While waiting for the season finale of SNL, I caught an episode of 48 Hours and the show was about a soldier who was murdered 2 days after coming back to the US from Iraq. The suspects were the 4 fellow soldiers from his unit that he was out with that evening, going out to a Hooters for dinner and a strip club afterwards. From the shows website:
At age 19, Richard Davis joined the military, following in his parent’s footsteps. After serving in Bosnia, Richard re-enlisted and found himself at the forefront of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Just two days after his return to the United States, Richard mysteriously vanished. What happened to him only came to light months later.
The end of the road appeared to be 2 of the soldiers that evening on trial for first degree murder (Davis was stabbed 33 times) and the other 2 later were tried for manslaughter and not reporting a crime, the Army didn’t even open an investigation for a month afterward as they listed Davis as AWOL despite his parents protests. There were diagnosis of PTSD amongst the soldiers and then toward the end of the program there were insinuations of the rape of an Iraqi woman. One of the soldiers denied the rape and said instead they had seen prostitutes and it was ‘common knowledge’.
My thoughts then turned to the subject of sex and our soldiers in Iraq. Our men have been there for 3 years now, stuck on long tours in a Muslim country where sex is not readily available. Where are the men dealing with sex? There are a percentage of female soldiers there but many of those women are married or dating soldiers already there and at home. I would think Iraqi women are particularly unavailable as any woman caught sleeping with the Occupying Army by the insurgents would be killed for collaboration and dishonor. I have read reports that Iraqi women are afraid to go anywhere alone for fear of rape but the inference was always that it was Iraqi men they were afraid of being raped by.
Since the soldiers mentioned prostitutes they must be there in small numbers but can you imagine prostitutes being tolerated by Muslims? Then, being curious I began to think about pregnancy and wondered if there would be a large group of soldier’s children like in Vietnam, only would this group be half Iraqi and half while/black/hispanic/asian? After 3 years there wouldn’t this all be happening for awhile now? I’ve seen absolutely no reporting about any of this yet it was not an unknown topic to the public in Vietnam. Also if there is sex and pregnancy does that mean there is abortion there as well? Is our government (via Halliburton et al) involved in all of this, supplying prostitutes, condoms, abortions etc.? If so it would be highly hypocritical of both Bush and the Fundies to be using public monies for this in Iraq while working to deny American citizens these very things. Any thoughts out there?
