“Throughout my deployment, I proceeded in constantly choking these individuals, just because it was my way of letting go,” he continued.
Turner testified that another time, after a firefight, he was "upset" that he hadn’t shot anyone that day. His friends in his platoon yelled they had someone for him, he said.
“I ran over to where my friend Tucker was at, and as soon as I got there put the man in my sights and I fired a 12-round burst into his chest,” Turner said. “This man was just riding his bike. He wasn’t doing anything. The firefight was over, but that was my way of letting go of the aggression. Afterwards, we all laughed about it and talked about it, and it was just a normal occurrence.”
After Howard reached Baghdad three weeks after the invasion began, there wasn’t a specific task to complete, he said. His company took over the abandoned United Nations compound. It was during a time of looting and chaos in the city, including the thefts of precious ancient artifacts from the Museum of Antiquities. "The oil ministry building was protected, while museums were looted," Howard said.
On his truck, Howard had a pallet of humanitarian food rations. When making the push north, he started to hand them out to the hundreds of people who lined the streets for food, he said. His First Sergeant then pulled up in his Humvee and screamed at Howard to stop, he said.
“It was conveyed that the decision had been made by the First Marine Division not to hand out the humanitarian rations because he did not want to give the enemy the wrong impression of why we were there,” Howard said.
He continued to hand the rations out until his gunner feared they might be punished, Howard said. When they returned to Kuwait, his commander told him to bury the food, he said.
When Howard returned home from Iraq in 2004, he said he felt betrayed by the government. “I was angry with the callousness that I felt my life had been treated,” Howard said. “It was very personal when I realized my commanders did not care whether I lived or died,” he said.
Iraq Now America's Longest -- and Costliest -- War Since Vietnam
In the beginning, people didn’t expect the United States to be in Iraq five years after the invasion, said Bill Wilson, the provost of Saint Michael's College in Colchester, Vermont.
According to Wilson, a Vietnam veteran, the scope of a five-year period is dependent on the society who is looking at it. “I think five years is long for us, because in many ways the war has been extraordinarily expensive,” he said.
The United States has spent more than $500 billion on the war, which may eventually cost about $1.7 trillion -- a conservative estimate, according to economics professor Patrick Walsh. This can be thought of as every U.S. household losing $14,000 of its net worth over time, he said. The country is spending about 0.8 percent of the its gross domestic product on the war, Walsh said.
“It’s not going to sink the economy,” he added. "The looming possibility of a recession cannot be solely blamed on the war. A number of other economic factors are in play."
The U.S. strategy in Iraq has changed dramatically in the past year to 15 months, according to Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, a liberal "think tank" in Washington.
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