Enemy Combatant
Thursday, September 16, 2004
An Army Captain Tells It Like It Is On The NewsHour
"Well, I mean, the first thing we need to note here is that the president is a failed commander- in-chief. President Bush sent soldiers like me to die for weapons that we can't find.
If that doesn't prove that he's failed his last four years as president, frankly, I'm not sure what does. Sen. Kerry is the only one of the two candidates who has the credibility to bring allies to our side.
Our force levels in Iraq are so high that soldiers like myself, who spent, you know, an entire year . . . or some of them have spent entire years in Iraq, have come home for a year, and are now going back. 43 percent of Operation Iraqi Freedom Three is going to be guard and reserve forces.
This president has broken this military. And John Kerry's the only one of the two who's given us any alternatives or any possibility of hope. He's the one who supports increasing the size of the army by 40,000 soldiers, not President Bush.
He's the one who has the credibility to go back to the world, because let's be honest, the world isn't against the United States; they're against our president.
And I'll tell you what, going it alone hurt soldiers like me. Going it alone burdened our American army to a point where we've had to back draft people in our military.
I went to war because of this backdoor draft. Even though my time was up, I still went, and I did my duty. But the American public has a right to know the truth about this war.
We can talk all day long about what Sen. Kerry said at the National Guard today, but, you know what, he leveled with the national guardsmen. He didn't make any crazy attempts to link al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein. He leveled with the soldiers and said, "you know, you guys are fighting hard."
And I'm going to be honest with you, President Bush continues to mislead our country about the direction of our war. And he hasn't even . . . this is a guy . . . this is a president who will not even support mandatory funding for our health care.
It was a dark day for me when I had to return home from the war in Iraq, have some bad dreams, go to my veterans hospital only to find out that the same man who sent me to war has turned his back on me when I came home, and decided that he was going to close our veterans hospital here in Pittsburgh on Highland Drive. "
* * *
"My experience on the ground was that, you know, we had a president who, prior to 9/11, his policies in Europe going against the Kyoto Accords, and deciding he wanted to build super-duper missile defense systems, had no credibility to build a coalition, spent our defense money on, you know, things like missile systems when we needed body armor and tanks.
My unit did not have body armor when we went to Iraq. When we got on the ground, I went from Kuwait to Baghdad in a convoy. Baghdad's very different from the southern part of the country where there's a British contingent.
Baghdad has lost . . . we've lost more American soldiers in Baghdad than any other place. That's why we're footing 90 percent of the bill for the war and 90 percent of the casualties.
And when we went to Baghdad, I heard my president tell our country that our mission was accomplished, and that same night I had two RPG's flung at my convoy and one of my trucks blown up. He clearly wasn't leveling with the American public. And then when I was in Baghdad, we started losing soldiers every day.
Every day we went out, there was combat. And when one of my soldiers died, I had to hear my commander-in-chief so eloquently entice my enemy with, "Bring it on," a deep sorrow day for me as an officer inside Iraq."
Army Capt. Jon Soltz, Iraqi occupational forces, May - September 2003 -- now Pennsylvania state co-coordinator, Veterans for Kerry
