Iraq War veteran's march draws hundreds of supporters

An Iraq War veteran dressed in desert fatigues has been marching around the State Capitol in Sacramento, 24 hours a day, since 8am on Memorial Day, to remember the US troops killed in Iraq and the futility of the war itself, spurring hundreds of supporters to walk with him and offer him support. The veteran, who prefers to remain anonymous to concentrate people's attention on the nearly 3,500 US soldiers killed in the war, plans to take one lap around the capitol for every fallen soldier, including about 362 from California. The veteran is carrying a yellow ribbon in memory of the fallen soldiers, and reading the name and brief biography of each soldier on every lap he makes around the capitol. Marchers accompanying him are carrying white sheets of paper with the names of an estimated 685,000 Iraqi civilians killed in Iraq since the US invasion in March 2003. "I decided to do this march to mobilize the community to become more active against the war, and to send a strong signal to the Bush administration that we won't put up any longer with this war," he said. "We want to show the public how many soldiers have died so far, and the need for the war to end now before more people die." "The march has been great in the sense that we have received a lot of community involvement. I have spoken with strangers who haven't been active in any other way, but decided to march with me," he said. The veteran became opposed to the war when he was stationed as a medic in Iraq in March 2003, after having been in Kuwait and Afghanistan. One incident stands out most clearly in his mind. He and two other soldiers were dispatched to retrieve the body of a fallen soldier. When they arrived, however, the Iraqis had already buried the soldier's body to prevent the dogs from feeding on it. "We didn't bring any shovels with us, and we tried to dig up the body with our hands - and we found one of his finger bones," he said. "Our first class petty officer then ordered us to abandon the body." "This was a really significant moment in my military career," he noted. "We had a chance to get the body back to the states and yet we were told to abandon our fellow soldier's body." That was not the only thing that the veteran questioned, since the civilian casualties that he encountered also greatly impacted him. "I saw Iraqi kids and teenagers injured and badly hurt by US weapons," he stated. When he arrived home from the war, he was angered when he heard reports from his fellow soldiers that were kicked out of the military for their injuries during the war, but received only partial disability benefits. He was also very dismayed by the many soldiers he saw that were not getting proper treatment from the military or the Veterans Administration for post-traumatic stress syndrome. "I met one veteran who kept having seizures after being forced out of the military without full compensation," he reflected. "Yet he couldn't hold down a normal job because of his disability." Supporters have walked hundreds of laps for the Iraqi people. "We started with the names of 3,500 Iraqi men, women and children," said Maggie Coulter of Sacramento Area Peace Action. "For each of those names, there are another 200 people who have been killed in this war that we don't have names for." Tina Wong from Military Families Speak Out emphasized that the veteran's action helped to put a human face on the costs of war. "Each soldier was a son or daughter, a father or mother, a wife or husband," she stated. "Each life was precious and each fallen solider was loved by someone. We continue to proclaim that the best way to support the troops is by withdrawing funds for this war and to fund the care that is needed for them when they come home." Zohreh Whittaker, whose son is currently deployed in Iraq, deplored the loss of US and Iraqi lives. "Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed and the infrastructure has been destroyed. It is time to pull our troops out of Iraq and the US needs to pay the cost of rebuilding the infrastructure of Iraq," she said.