Three years later she sits in the translation center at the University of Massachusetts, continuing the job that put a bounty on her head – translating. She also teaches and bakes at Rao’s Coffee shop in downtown Amherst. Her life has changed drastically but she carries dozens of stories with her about her work with Americans.

AUDIO: What freedom means to me

AUDIO: I would go back

“I was called a traitor in front of my face a couple of times actually. Not by Iraqis, but by other Arabs. I would tell them, ‘You don’t know me. You don’t know the quality of my translation, you’ve never served with me, and you’ve never been to Iraq in the first place. Why would you judge me, how dare you judge me?’”

Huda grew up in Baghdad with her mother and two younger brothers. After graduating from college in 2003, Huda was in need of a job. Finding a job wasn’t easy, as the war had just started months earlier with the American occupation of Iraq.

With a degree in translation, Huda went to the Green Zone looking for a job and was sent to the police academy in Baghdad. Despite rumors that women who worked in the army were “bad,” she took a job as a translator and kept it for 20 months. She kept her job under wraps, only letting immediate family know. It was too early to know how people felt about the Americans.

Huda may not have faced discrimination from members of the army, but she did from outsiders. In Iraq, she explained, the entrance scores to get into college are set lower for men than women, making it easier for men to gain admission. The assumption prevails that women will leave college to have children or do so just after they graduate, so preference is given to male applicants.

So one day when an Iraqi man came in to her office and saw Huda sitting with three bosses, all male soldiers, it was too much for him to handle.

He told Huda, “I don’t want you to translate for me. Go bring a man to translate for me.” Huda told this to her boss, who was upset by the man and said, “Huda, tell him, it’s either you or the door.”

Huda relayed the message. “I’m sorry, sir. You’ll have to deal, but all the other translators are gone,” she recalls telling the man. “They are either at lunch or went home.” He eventually agreed and she translated for him for about three hours. She made a good impression. The next day, the man returned and specifically requested her.

As a translator, Huda often had to sort out miscommunication along the language barrier. One particular incident sticks out in her mind.

“I had one of the soldiers running to me, running into the building,” she recalls, “And I said ‘Hey man, what’s wrong?’” The soldier told her a woman had taken off her shoes and chased after him. Huda asked what he had said to prompt this and he said, “I told her she was the most beautiful thing.”

Huda then asked him to repeat what he said in Arabic.

“He said the word and I said, ‘Man, you just told her she was a prostitute,’” said Huda.

* * *

The job had its risks. In times of war, in an occupied country, people often have their backs up against the wall and few options, Huda said

“Back in ‘03 and ‘04 everything was under American control, so where would someone go? There was nowhere,” said Huda. “If you want to work with the government, the government is the Americans.”

Huda said she had never felt more afraid in her life as she was during her time spent working with the U.S. Army.

“The real nightmare started when I had to go home and leave the base,” said Huda.

She would have to walk home from the safety of the base in civilian clothing, in a time when translators had bounties on their heads. “There is nothing anyone can do to provide any protection … at the academy I was at there were 200 translators. If you assign two security guards to each translator, that’s 400 guards. They’d be an even bigger target.”

It was in part the American occupation that made the walk home so difficult and dangerous, she said. The infrastructure of Baghdad had been transformed by the occupation, placing civilians at risk.

“Honestly,” said Huda, “you didn’t change the circumstances to a better situation. I think now people are suffering even more because back in the day you knew who your enemy was. Not anymore. You don’t know who’s who. You have all these murders and assassinations going on that you don’t hear about, and people disappearing and being scattered and found later on in Baghdad. The entire numbers of those people, we really don’t know.”

In 2005, Huda received a scholarship to enroll at UMass. She accepted it and was the first and only one from her family to travel to the United States. She misses her mother and her brothers, who watched out for her back home.

“They are happy for me, and my brother says ‘It’s one less person to worry about,’” she said.

One thing Huda loves about Amherst is the safety.

“It’s a shame people have to go through wars to appreciate how much they can have, and what they have,” she said. “I feel soldiers have the most appreciation to what they have over here, because they have been to Iraq. And it’s a whole different story back home in Iraq. People are happy with just a few hours of electricity. But here if you don’t have whipped cream on your coffee you are complaining. And so it’s really a shame. It’s a shameful thing to [have to] serve in a war in order to appreciate what you have.”

“I’m the only person in my class that could point out Iraq on a map!” he said. “It’s very frustrating because here in ‘liberal capital’ Massachusetts, where everyone is against the war, no one can find the war.”

Some say that such a lack of awareness is caused by the inability of news organizations to depict accurately what is happening in Iraq. And, some veterans at UMass, including Belanger and Sol Black, believe that misleading information and misperceptions of the war could have huge ramifications this election cycle. Belanger, who is now studying for an undergraduate degree at UMass, worries that American civilians are too detached from the war.

“Honestly, the only way it really impacts the majority of people on a daily basis is if it is right there in their face, which is a shame because people are dying or doing great things and courageous things every day over there and it never gets noticed unless it directly impacts [civilians].”

The government and the media are to blame for the public’s misconception of the war, says Belanger, who served in Fallujah from May 2006 to October 2006. The government leads the people to believe the situation is better than it really is and the media, marketing to its highest selling points, glorifies the sex, blood, and violence.

After five years of U.S involvement in Iraq, coverage of the war has fallen to the middle of the newspaper, fifth and sixth page coverage, says Black, a Marine Corps sergeant originally from Marblehead, Mass. He believes the media has better things to focus on and are more concerned about ratings. Black said, “[The media] isn’t worried about trying to inform Americans, that’s not what the media cares about.

“People forget what is going on until their neighbor’s son goes or their uncle goes.”

Black feels there is little public support for the war and troops, compared to previous wars. “There are so few people that are actually in Iraq,” he said, “A couple hundred thousand, but still, America is a big country.”

The ignorance common to many civilians can be blamed not only on the media coverage, but also the public’s reaction to it. As the months of U.S presence in Iraq continue, more and more people become disinterested and removed from what seems like repetitive stories. “You [only] hear about bombings [and how] many killed. People don’t remember that we’ve lost over 4,000 Americans there and that it’s costing our country over [an estimated] million dollars a week,” says Black.

“It’s not [just] the media now, it’s also people who just assume and hear bad things,” said Belanger. “People assume that if it has to do with Iraq, it’s automatically negative.”

According to a CNN Opinion poll on April 28-30, 68 percent of Americans oppose the war, yet only 15 percent see the war as the most important problem facing our country today. (CBS News/ New York Times Poll. March 28-April 2, 2008)

Although the veterans see the magnitude of voting on the issue in the general elections on Nov. 4, 2008, they fear many civilians do not. Black said, “Unfortunately I don’t think enough people [see Iraq as an issue]. People have just been really distracted by the economy and people forget there’s a war going on, [but the war] is responsible for crippling our economy.”

According to a Washington Post poll on April 15, seven in 10 Americans now give negative ratings to the President’s stewardship of the sinking U.S. economy. The failing economy combined with the continuous negative Iraq coverage makes the issue of Iraq less important in the upcoming election.

Black and Belanger differ on their opinions on the future of the White House. The more conservative Belanger said, “I don’t necessarily agree with why we went to war in the beginning, but I don’t believe in pulling out until the job is completed so McCain has my backing.”

In November, Black will be voting for the Democratic candidate. “I just don’t want another [expletive] Republican in the White House,” he said. “We’ve had our hands in the cookie jar where it doesn’t belong on several accounts, and it’s finally starting to catch up with us,” said Black. He hopes for the young, optimistic Obama to bring change to the White House. “Hopefully, he can change US foreign policy. It has kind of demonized us abroad.”

Despite their differing positions on the subject, they both agree the United State’s involvement with Iraq should be a serious issue for all Americans to consider in the elections.

“I’m all for people having different opinions, but educate yourself,” Belanger said. “The ignorance is really what gets me frustrated.”

“When did The Globe become a tabloid?” he asks rhetorically. “Why is this garbage front page news?”

Deep into an election cycle, it seems readers like Crosby are more likely to find out about Hillary Clinton’s exaggerated trip to Bosnia or Barack Obama’s breakup with former minister Rev. Jeremiah Wright, rather than the pressing issues facing the nation.

At the same time, coverage of the Iraq War has fallen off. According to a report by the PEW Research Center, just 3 percent of news coverage during February was dedicated to the war, down from 15 percent last July. So, can the lack of coverage include what voters see as important during this election cycle?

“I am not basing my vote around the Iraq War, more on who can do a better job as president, dealing with issues domestically,” said University of Massachusetts freshman Zachary Meilen.

Crosby echoed those sentiments adding, “The economy is affecting my vote a lot more than the Iraq War. There is no end in sight [to the war] currently.”

Why is the war generating such little interest? A lot of it has to do with news organizations, and how they cover the war. Some of those interviewed said the media force feeds the public superficial, general, soft stories on Iraq from afar, clouding the real picture.

“Maybe they should be talking to people who are currently involved. Talking to boots on the ground, not retired guys on the Pentagon payroll, getting information from the Pentagon,” said Crosby. “Talking to Afghanis, talking to soldiers, talking to people that experience it everyday on the ground.”

The reality of the Iraq War seems to be much different than the stories in the daily newspapers. Rieckhoff cited another study in his recent article stating 80 percent of Americans are aware Oprah Winfrey endorsed Obama, while only 28 percent know how many American troops have died in Iraq.

“If I wanted to see the news, I’d go there. I’d talk to people who are affected, you know. I’m not going to watch it on TV,” said University of Massachusetts sophomore Benjamin Beraha.

News organizations continuously fight between what sells and what the general public needs to know. Perhaps the reality of Iraq and horror of death is old news for Americans.

“The media should take a lot of blame for this themselves,” said Meilen. “They look for the best and brightest story, the story that is going to get the most ratings. It’s more of a ratings war than anything else.”

“At the end of the day, they are trying to make money. They are entertainers,” added Beraha.

Still, college students seem to find comfort in the safe haven of their dorm rooms, where the only fighting happens on gaming systems. Yet, when the conversation switches to the possibility of a military draft, so does interest in the war.

“If there was a draft from either candidate, it would affect my vote greatly because I would probably be one of the ones having to go over there,” said Meilen.

“Well, since I’m 22, healthy, and about to graduate from college, I’d probably be sent to Iraq [if there was a draft],” said Crosby. “Then it would probably affect my vote; I’d vote for whoever opposed the draft. But that would be political suicide.”

For many students, the Iraq War will continue to be yesterday’s news unless news organizations become more proactive in their coverage or civilians begin to feel the effects of war at home. Until then, it will continue to be the biggest news story no one hears about.

Now, almost four years after his return, the UMass alum feels that continued major military presence “isn’t worth our resources, unfortunately.”

He has watched the situation in Iraq deteriorate in the years since his service. The last five months of his tour were spent in the city of Balad, about 68 miles north of Baghdad. At the time he was there, Lau describes the region as a “pro-American mix of Shiites and Sunni living in harmony,” a community that twice attempted to assassinate Saddam Hussein.

Now the Shiite-led Mahdi Army controls the area, killing Sunni residents and striking fear in the hearts of their once peaceful Shiite neighbors.

“I would vote for somebody who does have a tentative plan to take us out of there. Do I really think that any of the big three candidates out there actually have a plan? No. Absolutely not. I personally don’t believe that they have any idea what they’re talking about.”

John McCain’s gaffe, describing al Qaeda as an Iranian-supported Shiite group when it is actually a Sunni militia, has discredited McCain in Lau’s perspective. He also views Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as “opportunistic,” seizing on the conflict’s unpopularity to garner political support. Still, he reiterates he would “vote for someone who has a tentative plan to get us out.”

Lau, who received a political science degree in 2006, has developed his own theory about the best course of action to get U.S. forces out of Iraq. His plan starts with an immediate 90 percent pullout of all forces in the Baghdad area. While he admits that a pullout may cause the Iraq government to fall, he questions: “Is the Iraq government a real government? I don’t believe so.” At its current state, he claims it consists of “sponsored warlord factions sitting together in power in parliament.”

Next, he would station troops in the Kurdish region to stop the spread of back and forth violence with Turkey. Once set up in the “peaceful regions” as he calls them, negotiations on an international level would have to begin with Iran in an attempt to resolve the “crisis.”

“Iranians have a huge play because they are sponsoring a lot of the Shiite militias,” he said.

International Politics professor Vincent Ferraro, of Mt. Holyoke College, agrees with Lau’s assessment of the current situation in Iraq as well as his ideas for the future.

“It acknowledges the primary role of Iran in the conflict and distinguishes between talking with Iran from embracing Iran, a distinction only a mature diplomat is capable of making,” Ferraro said.

He goes on to say that Lau’s plan “suggests that the state of Iraq has an identity that transcends the current configuration of forces and one that will likely survive without U.S. support for the current government. This assumption may be optimistic, but assuming that the government can survive with U.S. support is also optimistic.”

AUDIO SLIDESHOW: Eric’s scholarship

The baby was born with its organs outside of the body and couldn’t receive treatment while in Iraq. Valdepenas was part of a group of Marines who volunteered to take the baby out of Iraq and transport it to a hospital in Boston where it received proper treatment. He received a purple heart for the mission.

Valdepenas also volunteered to put his college education on hold to serve his country as a Marine in Iraq. He had every intention of returning to school after his tour, but one month before he was scheduled to come home in September 2006, he was killed when a roadside bomb struck his vehicle in Fallujah.

“Our brother was big on giving back to the community and being helpful,” said his sister, Karen Ing. “Wherever he was needed he would always reach out a hand even if he wasn’t asked.”

Valdepenas, the youngest of eight, focused on giving his all, whether it was at school, sports or in the Marines. He was an honor student and all-state lacrosse player in high school, before studying engineering at UMass.

“He was innovative and creative with his thoughts and ideas,” said his sister Nora Lough. “He was always dedicated and motivated to achieving whatever his goals were.”

When J. Brian Palmer, a 1995 UMass graduate and colleague of Ing, heard the tragic story, he wanted his establish something positive from Valdepenas’s memory and donated $36,000 to start a scholarship at the UMass School of Management in his honor.

“It’s a moving story of someone who put their life on hold to do something important for the country,” said Palmer. “Eric was a UMass student so it’s a sense of pride knowing where we all go to school, someone like that chose to go too.”

The scholarship is awarded to a business student with a major financial need who shows qualities that Eric possessed. It is designed not only to honor Valdepenas, but keep alive his dedication to the community by helping someone in need every year. The recipient of the scholarship must have a documented financial need, have a record of giving back to their own community and submit an essay to show they possess the qualities that made Valdepenas so special to those that knew him.

“We’re really looking for somebody that exerts good character,” said Lough. “Also someone who knows what they want and goes for their goals and dreams with a full heart.”

Eric’s family hope the scholarship can turn a tragedy into something positive while at the same time helping the family to heal. Although Palmer made it clear the scholarship was not political and that his own views were not changed by the tragedy, he did add that Valdepenas’s story gave a healthy respect for an individual that chose to serve in the military.

“We are very proud of all that Eric accomplished,” said Teresa Valdepenas. “It was very hard when we lost him but hopefully through this scholarship his memory can live on.”

University of Massachusetts junior Justin Rose was training with the ROTC not long ago when someone interrupted the session.

“We had a kid drive by and call us baby killers,” said Rose, a 25-year-old veteran.

Rose is one of many veterans and other UMass students involved in the military who share mixed feelings about their treatment on campus. He said he’s had an overall positive time at the university, but has experienced some remote negative incidents.

When the man yelled out his car window during the training session, Rose said he and the rest of the cadets just laughed it off and weren’t upset over it. He said reactions about his military experiences “fluctuate to both ends of the spectrum.”

“It is kind of a bummer when you see someone protest,” said Rose. “But you can’t hold that against the Amherst campus, you can’t let it get to you.”

Rose added that his military experience allowed him to build a friendship with one of his professors, whose brother is currently serving in Iraq. He said they’ve been able to share an understanding of the war.

Lt. Col. David Vacchi, the head of ROTC and a professor of Military Leadership, said when he arrived in Amherst a few years back, he expected to find a rowdy campus full of activists.

“I was led to believe like many are that UMass is a place of protesters and malcontent and problem children,” said Vacchi, a veteran who served in Iraq at the start of the war. “When I got here I was very surprised and pleasantly surprised. The caliber of the UMass student is great, especially for a state school.”

Vacchi said he doesn’t know of any specific professors who discriminated against veterans, but said “it does go on here.”

Although Vacchi outlined some instances of negative classroom behavior, other veterans illustrated a more supportive and understanding academic atmosphere. When asked how his professors treated him as a veteran, junior Tom McGrory praised their understanding.

“They’ll help me out, because I haven’t studied for three years,” said McGrory, 20. “They’re cool about helping me prepare for a test or paper I’m struggling with.”

McGrory was stationed in Nogales, Ariz. on the Mexican boarder between April and August of 2007. He enrolled in UMass this year, after signing on to serve another six years with the Army.

“I thought [the transition from soldier to student] would be easier than it was,” said McGrory, who’s currently a member of the Army Reserves, and plans on being deployed to Iraq by the end of 2009. “I moved into the dorms second semester, so nobody really cared to see who I was…I didn’t know anyone in my classes either.”

McGrory mentioned some people were taken aback when they learned he was in the Army, but no one said anything negative to him. He said he doesn’t mind the anti-war protests on campus, but doesn’t appreciate when it’s directed towards the troops.

“To talk negatively about troops isn’t right,” said McGrory. “We didn’t decide to start this war, Bush did. We’re just doing what we’re told. I’m not embarrassed about any of it. I’m proud to wear the uniform… I wouldn’t take it back, I feel my life is better for it.”

Sophomore Jacob Petrie, 24, spent four years in the Marines and did two tours in Iraq. He said living in a liberal environment like Amherst can be overwhelming at times, but he has never been confronted with negative reactions to his service.

“The only thing I can say about negative aspects of anything is… that I feel a little more sensitive about some topics,” said Petrie. “In a big mostly liberal school in a very liberal town in a liberal state it sometimes gets very overbearing. In the Marines it was much more conservative and that too was overbearing.”

While Rose, McGrory and Petrie served during wartime, it was the ongoing situation in Iraq that played a role in senior Brian Lepine’s decision to drop out of the AFROTC last year.

Lepine joined the AFROTC during his sophomore year because he thought being a member of AFROTC could help him secure a better job in the future. He also said he had interest in serving his country.

Because he entered the program a year later than most members do, he did not receive the scholarship benefits that members get. Lepine doesn’t regret his time in the program and also never encountered negative responses from the community, but did describe what it’s like walking around in uniform around campus.

“You get looks from people,” said Lepine. “They kind of just glance over you once and say, ‘Oh, he’s with the airforce.’ When I had to wear the dress [uniform], I was kind of embarrassed walking around, I was the only one wearing anything like that…I was kind of standing out in the crowd.”

Some students have faced troubling reactions throughout the years, but many say it isn’t a widespread problem and hasn’t altered their opinion of UMass. Despite some remote problems, veterans and other members of the military say they’re welcomed by the local community.

“Some people [had negative reactions] to finding out I was in the Army, but no one said anything to me,” said McGrory. “I don’t think anyone from around here would say anything to a vet. They’d have to be crazy.”

Black insists the outcome America desires in the Middle East no longer remains obtainable, an alarming assessment given the approximate $340 million Americans spend each day funding the conflict. With obvious frustration he explains the evolution of the American prerogative in Iraq and the challenges of facing an ambiguous enemy.

“First it was weapons of mass destruction, then liberating the Iraqi people, now it’s fighting terrorism…what next, what justification is there at this point?”

“It’s not a winnable war, this is not a uniformed enemy that we’re beating. Terrorism is a transnational phenomenon – it’s not a country, you can’t invade terrorism … by being over there we are urging fundamentalists to migrate [to Iraq].”

Those are the words of a two-tour veteran of the Iraq War.

THE MARINES
“I did not want to go to college. I hated high school with a passion, and I hated teachers and I hated school work.”

Black says he wanted something new, something different from the day-to-day monotony of academia. So in late 2000, after high school, he enlisted in the Marines.

On September 11, 2001 Black was in boot camp. Marines weren’t allowed televisions, radios, or Internet access. He heard rumors of planes crashing into the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. He heard the Towers fell. He didn’t believe it.

Hours later, his superiors confirmed the rumors as fact and offered some advice: “Take your training seriously because there’s a good chance we’re going to go invade a couple countries because of this.”

Black was first deployed as part of a Marine Expeditionary Force in the Mediterranean. He stayed on the Greek island of Crete before spending one and a half months in northern Iraq, where he says the level of violence was “really light.”

“Nothing too serious, for the most part everyone liked to have us there, it was before the insurgency had begun. This was before people realized the magnitude of the damage we had done to the infrastructure there,” he said.

Next it was off to Liberia and then Djibouti. He says it was exciting to travel, an opportunity to experience what he had been searching for, something new and something different. His first tour ended without losing a platoon member or a friend. He spent nine months home in Massachusetts, before returning to Iraq for a second tour.

This time Black was in the Anbar Province in western Iraq. He wanted to return, not because of an overwhelming sense of patriotism, but because of a sense of obligation to his fellow soldiers.

“I knew I wasn’t going over there to democratize Iraq, I’m not stupid. More than anything you go over for the guys you fight with, you go over there because you want to bring all your guys home alive.”

While in Fallujah, Black was part of a combat operation known as Operation Phantom Fury, a mission Black says was “the most intense urban combat and the most liberal rules of engagement since Vietnam.”

During the second tour a platoon member died after an Army vehicle rolled, a close friend was killed by enemy fire, another shot seven times.

Black admits the second tour changed him, changed his perspective on life, and taught him to approach any conflict from both sides. He talks about the average Iraqi view of America, and believes some of their gripes with the U.S. are warranted.

“We are employing American civilians over there, [they’re] getting disgusting contract payments, but we’re not employing the Iraqis.”

The Iraq government estimates unemployment at 20 percent, down from past years but still four times that of the United States, whose economy is lagging. Iraqi civilians often find themselves without electricity for a majority of the day. Life in Iraq, according to Black, is not easy.

He hopes the people of the United States appreciate just how fortunate they are. “After hearing bullets whiz by your head, seeing friends die, and living through roadside bomb attacks, [this] ain’t that bad.”

His advice?

“Enjoy life, enjoy what you have, treasure every breathing moment.”

BACK HOME
Thousands of miles from Iraq, Sol Black sits at a desk in his office. He’s an employee of the Veterans Services Department and a student at UMass. And that kid who hated schoolwork now frequents the campus library to get ahead on assignments.

Ask Black who his candidate is in the upcoming election and he’ll say, “Barack.”

Since Sen. Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton have such similar stances on Iraq, how did he choose? Black sees Obama as a fresh new face in American politics and his possible nomination as a step forward for the nation. Maybe, according to Black, it’s time for America to try something new and something different.

Durkin arrived on Parris Island, the Marine Corps Recruit Depot near Beaufort, S.C., less than 24 hours after his makeshift diploma became binding. The life-changing sequence of events was anything but a rash decision by a confused teenager.

AUDIO SLIDESHOW: Training for combat

“Every Saturday morning, I would get up at 8 a.m., and I’d go to physical training with the Marines. I was surrounded by Marines, so I basically grew up with these guys and always wanted to be one of them,” he said.

The routine continued for the rest of his time in high school. As he spent more time with Marines, the life of an officer became less glamorous, but the military life was still the life for him.

He applied to the United States Naval Academy, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and the Citadel. The Naval Academy eventually rejected him, choosing instead to offer him a place at the Naval Academy Preparatory School in Newport, R.I., for a post-graduate year. The prospect of spending five years in school didn’t interest him. Brad, instead, enrolled at UMass and chose to become a reservist in the U.S. Marine Corps joining a troop stationed in Londonderry, N.H. He also gained admission to the Citadel, but a bad experience with a student at the institution ruined his image of it, and made UMass the only real choice.

The Pioneer Valley isn’t an easy place for a Marine soon leaving for Iraq to live, especially one who opted to study in the liberal arts majors of journalism and political science. He expected denouncements of all things military from his classmates and worried some professors may hold his involvement in the military against him.

“I thought it would be tough coming to UMass because everyone told me it was such a liberal school,” he said. “But all my teachers here have been awesome and really comforting. The journalism and political science professors are more adept at helping me out than a mathematics professor would be.”

Support for the U.S. presence in the Middle East is rare. Respect for those doing the fighting, however, most certainly is not. At times, Durkin struggles listening to the thoughts of classmates who take their dislike of war a step too far, insulting the Marine, but he listens and waits for the right time to pick apart their arguments. His responses aren’t always as eloquent; they are, however, powerful and easily understood.

“What we’re trying to do over there is win [the Iraqi people’s] hearts and minds. Every time we have a drill, they tell us every 10 minutes that ‘we need to win the hearts and minds,’ so we have to focus on that,” Durkin said. “When you get over there, it is way less about politics and national pride; it’s about your buddies. It’s like the biggest fraternity in the world. I’m going over there with 3,000 marines, and I’m going to be really close with 45 of them.”

Recently, one of his professors posed the question “Should the U.S. have invaded Iraq?” to his class. Durkin didn’t plan to speak on the topic initially. When a classmate said, “If the Iraqi people hated Saddam Hussein so much, they could have just voted him out of office,” he had heard enough. The two argued back and forth before the teacher halted the discussion and segued into another topic.

Many consider Durkin’s thoughts that of a conservative, but, as he explains, for him and most Marines, the war isn’t solely about patriotism. It is about the man or woman next to you. Many of those who work at the infantry level are in the military in hopes of making a better life for themselves down the road. It just so happens that the current war means that opportunity may never come. The bonding and friendship fostered by their training and later by their time spent protecting each other is something that Durkin believes many Americans cannot understand.

“I’m not going to run away because I’m scared; I‘m not going to jail,” he said. “First of all, that would disgrace my family and friends, but I don’t think the reality has set in yet. On the day I’m going to leave, I think it’ll be pretty hard for me to say goodbye to my family.”

While his looming deployment weighs on his mind, the current race for the White House worries him more than anything. Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have both declared that, should they win the presidency, they would begin a troop withdrawal from Iraq.

“Every time I hear that, I laugh,” Durkin says. “Do you have any idea what would happen in Iraq if the U.S. started pulling troops?”

With so many differing viewpoints in a country like Iraq, it’s hard to imagine that the current Iraqi police could maintain anything resembling order in the country. His classmates express their views on the war and election daily, and he struggles to understand the level of certainty they speak with regarding a topic they know so little about. Personal feelings on war in general mean little at a time like this. Pulling troops from the country, in his mind, is the last thing Iraq needs.

“Whether or not we should have gone is irrelevant now,” he said. “We’re there. We need to finish what we started.”

AUDIO: A Tragic Personal Experience

AUDIO: Critiquing the media

After serving from August 2001 to March 2006, it is Shepard’s experience that now has made the war the single most defining issue for him in the 2008 elections.

“I do have my own personal political beliefs and they certainly do not lie with John McCain,” he said. “I might agree with other things he has to set forth, but the number one thing for me, right now, is making sure that the people I’m close to, the people that I call brothers, get to live under a responsible government and I don’t think perpetuating the war in Iraq is a responsible idea.”

A 2001 graduate of Minnechaug Regional High School in Wilbraham, Mass., Shepard chose to join the Marines after UMass, his college of choice, was unable to provide him housing that fall. He recalls, “I had a choice. I could either commute to college or my parents offered to buy me a Eurorail pass. Since I never really wanted to live off my parents’ money, I decided that, against my parents’ wishes, I would join the Marines.”

Since that decision seven years ago, Shepard has had two tours of duty in the Persian Gulf and Fallujah.

When Shepard told his parents about his plan to join the United States Marine Corps, he was immediately met with opposition. His parents, Bill and Nancy Shepard, were not in favor of the war. Shepard said, “My mom is a very liberal Democrat, very peace-loving and my father is more middle of the road. They are very, very proud of me, but I can tell that the war isn’t very popular in my family.”

Shepard remembers his own mixed feelings at the start of the war. “To be honest, I didn’t really agree with the war, but I still wanted to be there because we’re Marines, and that’s what we do,” he said. “It is our job and when you train very hard for that job, especially as an infantry guy, you want to get out there and you want to do your job.”

After serving from 2001 to March 2006, Shepard says, “Hindsight is 20-20, but looking back on it, it’s just a huge disaster. The civilian minds that were planning the war… they should be held accountable for what they’ve done.

“Now actually having been through the occupation and seeing what happens when you go to war, it’s hard to reconcile it.” Shepard feels the troops are being used haphazardly and that America jumped into war before completely understanding the consequences. He said, “There was no regard for prior military minds speaking their minds about the things we would need and things we didn’t need, how the war should be handled.

“We have to deal with the consequences of other people’s actions, and I’m not complaining about it, but it doesn’t make it right,” he said.

After his experiences in Iraq, the issues in the 2008 elections have a personal connection to Shepard. “To me, Iraq is the most important decision that our generation is going to make. When are we going to say enough is enough? Or change it so we can actually have some sort of favorable outcome. It’s the number one life changing experience that I’ve had, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone else, ever.”

Shepard retired as a sergeant from the United States Marine Corps in 2006. He says, “My mother hated it. She could have lost a son. She doesn’t even know how many times she could have lost a son. That would be horrible for her. That was one of the many reasons for me not staying in the Marine Corps. I just don’t think I could put my family through it again.”

Shepard has been home from Iraq for over a year. He returned to UMass to finish his degree and expects to graduate in the fall of 2008. School is just one of the many things he put on pause to serve as a Marine, including his relationships with friends and family.

“Your entire life screeches to a halt… all your friends, all your family,” he said. “It doesn’t just affect troops; it affects everybody that knows them. It’s a hard thing to go through. But in the end, for me at least, I’m glad because it makes me realize who’s important and who isn’t. Some things are worth putting on pause.

“My loyalty is to the Marines that I served with, and to the Marines that I’ve never met who will serve after me. My loyalty is to them.”

Halfway around the world, my cousin, Kyle Frost, of Kernersville, N.C., sat waiting as well. Waiting for the message stating the deadline passed. Waiting for the order to start the attack on Iraq.

We come from a family full of veterans from every branch of the military. Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force – the Frosts have covered it all. It seemed natural that Kyle entered the Army, like his father and uncles before him, like their father before them.

During a recent phone interview, he told me that before Sept. 11, 2001, he knew he wanted to sign up, but wasn’t sure when. As soon as the planes hit the towers, “I felt like I didn’t have a choice – like it was my duty,” he said, in a slight southern drawl. He enlisted two months later.

As part of the Third Battalion of the 101st Airborne, on March 1, 2003, he was deployed to Kuwait to gather supplies and prepare to enter Iraq one month later.

Kyle enlisted in 2001 because he wanted to help free a suppressed and tortured country. But now, five years later, his views have changed.

“There’s a lot of hatred, when you see – it’s not just friends, it’s your brothers – you saw a lot of your brothers get killed or hurt real bad, so you build up this anger. Now, I don’t think us being over there still is right,” he said. He said that helping a people who clearly do not want assistance is wrong.

Since getting out of Iraq, Kyle doesn’t watch the news. He doesn’t vote, and he doesn’t think he will any time soon, especially in this election. He is disillusioned and doesn’t see anyone who can or will turn the tides in Iraq.

“I think they just talk the talk and when it comes down to it nobody does anything… I don’t believe any of them,” he says.

He continues, saying, “It’s kind of a too late thing – if we stay there, of course more soldiers are gonna die, that’s what I don’t like to see, but if we leave there, though, it’s gonna be an area where terrorists are gonna gather in a real strong force… I think we’re gonna be in Iraq for a long, long time.”

The bitterness in his voice comes from a culmination of experiences – experiences that took place over the course of a year that have been forever burned into Kyle’s memory.

It started even before his battalion left in 2003 – the Army ordered somewhere around 20,000 body bags, according to Kyle. “That kind of played with my head a little bit,” he said.

Other than the foreboding sense conjured up by the tens of thousands of body bags, Kyle simply didn’t know what to expect. He had images from Vietnam and Desert Storm floating around in his mind.

Kyle’s battalion, 3-337 of the 101st, was in charge of infantry.

“We were the first ones in, front line,” he said. “When I went in, I was an Alpha team leader; I was in charge of anywhere between six to nine guys in my squad.”

He and his battalion would enter into the cities in the area to make their presence known. They’d establish base camps and target their enemies by any means necessary.

According to Kyle, from March 1 until he went home a year later, he traveled with his “brothers” from Kuwait all the way up to Mosul, Iraq, where they stayed for about seven months.

At the beginning, the third battalion of the 101st Airborne gave school and medical supplies to the people of the cities in which they stayed.

“A lot of them looked up to us,” he said. “They wanted that freedom and were looking at us to give it to them. It was our job … to give them something new and better.”

As the war continued on, however, that sentiment began to fade as civilians began to turn against the soldiers, stirring up questions of who to trust. Morale was low.

On Nov. 7, 2003, at 7:15 a.m., his platoon got ambushed again. At least three quarters of his comrades went down. The insurgents fired about 100 rounds of AK-47 and an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) before fleeing.

“The RPG … flew over one Hummer, went through another one, and then hit the first one, and it blew up … it blew up Sgt. Kennon – he died instantly … Sgt. Calhoun was sitting on the Hummer when it blew up, and the actual RPG came and clipped both of his legs off,” Kyle said. Another sergeant lost his left hand. Even to this day, that Nov. 7 saw the largest number of casualties for the 101st Airborne during its time in Iraq, which is now on its third tour.

Another memorable and historic moment in which Kyle’s battalion took part was the July 22, 2003 capture of Saddam Hussein’s sons, Uday and Qusay, the second and third targets for the military.

“That was a good moment,” he said, “because that showed a lot of the people that we were the force to be reckoned with, that we took those guys … those two sons did a lot of horrible things to the people.”

Kyle is now settled into a comfortable home in North Carolina with his wife and high-school sweetheart, Courtney. They were married a little less than a month before his deployment. Their beautiful four-year-old daughter Kendall is enrolled in a private pre-school. He went to night school for a while, and plans on going back to study environmental issues. He has a well-paying job near his home. But he still can’t leave Iraq.

“The worst thing about being over there was that it’s something I’ve got to live with for the rest of my life – I’m never going to forget it,” he said. He suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD); any smell, sound, touch at any given moment can take him back there. Iraq still lingers in his nightmares.

Until 2009, the Army can call Kyle back. Every day, he gets letters from different branches of the military, and every time he goes to the mailbox, he is terrified he’ll see the Army’s official seal. Every day, he thinks, “Is this the day that I’m getting called back? That I have to leave my family?”

He continues, with a bitter voice, “If they would quit [sending mail], it would be easier on us veterans to get over a lot of these things we’ve experienced.”

Currently, Kyle is working on a book. It is written in the second person, placing the readers in the soldier’s boots, allowing the reader to experience all the things Kyle went through. He wants the public to know the things the media won’t tell them.

“The government doesn’t want everything to be seen,” he said, but he wants to make sure Americans knows what is really going on in Iraq.