I TALKED to my son in Iraq recently, and he told me they were being fired at while on convoy on a regular basis. When I asked him if they shot back, he said, "No." I asked why, and he said all the ruckus about Americans supposedly committing atrocities and murders has caused military leadership to require soldiers to write an exhaustive report when they fire their weapons before they can call it a day.
He said many times they run for 10-12 hours in full battle gear, in the intense heat with bullets bouncing off their vehicles and everyone "just hunkers down" and sweats it out. When they finally get to the new U.S. compound, no one wants to write reports. He said morale is very low because of this and everyone still wants to believe they are supported back in the States.
As a Vietnam veteran, the loss of every soldier hurts my heart and puts a shadow over my day, but we just cannot, as a country, pull the rug out from under our guys and gals in harm's way and strap them with so many rules of engagement that they can't even fight back. And I don't think the answer is to nuke the country or anything like that, either. We have got to quit playing arm-chair quarterback on everything that happens. We have military officers for that, and we need to let them do their job.
We as Americans have to keep it before us that we are at war and there will be collateral damage in the way of women, children and noncombatants. I told my son before he left on his third overseas tour to not allow himself to be captured, knowing full well what I was saying. He's an advanced martial artist and a real scrapper, but allowing those terrorists to capture a soldier is only prolonging a very personal violent, heinous death sentence. A soldier might as well go down fighting and take as many as he can with him.
BERT MARSHALL Baytown
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