WMD's my ass!
I spent 2005 a.k.a OIF3 or two Thomas (suck on this) Friedman units worth of time in Abu Ghraib prison where we brought liberty and freedom to thousands of Iraqis detained and trapped inside of fences within 18’ high walls. Abu was home of the original uprising following our invasion, the compound where Saddam and his sons executed thousands of prisoners using a gallows chamber, plain old pistols, and American made chipper-shredders. Body disposal was a huge problem for them, so the chipper-shredders were employed to grind the dead (and sometimes alive and howling) criminals into pulp and bury them within the prison grounds. Unfortunately, the stench proved untenable, and crematoria kilns were installed. I know this as I dug trench after trench to bury large electrical lines uncovering bones, rotting flesh, teeth and portions of scalps and skulls throughout the grounds. KBR had subcontracted the construction work for the detainee compounds, and all the main electrical cables were simply laid on the ground to be stomped on by our soldiers and detainees, and for vehicles to smash. You can be sure KBR was paid in full. Apparently Abu Ghraib prison was selected in July 03 by that well known incarceration expert and war pig Wolfowitz as he found it to be centrally located. The list of fuck-ups, disasters, and wanton disregard for the Iraqi people is endless. It really was a case of: Join the Army, see the world, meet interesting people and kill them. Hardy fuckin' har har.
Did the soldiers torture and humiliate prisoners before we arrived? You betchya as Palin might say. But those who ran the show – the contract employees and the officers didn't get blamed - naturally. The murders and rapes and more were never released to the public. Wonder why? Why were only the lower enlisted fried for what was an approved policy? General Karpinski was demoted for trying to tell the truth, not for any detainee abuse.
Didn't believe in the war before I went, while I was there, and certainly not after I returned. But I was a soldier, and I couldn't live with the thought of another going in my place - it's a long, complicated story. I was part of Donny Rumsfeld’s back-door draft; a stop-lossed, cross-leveled engineer sent in with the MP reserves out of NY. We had more bullets, RPG's, mortars and rockets rained on Abu Ghraib than any other spot in Iraq. It was truly a hell-hole beyond description. As one old sergeant aptly put it: “God did not create enough ‘suck’ in the entire universe for this place”. Hell even the Marines who came over from Fallujah in late 2004 told me they’d rather be back there as Abu was much worse. We were stuck behind walls like rats in a cage, with no field of vision just waiting for chunks of lead and exploding metal to land on our heads or in our midst.
I was stunned by the number of my fellow soldiers who just knew that Saddam was in cahoots with OBL and that he definitely had WMD’s. And I’m still amazed that so few Americans know that in the first part of 2005, the reservists and guard soldiers outnumbered the active duty. Ol’ Rummy was sure we were just a Friedman unit (six months) or two away from freedom breaking out all over Iraq. I’m still waiting for the flowers to land at my feet? Crooked, deceitful, ignorant all describe the administration, but first and foremost they were truly incompetent, as were most of the suck-up generals and flag officers.
We were told we were a liberating force, and not an occupying force. We were on a mission to restore America’s honor and dignity by winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people one detainee at a time. Camp Remembrance where most of the Iraqis were detained was to remind us all of those brave firemen and police officers who died on 9-11. Yet while we were there, the boy president (what’s the difference between Sunnis and Shiites, I thought they were all Muslims?) let it slip that Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks in NY. Not to be deterred, we charlie-miked (continued the mission) for the rest of the year. I had a front row view of the phony elections, drove down the broken roads and saw the murderous carnage unleashed by our war machine, and listened intently to groups of Sunni prisoners tell me around May of ‘05 that the US should leave as we were killing too many people and the Shiites were taking over. That was the point where the civil war was a done deal. Upon my return in December 2005, Fox News raged furiously against any mention of civil war in Iraq. They were only about a year late in my opinion.
I spoke out openly against the invasion much to the chagrin of many (especially the command staff) in our unit, but by the end of the tour, a great number had changed their minds. Late at night soldiers would stop by my cell (we slept in the prison due to all the mortars and rockets) to ask me if I was really serious about this whole war being a great big lie when we were back a Ft. Dix getting ready to deploy. Some told me that at first they thought I was crazy, or some kind of peacenik, but many were quickly coming to realize that they’d been fed a line of complete bullshit. Of the 5000 prisoners, um I mean detainees, we held at any given time at least half (probably much more) were not guilty of anything. Most had simply been rounded up in sweeps. Senators Schumer and Clinton were sent several letters begging them to help remove the Iraqis from Abu Ghraib as it was in violation of the Geneva conventions regarding protecting those under an army's charge and keeping them safe from harm and away from the field of battle. Crickets on that one folks, big crickets.
One direct and unintended consequence of boy George’s folly is that ISIS was formed in our prisons, er detention centers like Abu Ghraib, Cropper and Bucca. I refuse to refer to them as ISIS as they're really Al Qaeda 3.0. Why weren't any of our generals fired? Why were our politicians and media so easily fooled by the bullshit surge? I came back to a brain dead country that had no idea what was going on, much of it in our name. And on and on it goes. The myth of the surge may never die, who knows?
To sum it all up, we took a country apart; massacred its people, destroyed its valuable infrastructure; their roads, sewage systems, power grids and opened the door for Al Qaeda and other radicals to come take root. Baghdad had a brewery before we invaded. That’s right folks, we went after the Arab country that allowed beer! Christians openly owned liquor stores and sold it quietly to their neighboring Muslims. I first met our favorite interpreter David while sharing dinner. I asked him, David isn’t a Muslim name is it? He said no, it was Hebrew. He told me he had converted as a young man and his family was OK with his decision and that there were tens of thousands of Jewish people living peacefully in Iraq before the war began. Sunnis and Shiites intermarried, the Yazidis weren’t being persecuted and for the most part, Iraq was secular and modern. That’s why OBL hated Saddam. Was Saddam a good guy? Hell no. But we decided to destroy an Arab country that was far more progressive than many of its neighbors, and unleashed a civil war from hell, the consequences of which have yet to be fully formed or even understood. And they had beer. Even more importantly, Iraq had NO WMD’s.
So when some dip-shit repuke tries to thank me for defending our freedom, I am no longer polite. I tell them: "No, let me thank you for voting for the bastards who led us into a terrible war, where millions of Iraqis lie dead and homeless and suffering, where our treasure was hemorrhaged to feed KBR and other private war profiteers and where my buddies and I came back broken both physically and psychically. And now we're expected to man-up and be quiet about all that shit?"
And if a democrat dares to thank me, I simply reply: "You have got to be fucking kidding me right? Because if you don't know what a terrible insult that is, well lend me your ear, and I'll tell you a little bit about what war is really like, and I am positive you won't enjoy it one goddamned bit!"
And I always ask, "What the hell did the people of Iraq ever do to the people of the USA?"
Time again to exhale - The Shadow Mayor
Note: Friedman when asked by Charlie Rose what we should be saying to the Iraqi people when we were kicking down their doors and terrifying them in the dark of night replied: “Tell them to suck on this” which makes him a first-class war pig. He also kept telling America that the war was going to turn around in the next six months, or as it is now known as, 1 Friedman unit.
This post was originally my response to a post by Quixote1818 about a Facebook message: Veteran Has Had It With Republicans: ‘Don’t You Dare Thank Me For My Military Service’ by Jim Adams. I’ve added some background to the original post. Le Taz Hot and several others encouraged me to make this an OP. Thanks to all for your encouragement. Please feel free to use this or disseminate freely as you see fit.
= new reply since forum marked as read
the whole point is missed by you. Nice try on the BS about "authorization" ect, blah, blah, blah..geez
You just pissed all over this thread for the sake of Party Loyalty. You guys have no shame and no conscience.
the honest to the bone truth of GWB-CHENEY-PNAC adventurism in Iraq. This really needs wide circulation. Thank You for the TRUTH
Clusterfuck doesn't begin to cover what happened and is continuing to happen over there, and I appreciate vets like you telling the story of what it was actually like on the ground.
Be well Brother. 
as it has a powerful impact.
Thank you for re-posting this to its own thread.
Bookmarked, recommended, and passed on to others.
Am so glad you came along Shadowmayor. Glad to meet you.
I am an OIF Veteran's wife. He was in TQ 05-06. I posted here throughout his deployment. We are still dealing with issues from what he went through.
Thank you for shedding light on something that a lot of Americans have conveniently forgotten, especially the veterans and their families.
Words cannot express my sincere respect for your courage and bravery.
