This iReport is part of an assignment:
The war through your eyes: Iraq 10 years on
Why I Volunteered For the Invasion
When I was a child I read "1984" by George Orwell. I thought and prayed that there could never be a place like that in real life. Then I learned about dictators, including Saddam Hussein. I joined the military for an opportunity to stop people like that, and when my unit asked who wanted to go to Iraq for a possible invasion I immediately volunteered. After the fighting died down where we were in the city of An Numiniyah, we got to talk to civilians for the first time. Several wanted to desperately talk to us so we got our interpreter. The first one came and told us how Saddam's men had come to his family's home and when his father refused to do what they said, they lined up his father and his uncle against a wall and made him and his mother watch as they shot them dead. The second person came up and told us how he had been walking home with his new bride in their wedding clothes when Uday Hussein drove by, stopped the car, got out, and raped this man's new wife while he was forced to watch. We asked them why they were telling us this and they told us it was because it was the first time they could tell anyone because "there had been ears and eyes everywhere", which instantly reminded me of Orwell's story. If you look at pictures from the war, you will see the photos and murals of Saddam had their eyes scratched out because he could not longer watch them. Under Saddam, even your own children would turn you in for complaining about Saddam because if they didn't they could be tortured themselves. These people who talked to us didn't want anything, they just wanted to be able to speak for the first time about this horrible sadness in their life. I knew that very minute that the war was worth it. Someone who was with us commented that if he died in the war, then it was worth it, because dying to save someone from a horror like that was 1,000 times better than dying from old age in a nursing home having done nothing. We all agreed and many of us, myself included, ended up volunteering for several additional tours over the following years to save the Iraqi people from the evil they were living in. Several even paid the ultimate price. I have absolutely no regrets and if you could ask even the ones who did not make it through, I'm sure they would say the same thing. It saddens me today to see our country now unwilling to help people in similar situations in Mali, Syria, and Somalia just because we had a difficult time in Iraq. It is worth risking everything to save someone from that horror.
- TAGS:
- GROUPS:
What do you think of this story?
Select one of the options below. Your feedback will help tell CNN producers what to do with this iReport. If you'd like, you can explain your choice in the comments below.
Be and editor! Choose an option below:
More from this assignment - The war through your eyes: Iraq 10 years on
iReport welcomes a lively discussion, so comments on iReports are not pre-screened before they post. See the iReport community guidelines for details about content that is not welcome on iReport.
© 2013 Cable News Network. 
Comments