Sadness Tempers Ex-Hostages’ Support of War on Iraq : Reaction: They pull for victory over Saddam Hussein but remember the sights and people of the Persian Gulf.

When Jack Frazier first returned to Orange County in late October from a private hell as a hostage in Iraq, he couldn’t even watch the TV news reports about the gulf crisis without cringing and quickly turning off the set.

But this week, as reports emerged about the bombing of sites he used to pass every day on his way to work, he stayed riveted to the screen, praying for victory. The change is a sign of his recovery from the ordeal, he says. And it is a sign, too, of his confidence in U.S. policy.

“This is a situation that I think had to happen,” the former supervisor at an Iraqi refinery project said in an interview from Montana, where he plans to move from Santa Ana. “I’m glad to see this is an all-out effort, not just some exercise.”

Frazier and other former hostages don’t consider themselves hawks--at least not before they were taken hostage in the prelude to the war in Iraq. But from their unique vantage point as one-time victims of Iraqi aggression, the former hostages in Orange County say they believe that war is the only option for ridding the world of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Their views appear to mirror those of a vocal contingent of ex-hostages and “human shields” nationwide. A delegation of 30 from this group went to Washington earlier this month to impress upon Congress the futility of economic sanctions against Iraq and to urge it to give President Bush the power to wage war against Hussein.

War has now come. And in the view of Gene Lovas, a 45-year-old construction superintendent from Westminster who spent four months in hiding in the American Embassy in Baghdad, it was tragically due.

“We’re dealing with a guy (Hussein) who is non-negotiable, and we’ve called the biggest bluff in the world,” said Lovas, who is recuperating from his ordeal at his Orange County home on medical leave from the Bechtel Corp.

Lovas last spoke with friends still in Iraq last week and warned them: “Get out of Baghdad and go north.” He’s not sure of their fate now. But he knows one thing: “I just really thank God that I wasn’t there for this.”

Lovas said he was so confident of U.S. victory, at least until Iraq’s attack on Israel Thursday clouded the picture, that he planned to return to a peaceful Kuwait by February to go back to work and help “rebuild it.”

Randall Trinh is confident, too, that President Bush’s actions were “appropriate” and that Hussein cannot win.

“I don’t know how stupid Saddam Hussein is--he knows for sure he’ll lose, so why confront the whole world like this,” asked the 50-year-old Fullerton man, held as a “human shield” at an Iraqi factory until November. “His country will be destroyed. I don’t understand it.”

As strongly as they support the war against Iraq, Trinh, Lovas and Frazier all say it pains them to see a region and workplace they had grown to love come under siege.

“When we sat down and watched the news on TV, I had a lost feeling about the place,” said Frazier, who recalled driving each day to work for 14 months past chemical and ammunition plants that are now the targets of allies’ bombs.

“It’s difficult--I lived there,” he said. “It’s like talking about bombing outside Los Angeles. It leaves a personal touch. And that’s something that someone who had never driven the countryside and seen the pretty sights and known the people couldn’t understand.”