The War in Iraq: The Soldier's Perspective

This week I've been reviewing the conditions regarding the war in Iraq and the real reasons behind the war. Since I've never been there, I can't speak from experience. However, the following are excerpts from Jay Shaft who interviewed two officers on Christmas leave from Iraq in January, 2004. Obviously, the officers spoke on condition of anonymity for protection of their careers and against retribution. The officers are identified as O1 and O2, JS stands for Jay Shaft.

JS- When did you deploy to Iraq?

O1- I went with a unit from Afghanistan to Iraq. We got there a good little bit before the official war started. Believe me when I tell you that there were some units already across the border doing scouting and intelligence gathering and other missions like bomb targeting and artillery plotting.

O2- About a month before the war started. I don t want to get to specific on that date. They are going to be looking for any small way to track me down.

JS- Okay, before we go any farther, I want to get into the details behind breaching the Iraq border before the war officially started. If the US did break the border that is a violation of the Geneva Convention and a whole list of international treaty declarations and charters. It violates the UN charter and goes contrary to NATO treaties and declarations also.

There had been a group of international peacekeepers and many humanitarian organizations that maintained that the US illegally invaded Iraq weeks or even months before the actual war was started. The US has denied any of these accusations, but I have heard from several US soldiers who say that the border was breached for weeks before the invasion. Was it? And if it was, how extensively?

O1- I really didn t want to get into this one. I know that there were at least 100 or more special ops and CIA types in Iraq in the months leading up to the war. This is pretty open knowledge among many officers and higher level NCOs. In the weeks right before the ground invasion there were various Spec Ops and Intel guys in Iraq doing target location and plotting, working with the Kurds in Northern Iraq, trying to find Iraqis to fight on our side, and gathering intelligence on where the WMDs might be located.

O2- I don t know anyone who went in early, but I know guys who talked to some spooks who said they had been right in downtown Baghdad about a month before the ground assault. I can t verify that with any hard facts, but it was pretty openly known. We completely ignored some of the same international conventions that we said Iraq violated in 1990 when they invaded Kuwait. I find it very disturbing that we went to war over that in 1991, but then broke a whole bunch of the UN charters when we invaded Iraq.

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.

O1- I don t think that some of the higher level planners expected this kind of resistance and guerilla activity. We tried to tell them months ago that it wasn t just Ba ath party members and Saddam supporters. Some of the most highly trained guerillas are Shiite and Kurdish. We are going to be in some real trouble if the Kurds ever decide to join together with the Shiites and fight against us. Throw the Sunni radicals into the mix and it s total chaos with our guys stuck smack in the middle. It s one giant cluster f..k and the US soldiers are going to be the one that gets hurt and killed. That country is on the brink of civil war right now. Years of subdued hatreds are now boiling over. That is why you see all the different targets that are being hit by the car bombs.

O2- Yeah, we are in a real meat grinder right now. The real danger is that the whole country will erupt in civil unrest and the US troops will be caught between many different rival factions. I don t look forward to going back there, but I don t have a choice.

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.

JS- Why is that in your opinion? What made them change their feelings toward US forces?

O1- You want to know the biggest reason? We still haven t accomplished the mission we started out to do. Iraqis will tell you they don t fell any freer, there is hunger all over the place, over half the country is out of work, there is a huge lack of clean drinking water, and their children are dying everyday from contaminated water, and from our cluster bombs. The people do not see us living up to our promises of liberation and democracy. Until we do what we promised them and get out of there, they will keep killing us and hating us. Put yourself in their shoes for a minute. Every American needs to ask themselves what they would do in the same situation. I guarantee you that they would not sit back and do nothing. They would want to fight back in whatever way possible.

O2- Good point! I get really mad when they kill or injure one of my men, but I have to examine why the attacks are happening. I am there to lead and protect my men, and that means I have to be aware of what is causing the attacks and what would stop them. I have asked many Iraqis what it will take to get the attacks to stop. They all tell me that the US needs to do what they said they would do, and leave them to run their own country. The majority of Iraqis believed that the US would come in, get rid of Saddam, and then go right back home. You and I both know that is not going to happen anytime soon. We are going to be there for at least another year or more in a very large force. There is no way that Bush and his cronies are going to give up all that oil and contracting dollars.

O1- Every day that we stay in Iraq, the resistance builds, and the attacks are bigger and more prevalent. We are going to see many more US soldiers die because of the failure of the US to live up to their basic promises. In the end it is the basic line grunt that is the victim of the Bush regimes drive for oil and profits. You won t see one of the senator s kids over there. You will not see one of the board members of Halliburton, Bechtel, KBR, or the other big contractors losing a son or daughter. All they are going to do is make money and send more troops to guard their convoys and assets.

We can t even go out in convoy with anyone from Halliburton or Bechtel without drawing a crowd of angry Iraqis. They hate the Halliburton and Bechtel guys worse than they hate the soldiers. It s like painting a target on your back just to travel with those contractors and try to protect them.

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.

O1- I was getting to that, and it is a big problem. I think about 80 percent of my unit casualties were coming from the Humvee crews. Do you know that bullets go through an older hummer like it s made of paper? Most of the hummers have canvas tops and plastic windows. If an IED (improvised explosive device) hits you from the side, you are going to get hurt or killed if you are in an older, lightly armored hummer. The recent increase in the amount of roadside bombs has been decimating my men. Almost all my recent KIAs (killed in action) and WIAs (wounded in action) were riding in a hummer. I was there when the CNN guys riding in the hummer were injured. The attacker just chucked the grenade right through the top of the vehicle. Most of the hummers are not designed for heavy combat ops.

O2- I would say that at least half of my WIAs and KIAs were in a hummer when it got hit. I think that in the last few weeks before I left, the average was more like 70-80 percent. It was something I have begged my higher ups to take care of. I have not seen a significant response to the problem yet. Man, they sent us to war in what is basically an aluminum can with a canvas topper. How messed up is that? But of course Halliburton and the other private contractors have the best and newest vehicles and body armor.

O1- I saw some Saudi police or militia, I don t know which, that were brought in by Kellog Brown and Root to provide security for the oil fields. Those fu..ers had the body armor our own forces were supposed to get. Bechtel got a whole bunch of body armor given to them for the police force they are training. Our own Reservists and National Guard are using Gulf War era equipment and some supplies are even older than that. They are getting wiped out and needlessly wounded because they don t have the proper body armor and vehicles.

The contractors seem to be able to keep their security forces supplied with the newest and best gear. Some of the oil field security had brand new Humvees and other equipment the reserve units would kill for. There were a lot of the reservists lost because they didn t get sent over with the right flak jacket. Let America think about that one for a while.

Every American should demand a congressional injury about why our troops were not equipped with the proper equipment to save their lives. I know of at least 50 men that were killed because they did not have the newer body armor, and some didn t have any body armor at all. How the hell can the Pentagon justify sending a man into battle without body armor? That is like driving down the freeway at 100 without a windshield or doors.

O1- So I guess you got the answer you were looking for right? At least make sure everyone finds out about this. I would hate to say all this stuff and then you don t do anything with it. I read the articles you wrote back in October. I thought they were bullsh.t at first, but I met a guy you talked to. I didn t think I would ever give an interview like this. A lot can change in a few months time.

Now I am just about done with the Army s bullsh.t and the Pentagon is about worthless as sh.t. It is going against everything the Army has ever told me. I am just sick of seeing good men and women die. In the end is it going to really mean anything that all these Americans shed their blood in the sand? I don t think most of America really knows how bad it is. We getting our asses kicked and no one is winning this thing.

O2- If you look at it really hard, the only ones that come out ahead are Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest of those corrupt old bastards. I mean come on, if all the soldiers who are actually fighting this war can see that, what the hell is wrong with the American citizens? We knew it was about oil from the beginning. Oil and building huge bases that the US will have to staff for years to come. There is no end in sight for the people serving in this war. How about us, don t we have a say in this?

JS- Let me ask you how you feel about serving in Iraq and being involved in the war.

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.

I was near a hospital for a few weeks after the ground war ended. I saw hundreds of dead kids, and kids dying from gangrene and infection. If you ever smell someone who has severe gangrene and flesh rotting you would know what I was talking about. That is one smell you will never forget. To see a little child with their arm or leg rotting off is one of the most gruesome sights I could have imagined.

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.

O1- I will never be ashamed of being in the Army or going to Iraq. I do hate some of the things that we had to do to stay alive, and sometimes it wasn t in any training manual or class you could take. I thought I knew what it would be like, and had some ideas about what I would do in certain circumstances. I had so many situations that we just are not trained to handle.

I was not prepared to have to be a police officer or a peacekeeper. I heard that over and over again from my men. They simply didn t know how to be in a police force capacity or know much about doing the urban peacekeeping patrols and standing checkpoint duty. I thought it was a joke when they kept referring to us as a peacekeeping force.

There is no way we were able to act effectively to keep the peace. It was all we could do to keep the patrol areas contained long enough to bring in enough reinforcements to get us out of trouble. We got shot at from rooftops, windows, and fields as we went by. Basically they attacked us from anyplace they could get off a shot or two.

I know that seeing the kids dead and injured was one of the worst things for me too. There just wasn t a damn thing you could really do. We didn t have a lot of food to spread around, and it was extremely hard for us to get clean water.

The madness and chaos that hit the whole country was completely overwhelming. I know a lot of my guys will come home with PTSD or worse. We had a lot of guys flown out for going off the deep end. You could just see it in their eyes. They were right at the breaking point or already over the edge. I heard about million mile stares, and now I really know what they are talking about.

I am about done with this if you got what you need. You won t get me to say much else. I just wanted to get some of this stuff on record. I think that enough people will believe it that it might make some kind of difference. I just hope the people stop letting us die so senselessly. Let us get the job done and get the hell out.

I don t want to have to write another letter to parents or a wife ever again. I know that I will have to do way too much over the next couple months, or however long we are really over there. I just don t want to have to tell another mother that her son or daughter is dead or crippled for life.

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."

O2- Yeah, I pretty much agree with that. I am proud to serve my country and even die for it. I know the risks of putting on the uniform and accepting command. But damn it, if we are going to die, make it for something that really is helping to defend the US. I agree that we are dying senselessly for an idea of democracy in Iraq that the US government will never really let happen. I just want to be able to look back on my service with total pride and that is not really what I feel right now. I hate the ones in power that have made me question my sense of duty and honor. I get so confused about it and there is no one you can really talk to about that.

Don t let me have to ship anyone else s body back home. I don t want to get shipped back in a box either. I have a family and I don plan on being in the Army forever. I want to have my mind intact, and not wake up with nightmares about dead kids.

O1- I want to say one more thing to all the American people. I guess I just can t figure out when to shut my mouth.

WAKE UP! This war has become bogus if it ever had any legitimacy at all, and it is only when you speak out that you will hold our leaders accountable. Don t forget what this country was founded on. God Bless America! I hope that everyone listens to what I had to say. Don t just push my words off and go on about your daily routine. Ask yourself what could have been so bad that I would speak out like this. Ask yourself how bad it must be when I am willing to put my career on the line to speak out.

O2- Yeah, that about says it for me too. Just think about what could have possibly made me go out on a limb and do this interview. I am not ready to go back to Iraq and die, but I don t have much choice. I just want everyone who supports this war to think about this, and realize that it must be one hell of a mess to get us to say all this. I never would have thought I would be doing this type of interview. I would have laughed in your face a year ago if you told me it would happen.

JS- Thanks for your time and for having the courage to speak out. This will make a difference to the soldiers in Iraq and to all the families who are supporting them. You really are true heroes. I wish you and all the rest of our troops continued safety and that you come home as soon as possible.

These are direct quotes from officers. Just imagine what the enlisted men had to say. Why do we put up with these unacceptable losses of men, material, and our values just to line the pockets of the greedy and unscrupulous few?

By the way, the current cost of the war in Iraq is in excess of $496 billion.

Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs—he wants to please his commanding officer. II Timothy 2:3-4 (NIV)

If you have comments or questions, please feel free to contact me at the address below.
Email: DeltaInspire@panama-vo.com