INTERVIEW WITH ADELE KUBEIN WITH LETTERS FROM M'KESHA CLAYTON

Adele lives in Oregon and her daughter, M'kesha Clayton, joined the National Guard to help pay for college. Adele shares her letters from M'kesha here.

Adele: M'kesha and I are very close, we're both liberal and somewhat cynical about government, and we both disagree with war. She joined six years ago and her National Guard contract stipulated that she'd never be involved in combat.

I was very concerned about her joining but she told me, "Oh, don't worry, there'll never be another war. I'm going to build roads and fight fires and save money for college."

She's with Bravo 52 and has had a very rough time.

When she left the US she had a serious leg injury. She'd broken it and had plates and bolts in the bone to assist healing. She was walking with a stick and she told me that they wouldn't deploy her like that. But they did. They sent her to Mosul, northern Iraq in April 2003, as the war was ending.

She was traumatized by what she saw in that country. Bombs and weaponry had decimated the countryside. Iraqi tanks and armored vehicles were strewn in the road and many still had bodies in them. She asked why the bodies hadn't been removed and was told people were afraid to approach those sites because of the chemical contaminants and Depleted Uranium (DU) from US ammunition. She was told not to breathe the "red dust" but given no masks or any other protective equipment.

M'kesha said Bravo 52 was under supplied in weapons, armor, and basic support, including water, ammunition, and very little food, just one meal a day.

She was told she'd build houses and orphanages, and "The Iraqis will love you, they're greet you with flowers and candy." Instead, she was placed behind the gun mounted on a humvee. Not only has she seen combat ö despite her contract ö she's killed people.

My family is Arabic, from Jordan. My father came here years ago and I have Jordanian relatives here and in Jordan.

When M'kesha killed Iraqis, she told me she didn't want to see members of my family again. She said, "I've killed people. How can I ever come home again? How can I ever look in peoples' faces? I'll always see the look in the face of the first man I killed just before I killed him and how he looked as he died."

The great irony is that at one point they escorted military contractors who had the best of everything. Contractors Kellog, Root, and Brown (KBR), subsidiary of Halliburton, had all the best equipment and military protection and did none of the work while the military was taking all the risks, fighting, shooting, and killing. After KBR set up the kitchens, many troops got sick from tainted meat. On average, troops dropped about 30 pounds in weight. Many were gaunt and undernourished.

M'kesha and several other troops contracted some kind of liver disease. Her liver simply stopped functioning. They were medivac'd to Germany where she recovered somewhat. At least two troops with the same liver disease died. Actually, several people of Bravo 52 suffered heart attacks or strokes. Remember, these were National Guardsmen, many in their 50s, out of shape, not combat ready, and not expecting to see combat at all. They were sent back in theater after treatment.

M'kesha was sent from Germany back to Mosul where she was blown off the back of her humvee when a mortar round exploded near by. The fall re-injured her leg and now she's in Ft. Carson, Colorado, awaiting surgery to repair it for a second time. She's must be on active duty while she waits.

She's likely to be redeployed in 2006 due to the stop loss program that is preventing so many troops from leaving even though they're finished their tours of duty.

I will share M'kesha's letters that describe her day-to-day life while in Iraq. But I want to say that we, the United States, have a pattern of mistakes in the Middle East. Yet, this administration has an agenda that is more radical than even our previous mistakes over there. September 11 was a rude awakening to many Americans and now we're playing catch up.

I don't agree with this war. There was no reason for it and there was no contingency planning for what would happen afterward ö the result of which we're seeing now.

This war is starting to look more and more like the Vietnam War.

Letters from M'kesha

21 April 2003
Dear Mom,
Nights here are a trip in the rainy season. Even the rain is desperate. But I feel at home, as if this land holds no hostility for me.

There was a pack of wild dogs where I walked in the desert last night barking to each other. The moon was hidden by clouds and, as I danced in the rain, my rifle thumped and beat against my calves, my boonie cap fell back and was held by a string against my throat. The rain fell in great, big drops and the wind whistled across the debris in the sand.

Someone was out there shooting the dogs. Those are the ugly moments interspersed with the beautiful. I heard two shots. I hope the dogs got away.

If I didn't distance myself from the world I'd be more upset than I am.

I miss my own dogs, my truck, my home, and I miss my people. Yet, if someone offered me a ride home tomorrow I'd turn it down. My crew is here. And the kids need me.

I have angry moments, frustration, all the usual things but I've also have found something.

I cannot describe the joy I have in living, even in the bad moments I find something beautiful around me. I hold onto it with all my power.

I may not be able to change the situations I face, or the world here, but I hold true to things that make me who I am. I will change. I return home a different person but I'll not let go of my joy in life. I will not let go of my ability to find beauty in squalor. I can't explain the faith that surges through me, but I know that I will return whole.

I will not let this tear me apart.

31 May 2003
Dear Mom,
Things have been pretty crazy, over all one helluva experience. I've been kissed, my hand shaken by about a hundred Kurds, blessed by Shiites, shot at, my truck's been struck by AK-47. I've literally had shit, rocks, cans, bottles thrown at me, and beaned with a slingshot. In return I've nailed people with sand filled coke cans from moving vehicles as they've thrown shit at me.

Somebody tried to run me over and I saw a kid run over. I've seen an Iraqi shot in the face, been in fire-fights in the middle of the night, and seen every kind of military aircraft.  I've been in every kind of fucked up convoy except for one going into a minefield.

I've been lost Saddam's home town of Tikrit with only three vehicles, found my way back, run a convoy, and repaired a truck in the middle of a riot.

People have tried stealing my tools as I worked. I've almost killed children who've run into the roads after MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) that soldiers in vehicles ahead of me threw.

I've med-evac'd wounded, taken pictures all over Iraq, and, generally, I've run amok. I've terrified whole stretches of Iraqis, who seem afraid of my tattoos and me. Perhaps they think I'm a demon possessed? Normally they flock to American women, crowd around, touch them, kiss them, and try to buy them. But me they sidle around at look at sideways. 

It isn't mayhem all the time, often it's pretty dull and routine, interspersed with random and incredible violence. Once our guys accidentally set alight the munitions dump and ignited in three hours what was supposed to take three years to use: mortars and missiles were flying everywhere. One guy was blown up.

Arabs have strange trinkets, animals, and toys hanging off their trucks and on their dashes. There are dingle balls and fringes hanging from windows, stickers all over cars -- like my truck -- and everything is painted in brilliant Gypsy color. The men dance in the street; little girls line up and wave like crazy while their brothers flip us off and throw rocks. Young women are starting to throw away their black shawls and hijabs and wear scarves of brilliant colors like belly dancers. One carload of women blew kisses, whipped their scarves off, and waved them out their car windows at me. Maybe they thought I was a guy.

Cities here are a mixture of rubble and incredible architecture. People are taking down Saddam's walls and using the brick for rebuilding. Baghdad is still burning in places.

The drive from Kuwait was a study in the complete destruction of cities, infrastructure, fuel lines, all sorts of shit. Swaths of highway were littered with carcasses of tanks and artillery, burnt hulls of cars lining the road, great pits burnt into the asphalt.

Sunlight at sunset catches sand and turns the sun into a bloody orb and adds eerie feelings of desolation to highways free of civilians, where gutted buses and stripped and burnt chassis lie. Dead bodies still rot in tanks because of depleted uranium.  

Ramadan has begun.

Things are going bad fast. We had ten attacks yesterday alone. One guy was killed and three others seriously hurt. Losing our guys is hitting us hard. Now we realize it's not just the infantry getting hit.  

Coming back my helicopter was shot at. We made it but I had a serious moment when that damned bird started dropping.  I love the ground.

Runs to Dohuk are cancelled except for vital parts. People are finally realizing we're at war and the mood around camp is serious, somber, and sketchy.  

Things are very bad here, worse than before. Tactically, and we're attacked nightly by Iraqi freedom fighters who've found a stock of rockets and are launching them from a couple of miles away. Infantry is hit hard. We might start the push for Kuwait in late January but still not be out of here until April or May. I love you, miss you, and will be so happy to see you.

16 August 2003 
Dear Mom,
Outside helicopters hover and operators clean weapons; the rack of slides punctuates each word stroked onto this paper. . .

Part of my heart grieves for my choices yet another part says I did what was necessary.

3 September 2003
Dear Mom,
A young, very beautiful Iraqi girl saw me walking up the street. I was greasy and my rifle and tool box was slung over my shoulder. Instead of running like most wise women do when they see soldiers, she paused. I guess she saw a sister when she looked at me. I saw her friendliness. She seemed happy to gain my attention and I was in awe of her fearlessness. We stopped and exchanged a dozen sign language augmented words. Her name is Dunyia, and laughed when I told her my name. Later her mother told me Mageesha is Iraqi Arabic for "to sweep out").

The night before we left the lake, Dunyia found me ö itself noteworthy as women never leave their courtyards -- and brought me to her home for dinner. Her family speaks good English. Her mother told me Dunyia liked me and had been watching me order the men around as I worked as a mechanic.

Dunyia and I talked a lot. She liked my necklace. Afterwards, alone in my room, I made her a chocker like mine. In the morning as we rolled out to convoy, I stopped at her house, jumped out, stormed the gate, put it in her hands, and the fled for my truck before I got in trouble.

The dog packs have shifted. Now there's a young female Shepard who runs to me to play. She bounces off me, bats me with her white paws and teeths me gently. The Iraqis are horrified and I threaten to shoot them when they tried to stone her. They say the dogs will turn on me, and tells me I'm as filthy as a dog. I smile and reach for my rifle. I hate the men who look at me like that. Abuses of women here is tragic. Returning home and seeing whole women, women who aren't soldiers, will be great.

The other night was interesting. I and others were on the scraper when a firefight started on the hill. We kept working until bullets whizzed past and one hit the scraper below me. I killed the drop-light, finished tightening the brake line, and got down all giddy and crazy with laughter. 

There are mortars on the other side of camp. No big deal. Those guys have bad aim. They put mortar tubes on bricks, light Îem up, and hope they go; most land without exploding.