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20 years ago
Author: Raine    Date: 03/20/2023 12:40:37

It's hard to believe that the invasion of Iraq is now 2 decades in our rearview mirror. Twenty years is a lot to contemplate.

That wasteful, illegal, and treacherous invasion changed everything. On a personal note, it brought us together as friends. And it brought Bob and me together as life partners.

Still in the end GWB is still, in my opinion, a war criminal and should have been held to account. Paul Reikoff, founder of IAVAwrote about this in 2006
George Bush had better be fucking right.

That's how I began my journal on April 3, 2003. Writing in pencil on an Army-issue notebook with mint green pages, leaning in on deliberate, hard letters, I underlined "better" and penciled over the words again and again until they wore through the tactically-colored paper.

On March 19, just two weeks earlier, the US had launched the first air strike of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Troops on the ground had invaded Iraq the next day. And now I was off to war for reasons that I feared were bullshit.

I reclined in the first-class section of a civilian 747 bound for Kuwait with an M-16 wedged between my legs and my gut firmly stuffed with all the Krispy Kreme doughnuts I could scarf down in twenty minutes, courtesy of the old Red Cross ladies who saw us off at Hunter Army Airfield, Fort Stewart, Georgia. It seemed a bad omen that the Red Cross was the last organization to see us off to war. The Red Cross sends emergency notifications to deployed soldiers when something urgent happens back home-like when someone is in a car accident or a grandmother dies. Everyone shuddered whenever word came that a Red Cross notification was on the way. It was the soldiers' equivalent of the knock at the door.
It was bullshit and his fears were justified. Paul and so many others signed up for service because they were patriots and wanted to do something after the 2001 attacks. you know the rest of the story...

GWB was not F#*king Right. The Media was not right. The Neo-cons were not right, PNAC was not right. The intelligence was not right. That war was a stain on everything. Tomorrow is AAV, and I will leave it to our TriSec to pontificate more on this issue.

I don't begrudge our veterans, but I sure as hell wonder -- was it worth it?

&
Raine
 

7 comments (Latest Comment: 03/20/2023 17:24:13 by Will_in_LA)
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