Interview: A soldier returned from Iraq.
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| Fri, 03-12-2004 - 9:30am |
A soldier back from Iraq discusses the war and the U.S. soldiers fighting that war, the suicides, and much more.
This interview is well worth reading.
Because members of the military are limited in their ability to speak out publicly, the soldier interviewed here must remain anonymous. A military medic who served in the Gulf War in the early 1990s, he is a member of the Reserves who was called up to serve in the current war in Iraq. His primary role is to deliver medical care to U.S. military personnel as well as Iraqis.
Profoundly patriotic and committed to protecting his country, he is deeply concerned that the U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, which has resulted in the deaths of over 500 American soldiers and uncounted thousands of Iraqis, may now be edging toward disaster. He believes that the troops have done their job and should be brought home.
More................


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The way GWB uses the reserves is aptly characterized as a businessman “getting rid of full-time, experienced workers, and bringing in temps. It’s great for the bottom line, and potentially very destructive in a whole host of other ways.” And that is exactly what this administration is CEOs.
“The difference is that the active duty go through far more training than Reserves. Up to now, we’ve had a mix of about 20 percent Reserves and 80 percent active duty. With the change going on now, they are rotating out tens of thousands of active duty troops and replacing a lot of them with Reserves. We’ve heard that could be 80 percent Reserves and 20 percent active duty. Some sources say it could be 50/50. But the main point is, nothing like that has ever been tried before, and these Reserves are being sent into a war zone.”
“Because Reservists are not paid yearly. Reservists don’t make as much money as active duty people do. They don’t require housing; you don’t have to move the entire family to the base in order to ship them out. The whole idea is to get more people on as Reservists, so that they can use them to replace active duty. It’s great for them , they’re saving money.”
While the defense budget balloons, out servicemen must buy their own equipment.
“We were supposed to have bulletproof vests, where we actually put the plates inside our flak jackets. We never got those. The money had been paid for those things, but we never got them. My brother had to send me a flak jacket. There’s all sorts of stuff that we had to buy on our own before we left. The types of canteens you need, water pouches that go on your back.”
The canteens are faulty and shoes are cheap and uncomfortable so troops must buy their own.
In order to have Thanksgiving dinner with the president you had to answer a questionnaire. If you were favorable toward GWB and answered “A-1, 100 percent yes, then you were not allowed into the cafeteria. You were not allowed to eat the Thanksgiving meal that day. You had an MRE.”
“About this questionnaire, it raises a serious question about whether military personnel, or civil servants for that matter, should ever be asked questions by their supervisors about their political beliefs. It also raises the whole question of freedom of speech. In particular, the circumstances under which members of the military have freedom of speech.”
But since when has GWB respected the Constitution?
GWB sends these men into war and doesn’t respect them—only wants to be seen as a “brave leader”. It makes me sick.
It's heartbreaking, isn't it? The following comes to mind..........
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the flowers gone?
Girls have picked them every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
Where have all the young girls gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the young girls gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the young girls gone?
Taken husbands every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
Where have all the young men gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the young men gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the young men gone?
Gone for soldiers every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Covered with flowers every one
When will we ever learn?
When will we ever learn?
Our Wounded Warriors
By BOB HERBERT
Hector Delgado joined the Marines in the spring of 1999. He was at loose ends in his hometown of Selden, N.Y., and hoped the Marines would give his life some "structure and discipline."
"Did it work?" I asked.
Corporal Delgado shifted his upper body in his wheelchair and laughed. "Oh, absolutely," he said. "One hundred percent."
His enlistment was supposed to have been up last March, and his plans were to pursue a career in law enforcement. He'd taken and passed the test for the New York City Police Department and was due to enter the police academy last summer.
But the U.S. went to war with Iraq, and Corporal Delgado's enlistment was extended. "They were pretty much preventing people from getting out," he said. "I was disappointed at first. But I had to sit down and really think about who I was, which was a marine, you know? This was my job."
Corporal Delgado was in the first wave of troops sent to Iraq and was severely injured in April 2003. He was with a convoy of vehicles, including fuel tankers, that had stopped outside Nasiriya. "All the fuel tankers were staged next to each other," he said. "Everyone was trying to sit in between them to get out of the sun because it was like 105 degrees that day.
"There was a lot of heavy equipment around, shaking the ground. And a tanker trailer really isn't all that sturdy in the sand. I had my friend Corporal Gonzalez sitting to my left, and all of a sudden I just started hearing metal crinkling and everybody yelling: `Get up! Get up!' "
Somehow the supports holding up the tanker that had been shielding Corporal Delgado and others from the fierce desert sun gave way.
"It landed on top of me," Corporal Delgado said. "On top of my waist."
He was pinned to the ground, facedown, for 25 minutes, remaining conscious the entire time. His pelvis was crushed. His right hip was broken and dislocated. Bones in his left leg and left foot were shattered. His abdominal muscles were crushed, and he suffered nerve damage in both legs.
In one of the great understatements of the 21st century, Corporal Delgado, who is 24, said, "It was very painful."
The rescue effort was excruciating. "They came with a forklift to try to lift it up," he said. "But the forklift couldn't do it. So they came over with a crane, and they hooked it up and the crane wasn't working. So they had to take the crane back and get another crane. As soon as they got it up, they pulled me out, and I was in so much pain they just threw me on the stretcher and put me in the medical Hummer and brought me to the medical tent.
"I looked up and saw both my feet were flopped over to the left, and I didn't want to look up again."
Corporal Delgado would learn later that his close friend, Cpl. Armando Gonzalez, who was right beside him when the tanker fell, was killed instantly. (Corporal Gonzalez, of Hialeah, Fla., was 25. He had married just six months prior to the accident, and last September his wife gave birth to a son.)
The troops who are selflessly sacrificing their bodies and their dreams in Iraq (as troops always do in war), are not getting a lot of attention here at home. Most of us are busy with other things — presidential politics, Martha Stewart's rise and fall, the use of steroids in baseball.
I was put in touch with Corporal Delgado (and several other marines who were badly wounded in Iraq) by John Melia, founder of the Wounded Warrior Project (a division of the United Spinal Association), which tries to assist the young men and women who are hurt in the wars they fight for us.
"They come back," he said, "and in many cases they're not the same kids that they were when they left us."
Thousands of U.S. troops have been wounded and injured in Iraq. They have been paralyzed, lost limbs, suffered blindness, been horribly burned and so on. They are heroes, without question, but their stories have largely gone untold.
If Corporal Delgado is harboring any bitterness, I couldn't detect it. There were times, he said, when he wished he had died beneath the trailer. But he fought his way through the mental distress, just as he is fighting through the physical pain, and his goal is to one day walk again. He'll be discharged from the Marines soon and hopes to find work helping other disabled veterans.
"That's one way I could repay all the people who are helping me now," he said.
<
I was there when President Bush came to the airport. The day before, you had to fill out a questionnaire and answer questions, that would determine whether they would allow you in the room with the President.
What was on the questionnaire?
“Do you support the president?”
Really!
Yes.
Members of the military were asked whether they support the president politically?
Yes. And if the answer was not a gung-ho, A-1, 100 percent yes, then you were not allowed into the cafeteria. You were not allowed to eat the Thanksgiving meal that day. You had an MRE.
What’s an MRE?
Meals ready to eat. We also call them “meals refused by Ethiopians.”>>
OJT flight hours to be flying missions in the first place. Many of them crashed because of it.
Didn't hear much b*tching from the left wing then.
Edited 3/12/2004 2:03 pm ET ET by cl-libraone
I can't imagine myself recovering from such a loss. The willpower to recover must kick-in.
Very rarely is anything mentioned on the news about the wounded & dead. Very different from the Vietnam war.
Edited 3/12/2004 2:17 pm ET ET by cl-libraone
It was obvious at the time it was PR but having it staged down to such details as to the solders views. Incredible!
In any case, I've read "stories" of soldiers that lost limbs but wanted to go back to fight with their comrads and to help the people of Iraq.
I appears to me the soldier in the initial story is burned out on war and should have
gotten out long ago. War IS hell, and I would think he would know better.
Let's face it, the Army couldn't have put every soldier in the 1st Armored Division in that cafeteria. Why not pick the guys who REALLY would enjoy seeing the president?
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