No Children for Oil

Dear Editor,
    As an Iraq war veteran, I was disheartened and angered to read Larry Joe Doherty's quote in the current Austin Chronicle [“The Man in the White Hat,” News, Oct. 3] in which he states: “We have to face the fact … we’re in that [Iraq] war for oil. We’ve killed children for oil.”
    Most people that have met me know that I’m basically an easygoing person that is slow to anger, but his quote, if accurate, has personally offended me. I write this as someone that knows that innocent people have been killed in conflicts since the dawn of man but also as one that personally volunteered to spend 7½ months in Al Anbar province, Iraq, to help the children, families, and good people of a land that needs our help. We can disagree about the cause of the war, the tactics, and the future (in fact, my roommate and best friend in my battalion in Iraq disagrees with me and even spoke at the Democratic National Convention this year); however, I truly cannot believe that Larry Joe Doherty would accuse us of killing children for oil. This disgusting statement angers me to my core. I have heard more reasonable and well-thought-out lines from Cindy Sheehan and Saddam Hussein’s disposed spokesman “Baghdad Bob” [Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf].
    I hope that Mr. Doherty misspoke and does not truly think my fellow Marines and I are baby killers. In fact, I would welcome the chance to visit with him in person on this matter. In the meantime, here is a series of nonpartisan blogs I wrote during my deployment in Al Asad and Haditha, Iraq, from August 2004 to March 2005 (www.politics1.com/usmc.htm). In them one will find happiness, hope, death, and despair – something every person in war has encountered to one degree or another. Nowhere in them however will you find anything about us “kill[ing] children for oil.”