LV veterinarian plies trade in war-torn Iraq

Stephen Curran

Tuesday, March 22, 2005 | 11:24 a.m.

Michael Simpson may be one of the only veterinarians in the world who wears a bullet-proof vest to work.

But, as Simpson sees it, the animals he treats on a daily basis as car bombs and mortars explode yards from his office in a fortified part of central Baghdad go hand-in-hand with rebuilding a country.

As one of four reserve vets assigned to the Army's Civil Affairs section serving in Baghdad's Green Zone, Capt. Simpson is thousands of miles from the household dogs and cats he was used to seeing as medical director for the Lied Animal Shelter in Las Vegas. Now, he rehabilitates the often disease-ravaged animals that often become part of the food supply for the Iraqi people.

"I see a myriad of diseases most (American) vets never get to see," Simpson, who spoke to the Sun by phone from Baghdad on Friday, said. "It's been quite an opportunity to see these things. It's very destructive."

Among the illnesses Simpson has had the opportunity to see first-hand are Newcastle disease, a fatal and contagious affliction that affects the digestive systems of poultry; foot-and-mouth disease, the illness that affects cattle and pigs and, left untreated, can be fatal for humans; and screwworms, another often-fatal larvae that can wipe out scores of livestock.

Like much of the Middle East, Iraq has long faced challenges with animal-borne diseases that Simpson said only got worse under trade sanctions imposed on ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein as the necessary vaccinations never made it to the country.

While the 38-year-old Army reservist said he has not known the illnesses to pose any harm to humans, the effects of contaminated meat can be devastating in a country where almost all food is produced on small, family-run farms.

"It (the diseases) decreases production substantially," he said. "A cow or a goat is not going to produce as much as they used to."

His current tour is a far cry from his first assignment with the Naval Reserve while he was a student at the University of Texas, Arlington, when he joined to help offset the cost of being a college student. He served in the Naval Reserve for eight years.

He joined the Army Reserve after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks while working in upstate New York and volunteered his services to the New York Police Department's K-9 unit at Ground Zero, Simpson said. Both times, it was meant to supplement his daily life.

"I guess this is where it led me, back into the military," he said. "I never intended it to be a full-time thing. It's the best of both worlds. You get to serve your country and have a life at home."

For Simpson's wife, Noel Palmer Simpson, a Las Vegas attorney and estate planner, the twice-weekly phone calls she receives from Iraq have helped her better understand the often-violent images she sees on television and in newspapers.

Like many spouses of deployed soldiers, Palmer Simpson made plans to take up new hobbies to stay occupied during her husband's deployment, but said she quickly found the challenges of keeping up with their four dogs and four cats after a long day at work challenging enough.

"One human is just not enough human" to take care of the couple's pets, she said. "They just need love but I don't know what I'd do without them. We're a pack. I can't move from room to room without them. It's like a school of fish."

Diane Orgill, the executive director of the Lied Animal Shelter, said she was surprised that veterinarians were needed in Iraq. While she knew Simpson was in the Army Reserve, her deployment still caught her off guard, she said.

Since then, two of her other employees -- neither of them veterinarians -- have been called up for military service, Orgill said.

"At first I was kind of surprised because I never thought of vets being in the Army or being in the service," she said. "It never entered my mind that there was a job in the military for vets."

But now that Simpson is overseas, Orgill has faced herself with a predicament seen nationwide by a number of employers: how to fill an employee's shoes while he or she serves in Iraq.

And although Simpson said he was concerned about his job being taken when he returns, Orgill said the worries were unfounded, as the shelter's recent expansion will likely require she hire another veterinarian, making room for both Simpson and the doctor who now serves as his replacement.

In the meantime, Simpson is a soldier as well as a veterinarian. Even his highly specialized role within the miliary does not shield him from the daily life of a soldier. Like all officers, Simpson carries an M-4 assault rifle, a shortened version of the M-16, and a handgun, each armed with six to 10 magazines of ammunition, he said.

And his job doesn't shield him from widespread violence in the region. Simpson laughed nervously when recalling his closest call.

"Foolish me," the Texas native known as "Todd" to his wife and friends said. "I was standing on a building one night looking at the skyline and there went the explosions. I heard, 'boom, boom,' and two seconds later two of them (shells) landed to my right. It scared the water out of me almost. I've never had that kind of sensation, where you feel the tightness in your chest. ... It's like they (Iraqi insurgents) get off work and instead of going home and drinking beer, they say, 'Let's go out and kill someone.'th"

It's that kind of deep-rooted hatred for all things American that makes Palmer Simpson uneasy about the U.S. mission in Iraq, uncertainties the phone calls from Iraq help soothe, if only a little.

"I support his desire to service his country," she said. "But it's hard. I have a lot of questions of my own about why we're there. But when I talk to him and I hear what's going on, I feel more sure than I do watching the news.

"... But I'm upset politically when they call it a backdoor draft, because that's what it is. I believe it's to our detriment. You're ripping people out of their lives and sending them over there, expecting them to be a cohesive unit. I think it's foolish. ... But when Todd tells me we're there for a purpose, I think there's a bigger picture."