...about Iraq, Abu-Ghraib, and going to war without the necessary support from the 'Commander-in-Chief'
By Brad Friedman on 9/10/2004, 2:47pm PT  

And now a word from someone who made it out of 15 months in Iraq alive. Someone who signed up for the Army Reserve after September 11th. Someone who wasn't a chickenhawk. Someone who ended up stationed in Abu Ghraib. Someone, unlike the Bush Supporters (as witnessed even here in BRAD BLOG comments) who doesn't find it necessary to avoid telling the truth about what's going on there, and how things went so terribly wrong via the incompetence and lack of support for our troops by this failed "Commander-in-Chief".

Here's the full article, please read it! It's short and to the point. Here's just one, of many quotable excerpts:

When my company landed in theatre in May, I was one of the few soldiers equipped with body armor effective at stopping powerful AK-47 ammunition. My mother, an elementary school art teacher, shipped the bullet-proof ceramic plates to me from the States. Other soldiers weren't so lucky, having to raid buildings and patrol dangerous streets while wearing inferior Vietnam-era flak jackets. Later I learned that 40,000 troops had been sent into Iraq without effective body armor. We rode in ‘soft shell' Humvees, equipped with flimsy fiber-glass doors. A Volvo has more protection. I saw the blood of American soldiers spilled because of the lack of ‘up-armored' Humvees.

After training 2,000 police, and bringing law and order to the city of Al Hilla, my unit was tasked to run Abu Ghraib prison, a mission for which we had no prior training. We were combat support military police, ideal for conducting convoy security, not administering prisoner-of-war camps. My unit was desperately under-manned, so I was assigned to run an entire tier at the ‘hard site'. Even as a junior-enlisted soldier, I was personally responsible for 320 prisoners and a staff of four or five ill-disciplined Iraqi police...

Educate yourself. Read the whole thing.

Support the Troops! Vote Bush out of office!

(Thanks to Alexi for the link!)

Share article...
                 

Article Categories: (Uncategorized)