“My Enlistment Oath Was To Protect And Defend The Constitution That This War Was Violating” Sgt. Jason Lemieux as told to Dave Wiellenga
“I got to Marine Corps boot camp in Parris Island, South Carolina, on Sept. 10, 2001. Boot camp is a media blackout so we didn’t realize the gravity of what was going on. The drill instructor told us the country had just been attacked by terrorists. But for all we knew he could have been exaggerating to scare us into submission.
“My first deployment was to Kuwait on Jan. 21, 2003, in preparation for the invasion.
“I was part of a huge boot drop. That’s not official terminology —boot drop — but it’s what they call dropping fresh infantry school graduates straight into combat. Our boot drop comprised 50 percent of the manpower of the unit we were joining.
“Normally they wouldn’t put so many fresh, inexperienced soldiers together in combat, but that’s the way they’re doing it in this war. I invaded Iraq on March 21, 2003, and went all the way to Baghdad. Most of the units we were supposed to attack fled when they found out we were coming. After the invasion we moved down to Karbala, the safest city in the country at the time. We supported the local businesses with our money, and were welcomed for our ability to maintain order. I came home in September.
“My second deployment was to Husaybah, from February to September of 2004. It was a meat grinder, incredibly violent, a whole different world than the Iraq I had left five months before.
“Husaybah was a nightmare. It was a place where human life lost all meaning for most people — American, Iraqi, or otherwise. The only life worth saving was your own.
“Among our forces there was blatant disregard for rules of engagement.
Instead, there was an understanding all along the chain of command that those rules were a formality for the sake of political protection for the people at the highest levels — so they would be able to fall back on those rules and say, ‘Well, he did commit crime X, but we have this rule against it so we’re not to blame.’
My section had a 50 percent attrition rate. We went with 14 Marines and came back to the States with seven.
“Personally, I didn’t agree with the war from the very beginning. I thought it was strategically unwise and legally unjustifiable. It is unconstitutional, and it was very demoralizing to fight an unconstitutional war. It contradicted the whole basis of my service in the Marine Corps.
My enlistment oath was to protect and defend the Constitution that this war was violating.
“But I actually served three deployments to Iraq.
For the third, I voluntarily extended my contract for 10 months.
Why? Most of the combat experience in my unit was leaving at the same time — all those members of that huge boot drop I’d come in with — and it was happening right before a redeployment to Ramadi, the center of gravity for the insurgency.
They were replacing us with another big boot drop — sending new and inexperienced guys to a horrible, dangerous place. I extended my contract to help bring home alive as many of these 18-year-old kids as I could. Looking at those kids, I wondered how I would feel if I was back home — drinking beer, talking to girls — and I got a phone call telling me that so-and-so got killed, I wasn’t there to do something about it.
“How would I be able to look myself in the mirror?”
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