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
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!”
*********
- Jay Shaft: Editor, Coalition For Free Thought In Media. EMAIL: freethoughtinmedia2@yahoo.com WEB: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/coalitionforfreethoughtinmedia/