuss the death of Osama Bin Laden, the guard's future and more.

TRANSCRIPT:

 This is "you can quote me".

Good morning, everyone.

I'm Darren Perron.

And I'm Kristin Carlson.

Thanks for joining us.

Our news makers are Major Michael Dubie.

>> We'll discuss the take down of Osama bin laden, Vermont's role in the war effort and how the guard has been called to duty to deal with flooding across the state.

Gentlemen, thank you both for joining us.

>> Thank you.

>> General, let's start with you.

Last week big news that Osama bin laden was taken down.

Did you expect we would see the day when Osama bin laden would either be captured or killed?

>> i think that most of us anticipated we would finally find him and get him at one time, but i was as surprised as anyone.

And quite frankly, i was kind of relieved about it.

He's a mass murderer as far as I'm concerned.

So i felt a sense of almost relief that we finally brought justice to a very troubling part of our history.

Ever since September 11^th, i think most Americans felt we should bring Osama bin laden to justice one way or the other, and that's kind of my reaction to the whole situation.

>> Most of us remember 9/11, where we were at that time.

Where were you when you heard the news about Osama bin laden?

>> I was just about to fly a dc 10 out of Seattle to Japan.

So i was on the west coast when i was actually woken up by my brother, and you know, as the events unfolded, my big thing was to try to get back home.

And i was, like anyone, i was stuck.

The strange duty to fly the first airplane across the pacific about three and a half days later.

And it was the first time i had crossed the ocean in a big air lane ‑‑ airplane as a pilot, and there were no other airplanes out there.

Generally we keep track of each other out on the pacific or Atlantic.

There was no one there.

We got about halfway to Japan when we crossed paths with the first Korean airliner coming at us, and we basically restarted the air system.

It took me two weeks before i got back to Burlington.

I'll never forget everything about September 11^th.

>> and when you heard the news that bin laden had been killed, what was your reaction?

What was your initial thoughts when you heard the news?

>> you know, i saw the news, some of the jubilation, and i didn't feel that.

No offense to the people that were at the white house or down at times square.

But that wasn't feeling i had.

My feeling was more of a sense of almost relief.

We came into camp Johnson that morning, and the sense of everyone at work was, okay, we just completed a chapter in the war, and we're not really sure what's coming next, but it felt, i thought, like some closure, even to me, and i suspect that many of the families who had to deal with the ultimate sacrifice of a loved one felt a little bit of closure, and some of the gold star families have said that to me.

You know, i just feel like justice was served and it's time to now focus, what are we going to do next as a country.

>> Definitely getting to that what are we going to do next.

I'm curious sergeant major, where you were when you heard about recollection.

You're recently back from Afghanistan.

>> My wife said she heard it on the news that night, saw it the next morning.

It was big news.

You grab the paper, see what's going on.

It was a relief also.

For us, it's a chapter that's closed and as the general said, he talks about people of New York and the pentagon with some closure, and it's chapter 1 of the long, long story of what we have to do in Afghanistan.

It was a good feeling.

We're driving on, and so we've got to keep our focus.

>> a lot of what you do focus on is allocate ‑‑ is al‑qaeda and dealing with insurgents.

How does that change this dynamic?

>> I don't think it changes anything, because as you see with bin laden, it worked.

They got them.

As they're conducting mission, we've got a job to do in Afghanistan now, which is not everybody looking for bin laden now, but we've got a country to develop and they're pulling out of Iraq.

I don't think it changes anything.

>> You both have mentioned sort of a chapter in this has been closed.

That leads me to believe that you think that we possibly could be in Afghanistan ‑‑ that it could be an ongoing war effort.

Do you think that this is the first chapter in ending the war and getting our soldiers back home?

>> well, i think the president made it quite clear this summer, summer of 2011, July, that they are going to reevaluate this situation and then i think the term that the president has used is we'll start thinning out the force.

Now, how precipitous that is, no one knows.

I mean, there's a lot of world events that are impacting national security across the globe, and i think looking in the totality of the uprisings in Egypt, Libya, toe neesh ‑‑ tanesha, Algeria, even the rise in morocco and syria, it's a very dynamic time on the national security front for the entire world.

The chapter in Afghanistan, i think as sergeant major said to us, we're going to stay the course.

We don't make u.s. Policy.

We execute.

United states foreign policy will continue to do that.

We have 98 members of the guard right now overseas either in Iraq, Afghanistan, cutter, Bahrain, Kuwait.

Even though the big group is back, we've got a small group going soon, another going to Kosovo.

We'll continue to fulfill our federal mission to the united states military, but i have this sense, and i think most of us do, that the president and his national security team will probably look at the progress that's being made, a lot of it attributed to the 86 brigade and the contributions they made, and there may be some tweaking going on in Afghanistan in the future.

>> Some people have described this as a win, that bin laden has been taken down.

Have we won?

Do you think that this is just, again, one chapter that we've won?

>> My sense that it took us almost 10 years, but we said we would bring Osama bin laden to justice, and we did.

Whether that's a win, yeah, i think it was definitely something that we feel like a perpetrator of a horrendous event, but it wasn't just September 11^th.

I mean, hundreds of people were killed in the bombings in 1998 in tang nia and Kenya that were attributed to Osama bin laden and al‑qaeda.

And the attack on the USS cole in 2000 and then September 11^th.

Think it was a win.

Will it dramatically change al‑qaeda's ability?

Impossible to say.

Will it have an impact?

I think it will have an impact.

It's our hope, and i think the sergeant major will agree with me, we'll be able to leverage and exploit some of that information they gleaned from the compound and maybe continue to dismantle and disrupt al‑qaeda worldwide.

>> Sergeant major, let's talk a little bit about your time in Afghanistan and the return for troops.

It's been a few months.

I know in talking with the general, they say sometimes the PTSD and other stressors don't exhibit themselves until troops have been home for a little bit.

Following that big mission to Afghanistan, what are you seeing some of the issues of some of the folks who have returned now?

>> Actually, coming back, we come to a phase of what we call yellow ribbons, reintegration into society and back into guard.

What that is, it helps us identify issues with soldiers, if they have them, or helps us guide them to someone that can help them with those issues.

I just went to one last month, the first of what they call a 30‑day, 60‑day, 90‑day yellow ribbon events.

First of all, we hadn't seen each other for months.

Got to see the families.

A lot of relief on their faces.

The stress was gone, back integrated with their families.

A as we get together, that helps us identify issues of the family, the soldier.

They talk about the PTSD.

I think for us, being deployed makes us more resilient because we've been together, so we have people to talk to.

So that's part of the resilience for us, is building up to help each other out.

As a matter of fact, next weekend, i go to my second phase of the yellow ribbon, and we're going to talk about, you know, counseling, if you need it, a follow up, what we did for surveys the first weekend.

And then we have people there who are outlining the area of the counselors, unemployment offices there.

There are businesses out there that try to help us through trying times, like Vermont small business has been there for us.

So there is definitely a great process for us to come back, which is different than what i did in 2003, 2004, because we've had time to build upon things.

We don't know yet.

We're helping soldiers in need, for sure, all the time.

But i think we have a grasp on their needs to put them in the right direction.

So i don't think there is any crisis mode for that, for sure.

It's pretty solid.

>> One of the things, and I'll foal ‑‑ follow up on something you just mentioned, unemployment of our guards who return.

At one point it was about 30% or so.

Have we seen that number go down, and what are we doing to make sure our men and women can get back to work?

>> when i first spoke in front of the legislature in January and mentioned the 30% unemployment number, that number had come from surveys taken by sergeant major and his team in Afghanistan before they came back.

And there was actually quite a bit of, like, almost shock that it could be that high.

So with the help of the Vermont employers and then the yellow ribbon process and then a lot of people at the national guard, we started setting up job fairs, and also career counseling and things like job finding skills, like how to write a resume, how to dress for success, how to act in an interview, all of those, and we had a great response from our soldiers who would come, and then the employer were just all over the state when we had a job fair.

We've had several, and we have some more coming up.

We had a lot of success.

We took a second survey, which actually was trying to glean a little bit more fidelity on, okay, you don't have a job, but are you a student, trying to figure out exactly what the situation is.

Its better, but the 30% number was really validated, but what we found recently is that many of our people are finding work.

I heard from the governor a couple of days ago that the jobs bill here has passed in the legislature that will provide some financial incentive for employers who hire people who just came back from deployment, for example.

So we're encouraged.

I can't give you an example number of how many people and what the percentage is now, because it's improved from the 30%, but we were about 30% of unemployed when they first came back.

>> I'm curious.

Why do you think that is?

Why such a high number for our returning troops?

>> I think there are a couple of factors.

First off, there is a student factor.

We didn't ask on the surveys, are you a student?

What we asked is, do you have a job to return to?

So that was one kind of data point that we didn't anticipate asking, and that would have changed the number a little bit.

Then we have the situation that some people had actually been on working full time at the guard in preparation, you know, a year or so before they even deployed.

So when they came back, they were going to have to find a job on the outside, and then the third factor, i think, is that some of our people had jobs that were not career oriented, more, you know temporary in nature, and so as a consequence, when they left, they left the job.

You know what i mean?

It wasn't like they were working at an established company like IBM or green mountain coffee roasters who the employers by and large have been so supportive that would welcome people back, as they're supposed to.

Some of our people were literally maybe working as a construction worker, and when they left, they left.

So when you start adding in those factors, it starts to make the 30% number not as ‑‑ make a little bit more sense.

I guess that's what I'm trying to say.

>> What do you think the number one issue facing the guard right now?

>> i would have said months ago that we were very concerned about the reintegration process, but as the sergeant major has already described, we are feeling quite pleased right now with the way people have come back and assimilated with their families and communities and their jobs, and so our information from the yellow ribbon experience is that our people are really doing well.

We have some issues.

We're always going to have some issues with posttraumatic stress disorder.

We have some traumatic brain injuries.

We have some serious injuries that are ‑‑ we have a number of people who have been wounded and it will take a long time to heal.

But by and large, we're doing well.

I would say that the biggest concern right now to me is the jobs issue.

>> We're going to take a brief break and continue our discussion, all focused on the Vermont national guard.

Stay with us.

>>> welcome back, everyone.

We are continuing our discussion on the Vermont National Guard, the issues facing the guard with major general Michael Dubie and sergeant major forest.

>> Sergeant major, we joined you on some convoys when we were in Afghanistan in bed with the Vermont National Guard.

What we kind of took away from that in addition from trying to root out insurgents and provide security and training was that it seemed to us there was really an effort to win the hearts and minds of the afghan people, and it was a village by village effort.

When you folks talk about, this is one chapter closed, is it because it's kind of a slow‑going process there because it is such a village by village effort?

>> It is.

And for us coming in, of course, when you have new people and new neighbors, it takes time to get to know them.

So our thought was to go out in the villages and treat people like you wanted to be treated, smile and handshake, get to know them, work with local police on the ground, and you treat them with dignity and honor, as they deserve.

As we travel to those towns, as we were telling you about our driving experience, we drive with ‑‑ you drive cautious and easy, like you're supposed to.

You don't knock things don't.

You don't run into things just because you're big.

You're a guest, and we were a guest, and we treated ourselves like that so that they would understand that we're not there to destroy everything.

We really need to get to know them and help them out, and i think we were doing that.

When you were there, wurp ‑‑ we were moving up the valley, and it showed that people really were nice to us, just like we were nice to them.

We were moving with ease.

Now, there are some issues out there, but i will tell you the locals, a lot of them really don't know what's going on.

They're insurgents.

They're not like they're from that village.

It was very good, and i felt good about it.

As a matter of fact, when we were leaving Afghanistan, the three problems is that we're slowly giving it back to the government, and it felt good to do that, felt like we accomplished a lot.

On the routes we were taking, the dangerous routes, id routes in the beginning we were riding on, we were securing those better because we had better interface with the local populous and the police.

That's what was going on.

So we were dealing with the locals like neighbors here, like Vermonters do.

>> do you think those are long‑term gains, or is this the kind of situation where the country could easily slide back and those roads that were once secure maybe aren't secure now?

>> Maybe.

But i think as we were leaving, the soldiers that replaced us, 234 out of Iowa, they were not Vermont guards, but guardsmen themselves, and they're going to carry on what we were doing, build up from what we were doing there on the ground easy.

They took it real easy.

I guess it could, but we've come a long ways, and i don't know how it could.

We've really built a good foundation there.

>> one of the challenges that we did hear about while we were on the ground in Afghanistan was that one of the challenging parts would be that Vermont men and women did such a good job of establishing these relationships with village elders and people in these villages, but then the Vermont men and women pulled out, and it was new faces that these elders had to then interact with.

Do you think that then there is, yet, again, we've got to start this trust building part?

>> Sure.

You have to build the trust, but we had a transition period.

The one that replaced me, i had him for about a month, so there was time to meet all the local people, start those relationships, talk about trust, and it was a good relationship.

Not everybody left at the same time.

We left in stages.

So i don't think that.

Again, depending on what happens to local government and what they do, what the governor does, that's all afghan business anyway.

We just did our business of supporting their efforts.

I don't think so.

We had a good ‑‑ had a good buildup.

>> You mentioned how there was so much unrest now across the Middle East.

I know on the schedule the guard isn't due up again until 2014 for the large call up, but there seems to be new questions about Pakistan now and their role.

You mentioned tanesha, Egypt, Libya, you name it.

Do you thing you could get called up sooner?

>> I think we're in what's called the reset phase.

As a consequence, we don't anticipate to be called up.

Before we have ‑‑ before we have three or four years of what's called reset time.

It's impossible to predict.

I will say with Iraq drawing down the way it is and then the idea is that Afghanistan will draw down some.

Unless there is a large deployment somewhere else in the world, we don't really anticipate that we will be moved ahead on the ‑‑ it's called the chart.

But we really don't anticipate being moved ahead.

Honestly, all the members of the guard know in the case of a national emergency, and then we'll go tomorrow, if we have to.

But we don't anticipate at this point having to go before our scheduled time.

>> One mission that the guard has been called up is right home in your backyard.

There is a lot of flooding.

What is the guard's role?

You have now been put on ‑‑ i guess what it's called?

>> activated.

>> activated by the governor because of the widespread flooding Vermonters are suffering and dealing with.

What's the guard's role?

>> Main members of the guard will tell you that's why they joined the guard, to be able to help their neighbors in time of need.

It's the most important of all of our missions, even more important than our overseas mission is to be ready at home.

The governor yesterday, after we took our flight together in one of the guard's helicopters, and i will tell you to see route 2, the sandbar bridge area, and then we worked our way up south here.

A lot of flooding.

Colchester, Milton, south hero.

We got up to isle la motte, went over to route 78, st. Albans bay, there is a lot of have there is ‑‑ Vermonters who are right now suffering and going to be hurting for a long time.

Even when the water recedes, the damage, it's going to be very extensive.

So the guard was activated yesterday by the governor Shumlin.

We have provided 67,000 bags, 24,000 are filled.

There's thousands more that we are filling right now in isle la motte with our sandbag machine.

There are civilians ‑‑ sergeant major was up there this afternoon when i was with the governor of Montpelier, and there are many, many civilians that are working alongside the guard filling sandbags.

We're supplying vehicles, what we call lmtv's or high water vehicles that can go through quite deep water.

In fact, sergeant major, tell what they're doing for farmers.

>> they needed to get some communication out to the first responders, so also we were loading up some grain bags to give a local farmer on the way, because he couldn't reach it because the water was so deep.

A guardsman grabbed ahold of it, threw it in the back.

They were moving out to help them out.

The fire chief was ‑‑ he was smiling that he saw them, and the guys were smiling just waiting to do it.

>> And you've seen and surveyed the damage, as you were mentioning.

Do you anticipate that the guard is going to be called to do further work?

>> I suspect ‑‑ the way it works in activation for the state is we're a what's called tiered response.

We've done an initial response.

We have another 134 people on four‑hour notice.

They'll be going next.

They're specifically trained in chainsaw operations, vehicle operations.

We've got then another 350 that we can call within 12 hours, and they will bring another capability.

We've got obviously our heavy equipment, like our bulldozers, our backhoes, our dump trucks, plus a lot of vehicles if we need to do an evacuation for the governor, but we don't ever move out until the governor asks us for more capability.

Whelp have our helicopters, an extensive medical area.

The good news is right now we haven't experienced any loss of life.

And that's the best news.

Unfortunately, there has been an incredible amount of property damage, and then there has been a lot of inconvenience with the roads, and then i will tell you as a Vermonter, I've also been very impressed with the department of transportation.

They're working tirelessly trying to keep the roads shored up from they rotation ‑‑ from the erosion already.

With the wind on the lake right now, that's probably the biggest threat.

Not only do you have the high water, but if you have the wave action, it can drastically reduce the security of a road.

So we're working together with first responders, with dot, with the state of Vermont, and we're ready for more activation, but we're going to go on a tiered nature.

>> Well, i have to end it on there and just stay tuned and see what happens next with mother nature.

Hopefully no more rain, right, guys?

>> I hope so.

>> I want to thank you both for joining us to talk about the guard.

Thank you very much.

>> Thank you.

>> And thank you for joining us at home, everyone.

Have a great Sunday.

>> seep you soon.

 

     captioning provided by         caption associates, llc www.captionassociates.com