iraq

Are you okay, man?""Yeah, I'm good."It's a lie. I wonder if I will ever be good again.

I missed the war and the freedom that came with it. When you are that close to death, you feel free. Every breath you take could be your last. So you inhale and savor each breath, try not to think about your death even though signs of it are all around you. The freedom comes from knowing that if anybody gives you crap, you can eliminate them and the situation. Just shoot and get it over with.

I wanted people to know that we fired rounds into moving trucks and open windows to survive, not for anyone else__ freedom. Not for the Democrats. Not for Republicans. Just to survive.

It__ be easy to blame everything on 9/11 or the wars that came after. It__ really about the choices we made. By necessity we adapt to the realities of the world we live in, but if we forget that how we live shapes and influences the world around us, then we__e already lost.

Fuck it,_ said Private First Class Chris Barnes, raising his hand. __et__ do it. This sounds like a great fucking idea. Who wants to get blown up?_ They started laughing. Watt, Barker, Cortez, and Private First Class Shane Hoeck all raised their hands. They did not give a damn anymore. It was all so absurd to them, that they were going to drive up and down a road for the next eight hours as bomb magnets. The only thing that they could do was laugh. __ooray! We__e going out to get blown up!_ they sang. __ho__ on board? Hey, who wants to come get blown up? Woohoo! Yeah, dude, I am ready to go fucking die! We are all going to fucking die!

Everyone acted like they knew so much about the war. But none of them really knew anything besides what they had learned through Internet searches or shady half-truths political pundits spouted from the comfort of their news desks. Nothing could ever be flushed out because nobody bothered to ask the troops or look at both sides of the story.

The other day, we went somewhere, and did something.

I__l give you one chance to run,but may your shoulder always whisper in your ear__t__ best to watch out for men, like me.

I__ clinging to one last thought: pain is the harbinger of hope. You have to be alive to feel pain. If you are alive, then you have purpose. If you have purpose, then you have hope.

I guess I was always looking for something. What it was, I didn__ know. I wanted help from the VA, but didn__ want to go back, didn__ want to be subjected to that second-rate treatment any longer. I wanted to find peace within myself, but didn__ know how or where to locate it. I wanted to be a sergeant again, a writer, less angry, a better husband, and to ward off the constant bombardment of war-related thoughts. Most of all, I didn__ want any more Americans coming home from Iraq in boxes or with jingle-jangled minds.

When you__e as small as I am, people don__ expect you to be much of an athlete. You either wilt under the weight of low expectations, or you rise above them.

Sami and I had exactly one day together in the old world. On Tuesday the jihadists came to our front door and knocked down our buildings. Our new world was hijacked planes, anthrax, and Afghanistan. Then we had snipers inside the Beltway. Then came Iraq. With every military action we were told reprisals were not just probable, but a foregone conclusion. An intelligence officer with a fancy PowerPoint briefed teachers on __ur new reality._ He called us __argets._ He said __et used to it._ He told our Webmaster __et off your ass_ and remove bus routes/stops from the school__ website. Johnny Jihad would find that information especially helpful if he decided to plow through our kids one morning as they stood half-asleep waiting for the school bus.

Appearances can be misleading. You just never know what__ inside someone until he__ tested.

Who supports the troops? The troops support the troops.

Always I am speaking English on behalf of fools

The war to preserve the privilege of mythmaking

To hear them laugh was to hear that everything was all right, but to see them laugh was to see otherwise

I am a Christian, but my time in Iraq has convinced me that God doesn't want to hear from me anymore. I've done things that He can never forgive. I've done them consciously. I've made decisions I must live with for years to come. I am not a victim. In each instance, I heard my conscience call for restraint, I told it to shut the fuck up and let me handle my business. All the sins I've committed, I've done with one objective: to keep my men alive.