CHAPTER HEROES OF OUR COUNTRY (REDUX) "Being out there and actually seeing it, as far as the progress and how the US carries themselves, how they interact with everybody, the whole outlook kind of brings it back to reality and you realize that you were being told one thing there's more to the truth than how they sugarcoat it." Paul Kulikov, U.S. Army, 1st and 25th Infantry Division in Washington "You have a technique called Recon By Fire which means you roll down a certain area and you fire at basically nothing, to try to draw fire, to try to find out where people are." Mathew Onstad, U.S. Army, 4th Infantry Division, Second Brigade, part of the 367 armored unit, stationed in Fort Hood Texas "Would you recommend the Army to a young kid, 18, going into the military?" I asked Matt Onstad. "Not now, no way." "Why not?" "It's a guaranteed deployment." "What do you think we should do in Iraq?" "Leave." "Leave now, just get out?" "Yeah," said Matt. "Their main thing right now is rebuilding the government, rebuilding the stature of things, our everyday soldier that's over there is not part of that. He's not the one sitting down at the desk, saying this is what should happen. You can do that with no soldiers, you can do that over the phone. There's an embassy over there now. They're trying to make Iraq a normal deployment, like a one or two year deployment we have in Germany or Korea." "You know they have 14 permanent bases in Iraq?" "Why though? You wanna rebuild their government. You wanna help them, you wanna help what we took away from them. That's awesome. But why do we need to be permanent over there? Ok, there's an embassy. We don't need permanent posts over there. There's no reason for it. We're not fighting terrorists any more. What we're fighting against is decades and decades of civil war and this religious war that went on before we got there, that had nothing to do with us. And it's still going on, that has nothing to do with us. And when you stick your nose in it, try to make things right, it just adds fuel to the fire give a trillion dollars to Africa and see how many more lives are positively affected. Not saying it's gonna solve the problem, but how many lives are positively affected that way, than with what we're doing over there in Iraq." "Especially if they don't want us over there." "Now what about Osama Bin laden?" "I don't even think about that anymore," said Matt. "It's so off the wall with what's going on. From the time of 9-11, everything was just criss-cross and blinded and braided into each other. I can't even think about Afghanistan. We have soldiers over there who are living in worse conditions than in Iraq, and dealing with worse stuff than in Iraq, that people have turned a blind eye to, almost. We need to sit down and think of what we're doing and where our concentration needs to be and why we're in the situation we're in now and think where do we need to be, where do we not need to be. If you're worried about Osama Bin Laden, funding and being part of 9-11, then find Osama Bin Laden. What are you doing in Iraq? Osama Bin Laden ain't in Iraq. There's no way he'd be there." If we can't take care of our soldiers over here, how are we going to take care of them as they go over there? If the rights and freedoms they are fighting for us over there are stripped away over here, then what have they really accomplished? "At that point, where you've already done a Recon-By-Fire, your cover is blown. Everybody knows what you're doing and there just saying Roll down these streets and either fire first or get fired at so our tanks can come in and find the people that are firing at you. On multiple occasions, every time we'd go down there they'd be firing at us." Mathew Onstad, U.S. Army, 4th Infantry Division, Second Brigade, part of the 367 armored unit, stationed in Fort Hood Texas The real heroes of this country are those who would stand up against all enemies, foreign and