Angry Mother Speaks Out About What Her Daughter Suffered In Iraq

My name is Adele Kubein. I am a student here at OSU as many of you are. I became active in the peace movement in the 1960s and '70s during the Vietnam War, and I resumed my peace activities when I realized we would certainly go to war with Iraq. I did not realize my own daughter would be caught up in this war when I began to speak out against it.

My daughter enlisted in the Oregon National Guard in 1999. She is a highly trained Army engineer, and her contract specifically read that she would never be in combat. She was a marine biology student at OSU, the same age as many of you. She wanted to fight fires and build roads in Oregon. She needed college money and thought she could help her home state while earning it. She is a real person. She could not stop thinking of the Iraqis as real people too, and that knowledge haunts her today.

Her unit was told they would build schools and homes in Iraq, that they would be welcomed as liberators. Instead she was put behind a .50 caliber machine gun, with no body armor, or even any ammo at first, to protect Kellog, Brown, and Root convoys in Northern Iraq. In the first days her unit had minimal ammo, one meal a day, and hardly any water. She rode on roads covered with depleted uranium dust and littered with burned cars full of dead bodies.

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How can we condone bombing and destroying a country with women and children and students with the same dreams you and I have? Iraq posed no threat to us, yet we allowed others to convince us war was the righteous thing to do.

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http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/what/latest.html#angry040428

:kick:

a mother like that makes it to the major news out lets and gets interviewed.

She is a highly trained Army engineer, and her contract specifically read that she would never be in combat.

That's a new one.

I have and they defaulted on my contract (LIED) as well as probably every single enlistee. I do not know the specifics of her contract and it is quite possible that a nation guard enlistee would have things on their enlistment papers that are not put on regular army forms. The one thing that is consistent is the fact that they LIED.

The idea that an Army enlistment contract would have a guaranteed no-combat clause is absurd. Period. Like signing a contract to work at a Burger King that included a clause that said you wouldn't have to be around food.

http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/what/faq.html#6whining

Isn't all this complaining about the conditions the troops face in Iraq just whining? Why don't they and their families remember why they joined in the first place and just suck it up?

There are four points we want to make here.

First, the conditions that our troops are facing right now show the contempt that Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush actually have for the troops they command. It's five months after Bush made his showboat landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared major combat over, and they still can't get US troops enough drinking water or sufficient decent rations?

Second, the conditions are not just uncomfortable, they are deadly. Modern battlefields are full of lethal toxic wastes, including radioactive depleted uranium. Over 30% of the troops deployed in the 1991 Gulf War have some sort of disability, mainly the poorly understood Gulf War Syndrome, and they were only in the region a short time. The new "mystery pneumonia" which has already killed several troops in Iraq is only the tip of the iceberg.

Third, this is not a question of the attitude or the willpower or the backbone of individual soldiers or their families. The Operational Tempo of the US military (meaning the time deployed away from home and/or the intensity–like overtime and speed-up for workers–of deployments and training) has tripled in the last ten years, with predictably bad effects on troops and on their families. As the Congressional Budget Office just reported, in six months, the Pentagon will start running out of the troops it needs merely to maintain the current force level in Iraq, let alone add the tens of thousands more most military experts say would be needed to stabilize the situation there. There simply aren't enough troops.

The bottom line, though, is that our troops are being used not to defend the people and the Constitution of the United States as they swore an oath to do, but to satisfy dreams of empire and seize control of oil supplies. US troops would face bad conditions in a just cause without complaint, but the reality is that they shouldn't be in Iraq at all. The hardships and dangers they face now are faced in an illegal and immoral war. The bottom line is that they shouldn't shut up and suck it up, because we shouldn't be in Iraq in the first place.

I'm not questioning loyalty or motives or describing this as "whining". I'm saying that this contention of a no-combat clause is stupid beyond belief, either an outright fabrication or a very interpretative reading or an extremely mistaken impression. It's the ARMY. The sole purpose of the Army is to kill people and break things. Cooks and engineers and clerks and medics have all been called upon to use weapons to kill other human beings at some point in the history of the Army. I mean, c'mon people. Believe whatever makes you happy, I guess.

same. National Guard is a State Militia designed to aid the state in times of emergency and as a back-up for the regular military when there is great need. Bush* has changed the rules and IMHO broken the National Guard beyond repair. People don't join the Guard to go into combat. If they wanted to do that they would join the military. It is very possible that a National Guard enlistment contract could indeed have a clause that states the person will never be used in Combat as the whole purpose of the guard is not designed for combat.

wonder why the call it the "Army" National Guard?

All state NGs are subject to federalization and every member becomes just like regular Army folk when that occurs. Or they're supposed to, anyway; they get shafted on pay and personnel issues.

Do you really want to kill someone? I know my daughter did not. When she called me sobbing and told me she looked in a young man's eyes as he died from her bullet, she knew she had lost her humanity for a time. She will bear the burden for the rest of her life, just as most veterans do.

Right now my daughter awaits surgery on a base in Colorado, and she wakes screaming from dreams of death at night. Her body and her mind will never be young and joyful again. She and I may never again hike or mountain bike together. She is my closest friend and companion, her grief is mine on many levels.

War is bad. It messes people up, not just those on the receiving end, but, maybe even moreso, those who are on the shooting side...

It destroys souls. It destroys humanity. That's why war should only be used as a very last resort in the most extreme circumstances.

Bush and company went to war unnecessarily, almost as a lark.

They will rot in hell for the Iraqis who have been killed, injured and destroyed, as well as for the Americans who have had their souls and humanity crushed by this war.

Those soldiers thought they were supposed to defend our country.

It has been obvious since 2002 that these PNAC thugs were going for oil and the protection of Israel and that instead of being told what their true agenda was, the propagandists pretended it was a war. It was NOTHING BUT, NOTHING BUT a corporate takeover and the corporations should have purchased their own soldiers. Instead they involved the entire country and some fool countries went along with them after they were told that we would pay the costs..we as in U.S. taxpayers.

This was and is a 'fraud war' and the people on this forum knew it and exposed it months...MONTHS...before the invasion.

The corporations should have paid for their own soldiers - they made the soldiers, their loved ones, and the taxpayers pay. They committed fraud on the world.

Whining, indeed.

The whole world deserves to whine.

Highly trained Army Engineer.


(CMF 12) COMBAT ENGINEERING

Each of the Army jobs is related directly to similar or equivalent
civilian occupations. Army experiences may help prepare a soldier
for possible employment in construction, forestry or industrial operations
in the civilian sector.

MOS/TITLE

12B Combat Engineer *

12C Bridge Crewmember

12F Engineer Tracked Vehicle Crewman *


All of these MOS's are male-only

I just checked. There's a bunch of engineering MOS under "Field 21" which is new to me. I guess they're doing away with 12 series. I'm sure a bunch of these are open to females.

http://usmilitary.about.com/library/milinfo/arjobs/bl21.htm