US Soldiers to America: ''Bring us home now; we�re dying for oil and
corporate greed!''
Part 1 in a 5 part
series
Interviews by Jay Shaft
Coalition For Free Thought
In Media
12th October 2003
I had the unique opportunity to interview five US military servicemen who
just got back from Iraq, or in the case of two men, corresponded with their
wives so that I could ask questions of these soldiers by mail. When the two I
corresponded with came back just last week, I was able to complete the
interviews I started several months ago with some new details on how the war
is actually going.
I was shocked and angered when I found out how many of the service men hate
being in Iraq and want nothing to do with rebuilding and policing the
devastated nation. From the conversations I had, many soldiers never wanted to
go over to Iraq and fight, and the ones who had were now convinced of the
awful crime that had been committed against Iraq and our own troops. I was
told very few soldiers now believe in staying in Iraq, or want to stay in the
country and serve any more days.
The following interview was with an enlisted man, but someone very high up
in the enlisted ranks, with over 20 years of military service. I have promised
not to reveal his identity for reasons that he has a family and has been told
not to speak to journalists. He told me the Army had put a gag order on him
while he was home, and told him they would give him twenty years in prison if
he spoke out in any manner against the US or the government.
I took several weeks to finish this interview because of not being able to
safely be seen with this individual out of his fears of being caught speaking
out.
He asked me to call him USA in all the transcripts of these interviews. I
have followed his wishes and tried to write what he said in the manner it was
said so as not to lose any impact. At times the interview was very rough and
the grammar is not perfect, but I tried to write this in his voice so that he
can tell the world how bad it is in Iraq. I truly want you to feel what he has
experienced in some way if possible.
CFTM-- �How are you today? Resting I hope?�
USA-- �Can�t sleep for sh..t and I have horrible nightmares when I
do sleep. I might be lucky to catch an hour at a time before the nightmares
wake me up. I slept easier in the combat then now that I�m away from there.
Most awful place I�ve ever been or served duty and I didn�t want to leave my
guys. That was the hardest part was leaving the guys I had been leading around
and trying to keep out of trouble and alive.�
CFTM-- �Did you see a lot of your buddies get killed? How did it
affect you?�
USA-- �How the hell do you think it affected me? I saw over 30 of
the men I had to keep safe die, and over 100 get wounded and not come back. I
still don�t know if some of the wounded men made it or not. I was never told
before I came back home.�
CFTM-- �So it really was awful and as bad as some returning troops
have claimed?�
USA-- �It was like a long trip to hell that you knew you might
return from. Of course it is as bad as the soldiers say it is. Hell it�s even
worse if the truth has to come out. It�s a constant fu..ing nightmare trying
to figure out where the guerillas are going to hit, how to keep the civilians
calm, and also getting enough water and food to eat. That is one thing the
media never really told the Americans about, how bad it was when our convoys
weren�t getting through. We had to go to some Iraqi people and trade socks and
underwear for some food and a little water.�
CFTM-- �You really did get that desperate because I saw it in the
foreign media that the Iraqi civilians had stepped in and fed a whole bunch of
troops that had been days without food.�
USA-- -�Yeah, that ain�t no joke about getting help from the
civilians right after the invasion. We had a pretty good laugh about that and
how the army owed them some money for reimbursement. We would not have starved
probably, but when we got the food from the people it made sure we could still
operate as a functioning unit. It was a near thing that several guys almost
died of dehydration because we ran out of clean water for a few days.�
CFTM-- �Just keep going, I want to hear more about the hardships the
military and Bush made you go through. I want the American people to know what
a nightmare this war has become and what it�s doing to our service men over
there.�
USA-- �Okay, well I can bitch about the problems like food being
short and water going bad, but I want to tell people about how bad the attacks
on US and coalition forces have gotten in the last month. In the last two
weeks I was there we were attacked at least 20 times a day if you count all
the shots we heard from random sniper or opportunity attacks. We were losing
at least five men a day to injuries and there was at least one of our unit
killed every twenty four hours.�
CFTM-- -�So you were getting one a day killed and at least five
injured? Did you know many of the guys killed?�
USA-- -�That�s a real dumb fu..ing question to ask me. You know what
my rank is, of course I knew them, I was the head NCO for years in our unit. I
knew most of the guys who died and I held a lot of hands as they were dying.
You tell me that�s not gonna to give you nightmares!�
�I had one guy tell me all he wanted was to see his little daughter; she
was born three days after the war started. He died in the sand holding my hand
and crying because his daughter would never know him. Tell me that�s fu..ing
right. Where was George Bush when this kid was gasping for air and spitting
his blood on foreign soil?�
CFTM-- -�I talked to you about this the other day. Do you think
George Bush is the wrong man to order troops into battle when he ducked it
himself?�
USA-- -�That asshole went AWOL and never showed up for duty and then
he has the nerve to take us into two different wars that will be going on for
years. I do not believe he should be president of this country, he�s a
complete idiot and he�s controlled by madmen with a drive for only profits and
getting oil.�
CFTM-- -�I just have to get this straight for the public, you are
well educated are you not? I mean you have had years of leadership training
and schools right? You sound very well informed and aware of the current lies
and manipulations, which I have not found in some other soldiers.�
USA-- -�I have a four year degree in the economics field and I am
not a soldier all the time. I am Reservist who just keeps getting caught on
long duty assignments. Believe it or not I read authors like Noam Chomsky,
Gore Vidal, and Jim Hightower, and went through three copies of �Stupid White
Men� by Michael Moore while I was over there. I let people read parts of
Mike�s book and they were irate that Bush had screwed us so hard. I had parts
of �Best Democracy Money Can Buy� mailed to me because I knew if I had the
whole book it would get stolen in a heartbeat.�
CFTM-- -�So you might be quite a bit more aware and well informed
about the real reasons for the war that others did not know. I don�t know of
many line soldiers reading Greg Palast or Noam Chomsky.�
USA-- -�I guess you�re right and that might be why I am trying to
speak out and let the Americans know that they are sending us to be
slaughtered. If you don�t mind I am going to cut through all the niceties and
get down to why I am going against every oath I took and giving you this
interview. I am doing it for the guys still over there and for the ones who
are going. If I�m not careful I�ll end up back there for another six months.�
CFTM-- -�Alright tell me what it was really like and don�t skip the
gory details. I want people to be shocked and offended enough to realize why
you spoke out and what it is doing to our military by sending them over there
with blind flag waving and cheers of false victory�
USA-- -�Well the first thing I would like to thank Bush, Cheney,
Rumsfeld, and Congress for is that nice huge cut they made to Veterans
Benefits as soon as the war started. I am in the Reserves after years of
active duty and now I cannot get PTSD counseling or many medical benefits I
used to take for granted. I knew I would have the benefits because I was
laying my life down for my country. Now my benefits are cut by around 2/3 and
I have to go to either group therapy or pay for a private counselor out of my
own pocket. What happens when someone like me has been through enormous battle
stress and combat fatigue and then comes home to no counseling?�
�I�ll tell you what is going to happen, he will either kill himself or take
a bunch of people with him. Some of the guys coming back are going to have
gone through the worst time of their lives with their buddies dying and
getting hurt, and then they�ll find out they got screwed out of any
counseling. It is the greatest disservice America is committing against
soldiers who fought for this country and may come back wounded or horribly
scarred. Medical services, school aid to dependents, school aid for the vets,
all slashed to the bare bones; mental health and drug and alcohol counseling
are being eliminated or the waiting lists will be years long for whatever
services manage to survive.�
�That is one thing the American people still have not really caught on to
is the fact that while they were screaming out �Support Our Troops� the
current regime makers were fu..ing the military and veterans out of almost
every social program and non essential service that would make life easier.�
�Bush really fu..ked us while we were gone. We found out about after being
in the middle of heavy fighting for several weeks. It was one of the first
things I read in Stars and Stripes, and I thought it was a joke because it was
just to hard to believe Congress and our leaders would screw us that bad while
we were fighting and dying.�
CFTM-- -�Glad you brought that up about counseling because I wasn�t
even aware of it. Are you alright to talk about some of the civilian
casualties you witnessed and some of the horrifying images you told me about
when we first started talking?�
USA-- -�I want to talk about some of the children I saw killed for
no reason, maybe it will wake someone up who doesn�t believe it was happening,
or that it was very bad. I can tell you I will never forget the screams of the
wounded or orphaned kids, or the wailing of the parents who lost their kids.
The Iraqis and most Muslims have a very vocal way of mourning the dead by
lamenting and wailing for the dead. There is no mistaking a mother or father
crying out in pain for the loss of a child. They don�t cry like that unless
there has been a death. Sometimes after a bombing raid or an artillery attack
you could here hundreds of people wiling and weeping.�
�I have several grown children with grand kids about the age of most of the
dead children I saw in Iraq. I also have several kids who are about half grown
and I saw a lot of Iraqi children that age wandering around in charge of three
or four little ones because their parents were dead.�
�Let me tell you about the cluster bomb raid we saw wipe out a whole bunch
of little kids. It looked like they had already lost their parents and were
trying to salvage food from a destroyed Iraqi convoy by the side of the road
we were on. The kids were way off to the side about half a mile away by then
when we got the word that the Iraqi column was going to be hit with cluster
bombs and we had to clear the area. We got on the radio and tried to get the
air strike stopped but we were told it was too late to get it stopped.�
�We could see the body parts flying up into the air after the bombs hit. It
was terrible and we could not do a damn thing but watch it happen and scream
into the radio at the dumb sh.t pilot that was dropping the bombs. After the
strike was over we went to see if there were any survivors and all we found
was bits and pieces of little kids and here and there an arm or leg you could
still identify.�
CFTM-- -�Pretty rough stuff to have to see. Did that kind of thing
happen a lot?�
USA-- -�More than you can imagine until you�ve seen it over and over
again. Man I don�t want to talk about this sh.t anymore. It doesn�t help to
talk about it because it just makes me think about it again. I can�t even get
any counseling without having to pay for it.�
�Let all those people who support our troops in on that nice surprise that
Bush gave us. That�s how much we really mean to Bush, the Department of
Defense and all those other stupid assholes who keep saying how good we�re
doing over there. Let those patriotic morons go and fight and die for our
country. Let them leave their families behind for months and maybe come back
home in a box. I�ll be the first one to salute them or honor them when they
die.�
�It�s just like Nam was in the beginning. I was twelve when my dad got back
and I�ll never forget the pain and agony he lived with the rest of his life.
Its kind of what I feel now, I suppose. I never thought I would ever serve in
some stuff that�s so much like Nam it isn�t funny. Now I really see what my
pop went through, and if I could I would go back in the past a few months, I
would go AWOL or turn conscientious objector on them, but it�s too late for
that now.�
�I damn sure will not go back over there even if they throw me in
Leavenworth. I never could understand how a guy could be a conscientious
objector until what I just went through. I wish more guys would stand up and
tell Bush and the Pentagon they will not fight their war for oil. We should
not have to die for these rich bastards profits and enrichment.�
CFTM-- -�Thank you for taking the risk and talking to me. I know
there will be other soldiers who can�t speak out who will thank you for having
the courage.�
USA-- -�It isn�t about courage it�s a matter of what�s right. This
war is killing the poor or middle class American men and women who went in the
armed forces to have college or some kind of better future. You don�t see the
rich kids joining up or any Senator�s kid dying in Iraq. It�s us little guys
who are dying over there or getting disabled for life. Where are the leaders
that are supposed to be looking out for the little man? They are elected to
look after out interests not the interests of Cheney and Halliburton, or any
of the rest of the fat cats piling up the profits while the blood of our
soldiers flows over their hands.�
CFTM-- -�Anything else you want to say to America? Any final
thoughts or words?�
USA-- -�Yeah! Wake up America! Your sons and daughters are dying for
nothing! This war is not about freedom or stopping terrorism. Bring us home
now! We are dying for oil and corporate greed!�
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