A Split Mission in Iraq Tempers Views of G.I.'s

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/17/international/middleeast/17SOLD.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=

Six weeks ago, soldiers of the First Armored Division were renovating schools. Now they are raiding them for hidden munitions.

Children wave to them along the roads, while insurgents with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades make them targets.

"Our mission is to rebuild this country, but the thing is, the bad guys won't let us do it," said Specialist Jennifer Marie Bencze, 20, of Santa Rosa, Calif. "At the same time we've got engineers rebuilding schools, fixing roads, doing all the humanitarian projects, we've got infantry fighting the bad guys. So the mission is really confused."

Here in the Shiite heartland, the division is caught up in the fiercest and deadliest fighting now under way in Iraq. That is a far cry from May 2003, when it rolled into Iraq thinking the war was all but over, ready to plant Western-style institutions in this arid land. Interviews with dozens of soldiers over the last two weeks suggest that their idealism has been tempered.

I say "bad guys" are in the WH!

Most really do believe in their spoon-fed purpose and seek to do "good". They just do not understand the true motivations of their God-awful Commander-of-Thief and the neocons.

As a taxpayer, I must say that that wasn't the reason I was told that we were going to Iraq for. I was told that it was because Saddam was a dangerous and "gathering" threat, and that if we waited any longer the smoking gun would be a mushroom cloud.