GI famlies protest Iraq war at US base

Our Wounded Warriors
NY Times OP-ED COLUMNIST
Our Wounded Warriors
By BOB HERBERT
Published: March 12, 2004

Hector Delgado joined the Marines in the spring of 1999. He was at loose ends in his hometown of Selden, N.Y., and hoped the Marines would give his life some "structure and discipline."

"Did it work?" I asked.

Corporal Delgado shifted his upper body in his wheelchair and laughed. "Oh, absolutely," he said. "One hundred percent."

His enlistment was supposed to have been up last March, and his plans were to pursue a career in law enforcement. He'd taken and passed the test for the New York City Police Department and was due to enter the police academy last summer.

But the U.S. went to war with Iraq, and Corporal Delgado's enlistment was extended. "They were pretty much preventing people from getting out," he said. "I was disappointed at first. But I had to sit down and really think about who I was, which was a marine, you know? This was my job."

Corporal Delgado was in the first wave of troops sent to Iraq and was severely injured in April 2003. He was with a convoy of vehicles, including fuel tankers, that had stopped outside Nasiriya. "All the fuel tankers were staged next to each other," he said. "Everyone was trying to sit in between them to get out of the sun because it was like 105 degrees that day.

"There was a lot of heavy equipment around, shaking the ground. And a tanker trailer really isn't all that sturdy in the sand. I had my friend Corporal Gonzalez sitting to my left, and all of a sudden I just started hearing metal crinkling and everybody yelling: `Get up! Get up!' "

Somehow the supports holding up the tanker that had been shielding Corporal Delgado and others from the fierce desert sun gave way.

"It landed on top of me," Corporal Delgado said. "On top of my waist."

He was pinned to the ground, facedown, for 25 minutes, remaining conscious the entire time. His pelvis was crushed. His right hip was broken and dislocated. Bones in his left leg and left foot were shattered. His abdominal muscles were crushed, and he suffered nerve damage in both legs.

In one of the great understatements of the 21st century, Corporal Delgado, who is 24, said, "It was very painful."

The rescue effort was excruciating. "They came with a forklift to try to lift it up," he said. "But the forklift couldn't do it. So they came over with a crane, and they hooked it up and the crane wasn't working. So they had to take the crane back and get another crane. As soon as they got it up, they pulled me out, and I was in so much pain they just threw me on the stretcher and put me in the medical Hummer and brought me to the medical tent.

"I looked up and saw both my feet were flopped over to the left, and I didn't want to look up again."

Corporal Delgado would learn later that his close friend, Cpl. Armando Gonzalez, who was right beside him when the tanker fell, was killed instantly. (Corporal Gonzalez, of Hialeah, Fla., was 25. He had married just six months prior to the accident, and last September his wife gave birth to a son.)

The troops who are selflessly sacrificing their bodies and their dreams in Iraq (as troops always do in war), are not getting a lot of attention here at home. Most of us are busy with other things ?- presidential politics, Martha Stewart's rise and fall, the use of steroids in baseball.

I was put in touch with Corporal Delgado (and several other marines who were badly wounded in Iraq) by John Melia, founder of the Wounded Warrior Project (a division of the United Spinal Association), which tries to assist the young men and women who are hurt in the wars they fight for us.

"They come back," he said, "and in many cases they're not the same kids that they were when they left us."

Thousands of U.S. troops have been wounded and injured in Iraq. They have been paralyzed, lost limbs, suffered blindness, been horribly burned and so on. They are heroes, without question, but their stories have largely gone untold.

If Corporal Delgado is harboring any bitterness, I couldn't detect it. There were times, he said, when he wished he had died beneath the trailer. But he fought his way through the mental distress, just as he is fighting through the physical pain, and his goal is to one day walk again. He'll be discharged from the Marines soon and hopes to find work helping other disabled veterans.

"That's one way I could repay all the people who are helping me now," he said.

Relatives of GIs killed in Iraq protest outside US base
Relatives of US soldiers killed in Iraq protest outside US base
Sun Mar 14, 6:13 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Hundreds of protesters, many of them relatives of US soldiers killed in Iraq or currently on duty in the region, marched outside the Dover Air Force Base in the northeastern state of Delaware to protest the US war in Iraq.

The march was organized by Military Families Speak Out, a group made up of people with relatives in the military, as well as the group Veterans for Peace.

The Sunday march was a "memorial procession" to "honor our fallen brothers and sisters, sons and daughters," as well as "Iraqis and the increasing number of people from other countries who have been killed and wounded," the group said in a statement.

US military casualties are flown into Dover. The government however has been reluctant to let cameras record airplanes unloading coffins, and reluctant to let news reporters interview personnel wounded in Iraq.

According to the groups, the government of President George W. Bush "refuses to acknowledge the toll of this war -- including those who are killed and wounded."

"We call on this administration to start telling the truth, and stop hiding the toll," Military Families Speak Out said in a statement.

The protesters marched up to the base gates and read one by one the names of the US military personnel killed in Iraq.

A similar protest is scheduled for Monday outside the Walter Reed Army Hospital in the US capital, to be followed by a protest march outside the White House.

The protests are being held to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the US-led attack on Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s Iraq.

Well, at least their deaths mean something to someone:
Survey finds hope in occupied Iraq