A SOLDIER'S STORY- "IF PEOPLE KNEW THEY'D SAY BRING OUR KIDS HOME NOW!"

[Jcrowley]

A Trucker’s View from the Road

<snip>
 
“Yes.”  I held my tongue and waited, not knowing what I would hear next. The waiter hung his head and clasped his hands in front of him.  He was built like a weightlifter; I could see the veins in his arms.  He said he’d been there when the Marines went in to Kuwait City and Fallujah. “I’m not proud of what I did,” he said softly, and he repeated that statement over and over throughout the conversation, as someone might say “um,” or “ok.”
 
“In Fallujah, it was like in the Bible,” he began slowly. “When they marked the houses with lamb’s blood, and the Angel of Death flew over and killed the firstborn sons in all the houses that weren’t marked.  They marked the houses…and the ones that weren’t marked, they had us go in and open fire and…” He stopped speaking and only made gestures.
 
“The kids?” asked my co-driver.
 
“Yes.”
 
The waiter’s words came a little faster now. “If people knew what was really happening over there, they’d rise up and say, ‘bring our kids home NOW!’ If people knew, they wouldn’t stand for it.”  And then a harried-looking, stringy-haired blonde appeared in the doorway and told our waiter that his other tables were wondering where the hell he was, and he had to go.
 
<snip>
 
And of course we do know. We know very well exactly what is happening over there.  The survivors of that hell are coming back and telling their stories, not just in New York, not just in Chicago, but at midnight in the Denny’s in Rolla, Missouri.  And we know very well what’s happening here as well.  C’mon, do we really want to keep slaving away so the greedheads can keep up their profit margins?  How long before we decide we’ve had enough?  How long before we realize we truly have nothing left to lose?  How long, I wonder, before we make the transition from “Isn’t that tragic?” to “Let’s roll.”

-Kim the Driver

http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3440&Itemid=223

[helderheid]

1. It's time.

Past time.

[calimary]

8. It is WAY PAST time.

BRING 'EM HOME!!!!

We sure can use that 100-thousand bucks a minute that's still being squandered on this stupid, dead-end war, for FAR better uses here at home, that REALLY WILL make us safer and more secure. And think of the lives that will be spared...

[Marnieworld]

15. 1 month in Iraq would bring back New Orleans

And I mean bring it back new and improved. It's madness. We are just getting robbed by the worthless contractor/cronies.

[SammyWinstonJack]

20. That's the BFEE for ya. They always operate the same way. Stealing other

peoples' monies, is their MO, their preference, the U.S.Treasury. And they get away with it generation after generation and no one does anything to stop them.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

23. kick... this is the best writing at DU, I've seen so far today

[Coexist]

9. I know.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

25. kick again

[LynnTheDem]

2. Wait 'til the 85% of US troops in Iraq who think Saddam did 911 find out

that IN FACT Saddam & Iraq had NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with 911.

I tell ya, if ya live close by a US base, ya may wanna think about moving, coz there's gonna be a huge pile of very irrate PTSD'd soldiers.

[Jcrowley]

4. Here's another story that will never see the light of day

She Survived Iraq -- Then Shot Herself at Home

By Greg Mitchell

Published: November 13, 2006 12:10 PM ET

NEW YORK Her name doesn't show on any official list of American military deaths in the Iraq war, by hostile or non-hostile fire, who died in that country or in hospitals in Europe or back home in the USA. But Iraq killed her just as certainly.

She is Jeanne "Linda" Michel, a Navy medic. She came home last month to her husband and three kids (ages 11, 5, and 4), delighted to be back in her suburban home of Clifton Park in upstate New York. Michel, 33, would be discharged from the Navy in a few weeks, finishing her five years of duty.

Two weeks after she got home, she shot and killed herself.

"She had come through a lot and she had always risen to challenges," her husband, Frantz Michel, who has also served in Iraq, lamented last week. Now he asks why the Navy didn't do more to help her.

Michel's story has now been probed by reporter Kate Gurnett in today's Albany Times-Union. It's headlined, "A casualty far from the battlefield."

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003381399

[bobbolink]

5. PTSD is affecting women at a higher rate than the men...

So this is going to be a tragedy the likes of which this country has never seen.

I've been telling agencies that dont' want to deal with homelessness, that as these soldiers come back, and especially the women, that they better start NOW to figure out how to house them and care for them, because this is going to be an EPIDEMIC!

[Jeffersons Ghost]

30. kick again

[midnight]

31. The human fall out of this war was never considered. It is up to

those taking over the next congress to clean up this horror. Hopefully those with the real expertise in this area will be the ones in charge. We don't need to be FEMAD again.

[bobbolink]

38. It was never considered because it doesn't matter to neocons!

I have been trying to remind people that homelessness is going to increase sharply with the return of the Iraq vets, and especially the women!

I hope you will also remind people of this, and that plans need to be made NOW on how this homelessness will be dealt with. Will we just let 'em be homeless, and die after they come back?

Really, speak up in your communities, because this is a huge issue!

[Cleita]

3. K&R

We've got to get stories like this out into the MSM. I wish I knew how.
:-(

[MadMaddie]

6. Another tradgedy.....the military is going to conduct a study &

spend milllions of dollars on something they should have been ready to address....

I think the medical personel are the overlooked population in this war...the Nurses and Doctors are seeing Trauma they would never see in the US....

Another lost life that the * cabal is responsible for...

[Viva_La_Revolution]

7. My Cousin just got sent back over for his second mission

He came back from the first one 'changed'.

End this! Please!

[NMMNG]

10. We've been saying "bring them home" for years

But we get called "un-American traitors" in return.

[H2O Man]

11. In 2004

one of my closest friends told me that he did not think he could vote for Kerry, because of his impressions of him in the early 1970s. He knew him, but not well, from Vietnam. I was surprised, because I thought Bush's NG non-experience would have been more unattractive.

About six weeks later, I saw my friend's wife in a grocery store. She said that another friend had stopped by to see her husband, and brought his son. The young man was just back from Iraq. He told my friend about what was really happening in Iraq. My friend began to support Kerry that day, not because he liked him any more, but because he knew that another generation was experiencing the same horrors that the Vietnam veterans had.

A sign went up along the NYS Highway 8 that said "Support Our Troops -- Bring Them Home." It was put up by the families of soldiers.

[Jcrowley]

12. It's all the stories

like these that slop outside the bucket of rhetorical effluence offered up by our politicians.

Out Now!

[grace0418]

13. I was one of the ones saying they shouldn't go in the first place.

But yes, they need to come home NOW.

[donkeyotay]

14. The nation is wising up, but Wash, DC is deep in denial.

"And of course we do know. We know very well exactly what is happening over there. The survivors of that hell are coming back and telling their stories, not just in New York, not just in Chicago, but at midnight in the Denny’s in Rolla, Missouri. And we know very well what’s happening here as well. C’mon, do we really want to keep slaving away so the greedheads can keep up their profit margins? How long before we decide we’ve had enough?"

[mom cat]

16. 700,000 innocent civilians killed. Do we have to wait till ist a million?

[seemslikeadream]

17. There are children at the cannons

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFowNFvmUxw&eurl=

Ive been waiting for something to happen
For a week or a month or a year
With the blood in the ink of the headlines
And the sound of the crowd in my ear
You might ask what it takes to remember
When you know that youve seen it before
Where a government lies to a people
And a country is drifting to war

And theres a shadow on the faces
Of the men who send the guns
To the wars that are fought in places
Where their business interest runs

On the radio talk shows and the t.v.
You hear one thing again and again
How the u.s.a. stands for freedom
And we come to the aid of a friend
But who are the ones that we call our friends--
These governments killing their own?
Or the people who finally cant take any more
And they pick up a gun or a brick or a stone
There are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire

Theres a shadow on the faces
Of the men who fan the flames
Of the wars that are fought in places
Where we cant even say the names

They sell us the president the same way
They sell us our clothes and our cars
They sell us every thing from youth to religion
The same time they sell us our wars
I want to know who the men in the shadows are
I want to hear somebody asking them why
They can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are
But theyre never the ones to fight or to die
And there are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire

[RevolutionStartsNow]

22. That song was written 20 years ago...but about the SAME people.

How prophetic was Jackson Browne? He was writing about Iran-Contra and Central America, most likely. The song resonates now, but perhaps that's because the same damn people are involved: Bush I, Baker, Negroponte...

Unbelievable.

[SouthernBelle82]

18. That's so horrible

:cry: It's a pure slaughter. :( The poor Iraqi people have been through so much.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

19. WOW K&R... it's hard to leave a blabber like me speechless n/t

[Karenina]

21. OUT. NOW.

*too.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

24. kick again

[La_Fourmi_Rouge]

26. You made me cry.

Back in the '80s, I hired a guy to work in my furniture factory. His name was Wolfgang Stuhlert, but everyone called him Wolfie. He was a Vietnam Vet. He had enlisted one step ahead of the draft, and figured he would be a shoe-in for posting to Germany, as he spoke that language fluently. He ended up in Vietnam as a gunner on a helicopter. Sometimes he would talk about his experience, and it makes me shudder even to this day. "Yeah, I spent 12 months shooting at little guys in black pajamas. After awhile, they looked just like bugs down there in the fields and rice paddies."

Wolfie drank. Alot. Did a fair amount of speed and whatever else he could afford and get his hands on. He was a broken, shattered man, lost in his own head, haunted forever by his year "in country". He'd do a good day of work and then settle in with a bottle of Wild Turkey and a 12-pack of Bud, drink himself into a stupor, pass out, and start over again in the morning.

He died on his birthday at age 39, of alcohol poisoning.

Ever since, I have wished that there was a Wall for guys like him - the broken-spirited young men we sent into hell who witnessed inhumanity the likes of which are the stuff of nightmares.

I'd go on, but my eyes are getting clouded by tears.

[midnight]

27. You put a big lump in my throat with this one.

We know it's wrong ,and we want them home. I guess it is more horrible than ever thought of. Thanks to Cindy Sheehan and her voice that said bring them home long ago. Bring them home, and bring them home now. There is just one more soul,that soldier, who I worry about. I hope peace comes to him soon. What an awful burdon to carry out

[Pierzin]

28. Amen Kim!! Protest from the Highest Rooftop, rally in the streets!!

It continually amazes me that there not protests every freaking day. And yet, the MSM complicit whores that they are, do not call on the whole to cabal to get out of town!!

I support World Cant Wait too!:hi:

[Pierzin]

29. Great Writing Today... Tragically, most people will not see it.

[Danger Mouse]

32. Now we have...

the power to implement the change that MUST happen. For a long time now, we have walked in the darkness...and our soldiers have been the worse for it...they, and the Iraqi people, have suffered too much, for too long.
I wonder how Bush and the others can sleep at night. I wonder how they can keep out the screams of the dying. I wonder how you can even walk, Mr. Bush, with the hands of the dead clinging to your heels.
In the darkness of night, I hope they haunt you.

[karlrschneider]

33. The Denny's in Rolla. My namesake...or vice-versa, my dad gave me

Rolla for my middle name since he went to college there. And your link is a poignant tale for sure.
Peace.

edit for small change

[Terri S]

34. and this is only the tip of the iceberg

No one comes back from war unscarred. The unseen scars are maybe even worse.

My dad was a WWII vet..you know the 'good war'. One day he called me out of the blue and sounded a little funny. I asked what was wrong and he broke down.. it was during the first Gulf War. He said he was just thinking about his old war buddies and the war. His service left him with a knob of shrapnel in his arm, what they used to call 'shell-shock', and life-long alcoholism from god-knows what demons haunting his insides. 40 or so years later it was like it was yesterday.

This is what happens after a 'good war' a 'necessary war'.. imagine what Vietnam vets come home with, and now Iraq War vets. Imagine, if you can even bear the thought, the scars, visible and invisible, Iraqi children will grow up with..if they're ever given the chance.

Damn the bastards for what they do to innocent lives in their insatiable hunger for power. Hell is too good for them!!

[shadowknows69]

35. For more chilling stories from soldiers

check my journal. I'm a cab driver that gets to hear a lot of stories like Kim does. Lot of amazing tales on the road.

[Terri S]

37. That's gonna be one hell of a book!

put me on the waiting list! Great writing, Shadow..good luck with it!

[StrictlyRockers]

36. Bring the troops home NOW!!!!!

[Karenina]

39. Kick!

:kick: