A reception was held Saturday at the home of Richard and Joan Reitz of Perry in honor of their neighbor, U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Joel M. Samuelson, who was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for the “exceptionally meritorious performance of duty” in 2003 during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Samuelson served as a contingency contracting officer in Baghdad from from Sept. 11, 2003, to Nov. 10, 2003. He suffered a traumatic brain injury in the line of duty and spent two years recovering at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, he said.
The honored veteran has lived in Perry with his brother, Paul Samuelson, and sister, Laura Samuelson, since 2019, and the family has become friends with the Reitzes and others in the neighborhood of north Perry. First Ward Perry City Council member Barb Wolling was among about a dozen neighbors and friends attending Saturday’s reception.
According to volume one of the “History of the 49th Fighter Wing, 1 January-31 December 2003, Narrative,” Samuelson served with the 49th Fighter Wing of the 12th Air Force Air Combat Command and was first deployed June 3, 2003, in support of the 1st Expeditionary Red Horse Group at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.
He was reassigned Sept. 11, 2003, to assist Combined Joint Task Force 7 in Baghdad, Iraq, serving as the group’s contingency contracting officer in the Baghdad Contracting Office.
According to the “History of the 49th Fighter Wing,” the Baghdad Contracting Office “served as a hub which supported over 40,000 coalition forces inside Iraq. In addition to primarily serving U.S. Army forces, the contracting office also assisted Australian forces, the Turkish Embassy, a Japanese ADVON team and various Iraqi ministries.”
Samuelson served as one of only two contingency contracting officers, who together awarded more than $16 million in contracts every month. Prior to his injuries, he described his overall deployment as “a rewarding experience. No doubt, Iraq is still dangerous with daily gunfire and frequent mortar attacks against the Coalition Forces. The first priority of work was and always should be security. Constant and continual situational awareness, alertness and watching out for each other were on the forefront of everyone’s mind. I believe the key to being successful on any deployment is to remain flexible.”
The reconstruction of Iraq was described as “the most ambitious program of nation-building since the Marshall Plan in 1947,” with some $58 billion “in grants, loans, assets and revenues from various sources” available for the reconstruction in 2004, according to “Iraq Reconstruction: Government Contracts Year In Review.”
The Congressional Budget Office in 2007 estimated the long-term price tag for the war in Iraq at about $1.9 trillion. The Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz in 2008 estimated the total costs of the Iraq War on the U.S. economy at more than $3 trillion.
