Active Duty US Troops in Iraq want OUT!

It is very likely the US soldiers actually there on the dirt of Iraq have the best view available as to what is really going on there. They have been subjected to being put in the position of accomplishing this illegal invasion of a country which has never been any threat to the US and have now seen up close and personal the carnage this has resulted in from all sides of this conflict. Many of them have done things which they will regret for the rest of their lives and the tremendous number of returning troops with severe psychological difficulties certainly bears this out.

They are now understanding, if they have not from the very beginning, that they are actually fighting a populace which is attempting to repel a foreign invader which seeks to own and control their own country! In general, the Iraqi 'freedom fighters' as they should actually be called, seem to be doing a pretty good job and anyone with even half a functional brain can easily see that the US is NOT going to succeed in their plans to 'acquire' Iraq.

Some of these US soldiers are now getting so fed up with the situation they have been put into that they are now openly calling for Congress the get them the heck out of there!
From a Reuters article recently posted at the Signs of the Times website it is clear that a bunch of these soldiers want us out of Iraq... and fast!

This is the article:

Reuters
Wed Oct 25, 2006

WASHINGTON - More than 200 active duty U.S. armed service members, fed up with the war in Iraq, have joined an unusual protest calling for withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country, organizers said on Wednesday.

and takes advantage of Defense Department rules allowing active duty troops to express personal opinions to members of Congress without fear of retaliation.  The campaign, called the Appeal for Redress from the War in Iraq, is the first of its kind in the Iraq warliation, organizers said.

"As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq," states the appeal posted on the campaign's Web site at www.appealforredress.org

"Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home," it adds. The Web site allows service members to sign the appeal that will be presented to members of Congress. Organizers said the number of signatories has climbed from 65 to 219 since the appeal was posted a few days ago and Wednesday when it was publicly launched. There are 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

Active duty service members are restricted in expressing personal views publicly. But rules governed by the Military Whistleblower Protection Act give them the right to speak to a member of Congress respectfully while off-duty and out of uniform, making clear they do not speak for the military. In a conference call with reporters, a sailor, a Marine and a soldier who had served in the Iraq operation said American troops there have increasingly had difficulty seeing the purpose of lengthy and repeated tours of duty since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Their misgivings have intensified this year as the country has edged toward civil war, they said.

"The real grievances are: Why are we in Iraq if the weapons of mass destruction are not found, if the links to al Qaeda are not substantiated," said Marine Sgt. Liam Madden of Rockingham, Vermont, who was in Iraq from September 2004 to February 2005 and is based at Quantico, Virginia. "The occupation is perpetuating more violence," he said. "It's costing way too many Iraqi civilian and American service member lives while it brings us no benefit."

The campaign's sponsoring committee includes the activist groups Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace and Military Families Speak Out. Navy Seaman Jonathan Hutto of Atlanta, stationed at Norfolk, Virginia and the first service member to join the campaign, said a similar appeal during the Vietnam War drew support from over 250,000 active duty service members in the early 1970s.