Iraqi who helped U.S. troops getting aid in Tucson

TUCSON - Sgt. Joseph Cardone left immediately after seeing the address.

"As soon as I got the e-mail, I told my wife and kids, 'Let's go,'" said Cardone, who works in military intelligence at Fort Huachuca.

They buckled their three children into the car and drove about 75 miles, from Sierra Vista to Tucson.

"My wife said, 'How do you even know if he's home?'" Cardone, 27, said. "I said, 'I don't, but it doesn't matter.'"

At a Tucson complex on that August afternoon, Cardone found the apartment and an Iraqi man he credits with saving the lives of many U.S. soldiers, including his own.

"There were big smiles, big hugs" upon seeing Taha again, Cardone said. "I introduced my family to his family, and he introduced his family to my family. It was amazing."

In 2003, Taha, who asked that his last name be withheld for fear of retaliation for the work he has done for U.S. forces in the Iraq war, began helping train Iraqi police for the U.S. military.

In general, life under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship was relatively normal for Taha. Low wages were the biggest problem he encountered.

Taha taught English at a teachers college and earned less than $3 per month. There was no room for advancement and so, to help his family, he also worked at night selling kabobs.

"As a poor man, I didn't have a chance," he said. They could afford to eat only tomatoes, bread and eggplant each day, he said.

Armored vehicles and foreign soldiers arrived in Al Kut in April 2003.

Taha walked to the soldiers' base, about seven minutes from his home, and asked to speak to someone in charge.

After being searched, Taha was allowed in. He asked a high-ranking officer when the troops were going to leave.

"He asked me about chemical weapons. I told him, 'I don't know anything about chemical weapons. I'm a teacher,'" Taha said.

"He said, 'You want to work for me?'"

He sought his father's advice.

"He told me to go work for them. He said, 'If you want to help your family and your country, to rebuild it, God will help you,'" Taha said.

"The next day, I was at the gate at 9 a.m. sharp."

Life changed dramatically in Al Kut after the arrival of the U.S. troops.

As a translator, Taha was doing even better than that. His first paycheck for a month's work was $312. He was able to buy a car. Soon he had some savings.

"They convinced me they are good guys," he said of the soldiers. "They had a great mission there."

It was about 8:20 p.m. on Jan. 5, 2007, his wife, Sura, remembers, when they were returning from her in-laws' home.

As they approached their house, Sura noticed a man standing close to the roadway.

"I told (Taha), 'Someone wants to cross the street. Be careful,'" Sura said.

They stopped and the man started to cross, but then backtracked. Seconds later, the glass window next to her husband's head shattered.

Terrified, Sura realized she needed to protect their son, so she leaned forward, twisting her body around him. She didn't feel the bullets going into her leg as she wrapped her son in a blanket and pushed him out of their car.

Her son, she later learned, was unharmed except for a scrape where a bullet had grazed the top of his head. A bald patch is still there.

They were taken first to an Iraqi hospital. Soon, though, family members and soldiers from the team Taha had been helping showed up. The U.S. officers said they would care for Taha themselves.

Taha remembers looking up and seeing that some of the soldiers were crying.

"I joked with them. I said, 'I think I'll need a day off,'" he said. "We were laughing and crying at the same time."

The last team of U.S. soldiers Taha worked with in Iraq was attacked only once in nearly a year of missions, a feat the team's commanding officer attributes largely to Taha.

"I have no doubt that he saved lives," Army Capt. David Salazar wrote recently in an e-mail from Korea. "He would constantly tell us of the various locations to avoid and what routes would be safe, as well as times."

Taha used his many connections in the community to learn of insurgent attack plans.

Salazar and Cardone met Taha in 2007, just a couple of months after insurgents nearly killed him.

"We all got to know him pretty well. When it comes down to interpreters in Iraq, it's a question of how much can you trust someone you don't know. We could definitely see his heart was in the right place."

In December 2007, Taha, Sura and their son moved to Jordan. Taha contacted his brother in Germany and asked about U.S. cities with warm, dry climates. They had taken about $10,000 in savings with them to Jordan and tried to live simply in the expensive country.

They arrived in Tucson seven months later with nothing.

Now, Taha, 33, spends much of his time waiting.

He waits for the bus, and for a chance to work. He waits in lines for assistance with food and clothing, diapers and toothpaste.

Grace Schuster, a volunteer with the Giving Tree Outreach Program, first met Taha a couple of months ago and now sees him and his family regularly at the program's free dinners on Thursdays and Sundays.

Schuster, 68, recently drove Taha to an Arizona Motor Vehicles Division office so he could start preparing for a driving exam.

On the way, Taha confided in her his frustration, and his fear, over not being able to get a job.

"I told him, 'Do not be embarrassed. The way I look at it, you helped our troops and we're the ones who owe you,'" she said.

Cardone is hoping to help Taha find work with the military again, as a translator or in cultural-awareness training.

Salazar said he also believes a debt is owed to people like Taha, interpreters who make sacrifices for the U.S. and for their own country.

"They constantly go out in their communities in fear that they will get killed as a result of what they do," he wrote in an e-mail.

"Some do it because the pay is good, but a majority feel that they are doing their country a service, even if it means they have to make sacrifices."