m. sixteen. i was the only person to raise my hands when the convoy commander as who's never done this before. looked me eyes he said. when you have your selector lever and see the semi you're shooting to kill. i stuck my m. sixteen of the better two ton truck. i was thinking about what's my field of fire. who's on the side of the road. who's that moving on top of the building. i was acting on instinct which is usually the mode the soldiers go into when they enter a combat zone. and for a kid who grew up in evangelical christianity as much as we might be patriotic or something doesn't quite sit right i was thinking about the stories in sunday school of a gentle jesus in the gospels that says if a man strikes you on the left cheek turn him also your right. has started to ask questions about redemption. and what would it look like if that same determination that's used to the the enemy is used to redeem the enemy. the nine eleven. i had to act. i focused on duty. i focused on the job ahead. and. fo

m. sixteen site so it's rare very very very intense moment and. i don't remember squeezing the trigger and i i don't remember seeing him go down all i remember is that we shot him and the next image that i have is you know two men came from the crowd and grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him through up bottle of blood. and then i remember that after that mission was over you know before we moved on to our next mission you know went into a dark room by myself and i pulled up my magazine and i counted the bullets and i realized i had fired eleven bullets at him. and. and it changes you. it's really hard to sit down and make moral decisions when you're trying to stay alive somebody shoots at you you need to take over you have your finger on the safety immediately goes to fire you know you do everything without even thinking about it. but then i came home and to whitney. and removed from that dangerous situation removed from that pressure i start thinking about the war. looking for answers. and. something changed my life. i began to object in a

sixteen s m one a one tanks and items there are seven hundred fifty contractors that specifically support that mission all the other contractors that you hear about for that mission are third country nationals people from india guards around the gate from the guy in the butt look we've got a gun in iraq for years getting paid five hundred dollars a month to protect our bases all because we can't afford a counterinsurgency but to you does that not mean that that this war or whatever it is that this conflict was what every want to call it is not entirely over if you're going to have thousands of contractors war's over because the iraqis aren't done fighting with each other ok now there are people there that are involved in it but this sense of an occupation of iraq is over i mean if you're a member of the u.s. military and you're in iraq on one january you don't have a weapon and you have a passport ok so. you can't carry a weapon unless the iraqi government authorized it so these people are there as a guest of iraq a government that's the huge difference now of course the iraq war wasn't o