Two US Soldiers ask: "When will we stop dying so senselessly?" [View All]

[Desertrose]

AXIS of LOGIC

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_4893.shtml

Jay Shaft Interviews 2 U.S. Soldiers
Jan 31, 2004, 10:02

"Over the Christmas holidays I managed to find two US soldiers who were back from Iraq. They were both somewhat willing to be interviewed and describe their time in Iraq in their own words.

One was imminently returning to Iraq within a few days and the other was home for an unknown length of time. Both knew at some point they would be returning to a bloody guerilla conflict, and they did not know if they would be coming back."

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"O2- I want to talk about this and tell people how bad it really is in Iraq. It is a complete fu..ing slaughter and it is only going to get worse. The attacks in the last month or so have been meticulously well planned and executed. We are seeing a level of sophistication that the chain of command did not ever expect. Many of the officers knew that they were going to be dealing with well trained Iraqi army and militia units. There might or might not be outside support and insurgents, but I know the Iraqis are more than capable of messing up your day. These guys have been trained to fight guerilla style and they don t give up. We are in deep sh.t now that they have started to get more organized."

snip

"O1- You know, right after the invasion, the average Iraqi was happy to see us get rid of the Saddam regime. You ask the same Iraqi how they feel about us now, and they will openly admit that they hate us as bad as Saddam, or even worse than Saddam. "

snip

"O2- Let me jump in here. I want to say that I am extremely mad that Halliburton and Bechtel have better equipment than our own troops do. The contractors have fully armored Hummers and the best body armor. The have us escort them in our lightly armored Humvees and they ride in heavily armored vehicles. That is bullsh.t and every American needs to know about it. It s been in the paper recently about how bad the casualties have been from the older Hummers. Our vehicles don t provide adequate protection, and that is a fu..ing outrage that needs to be fixed."

snip

"O2- I m proud that I served my country, I am proud to be an American soldier. That is why it is so hard for me to say stuff like this about our leaders and the government. I hate doing this, but what the Pentagon and Bush are doing to our soldiers makes me sick. I also get sick when I think about how many Iraqi civilians I saw killed and terribly maimed. I have seen hundreds of kids missing body parts or dying from dysentery and diarrhea from contaminated water. I saw orphans who had lost every family member and were starving in the street.

There are whole packs of orphans roaming around Baghdad and some of the other cities. They scavenge for scraps and beg for food. It got really bad after the Red Cross and the UN pulled out. Seeing hundreds and hundreds of maimed and starving children is one sight you will never forget. I can t sleep sometimes, and I hear the kids crying in my nightmares. I saw little kids with injuries like I never dreamed possible."

snip

"I never was prepared for anything like I experienced in Iraq. There is no way in hell that the Army can train you to be able to handle something like that. No amount of practice can even come close to the reality I found in Iraq. There just wasn t anything to prepare any of us who had never been in that kind of combat environment. I thought I had seen some really nasty sh.t in Bosnia and then in Kosovo. Boy was I ever wrong about that being as bad as it could get. I feel sorry for the newer guys who hadn t ever seen any combat, or ever shot at a real person.

Coming under fire was another thing that fu..ed up some of my guys who had never seen any action before. Some of them just froze and got shot because they just didn't have the proper training to react the right way.

I must have seen at least five hundred dead bodies, and those were just the ones you could see in plain sight. We could smell the ones that hadn t been found in the rubble, and there were bodies in some of the canals rotting for days or weeks. Some of those canals were downright ugly looking, and the smell was incredibly foul. "

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"Well so far we got rid of Saddam and the rest of his henchmen, and the attacks on our troops still keep happening. I don t see the insurgents or resistance backing down anytime soon. They are only going to fight harder the longer we stay.

What I want to say as my final statement to America is "Stop letting your proud men and women die so senselessly. If we are going to die for our country let it be for something we can really be proud of. I just don t see us making the US any safer from terrorists because of what we are doing in Iraq. Bring us back home so we can defend the US from real threats to our shores."
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This is a long interview but worth the read if you wnat to know what its really like for our troops in Iraq...my heart goes out to all the human beings having to experience these never ending horrors.
Peace the only answer....
DR