Halliburton/Cheney,soldier speaking out

read today:

“For two years, I risked my life in the Iraq war. I am the child of a career Army man, and when it came time to decide what to do after high school, I knew I wanted to follow the same path. In 2003 and then again in 2005, my unit was deployed to Iraq.As a maintenance unit, we were responsible for repairing everything and anything soldiers used to do their jobs and stay alive: weapons, radios, trucks, computers—you name it.

So you can imagine our shock, weeks after getting to Iraq, when we were ordered to hand our mission over to private contractors employed by Halliburton.But there's a catch: Halliburton had neither the training nor the equipment to take over our mission. Most of the contractors had no previous knowledge at all of our equipment before coming to Iraq. One of the contractors I "trained" was not even remotely familiar with radio systems, but had been a missile systems repairman while he was in the Army.

Because our unit no longer had a mission, we were forced into other things that we weren't trained to do. Mechanics found themselves on guntruck missions escorting convoys between bases. Many of us were forced onto guard duty while the contractors fumbled through our old jobs getting paid way more than any soldier. I spent months checking ID cards at the Post Exchange and Recreation facility.

I felt helpless and awful, like I was letting down my fellow soldiers while they were being put into life-threatening situations with unsafe equipment, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Since I returned to the States, I've learned more about why all that happened—about how the Republicans gave Dick Cheney's old company all these huge contracts and didn't care at all how it endangered us soldiers.

And now, there is something I can do about it—I can speak out.
Respectfully,–David Mann,
SPC US Army 2003 & 2005
Tuesday, October 10th, 2006"