US Military

I listened intently to the latest Presidential speech. I was astounded by how adolescent the President must think the American people are and at what low regard he holds his fellow citizens.
I therefore took a few of his remarks to reply to myself. It is somewhat tongue and cheek, but the subject is as serious as life and death itself. This Presidents leadership of this country has caused untold suffering in our country, Iraq, the Middle East in general and throughout the world.
In President Bush’s quest to secure oil, establish greater U.S. dominance in the world and secure his place in history, he has taken our country to an unjustified war of aggression and occupation in Iraq while abandoning our legitimate pursuit of those who attacked us from Afghanistan on September 11, 2001.

The new U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad must be deaf, dumb and blind. He ran the United States Embassy in Iraq for two years and never noticed the U.N. was there the whole time? Now he is announcing that the U.S. welcomes the presence of the U.N. in Iraq. I attended a few meetings with the U.N. members in Iraq, and the fact is, as far as I could tell, we didn’t want anything to do with them. The Bush Administration duplicity and pretence is showing here.

A Reformation is a new morning, an improvement, a renovation or, restoration. I believe that America is on the verge of just such a new morning, a reformation. I admit to being an optimist, but I am also grounded in a lifetime of real experiences and having been present during many significant worldly events. Because I believe a Democrat will be elected in 2008, to replace President Bush, I feel a renewal to Americas commitment to human rights, justice and the return to checks and balances in our government is just on our political horizon and I am raring to see it happen and be part of its rebirth.

Soon, I believe, America will be waking to the real prospect of universal health care, an end to America’s military involvement in Iraq’s civil war and the beginning of a worthy and long overdue American war; a war on poverty, hunger and sickness in America first and to the world as well. Our trade deficiencies will be addressed and the hard work of reducing the crippling Ten Trillion dollar U.S. deficit left by the Bush Administration will begin.

If I had to use one word to describe my three year experience in Iraq, one word which could say how I feel without discounting or dismissing the good things I personally saw and experienced, that word would be DISHEARTENING.

Unlike many Americans in Iraq, my experiences there brought me close up and personal to the Iraqis and their day to day lives. I worked with them and I lived among them in the red zone of Baghdad. As the V.P. of Aviation and marketing for the Sandi Group, a DC based Iraqi-American Corporation, I live on one of the city blocks in the middle of Baghdads Red District, away from the Green Zone and the protection of U.S. Forces. Those assigned to protect me were Iraqi, mostly Kurds from the Northern region of Iraq.

Every day as I traveled throughout Baghdad in the course of my work, it was Iraqi body guards who saw to my safety. We did not have armored cars, or soldiers to accompany us, as I would have later, being appointed into a U.S. Diplomatic mission in Baghdad. I trusted my Iraqi guards and befriended them. They never betrayed that trust. On more than one occasion, while on ambush alley in Baghdad, those Iraqi guards would cover me with their own bodies to ensure my safety when snipers opened up on our cars.

A Few Things about Iraq You Probably Have Never Been Told (Generally speaking)

By Marshall Adame

1.In the United States Embassy in Iraq there are a couple of hundred Iraqi workers. They are badged and vetted. No hostile incident has ever occurred in the US Embassy executed by an Iraqi employee of the U.S. Embassy. In fact, the Iraqis working for and in the US Embassy have turned out to be great assets to the operation as a whole and have contributed more than expected and have gone the extra mile to help achieve stability in Iraq. Most are risking there very lives every day by working for the US Embassy, but through various forms of cloak and dagger secrecy they are able to make their way to the Green Zone to work on behalf of the Coalition and their country. (Most Iraqis are not the enemy).