--Animal Mother, Full Metal Jacket
News from Iraq the mainstream press isn't reporting, via Dahr Jamail in Tomdispatch:
Then there are the emails I get from American soldiers or their family members. In late October, I received one from a mother whose son is a Marine stationed in Ramadi where the fighting between U.S. forces and Sunni insurgents has been fierce and ongoing these last months.
"Many, many atrocities on both sides," she writes,"because of course the town has deteriorated into nothing more than a horror flick. His emails are few because his outpost was mortared and he lost computer connection with me. He has to go to the Army side of the city and try to send email from there. I've gotten one email. The marines are not supplying the boys with working satellite phones. Instead they give those, along with money for bribes, to the Iraqis in hopes of obtaining information. So our marines sit there (only 400 patrolling half of Ramadi, a town of 400,000… talk about war crimes). This is such a nightmare. If my son survives, he'll be embittered forever...This is a portion of his angry email....I found it very disturbing....please excuse the spelling, he's in a hurry and exhausted when he writes....his point is to kill the Iraqis before they kill him. Now it's just a race for life. Insane."
Her son's email reads in part:
"I was gonna call you but the phone is broken. I hate this place more than anywhere else i've been. I guess is a compilation of all the time I've done overseas fighting. Bullshit fights, its really bringing me down. I can't wait till all this is over…I'll be the biggest anti-war person this country will have… at least against this war in Iraq....Let's go fight a different one somewhere else cause this one is lost. I swear i wish you could spend a week over here…you would know it's lost. You can't stop ‘holy warriors,' especially in their territory. Tonight we are about to go drop off generators to the enemy (Iraqi civilians) hoping they will give us info about the enemy (bullshit storys). The shit your tax dollars go to would make you puke. You really would puke. I almost do when i think about it..... thomas jefferson would have a heart attack if he saw all the shit goin on today. Oh well. I really hope it changes soon when Bush is out…but i doubt it. I thinks its all Gods plan…he runs the show no matter what. Fate and all that…its good to trust him. "…I'll keep the machine gun lubed in hopes of killin em all at the first opportunity for you. I love you ma and i know that no matter what you support me. I hope you don't find this email burdensome. Just hit delete if that's the case."
1 comment:
War is an evil thing. It's something you shouldn't engage in if you can possibly avoid it. It's so clear that we as a society have lost track of this basic truth. This is a pro-war society; war is romanticized and fetishized. I find the various middle-aged internet war buffs delivering their lectures on strategy to be particularly disgusting.
MQ
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