[GJM] Turn off the Life Support, America is Dead...

[marguerite hampton]

I cannot help but forward this message.   



We've been asked for so long to support our troops;

perhaps it is time to support them in speaking their

truth. 



eco 





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From: Daniel Drasin <Ddrasin at aol.com> 

Subject: "We, The American Soldiers, Were The Terrorists" 

  

And this soldier adds: Turn off the Life Support, America is Dead... 

  

"We, The American Soldiers, Were The Terrorists" 

 

"I was awakened at 3 a.m. that first night and told to get my ass up  

quickly because in one hour we were going to raid a house full of  

terrorists. 

  

Capt. Conde and some sergeants showed me and my squad mates a  

satellite photo of a house and a drawing of the layout of the inside.  

Our assignment was to blow off the door, burst into the house, raid  

it fast and raid it good -- looking for contraband, caches of  

weapons, signs of terrorists or terrorist activity, then rounding up  

the men and getting out damn fast. The longer we stayed in any one  

location, the longer somebody would have to put us in the sights of a  

rocket-propelled grenade or lob mortars at us. 

  

I had no idea what to expect. 

  

Would I charge through the door, only to be blown to bits by a  

grenade? Would somebody with an AK-47 knock my Oklahoman ass right  

back out that door? 

  

Would some six-year-old terrorist with two days of gun training be  

waiting to put me in his crosshairs? 

  

..I gripped my M-249. Yes, it could belt out 2,000 rounds a minute  

but only in theory. You couldn't really hold your finger down that  

long. When you were blazing away like that, the bullets turned the  

barrel as hot as Hades. And if you held your finger down too long, it  

would warp the barrel. 

  

It took thirty seconds for Jones and me to put the charge of C-4  

plastic explosive on the door. 

  

Then we dashed around to the side of the house so we wouldn't blow  

ourselves up. You'd be fried meat if you were anywhere near the  

explosion. I set off the blast, and then the six of us charged in.  

Jones went first -- that skinny, red-haired Ohio boy was always hot  

to trot. With Jones leading the way we burst into the house, armed to  

the hilt. Kevlar helmets, flak jackets, machine guns, combat boots,  

the whole nine yards. 

  

I'd never been inside an Iraqi's house before. 

  

We charged through a kitchen. I had been told by squad leader Padilla  

to check everything, so I even opened the fridge. Perhaps, I thought,  

I would find guns or grenades hidden inside. No such luck. 

  

In the fridge, all I saw was a bit of food. In the freezer I found  

big slabs of meat, uncovered. No wrapping. No plastic. Frozen, just  

like that. We ran into a living room with long couches, one along  

each wall. 

  

In this room with the couches we found two children, a teenager, and  

a woman. We also found two young men in the house. One looked like a  

teenager and the other was perhaps in his early 20s -- brothers. 

  

We hollered and cussed. I spat dip on the floor and screamed along  

with the other soldiers at the top of my lungs. I knew they didn't  

understand, but I hollered anyway. 

  

"Get down," I shouted. "Get the f--k down. Shut the f--k up." 

  

They didn't know what "get down" meant, so we knocked the two  

brothers to the floor, face down. 

  

We put our knees on their backs, pulled their hands behind them, and  

faster than you can bat an eye we zipcuffed them. 

  

Zipcuffs are plastic handcuffs that lock on tight. They must have bit  

something fierce into those young men's skin. There was no key,  

nothing -- the only way to get them off was to slice them with cutters. 

  

We pushed the brothers outside, where 12 other soldiers from our  

platoon were waiting. 

  

The Iraqi brothers were taken away to an American detention facility  

for interrogation. 

  

I don't know what it was called, and I don't know where it was. All I  

know is that we sent away every man -- pretty well every male over  

five feet tall -- that we found in our house raids, and I never saw  

one of them return to the neighbourhoods we patrolled regularly. 

  

Inside, we kept on ransacking the house. 

  

The more obvious it became that we would find no weapons or  

contraband, the more we kicked the stuffing out of the house. 

  

We knocked over dressers, sliced into mattresses with knives, kicked  

our way through doors, raiding the three bedrooms on the second  

floor, then raced up to the third floor. 

  

We turned over everything we could and broke furniture at random,  

searching for contraband, weapons, proof of terrorist activity, or  

signs of weapons of mass destruction. 

  

We found nothing but a CD. 

  

Soldiers initially said it showed proof of terrorist activity, but it  

turned out to have nothing on it but a bunch of speeches by Saddam  

Hussein. 

  

Once we had everybody outside the house and had done our initial job  

of ransacking, another squad took over inside. 

  

They kept raising hell in there, breaking and turning over more  

furniture, looking for weapons that we might have missed. 

  

Outside, under a carport, I was assigned to watch the women and  

children. We weren't arresting them, but we weren't allowing them to  

go anywhere either. The family members couldn't go back inside, and  

they couldn't wander off into the neighbourhood. They had to stay  

right there while we tore the hell out of their house. 

  

A girl in the family -- a teenager -- started staring at me. I tried  

to ignore her. 

  

Then she began speaking to me. Inside, when we had been screaming at  

her and the others, I'd assumed that nobody understood a word of  

English. But this young girl spoke to me in English, and her eyes  

bored holes right through me. 

  

She was skin and bones, not even 100 lb., not yet a full-grown woman,  

but something about her seemed powerful and disturbing. 

  

I feared that girl, and I wanted to get away from her as fast as I  

could, but it was my job to stay right there and make sure she didn't  

move. I had my weapon ready. She was wearing a blue nightgown and had  

a white scarf covering her hair. She had no veil, so I could see her  

face perfectly. Her eyes were coal black and full of hatred. 

  

In English, she asked me, "Where are you taking my brothers?" 

  

"I don't know, Miss," I said. 

  

"Why are you taking them away?" 

  

"I'm afraid I can't say." 

  

"When are you bringing them back?" 

  

"Couldn't tell you that either." 

  

"Why are you doing this to us?" 

  

I couldn't answer that." 

US Soldier Joshua Key "Given What We Were Doing To Them, Who Could  

Blame Them For Wanting To Kill Us, And All Americans?" March 8, 2007 

  

US Deserter Joshua Key (Video-16 minutes) March 8, 2007 interview 

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17271.htm 

  

"It doesn't matter who controls Congress. Congress is a dead  

institution, ruled by timid legislators who no longer exercise any  

real role in the governing of this nation. 

It doesn't matter what the Supreme Court may or may not do. The  

President of the United States has declared himself a "war time  

President" and granted himself dictatorial rights that no one in  

Congress or the Court appears able to successfully challenge him. 

The America we used to cherish is dead, replaced by a ruthless  

dictator. The America that more than 3,100 men and women died for in  

Iraq no longer exists. We might as well pull the sheet over Uncle  

Sam's head and prepare for the funeral. 

Or can we, as a people, regain control of our government? Perhaps,  

but doing so will require drastic measures. I'm not talking about  

kicking out one party of political hacks and replacing it with  

another: Been there, done that, witnessed the failure. 

We need to rethink this experiment called America. Maybe we need to  

start with a clean sheet of paper. Maybe it's time to recognize that  

our present America is a rotting corpse, devoured from within by the  

cancer of politics, corruption, greed and a lust for power. 

Maybe it's time for a new American Revolution. After all, the last  

one started because another guy named George tried to destroy our way  

of life. 

Turn off the life support: America is dead, March 9, 2007 (The  

comments are also noteworthy)