US Marine 6/19/2003 6:56 pm EDT

It´s not the soldiers fault that terrible shit happens in wartime. They´re scared beyond anything anyone who hasn´t experienced combat can understand.

Try to imagine the confusion of a battlefield. You´ve probably been without sleep for 24-60 hours. The terror. You might DIE at any moment, from any direction. You just watched your buddy get shot in the head, or blown to tiny, greasy patches of flesh and bones. You know his wife and have played with his kids.

War is not cool.

I blame the punks that run the racket. War is a tool to keep powerful people, powerful.

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You hit the nail right on the head.

I´m a Lt. in the Marine Corps and I just returned from Iraq. I am NOT pro-Bush (in fact, I hate that motherfucker) in any way, but it´s not the soldier´s fault. We follow orders, if anything, the Commanders are to blame for this type of stuff.

Also, most soldiers are misinformed (not everyone knows what Bush is really up to) and they really DO believe that we´re getting Muslims back for what they did to us on 9/11, but most of these guys don´t know Iraq had nothing to do with it, it´s the way they are trained, the ´Higher-Uppers´ who don´t disclose the real truth to these loyal soldiers who want to do nothing but go to war and ´get the enemy´ so their families don´t have to go through another 9/11. I know this because that´s how most soldiers over there talked, even the men in my unit. I just do the job I´m supossed to do and come home, I´d rather not do this and because of the reasons it´s being done, but what can I do? If I refuse, I´ll be court-martialed and thrown in the brig. I wouldn´t do that to my children. So sometimes you gotta play the game, even if you hate it. Once you´re in, you´re in and there is no going back.

I watched 18-yr old Marines die under my command in this war, I held them in my arms when they took their last breaths and said their last good-byes (usually thinking about wife, children, or parents), I come home from war no longer a young and lively Marine Lt. although I am 25 years old... I feel old, like I´ve lived through too much, I´m tired and I have a heavy heart. I have many Good-Byes to give to the brave wives of the soldiers I lost in Iraq. When you´re in that sort of situation when there are bullets flying around you and you are watching your men get shot one after the other before your very eyes and you know you could be next, you shoot at pretty much anything that moves on the enemy´s side, it´s their life or yours, I´m just trying to come home to my family and I do really feel so deep for the innocent civilians that get caught up in this horrible situation that is war. But you don´t understand that when our men say they don´t help the dying soldiers or they double-tap them, it´s because they´ve just seen those very soldiers blow their roomate´s head off. How would you feel? I´m sure it´s the same for both sides, we hate to do what we do, but we have to. We´ll live with these physical and emotional scars for the rest of our lives, but hopefully you´ll never have to.

So, please, unless you´ve lived through the hell that is a war, don´t blame us, blame the ones who make us do this.

God Bless, and FUCK BUSH

Marine Lt.