Soldiers Do Have a Choice

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0108-14.htm

U.S. soldiers have faced moral dilemmas in Iraq from the earliest days of the invasion. That their problems of conscience have continued is not surprising, given the nature of a military occupation by a foreign power.

"Did you see all that?" the American lieutenant asked, his eyes filled with tears. "Did you see that little baby girl? I carried her body and buried it as best I could but I had no time. It really gets to me to see children being killed like this, but we had no choice." The reporter from The Times (UK), in his article entitled "US Marines Turn Fire on Civilians at the Bridge of Death" (30 March 2003), noted that the lieutenant´s third child, Isabella, was born while he was on board ship heading to the Gulf.

A few days earlier at Nasiriya these troops had suffered the worst coalition losses of the war "and the humiliation of having prisoners paraded on Iraqi television." In one incident a US Army convoy had encountered a group of Iraqis dressed in civilian clothes, apparently wanting to surrender. When the American soldiers stopped, the Iraqis pulled out AK-47s and sprayed the US trucks with gunfire.

The baby girl held by the lieutenant was among 12 dead civilians, who had tried to flee the town to escape the oncoming forces. "Their mistake," the writer commented, "had been to flee over a bridge that is crucial to the coalition's supply lines and to run into a group of shell-shocked young American marines with orders to shoot anything that moved."

The reporter saw one man's body which was still in flames, hissing; a girl about five dead in a ditch next to the body of a man who may have been her father, who had lost half his head; nearby, a dead Iraqi woman slumped in the back seat of an old Volga. Other bodies of civilians were strewn about, one next to the carcass of a donkey. "A US Abrams tank nicknamed Ghetto Fabulous drove past the bodies."

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[sventvkg]

1. I feel Bad for that Marine..He will never be right again after this War

You have to understand that man will be haunted by what he has seen for the rest of his life...These Right Wing Bastards....I HATE THEM ALL!!!! They should go DIE instead of our young men and Women...

[NNN0LHI]

2. If I had been involved in this invasion to steal Iraqs oil...

...after thinking I was over there to protect America I would blow my brains out.

Don

[Gin]

3. Thinking of what they endure makes me cry. These soldiers will be

haunted for the rest of their lives. And then....there are the Iraqi's caught in the crossfire.

God help us.