This panel interests me very much. Within two weeks of arriving in Iraq, I realized just how crazy it was to send a unit of Oklahoma National Guardsmen to Iraq and expect them to treat the Iraqis with dignity and respect. Many of our soldiers had never had a black friend or never even had a black classmate in high school. Racist jokes were common with these individuals. It became clear to me that it was unrealistic to send a group of men who did not even treat their fellow American citizens equally to an Arab Muslim country and expect them to suddenly become bastions of equality. In the end, our men made great strides, but those early days were very frustrating for me.

Scott Ewing served as a cavalry scout in Iraq one month after leaving basic training. His slow, deliberate delivery sounds like a man with much to share. Scott served in Tal Afar, what President Bush called a model for a free and secure Iraq. There, he was constantly approached by children wanting soccer balls and MREs; Scott's unit consistently passed out candy for quite a while before the children became a nuisance and the practice was stopped.

Two rival tribes had been fighting for control of the hospital and Ewing's unit arrived and provided security for the Iraqi security forces. This put the hospital in a vulnerable position and the hospital was routinely mortared. Shortly after, the battle of Tal Afar began and every house in the city was searched. In the beginning, everyone was respectful of the Iraqis' property and dignity. After cordoning off a quarter of the city and having the families move out, the US forces bombed the Hell out of the neighborhoods, where they believed the terrorists were. After the shelling, the house to house search continued, and this time they were not nearly as respectful. They found no signs of any enemy combatants in the neighborhoods. All that was found as evidence was a collection of knives, saws, axes, and antibiotics.

The men moved to a different neighborhood and did the entire thing over again, thinking that perhaps the terrorists had moved through the city. Fifty men were pointed out by the Iraqi security forces as being terrorists; they were detained and the men never knew what happened to them.

All of this is counterproductive to the CoIn mission, and Ewing feels that his whole tour was a waste.