Medically retired soldier concludes: "We are pawns" in Iraq
At what price would you take a job that included scraping human flesh off ambushed Humvees?
What if it also meant working 16 to 20 hours nearly every day in 120-degree temperatures?
As an enlisted soldier, Army Staff Sgt. Jeffrey Peskoff of Fountain took on such a job, overseeing 29 soldiers at a military installation in Mosul, Iraq.
Of course, he didn't know what he was getting himself into.
Taking into account the number of hours he worked each week, his $43,000 salary during his year in Iraq came out to less than $7 an hour.
Meanwhile, the soldiers in his unit had to transport and protect workers of U.S. corporations who earned salaries three to five times higher working on engineering projects, such as building (and rebuilding) oil pipelines.
"If you don't think about being security for these massive corporations making big bucks being there, you're OK, but if you do, then you realize the entire military is being used and abused," Peskoff, a married 33-year-old father of two girls, told me.
"This is not a Michael Moore conspiracy. It's not just Halliburton. Many U.S. companies are there to get the oil that's there."
"The politicians, not just the Republicans but the Democrats, too, could care less about spreading democracy," he said. "We are pawns. The soldiers are being used."