A soldier maimed by war now questions the mission (Boston Globe)

[Eugene]

A soldier maimed by war now questions the mission

By Brian MacQuarrie, Globe Staff | August 2, 2006

WASHINGTON -- President Bush came and sat by the side of Sergeant Brian Fountaine,
a 24-year-old tank commander from Dorchester, a gung-ho soldier who had lobbied
to be deployed a second time. Now Fountaine was among the wounded at Walter Reed
Army Medical Center, his legs amputated below the knees after an explosion June 8
ripped apart the Humvee in which he was riding.

The president chatted about the sergeant's beloved Red Sox, but made no reference
to the war, the soldier said.

If the topic had come up, the president might not have liked what Fountaine had
on his mind. In a dramatic change of heart, Fountaine now considers the war a
military quagmire in which American soldiers are caught in a deadly vise between
irreconcilable enemies.

In his view, troop morale has plummeted, suicide has increased, and the sacrifices
being made in American blood and treasure suddenly seem questionable.

-snip-

Full article: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/08/02/a_soldier_maimed_by_warnow_questions_the_mission

[leftchick]

1. this poor kid....

Sergeant Brian Fountaine, 24, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington this week, was injured in June while on patrol near Baghdad. (Jay Premack for the Boston Globe)

<snip>

That sacrifice has been profound, excruciatingly exacted from Fountaine's body by two large bombs on a dusty road a dozen miles north of Baghdad.

The pain has been both physical and psychic. On June 30, while visiting the Marine Corps War Memorial in a wheelchair he was still learning to use, Fountaine lost control and fell over. Nothing he experienced in the explosion outside Taji -- not the searing burn, not the loss of blood, not the experience of binding his own mangled legs with tourniquets -- equaled the humiliation of that moment.

``It was like a hammer to the face," Fountaine said this week as he sat on his hospital bed. ``I just sat there for about 5 minutes, and I said, `How does one go from being a combat-hardened tank commander to being a poor wretch on the ground?' "


:cry:

[Philosoraptor]

2. He looks like my son.

And all bush could talk about was baseball.