For people who call those of us who oppose the war in Iraq unpatriotic, consider the words of Frederick Douglas: “A true patriot is one who loves his country but rebukes and does not forgive its sins.”

I enlisted after September 11, as did many of my brothers and sisters in arms, to defend the country against an attacking force, to defend the country and its constitution, which is a love of our country. I will not forgive and I will rebuke what I consider to be the sin of an arbitrary invasion of Iraq that has cost the lives of 4,000 of my brothers and sisters and the severe injury of countless more. The sooner you bring them home, the more of them will come home.

The Day A Bullet Changed My Life

I was the company clerk, a position I had transferred into about six weeks before we deployed to Iraq. I transferred because I had signed a contract and I was going to fulfill that contract, but I was going to try to do it in the safest way possible so I could come home safely. That plan, unfortunately, did not work out: the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray, as they say.

It was April 4, 2004. I was guarding some gear when my sergeant said to grab my gear, get on a truck and go. I loaded onto a truck with 23 other soldiers (the truck was meant for 18 soldiers with gear so we were quite packed in). The truck had no armor on the sides, nor did it have a tarp on the front and it was prone to overheating.

We were on a mission to provide security for a rescue operation – that was all we were told. We got to a spot, got out, provided security, rescued some guys and thought we were heading back to base, end of mission. But the mission changed.

There are two different accounts of why we went through Sadr City: One account is that our troops had shut down an Iraqi newspaper which caused a riot. I don’t know whether we were going there to try and quell the riot or if it was to provide support to a Humvee that had gotten pinned down somewhere else.

We rolled down the main street of Sadr City and began taking fire from the rooftops. It was quite a firefight but I couldn’t get my weapon wedged out of the side of the vehicle to fire; it didn’t really matter because all I could see from my vantage point were women and children running away. I wasn’t going to shoot at anything I saw.

I did, out of the corner of my eye, see a man with an AK47 step from behind a pillar and pop off a couple of shots. For some reason, and I thought this funny at the time, he then hid his weapon behind his leg and stood there as if to say, “Hey, I’m just here enjoying the gunfire, don’t worry about me!” But I saw him go down with a couple of rounds from one of my buddies, so I knew the other guys were firing at the right things.

Shortly after I came to this realization, I felt my body go completely numb and I dropped my M16. I didn’t know what had happened. I tried to pick up my weapon but I couldn’t move my arms. I’ve always been the kind of kid to jump to the worst possible conclusion and my first thought was that I was going to be a quadriplegic, completely dependent on friends and family and moving my wheelchair around with a mouthpiece.

I tried to yell for somebody in the truck to just go ahead and finish the job and take me out. But all I could get out was a very tiny, hoarse whisper.

We kept rolling. There were only four or five guys on the truck who didn’t get shot. We decided to head back to base as quickly as possible, but the truck decided to overheat again. There have been reports that concluded the radiator was shot out and if that’s the case then that’s the case, but I distinctly remember somebody yelling, “Oh sh*t – we overheated again!”

Then an Iraqi bus came up behind us and we commandeered the vehicle and loaded the wounded onto the bus. We got the driver to take us to the base and then we sent him on his way. We did not hijack the vehicle in any way, shape or form.

From the base, I went to the field hospital which is quite a graphic scene, like something out of one of those civil war movies. Then they airlifted me to a field hospital in Kuwait where I had bone and metal fragments removed from my spine and my knee, where I was shot after I had already been paralyzed. To this day, I still can’t shake the idea of what would have happened had I been shot in the knee first, and had to experience that pain for a second and then live with it for the rest of my life.

From The President On Down

Who do I blame? The blame is easily assigned, let’s say that.

I blame the leadership, from the President on down: the president for making the decision to go into Iraq arbitrarily and Congress for allowing him to go in without asking for any type of oversight as to how the hell this was going to be handled. Congress also gave away their constitutional right to be the only ones to declare a war; it was a complete abdication of power. Then there’s the military leadership who didn’t properly plan and the Department of Defense for not adequately supplying the troops beforehand.

This wasn’t a rush-to-war a là Afghanistan; a knee-jerk reaction where you want to just go in and get the people responsible. This was an unnecessary war to begin with so it would have made sense to stockpile your necessary resources beforehand to make sure the soldiers who are being sent in are as well protected as possible.

I’m Not Anti-War. I’m Anti-This-War

The overwhelming majority of Americans support the troops, no question about it. But the issue lies here: do you support the troops being used unnecessarily and their blood being shed for an improper reason? Or do you support the troops being used properly to defend the country and this constitution and being kept safe at all other times? I fall into the second group, along with, I hope, many other Americans.

Less than five per cent of Americans are serving in Iraq or Afghanistan but there are far more people who have the $3.99 magnetic ribbon on the back of their car that says “Support the Troops!”

What angers me the most is when I see people of military enlistment age standing on the sidelines, saying “Support the troops – we need to be in Iraq!” If that’s the case, they need to join!

Let them deal with the 100-plus degree heat with all that gear. Let them deal with being separated from their friends and husbands and wives and children. Let them deal with just the idea of being shot at or the threat of being blown up in a roadside bomb attack. Let them deal with the sacrifices and the pain of deployment. Let them deal with the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that they’re going to suffer from. Then let them say that they support the war and if that’s the case, then so be it.

The only people in America who can say they support the war are those who have been there or are direct family members of those who have been there – people who have to walk by their son or daughter’s empty bedroom everyday or the husband or wife who has to sleep in an empty bed every night. Those are the only people who can say they support the war because they either believe it, or they have to say they believe it to keep from going insane with the idea and pain of potential loss.

I’m not anti-war. I’m anti-this-war. The only reason I’m doing this is because I was injured in an unjust war, and I don’t want to see other people – American or Iraqi – injured for an unjust cause. And it bothers when people think that I’m doing otherwise.

I got one interesting Myspace [1] message from a man who said I needed to shut the “f” up. He said I enlisted after September 11 so I knew I’d get “f’d” up and I should quite whining and stop using my handicap to get fame and fortune.

Yes, there has been a little bit of fame because of the documentary and the compilation album I set up for the Iraq Veterans Against the War. But I’ve not seen any fortune and to be perfectly honest, if I had been shot in Afghanistan (the war I enlisted to go in to) there would be no Body Of War movie or soundtrack compilation. I wouldn’t be talking, pointblank. I’d take my money from the government, I’d go home and I’d shut up.

This Is My Life

Some nights I sleep a couple of hours, some nights I sleep a couple of minutes. In the morning, my body is so used to lying down and my muscles are so rigid and spastic that when I try to sit up, my upper half gets thrown back into the bed like Linda Blair from the Exorcist, while my legs kick out and go in all kinds of crazy directions.

I have to wait for my body to become a little loose before I can straighten my legs and get dressed. Just getting dressed can take me roughly 20 minutes on a good day and 30 to 40 minutes on a less-than-good day.

From there, I try to transfer into my chair and if my legs decide to get jerky, I almost fall out. Once I’m in my chair, I get on the Internet, check my email, eat some breakfast and just try to have a normal day.

I have to wear an external catheter, which is kind of like a condom with a tube on the end that connects to an external urine bag. Sometimes the tube becomes detached and I have accidents in public, which can be quite embarrassing. I also have also to put in an internal catheter once a day, which involves sticking a tube down my penis to get out any excess urine that could cause serious illness later.

When my day is finally done and I’m ready to get back into bed, it’s another struggle. This time, my body has become used to the sitting position so trying to lie down is just as difficult as sitting up was in the morning.

What’s a typical day in my life? There’s no such thing.

*****
Visit the Body Of War website [2]

You may also want to read Iraq: Taking Home The Feet I Felt Comfortable In [3]