Those of us who support– from places of relative comfort and safety– the liberation of Iraq owe a special gratitude this holiday season to the soldiers putting their lives on the line every day to accomplish that goal.
So what kind of gratitude is it when Pentagon inspectors find that mess halls run by Halliburton in Iraq feature “[b]lood all over the floors of refrigerators, dirty pans, dirty grills, dirty salad bars, rotting meat and vegetables.” Or that Halliburton promised once to fix the problem but didn’t?
What kind of gratitude is it when soldiers are forced by low pay to go into horrendous debt at the hands of “payday loan” vultures? Or when “[s]oldiers who do not pay up can face a court-martial and loss of security clearance, and in some cases are kicked out of the Army”?
It’s worth noting that most of the reports I’ve seen about poor treatment of US soldiers appear on anti-war web sites. Why is that? Shouldn’t it be the pro-war people who are raising hell about this?
Nobody joins the military to get rich or live in luxury. But surely we owe those who do join something better than this.
