Vet turns against the war after time in Iraq

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http://www.press-citizen.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080330/NEWS01/803300313/1079

In March 2003, two days after his 17th birthday and the start of the Iraq War, Andrew Duffy joined the Iowa Army National Guard during his junior year of high school at City High.

It was a move he said he would come to regret.

Two and a half years later, he was sent to Iraq, and he said his experiences there truly changed his mind about a war he initially had supported.

"I didn't feel like we were bringing peace to a people," said Duffy, 22, who is president of the Iowa City chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War. "Our practices on missions were not peacekeeping. We would drive on the wrong side of the road. If someone got in the way, they'd just ram the cars."

Duffy, still with the National Guard, now regularly speaks out on his experiences as a medic at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and other observations of the war. He said he regularly saw cases of medical care being denied to Iraqi prisoners and soldiers firing recklessly at civilians.