He hits all the major talking points. Quotes them almost verbatim.
I know FR has the best fraud investigation unit. So is it just me or does this come off as a total fraud?
I stopped 1/4 of the way through--I don't have hip waders high enough to go any further.
Hard to say, but I can add that I know a pilot that is flying 45 wounded out each trip he makes to Germany. That is one day's supply of injured. He says it is not just lttle cuts, but wounds and missing body parts.His comment was that we are not getting any truth over here about the price we are paying in life and limb. The death toll is low, not becuase of low frequency of getting shot at, but because of good care for those injured.
If any part of this were true, we'd all know it, because in fact, huge numbers of Reservists are moving into Iraq on active duty, and out of Iraq back to personal life. Journalists are able to move anywhere they want to, providing they're willing to take the risk. (They felt safe playing the whore for Sadam in Bagdad, but now that freedom reigns in Iraq, they're scared to death to leave the confines of their hotels. What's that tell you about the "mainstream" journalists? But I degress...) If body bags were stacking up at 30 per day from one single combat unit, or half the other crap that this guy invented were indeed happening, you wouldn't have to go to left-wing, Bush-hating, anti-military, traitorous web sites to find out about it.
I'm close to some folks who recently returned from their tour in Iraq. There is no feedback like this coming out of genuine active duty personnel. There maybe a few malcontents, like aways, but no left-wing SNCO's. (They always find a way to stay out of combat.)
The author is a leftist, who like most leftist ascribe to situational ethics and moral relativity. He would consider it virtuous to make up a story like this of whole cloth, while claiming to protect anonoymous sources. Leftists always lie. They never tell the truth; ever! So, why publish this crap on FR?
SFS
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.
Wow. That was not my experience talking to Marines leaving San Diego in the months leading up to the war.
I was told very few soldiers now believe in staying in Iraq, or want to stay in the country and serve any more days.
I'm sure you were told that by somebody. Notice how he doesn't say that soldiers told him that?
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.
This story is pure Grade-A bulls**t.
You do NOT get 20 years merely for talking to a journalist and saying things your seniors dislike.
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.
The goobermint is following this enlisted guy around?
They'd only do that if he were actually accused of criminal conduct, and then he'd just be on lockdown inside the base.
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.
Perpetuating the myth that enlisted personnel are uneducated peons.
Many senior NCOs have graduate degrees in a range of fields--from education, to business administration, to electrical engineering. One of the best staff NCOs I served with in the Marines had a MA in literature.
I truly want you to feel what he has experienced in some way if possible.
I truly doubt that he really has experienced this.
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.”
Playing to the stereotypes of combat-vets-as-delayed-stress-timebombs...
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.
There were 356 total KIAs in Operation Iraqi Freedom among US Army, US Marines, US Navy, US Air Force, the Royal Air Force, the Royal Navy, and the British Army. I counted 200 US Army KIAs on a web page memorial that lists all 356 KIAs. This figure--200--includes noncombat deaths, EOD personnel killed neutralizing explosive devices, et cetera.
This guy is claiming to have led 15% of the US Army's KIAs.
Incidentally, I looked for US units--no single unit had 30 KIAs.
"Stolen Valor."
I still don’t know if some of the wounded men made it or not. I was never told before I came back home.”
Bulls**t. The US Army takes great pains to communicate the condition of wounded personnel to their seniors. If this guy didn't know, it was because he wasn't reading the damn reports.
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.”
US forces are typically overstocked with all manner of supplies. I have heard ZERO claims that anyone was in danger of running out of food or 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.”
So they proceeded to drink Iraqi water.
Yeah, right.
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.”
Five a day to injuries? One KIA every day in his unit?
He's claiming that every KIA in Iraq came from his unit.
BRAVO SIERRA ALERT
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!”
Yup, another snippet stolen from Vietnam stories.
“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?”
Gosh. Where was Bill Clinton when US troops were dying in Mogadishu? Where was Bill Clinton when US troops died in the Khobar Towers bombing? Where was Bill Clinton when US sailors were dying aboard the USS Cole?
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.”
Standard leftist talking point #147,882: it's all about oil and Bush's oil cronies.
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.
He's a reservist?
Gee, very few of the soldiers who have died in Iraq were in Army Reserve units.
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.
Anyone who reads Noam Chomsky in the US military is regarded with deep suspicion.
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.”
Yeah, as if anyone's dumb enough to steal the top kick's stuff.
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.”
(That's because they generally don't.)
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.
Then they're not doing a very good job of it.
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.
What oath? The Booger Oath?
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."
God, I hope not.
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”
Yup. No bias there.
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.
Wow. Talking point #451,093.
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.
Uh-huh. EVERYONE needs PTSD counseling, yeah, right...
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.
That is complete BS.
What happens when someone like me has been through enormous battle stress and combat fatigue and then comes home to no counseling?”
What happens when he find out what a lying sack of s**t you are, sonny boy?
“I’ll tell you what is going to happen, he will either kill himself or take a bunch of people with him.
"Give me my welfare bennies or else."
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.
And they will thank God for it, because VA counseling is probably the worst there is.
But DO keep up those Vietnam-vet stereotypes.
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?”
“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.”
Gosh. Too bad air strikes don't work like this.
Among other things, we don't waste ordnance on already-destroyed vehicles. We also have multiple ways to call off the airstrikes when we can't "deconflict" the area.
“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.
If you had radio contact witht the pilot while he was dropping the bombs, and you didn't call "ABORT ABORT ABORT," then you're just as guilty.
“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.”
Yet another leftie talking point.