Mommy's back from Iraq (WMD Unit - Hubby ticked at * Hawks)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/03278/228302.stm

Just over two weeks ago, my wife returned to the United States after a six-month tour in Iraq. It wasn't the ecstatic, clamorous kind of homecoming that you may have seen in the news.

Only 15 soldiers returned to the unit that day, and fewer family members showed up, although I was there with our five kids. There was more bumbling around than anything, especially among the military, and it was typical of what I've grown accustomed to in my unhappy association with the U.S. Army. The Army does a lot of things well, but sometimes it does things badly. That can frighten you.

My wife, Sgt. Bethany Airel, was a Reserve medic in the 203rd Military Intelligence Battalion, the Army's contribution to the Iraqi Survey Group, the lead entity in the ongoing search for weapons of mass destruction. For what it accomplished, the 203rd probably ought never to have gone. The Pentagon admitted as much in a "secret report" that, thankfully, was reported on by Rowan Scarborough of The Washington Times on Sept. 3: "Weapons of mass destruction elimination and exploitation planning efforts did not occur early enough in the process to allow Centcom to effectively execute the mission. . . . Insufficient U.S. government assets existed to accomplish the mission."

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Recently there have been reports that soldiers have had to purchase equipment and supplies with their own money, and our family has been no different. We "supported the troops" with the purchase of medical supplies she would need to do her job as a medic, and more mundane items she would need in Iraq, such as a foot locker, a laundry tub, mosquito netting and batteries for flashlights, which the Army didn't provide.

<snip>

But in the intervening months, I rarely heard from her, though I knew of her depression. It began to look as if the war was more of a bodybuilding flex designed to satisfy the imperial foreign policy cravings of the hawks in the administration, and, well, that gave the whole thing a different sensation.

[E_Zapata]

1. This gets me. It really gets me. Ugh.

"The most striking thing about the next few months was the fact that virtually the whole battalion spent all of May and early June in Tallil, near Nasiriyah, "without vehicles, gear, tents, or computers and equipment," as she wrote to me. The people had been sent by plane, the equipment by boat. "I can't understand why we'd have everyone move to Iraq and not be able to do any work.""