And frankly, myself, I have the opportunity to speak out because I'm
kind of an odd case. I got back from Iraq completely in one piece and
healthy, and was selected to play rugby for the All-Marine Corps rugby
team. And I blew out my knee and had reconstructive surgery and got a
medical discharge from the Marine Corps on August 15. On August 16 I
walked into Kerry headquarters and asked them how I could help out,
because I've followed the issues very closely, and Senator Kerry laid
out a plan long ago to double the size of the special forces, to
increase funding for intelligence personnel and operations, and that's
the kind of thing we need to do. It's just common sense. Where do
terrorists live? How do they get trained? They get trained in little
camps. Or they're a couple of guys in an apartment building. Prior to
9/11, many of them were in Hamburg before the attack happened.

How do you get them? You use special forces, you use intelligence
operations, you find a couple of them and drop some black helicopters
and guys in black pajamas, and you whack them. And that's the kind of
operation we need to launch. This sideshow in Iraq where we send
150,000 teenagers without enough equipment to manage the occupation,
and without the kind of international support we needed for that
battle on the Iraqi front, it really detracted from our ability
globally to stop the spread of terror.

http://www.citypages.com/databank/25/1245/article12550.asp


"I've served in Iraq, and that's why I can't vote for this president
again"

By Andrew Borene as told to Steve Perry (Since leaving the Marine
Corps, Andrew Borene has become a national leader of Veterans for
Kerry)

[After graduated from college and working a couple of years as an
investment officer] he I got bit by the bug to [become] a ground
officer and ...
I ended up as an intelligence officer with the 1st Marine
Expeditionary Force. I was an intelligence collections officer, one of
several, with the 1st Marine Division, which is the infantry unit of
the expeditionary force. Personally, most of my work in intelligence
was done during the buildup to the invasion of Iraq, here in the
United States. I deployed to the Middle East in February of 2003. I
was in Kuwait; I crossed over to Iraq the night the invasion began.
Made it as far north as the north side of Baghdad, drove into Baghdad
the day that Saddam's statue fell down. I basically was there for the
events of the invasion and the fall of the regime.

Just after President Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" and the end
of major combat operations, I was sent home because it looked like
things were going to settle down, and my wife was pregnant and had
some pregnancy issues. That was pretty much the end of my combat phase
of the war, but the war was not over for me at that time. When I came
back, I was still serving as an intelligence officer. My job was to
support the troops in Iraq by putting together a lot of reporting from
agencies and assets, and helping in an intelligence capacity through
the computer and by communicating with the troops on the ground. It
was also my job to call families when there were casualties--not
deaths but injuries. That is a story that hasn't really been reported.
You don't see those numbers. But there are now over 10,000 young
Americans whose lives are forever changed by the injuries sustained
there.

When I left Iraq, fully two-thirds of the Iraqi people supported our
occupation of Iraq and wanted us there. Also at that time, the 1st
Marine Division, the unit I'd been part of, did occupation duty in
southern Iraq for four months, in what are now lawless areas where
al-Sadr is. But during that four months, no Marines were killed in
action. That's an important thing to note: What happened in Iraq to
cause the Iraqi people to suddenly swing to--the last poll I saw said
over 80 percent of the Iraqi people want the occupation forces gone
tomorrow. And they see the coalition as actually creating more chaos
and more insecurity in their country. For me personally, I fully
supported President Bush, I fully supported the invasion of Iraq. I
still support the liberation of the Iraqi people, but I came around to
support John Kerry when I realized that this administration has erred
time and time again. Even in the pursuit of their own end of a free
Iraq, they're incompetently carrying out the plan.

I started to get doubts as I drove south from Baghdad into southern
Iraq where we were going to do occupation duty. The Army forces were
coming north at the time. At the time we drove into Baghdad, people
were literally hugging and kissing the Marines. We had Marines wearing
soft-covers instead of helmets. It was a very permissive environment
at the time. I'm not going to say it was safe, but I will say that the
Iraqi people genuinely appreciated us. The joy that we felt doing
that, I've got to think it's only akin to what the WWII vets marching
into Paris felt on the day that they liberated France.

But as we were driving south, there was a Shi'ite pilgrimage going on
at the same time. It hadn't happened in over 20 years because of
Saddam, but they actually got to exercise their religious freedom. As
our Marines were driving south past these Shi'ite people waving and
smiling, the Army was driving north, as I said. I expected to see
construction equipment, or water, or supplies. Instead what I saw were
combat troops--tanks moving up the highway. They had dismounted
infantry along the side pushing Iraqi people off to the edge of the
highway. It was at that time I started to have some doubts about how
the occupation was going to go if we.... There was a window of
opportunity where the Iraqi people genuinely wanted assistance, and we
could have exploited that opportunity and used it to the advantage of
the Iraqi people and of the U.S. forces in Iraq.

Unfortunately, the reconstruction funds were never spent. If you just
look at the record, I think it was $18 billion appropriated by
Congress for reconstruction, of which this administration only spent 5
percent. They spent more than seven times that much money on non-bid
contracts to Halliburton. And this is the kind of stuff that got me
upset. I think the final screw for me was...there's a Marine general
named Anthony Zinni. He wrote a book called Battle Ready with Tom
Clancy, who obviously has a following in conservative circles. I read
that book, and then General Zinni came and gave a lecture to the
Marine officers at Camp Pendleton where I was stationed in which he
made a rather scathing indictment of the incompetence with which the
White House was essentially interfering with commanders on the ground.

The thing that General Zinni was talking about was that the White
House had appointed spokesmen. I don't know if you recall the press
conferences from Baghdad, but there was a guy [from the
administration] at every press conference. They spent more time on the
information campaign, on deceiving the American people about what was
happening in Iraq, than they did on actually trying to win the hearts
and minds of the Iraqi people. That's a problem. General Zinni is one
of the generals who spoke out and said, Hey, you need more troops for
the occupation. And you need better plans for the stability operations
after the invasion.

Because everybody knew the invasion was going to go very well, even
with the limited number of troops. However, any of the generals who
dissented--like Shinseki, he got basically relieved. If you look at
what happened yesterday, where it looks like even Bremer on the day he
got there said he wanted more troops on the ground, and that what we
had was not sufficient to stop the looting. The bottom line is that,
even though the argument about weapons of mass destruction and
terrorist proliferation was fabricated, the underlying argument, the
principle that a free Iraq would be better for the war on terror,
still holds true. But you can't even get that done.

And frankly, myself, I have the opportunity to speak out because I'm
kind of an odd case. I got back from Iraq completely in one piece and
healthy, and was selected to play rugby for the All-Marine Corps rugby
team. And I blew out my knee and had reconstructive surgery and got a
medical discharge from the Marine Corps on August 15. On August 16 I
walked into Kerry headquarters and asked them how I could help out,
because I've followed the issues very closely, and Senator Kerry laid
out a plan long ago to double the size of the special forces, to
increase funding for intelligence personnel and operations, and that's
the kind of thing we need to do. It's just common sense. Where do
terrorists live? How do they get trained? They get trained in little
camps. Or they're a couple of guys in an apartment building. Prior to
9/11, many of them were in Hamburg before the attack happened.

How do you get them? You use special forces, you use intelligence
operations, you find a couple of them and drop some black helicopters
and guys in black pajamas, and you whack them. And that's the kind of
operation we need to launch. This sideshow in Iraq where we send
150,000 teenagers without enough equipment to manage the occupation,
and without the kind of international support we needed for that
battle on the Iraqi front, it really detracted from our ability
globally to stop the spread of terror.

Another issue I had is, in the last 12 months, $3 to $4 billion worth
of heroin has been exported from Afghanistan. So that $3 to $4
billion, that's illicit drugs, that's illicit money. And who does that
money go back to? It goes back to the former Taliban warlords; it goes
back to the people who generated the very first terrorist strike on
America anyway.

And that $3 to $4 billion worth of heroin, how does it get exported?
It gets exported through clandestine shipping networks--the same kind
of clandestine shipping networks that one would need to smuggle
weapons of mass destruction. So the bottom line for me is, America is
less safe because of the way this administration has prosecuted the
war on terror. Senator Kerry and Senator Edwards have laid out real
structural plans. They want to add two active duty divisions to the
armed forces. They want to double special forces. And they want to
rely on the 9/11 Commission, which is something the administration
opposed in the first place, to look into those failings and ask how we
can make America better.

I guess I used to be what they call "Republican in name only." Kind of
a Ramstad Republican, you know--socially liberal and fiscally
conservative. Unfortunately, the issues in this election are just too
big for that.