Marshall’s Blog | Crazy Mormon Lib

The following is a blog entry I made three years ago on Martin Luther King Jr. Day from Iraq. If you can’t tell, I was a little bit bitter.

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I was hoping we’d get the day off, but that didn’t happen. G.W., whose visit to King’s grave was heavily protested, recently said that America has made progress toward King’s dream, but we’re not there yet.

This is one of those special occasions when I agree with G.W. Within the military in Iraq, I don’t see a lot of tension between white and black soldiers. It doesn’t mean it’s not there, I just haven’t experienced it. However, I have been witness to the emergence of a new racial epithet for Arabs.

Haji, once an honorable term for one who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, has moved into popular use among soldiers to denigrate and generalize Arabs and those who live in predominately Arab nations. Spencer Case wrote a great editorial about it in the Jan. 15 edition of the Anaconda Times on pg. 2. It will also run in the Army Times soon and you can read it on his blog, Case and Point, atwww.spencercaselog.blogspot.com.

The chow hall was nice. They made a huge MLK cake. I couldn’t help but notice that it was a two layer cake, vanilla and chocolate. I nearly teared up as I realized that, in a small way, this cake was realizing Dr. King’s dream. Two separate flavors combining to form one cake. But then I realized that the vanilla layer was on top of the chocolate and that they were separated by an impenetrable layer of cream cheese icing. Just another example of the vanilla cake keeping the chocolate cake down.

So, yes, G.W., I guess we’re not there yet.

The open-air burn pit at Balad Air Base in Iraq has been a terrible thing. In burns all sort of waste from plastic to human remains and the smoke permeates the entire facility. I continue to get e-mails and posts from people who are having health problems because of it. While I was in Iraq, I recognized the burn pit as a major problem and took precautions.

When I got home, however, my number one priority was working toward a responsible troop withdrawal and so the thick black smoke in Balad took back seat in my mind. I thought if we didn’t have troops at Balad Air Base, then we wouldn’t have to worry about the health hazard.

That was two and a half years ago now, and more and more people are being exposed to this incredible health hazard every day. I should have been speaking out earlier about this, but I suppose it’s better late than never.

One story about Iraq that I’ve never told publicly was the way we treat Third Country Nationals, or TCNs. They are people, usually from the Philippines and India, who have subcontracted to work for a U.S. contractor in Iraq, like Haliburton or KBR. In actuality, most of them have sub-subcontracted with a group like PPI who subcontracts with Haliburton or KBR.

The Third Country Nationals live in atrocious conditions on U.S. bases like Balad (Camp Anaconda for the Army folks). People I talked with said they made about $300 a month, minus their airfare, housing and food. The food they could get only at segregated chow halls consisted of rice, beans and a half a pita for lunch and diner. Most of them had contracted to stay in Iraq without a vacation for two or three years at a time.

The completely unaccountable subcontractors ran segregated housing complexes for the TCNs. The contractors would not allow military personnel to check for environmental or public health hazards or even make routine visits. The TCNs usually had three or sometimes four bunk beds to a room, which left hardly any space to move. Three people shared each bed and slept in 8-hour shifts around the clock. The Navy sometimes does this for short stints on submarines – it’s called hot bunking. It’s a terrible way to live three years of your life. With three shifts, there isn’t time to wash the sheets, so you’re often left sleeping in the sweaty linens of the person ahead of you.

On the base, the TCNs did all the undesirable jobs. And, you guessed it, that included manning the burn pit.

Military personnel work on and around the burn pit as well, and we have seen that the smoke has done some irreparable damage to their health. What we don’t know is how much devastation it has caused in the health and lives of the Third Country Nationals who are already exploited and abused.

This is a human rights violation. We need to fix it immediately and make reparations to every human being who has been affected. Like the war, it’s gone on too long.