This disorganized operation continues to needlessly rip apart the lives of many a dedicated individual. This story really drives the point home.

The kicker for me was to learn that the troops themselves are expected to buy the supplies for the goose chase!

Mommy's Back From Iraq
By John E. Bugay Jr. for the Post Gazette.

My wife, Sgt. Bethany Airel, was a Reserve medic in the 203rd Military Intelligence Battalion, the Army's contribution to the Iraqi Survey Group, the lead entity in the ongoing search for weapons of mass destruction. For what it accomplished, the 203rd probably ought never to have gone. The Pentagon admitted as much in a "secret report" that, thankfully, was reported on by Rowan Scarborough of The Washington Times on Sept. 3: "Weapons of mass destruction elimination and exploitation planning efforts did not occur early enough in the process to allow Centcom to effectively execute the mission. . . . Insufficient U.S. government assets existed to accomplish the mission."

We didn't know this in February, when she was activated, when President Bush and his administration were telling us that war with Iraq was imperative to stop Saddam Hussein from distributing his WMDs to terrorist groups that would bring them to America.

Based on reports of a potential "scorched earth" policy by Saddam, Beth spent the next several months training to don her MOPP (Mission Oriented Protective Posture) gear quickly. I never managed to get beyond a debilitating sense of despondency. Nevertheless, I got into a daily schedule of waking the kids for school, packing lunches, seeing them off and then sitting with my 4-year-old daughter while she cried, "I miss Mommy."

February was a "lockdown" month, but as the start of the war was delayed, the lockdowns gave way to something like weekends off for the soldiers, and so each weekend for several weeks the kids and I packed up the van to travel the 280 miles to Aberdeen, Md., where the 203rd was stationed. Each trip was potentially "the last time we might see Mommy for a while," and we treated those weekends with all due reverence. We also spent hundreds of dollars in hotel and travel costs over five such weekends.

Recently there have been reports that soldiers have had to purchase equipment and supplies with their own money, and our family has been no different. We "supported the troops" with the purchase of medical supplies she would need to do her job as a medic, and more mundane items she would need in Iraq, such as a foot locker, a laundry tub, mosquito netting and batteries for flashlights, which the Army didn't provide.

Finally, in mid-April, we did spend our last tearful weekend, and then Beth left for Kuwait and Iraq. The most striking thing about the next few months was the fact that virtually the whole battalion spent all of May and early June in Tallil, near Nasiriyah, "without vehicles, gear, tents, or computers and equipment," as she wrote to me. The people had been sent by plane, the equipment by boat. "I can't understand why we'd have everyone move to Iraq and not be able to do any work."

Beth and I each fell into a deep depression. I went into therapy; she tried to immerse herself in her work. It is often said that soldiers complain about everything and that you shouldn't make much of it. In a letter dated July 7, she wrote, "the country [Iraq] has a way of making you feel raped and lost." As a woman, she doesn't use the word "rape" lightly. The letter was so bad she didn't send it at the time, because she didn't want to worry me. I never received another letter from her, even though she had written once a week or so before that...

It is said that the mood of the soldier depends on the mood of the family at home, but the reverse is true as well. The thought of my wife in a country like Iraq was incredibly hard when I thought it was necessary to defend the country from mushroom clouds over New York.

But in the intervening months, I rarely heard from her, though I knew of her depression. It began to look as if the war was more of a bodybuilding flex designed to satisfy the imperial foreign policy cravings of the hawks in the administration, and, well, that gave the whole thing a different sensation.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/03278/228302.stm

Mommy's Back From Iraq By John E. Bugay Jr Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Sunday 05 October 2003

One family's story: John E. Bugay Jr. details the experience of staying home with five children while his wife helped in the search for weapons of mass destruction.

Just over two weeks ago, my wife returned to the United States after a six-month tour in Iraq. It wasn't the ecstatic, clamorous kind of homecoming that you may have seen in the news.

Only 15 soldiers returned to the unit that day, and fewer family members showed up, although I was there with our five kids. There was more bumbling around than anything, especially among the military, and it was typical of what I've grown accustomed to in my unhappy association with the U.S. Army. The Army does a lot of things well, but sometimes it does things badly. That can frighten you.

My wife, Sgt. Bethany Airel, was a Reserve medic in the 203rd Military Intelligence Battalion, the Army's contribution to the Iraqi Survey Group, the lead entity in the ongoing search for weapons of mass destruction. For what it accomplished, the 203rd probably ought never to have gone. The Pentagon admitted as much in a "secret report" that, thankfully, was reported on by Rowan Scarborough of The Washington Times on Sept. 3: "Weapons of mass destruction elimination and exploitation planning efforts did not occur early enough in the process to allow Centcom to effectively execute the mission. . . . Insufficient U.S. government assets existed to accomplish the mission."

We didn't know this in February, when she was activated, when President Bush and his administration were telling us that war with Iraq was imperative to stop Saddam Hussein from distributing his WMDs to terrorist groups that would bring them to America.

Based on reports of a potential "scorched earth" policy by Saddam, Beth spent the next several months training to don her MOPP (Mission Oriented Protective Posture) gear quickly. I never managed to get beyond a debilitating sense of despondency. Nevertheless, I got into a daily schedule of waking the kids for school, packing lunches, seeing them off and then sitting with my 4-year-old daughter while she cried, "I miss Mommy."

February was a "lockdown" month, but as the start of the war was delayed, the lockdowns gave way to something like weekends off for the soldiers, and so each weekend for several weeks the kids and I packed up the van to travel the 280 miles to Aberdeen, Md., where the 203rd was stationed. Each trip was potentially "the last time we might see Mommy for a while," and we treated those weekends with all due reverence. We also spent hundreds of dollars in hotel and travel costs over five such weekends.

Recently there have been reports that soldiers have had to purchase equipment and supplies with their own money, and our family has been no different. We "supported the troops" with the purchase of medical supplies she would need to do her job as a medic, and more mundane items she would need in Iraq, such as a foot locker, a laundry tub, mosquito netting and batteries for flashlights, which the Army didn't provide.

Finally, in mid-April, we did spend our last tearful weekend, and then Beth left for Kuwait and Iraq. The most striking thing about the next few months was the fact that virtually the whole battalion spent all of May and early June in Tallil, near Nasiriyah, "without vehicles, gear, tents, or computers and equipment," as she wrote to me. The people had been sent by plane, the equipment by boat. "I can't understand why we'd have everyone move to Iraq and not be able to do any work."

Beth and I each fell into a deep depression. I went into therapy; she tried to immerse herself in her work. It is often said that soldiers complain about everything and that you shouldn't make much of it. In a letter dated July 7, she wrote, "the country [Iraq] has a way of making you feel raped and lost." As a woman, she doesn't use the word "rape" lightly. The letter was so bad she didn't send it at the time, because she didn't want to worry me. I never received another letter from her, even though she had written once a week or so before that.

Chaplains and others I have talked with in the military frequently have said that the families have a more difficult time with deployments than do the soldiers in the field. I don't know if that's the case -- nobody took a shot at me in the whole six months she was over there -- though I did wonder who would cry harder during this deployment, my daughter, who often asked, "Is my Mommy dead?" or my younger sons, who cried when I read Mom's letters to them, or me.

We learned in August that the 203rd had done all it was going to do, after only a month and a half of going full bore, and they received orders to come home, just hours before a general order was given extending all tours to a year.

The next weeks were filled with anticipation and disappointment. Dates were bandied about among family members. August? September? October? Finally I spoke to a sergeant from the unit who told me that she would arrive Saturday, Sept. 20. So I packed the kids and made the trek from Pittsburgh to Aberdeen again. Sure enough, she landed that day, in South Carolina. She arrived in Aberdeen two days later, on Monday, making Saturday and Sunday two of the most maddening days of the whole deployment.

She was given two days off, and so we hurried to the hotel, with Beth still wearing her desert uniform. She had several bags to carry, and my 7-year-old son John, a showman and a gentleman, ran ahead to open the door for her. "Ladies first," he said with a smile.

"I'm not a lady, I'm a soldier," she said. I wondered how long it would be until she became a lady again and not a soldier, but only a few hours later, the kids and I were in a rugby-style scrum with her in the pool. All seven of us in a pack.

It is said that the mood of the soldier depends on the mood of the family at home, but the reverse is true as well. The thought of my wife in a country like Iraq was incredibly hard when I thought it was necessary to defend the country from mushroom clouds over New York.

But in the intervening months, I rarely heard from her, though I knew of her depression. It began to look as if the war was more of a bodybuilding flex designed to satisfy the imperial foreign policy cravings of the hawks in the administration, and, well, that gave the whole thing a different sensation.

Sen. Edward Kennedy has, I think, spoken correctly when he said of this effort in Iraq, "The tragedy is that our troops are paying with their lives because their commander in chief let them down." Someone has let them down, and the buck has got to stop somewhere.

In response, Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay suggested that Sen. Kennedy has accused the president of treason. Yet I wonder how Rep. DeLay would feel if his wife had been sent on a mission like this one.

I thank God that my wife made it home safely. But not everyone from that unit returned. A member of the security detachment was killed in a Humvee accident. I don't know how that man's wife feels. I can only imagine how I would feel if my wife had died on a mission that, from the start, was given "insufficient U.S. government assets."

After the outprocessing in Aberdeen, Bethany finally set foot in our home in West Mifflin on Thursday evening, a tired, proud and decorated war veteran, having received an Army Commendation Medal for the work she did in spite of all the adversity. She was ecstatic to arrive, amid the bumbling of the kids, back in the home she thought she was defending. It was a long journey.