WP: 'Waiting to Get Blown Up' (troops express frustration with war)

[Rose Siding]

snip>
"Think of what you hate most about your job. Then think of doing what you hate most for five straight hours, every single day, sometimes twice a day, in 120-degree heat," he said. "Then ask how morale is."

Frustrated? "You have no idea," he said.

...(S)ome soldiers in the 2nd Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment, 1st Armored Division -- interviewed over four days on base and on patrols -- say they have grown increasingly disillusioned about their ability to quell the violence and their reason for fighting. The battalion of more than 750 people arrived in Baghdad from Kuwait in March, and since then, six soldiers have been killed and 21 wounded.

"It sucks. Honestly, it just feels like we're driving around waiting to get blown up. That's the most honest answer I could give you," said Spec. Tim Ivey, 28, of San Antonio, a muscular former backup fullback for Baylor University. "You lose a couple friends and it gets hard."
...
Steffey said he wished "somebody would explain to us, 'Hey, this is what we're working for.' " With a stream of expletives, he said he could not care less "if Iraq's free" or "if they're a democracy."

.........MORE.......

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/26/AR2006072601666.html


Capt. Mike Comstock talks with residents of a Baghdad neighborhood
about the lack of basic services.

[brentspeak]

1. Godspeed, troops

Get back to the States soon, safe and sound. Away from the Iraqi madness.

[Monkeyman]

2. Double that

[JohnyCanuck]

7. And try not to breath in any depleted uranium while on deployment

U.S. Colonel Admits 500 Tons of D.U. Were Used in Iraq

By Jay Shaft
Coalition For Free Thought In Media
5 May 2003

In three separate interviews a U.S. Special Operations Command Colonel admitted that the U.S. and Great Britain fired 500 tons of D.U. munitions into Iraq.

SNIP

J.S.: If you will, I want to see what the behind the scenes view of D.U. is in the Pentagon.

U.S.C.: Well����� (long pause, followed by heavy profanity)�. Okay, I�ll give you some dirt if that�s what you�re looking for. The Pentagon knows there are huge health risks associated with D.U. They know from years of monitoring our own test ranges and manufacturing facilities.

There were parts of Iraq designated as high contamination areas before we ever placed any troops on the ground. The areas around Basra, Jalibah, Talil, most of the southern desert, and various other hot spots were all identified as contaminated before the war. Some of the areas in the southern desert region along the Kuwaiti border are especially radioactive on scans and tests.

One of our test ranges in Saudi Arabia shows over 1000 times the normal background level for radiation. We have test ranges in the U.S. that are extremely contaminated, hell they have been since the 80�s and nothing is ever said publicly. Don�t ask don�t tell is not only applied to gays, it is applied to this matter very heavily.

I know at one time the theory was developed that any soldier exposed to D.U. shells should have to wear full MOP gear (the chemical protective suit). But they realized that just wouldn�t be practical and it was never openly discussed again.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0305/S00050.htm

[IndianaGreen]

3. The beginning of the end has finally arrived!

The war was lost long ago, and now there is a growing awareness that all those purple fingers were not a sign of victory, as Bush portrayed them.

[lonestarnot]

18. Are you kidding... hmmmf.

[proud patriot]

4. Please someone LISTEN TO OUR SOLDIERS

This is so agravating, I wish I could do more . :patriot:

[Rowdyboy]

10. I'm afraid you're doing about all any of us can do, my friend....

But its no less frustrating. The quotes in the article really affected me....

"It sucks. Honestly, it just feels like we're driving around waiting to get blown up. That's the most honest answer I could give you," said Spec. Tim Ivey, 28, of San Antonio, a muscular former backup fullback for Baylor University. "You lose a couple friends and it gets hard."

"No one wants to be here, you know, no one is truly enthused about what we do," said Sgt. Christopher Dugger, the squad leader. "We were excited, but then it just wears on you -- there's only so much you can take. Like me, personally, I want to fight in a war like World War II. I want to fight an enemy. And this, out here," he said, motioning around the scorched sand-and-gravel base, the rows of Humvees and barracks, toward the trash-strewn streets of Baghdad outside, "there is no enemy, it's a faceless enemy. He's out there, but he's hiding."

"We're trained as an Army to fight and destroy the enemy and then take over," added Dugger, 26, of Reno, Nev. "But I don't think we're trained enough to push along a country, and that's what we're actually doing out here."

[bennywhale]

23. "I want to fight in a war like World War II." He sounds like a fucking

moron. You actually WANT to fight a war like WW2. No, don't you mean you want peace.

I'm sorry i have no time for people who actually want to fight in a war, even WW2 wasn't fun, not for the millions of dead folk anyway, and i doubt if actually killing other people is very cleansing either.

WW2 was a necessity that had to be fought not something that people wanted to fight.

PEACE

[CAG]

5. Cheney: "Stay the course....Stay the course.....Stay the course"

I don't understand what these soldiers are complaining about???!!! :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm:

The Cheney/Rumsfield administration clearly have a plan!!!
Boy, if Cheney, Rumsfield, Viagra Limbaugh or * hear about this type of mutiny from our soldiers, they're going to kick some a@@!! Of course, they wouldn't PERSONALLY kick the soldiers a##, because they have "other priorities," "anal cysts", and need to get their daddy's to put them in the Texas champaigne unit while they send some other lower-middle class dudes over there to kick their a##es.

[MADem]

6. ....driving around waiting to get blown up....

And who will be the last one to die for a lie?

[okieinpain]

8. someone better keep an eye on spec. Ivey, sounds like a

accident (or should I say incident) waiting to happen.

[rodeodance]

9. I feel so terrible for Iraqi people-like the ones standing next to the

troop. So young--yet have seen such loss and death. and no end in site.

[bling bling]

19. Me too. And I also feel sorry

that these people STILL have to deal with water shortages and only having electricity a few hours a day.

When cities in the US lose electric it makes front page national news.

[shadowknows69]

11. I had a soldier just back from Afghanistan tell me almost the same thing

tonight in my taxi. I was going to save it for another column but it begs repeating now. The guy was just back from Afghanistan and it had been his second deployment. He was in Iraq previously. He was obviously relieved to be home but his manner was quite frantic. A lot of these guys are still walking a serious edge and you can tell how tight they're wound. Who can blame them? Anyway we got talking a bit. I think he'd been in originally for a 4 year stint right after 9/11 and he was in his second enlistment for 4 or 5 years. He said he was almost 4 years from getting out and that he had 2 more scheduled deployments to combat zones. I always talk to the guys and girls about how much this division is deployed, which is significant compared to the rest of the Army, and try to see how thin they are wearing our people. Despite the fact he survived to come home this guy was already very stressed about his pending deployments. He started referring to it as Russian Roulette.

He said, "They just keep sending you and maybe you don't get shot this time but it's like russian roulette."

"You can't think of it like that", I said. I was going to launch into a tirade about how he has to have confidence in his ability and his experience to bring him through safe again but he cut me right off and said, "my time will come eventually. It's russian roulette"

My heart sank like a rock. That this young man who had survived hell twice was still so certain that war was going to take him someday. The inevitability in his voice was horrible. Thankfully before we were able to continue this cheery conversation he went into a store we stopped at and got on the phone when he came back. I was relieved. I had no idea what to say. Saddest thing is there is a better than fair chance he will be right. They've really decided to embrace the concept of cannon fodder in today's military. My heart aches so bad for these fine people we're using as human ammunition.

[TexasLawyer]

12. I feel so sorry for these guys

Thanks for the story.

[Ghost Dog]

15. Yes, thanks for that, Shadow. Sad k&r.

[zippy890]

13. BRING THEM HOME

How can anybody read this article and support US troops continued presesnce in Iraq?

They don't even know why they are over there.

[bklyncowgirl]

14. Those soldiers are incredibly brave

They're incredibly brave for doing their best in a hopeless situation for leaders who fail (or refuse) to grasp the reality that they see on the ground. For all that's happened to them, they care about the Iraqis who they see as people and are determined to do what they can for them. These guys are the face of the fundamentally decent American soldier.

They're also incredibly brave for speaking out publicly about their frustrations with these leaders. Let us hope that nothing happens to these soldiers. Their so called leaders are not known for their tolerance of dissent.

[SoCalDem]

16. Soldiers search for IEDs so they don't so they don't blow up the

convoys that re-supply the soldiers who search for the IEDs...rinse...repeat

[shadowknows69]

17. Ouroboros

<http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Ouroboros>

[karlrschneider]

20. I remember the word from one of Fleming's James Bond novels

from many years ago, can't recall which one though. ;-)

[MasonJar]

21. And now they are again going to extend their tours so they can

have more troops in Iraq. These troops cannot continue this way. It is cruel and unusual punishment.

[Supersedeas]

22. when will the AWOL cheerleader in the M$M wake the hell up?

[warrens]

24. I really, truly feel for these guys

That's about the best explanation I have heard about what it is like to be there. It ain't their fault, and the idea of a peaceful, democratic Iraq is just a neocon opium dream. Democracy can't be imposed, and in a society where loyalty to tribal ties and religious ties trumps loyalty to a government, it's not likely to come from the ground up. Having an election is not the same as having a democracy, particularly since in this case, one large segment of the population, the Sunnis, is going to think the election was rigged from the beginning, whether it was or wasn't.

[donkeyotay]

25. Disaster. Miserable Failure, Catastrophic Failure

No accountability, and they continue to drag us into the quaqmire of their stupidity. Someone for once make these fucking idiots like Cheney and Condi actually say what their plan is. Is it to kill enough people to bring obedience to their neo world order?

:nuke:

[Bush_MUST_Go]

26. So, so sad. bush sent them there with NO PLAN to win.

Instead of spending the money on Homeland Security & making Americans safe, bush's grand plan was to stick a bunch of young kids on foreign soil to be targets for all too willing terrorists & extremists.

bush & Rummy & all the rest of those incompetent chickenhawks should be ashamed of themselves.