Posted on 05/27/2007 4:23:04 PM PDT by james500
Staff Sgt. David Safstrom does not regret his previous tours in Iraq, not even a difficult second stint when two comrades were killed while trying to capture insurgents.
“In Mosul, in 2003, it felt like we were making the city a better place,” he said. “There was no sectarian violence, Saddam was gone, we were tracking down the bad guys. It felt awesome.”
But now on his third deployment in Iraq, he is no longer a believer in the mission. The pivotal moment came, he says, this past February when soldiers killed a man setting a roadside bomb. When they searched the bomber’s body, they found identification showing him to be a sergeant in the Iraqi Army.
“I thought, ‘What are we doing here? Why are we still here?’ ” said Sergeant Safstrom, a member of Delta Company of the First Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division. “We’re helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us.”
His views are echoed by most of his fellow soldiers in Delta Company, renowned for its aggressiveness.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Wonder how long the Old York Times had to dig to find this guy?? Wonder how much of it is out of context and how much is pure fabrication.
Pray for W and Our Freedom Fighters
Ashamed of me? Why? Because I choose not to accept your defeatist, cut and run attitude?
Obviously you wasted 20 years of your life, sorry to hear that.
While you are entitled to your opinion, you nevertheless are not welcome in this locker room during halftime where the rest of us with positive attitudes are planning for our ultimate victory..........
We have no room for your defeatist attitude and do not wish to be associated with those who share your same cowardly stance.
No, because you've got your head up and locked.
Is this something new in the history of wars?
Then please explain your your defeatist, cut and run attitude...........
actually, winning people over to freedom is a big part of our miltitary. They are helping to establish order in all of the various towns after the enemy is cleaned out. I’m sure there was much of that after world war two. I know there were generals in charge of establishing a good democracy in Japan after her defeat. Just killing people and breaking things sounds to the point, but there’s a bit more to it than that.
When they searched the bomber’s body, they found identification showing him to be a sergeant in the Iraqi Army ... “We’re helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us.”Uh... did it ocurr to neither Sergeant Safstrom nor our dear reporter that the perp was not a soldier turning around as an insurgent, but an insurgent who had infiltrated the Iraqi Army?
“We’re helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us.”
You can expect the same to happen in every Muslim country.
The difference though is that Japan was easy to pacify. They had just been nuked. Twice. Germany was smoldering with nearly every major city reduced to rubble and the Red Army exacting a brutal revenge. Both these countries had been brought to their knees .
That’s not the issue. Your intolerance and lack of respect for opinions of other is.
“I’m only in my early 30s. Was it this bad with these treasonous clowns during Vietnam? “
IMHO, it was worse only because there was no, and I mean no, voice for the right side (think Rush, Free Republic, etc.)
They were absolutely giddy then. They are more cautious, yet determined now.
Go back and read what Bush said that day, and to whom that banner was for.
You risk sounding like an ignorant DUer otherwise.
It is the issue and that is why I called you out on it. So I ask you again:
Rather than continue your attack on me, please explain your defeatist cut and run attitude........
It’s a typical liberal talking point.
I didn’t see all that....please accept my sincer apologies...=s=
No need to apologize, your frustration speaks for more people than you know, just what the hell are we doing over there trying to win the hearts and minds of a Muslim population and win it to what? Christian ideals?
Drip! Drip! Drip! More troops continue to die unnecessarily, more and more innocents get blown up, kidnapped, tortured, decapitated, daily, and this crap continues unabated, Just what are we doing to stop it, 200,000 troops over there and we still can't get a handle things, makes me wonder if we need new leadership or maybe it's time to come home and circle the wagons.
Polls like this show just how unpopular this nation building exercise has become with our soldiers.
Only 35 percent of the military members polled this year said they approve of the way President Bush is handling the war, while 42 percent said they disapproved. The president’s approval rating among the military is only slightly higher than for the population as a whole. In 2004, when his popularity peaked, 63 percent of the military approved of Bush’s handling of the war.
Just as telling, in this year’s poll only 41 percent of the military said the U.S. should have gone to war in Iraq in the first place, down from 65 percent in 2003. That closely reflects the beliefs of the general population today —
The mail survey, conducted Nov. 13 through Dec. 22, is the fourth annual gauge of active-duty military subscribers to the Military Times newspapers. The results should not be read as representa tive of the military as a whole; the survey’s respondents are on average older, more experienced, more likely to be officers and more career-oriented than the overall military population.
Among the respondents, 66 percent have deployed at least once to Iraq or Afghanistan. In the overall active-duty force, according to the Department of Defense, that number is 72 percent.
The poll has come to be viewed by some as a barometer of the professional career military. It is the only independent poll done on an annual basis. The margin of error on this year’s poll is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Professor David Segal, director of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland, was not sur prised by the changing attitude within the military.
“They’re seeing more casualties and fatalities and less progress,” Segal said.
He added, “Part of what we’re seeing is a recognition that the intelligence that led to the war was wrong
The NY Times: Your headquarters for anecdotal evidence.
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