The Register could not confirm the FBI informant’s identity, but the paper quotes activists who say that they believe it was a man named “Jason.” I can confirm now that the man suspected by activists of informing to the FBI is Jason Munford, who gave a fairly sincere-sounding presentation early last year at the University of Iowa about becoming a conscientious objector.

The Iowa Independent’s Adam Burke interviewed Munford on camera at the time:

In January of this year, Munford contacted the Iowa Independent via a YouTube message. Citing threats that he considered serious, he asked us to take down the video. (We declined.) Munford also firmly denied the allegations that he was an FBI informant:

A few months ago, I was falsely accused of giving sensitive information from an anarchist group to the FBI, that resulted in charges against members. Because of the threats I received and such due to those claims, I’ve been forced to move and I’m changing my name and taking other steps to protect myself. In the comments on the video from my talk, a lot of people have reconnected the claims against me to a video record of my appearance.

In the Register’s story, activists say that Munford admitted to them that he had informed to the FBI — a fact that the paper could not confirm. Here’s the relevant reporting from that story:

Political activists [Robert "Ajax"] Ehl and [David] Goodner said they believe they know the identity of the FBI informant who spied on the Iowa City protesters.

They say it was a young man from Michigan named “Jason” who claimed he was a U.S. military conscientious objector. He told people he had been discharged from the Air Force after he objected to being deployed to Iraq.

The man hung out with Iowa City activists for months, sharing beers and meals with them while expressing solidarity with their political beliefs.

Goodner and Ehl said “Jason” later admitted that he provided information to the FBI in exchange for money.

“It is my understanding that he just took money because he was unemployed,” Ehl said.

Looking back, the surveillance in Iowa City may have begun as early as the fall of 2007, Goodner said. He and three others from Iowa City traveled to St. Paul for a meeting with the RNC Welcoming Committee. A few weeks later, “Jason” started coming to their meetings in Iowa City.

If Munford was an informant, it remains unclear whether information he provided led to arrests or disrupted protests. The Iowa City activists told the Register that only one member of their group had been arrested in connection with protests in St. Paul, and that the charges against that person were subsequently dropped.

Latham seems to imply that the goal of federal policy should be to “bring our troops home safely and as quickly as possible – in victory and honor,” echoing GOP arguments from the 2008 campaign trail.

“In victory and honor” is a qualifier that is often used to say that a quick withdrawal that gives up some of the gains U.S. forces have made in Iraq would amount to a defeat, and it would bring dishonor on the armed forces.

Here’s the text of Latham’s statement:

“On my fourth trip to Iraq, I was very interested in personally seeing what progress has been made since my last visit in the fall of 2007,” said Latham. “I firmly believe that nothing can substitute for the frank and honest conversations I will have with troops who are on the ground in the region. And, I am please to see that American troops have made remarkable progress in Iraq as a result of their true commitment and sacrifice.”

“The progress and success does not overshadow the somber fact that there is much more work to be done. Our meeting with General Odierno and Ambassador Crocker cautioned us that the gains realized by the surge and the political reconciliation process are still fragile. We must be committed to continuing to listen to the expertise of our commanders on the ground and providing the resources and support that will bring our troops home safely and as quickly as possible – in victory and honor.”

The Johnston-based Iowa Army National Guard unit finished its second tour as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The unit was mobilized in Nov. 2007 and after undergoing additional training at Fort Dix, N.J., the unit, which provides security and law enforcement support, was assigned to the Central Command theater of operations and arrived in Iraq in Jan. 2008.

During its second tour in Iraq, the 186th MP was responsible for transporting 4,000 detainees; providing a law enforcement presence in the Strategic Debriefing Center; conducting detainee operations at Remembrance II, the Taji Theater Internment Facility Reconciliation Center; and transportation missions in support of Task Force 134’s juvenile re-integration school.

The 186th MP Company was previously mobilized from 2003-2004 for Operation Iraqi Freedom. They were also mobilized in 1995-96 in support of Operation Joint Endeavor (Bosnian peacekeeping operations), and in 1990-1991, when they deployed to the Persian Gulf in support of Operation Desert Storm.

The Department of Defense (DOD) and the National Guard Bureau, Washington, D.C., have ordered the 1133rd and 1168th Transportation Companies to federal active duty. The mobilization is part of Operation Iraqi Freedom and the Global War on Terrorism. The Soldiers will leave Iowa and report to Fort Bliss, Texas for additional preparation and training before departing for the Central Command theater of operation.

To honor the guardsmen, political dignitaries joined family and friends at the sendoff ceremonies in Audubon, Iowa City, Mason City, Perry and Marshalltown.

Audubon

Several hundred people crowded in to the Audubon High School to say goodbye to 65 members in Detachment 2 of the 1168th Transportation Company. They were joined by Gov. Chet Culver and U.S. Rep. Steve King, D-Iowa, who presided over the ceremony, the Caroll Daily-Times Herald reported.

“I’m here with a simple message,” Culver, a surprise guest, told the soldiers standing at attention in six ranks before him. “To thank the members of the Guard for your service to our country, to our state, and to join every Iowan in honoring you as you are deployed.”

“But as you depart, I want you to always remember you are not alone. We will always be here for you, and we will always be grateful for your service to the country that we love. Because our service members are Iowa’s heroes…”

King remarked that he was impressed by Thursday’s show of community support.

“I wasn’t prepared for what I saw when we came over the hill here today at Audubon,” he said, referring to the hundreds of vehicles parked outside.

“You come out, Audubon, Audubon County and the surrounding area. You come out to support our military men and women who have sent themselves up as volunteers to defend our freedom and promote freedom around the world. This is a powerful testimony to the best that America has to offer here in the heartland of America.”

Iowa City

Rep. Dave Loebsack, D-Iowa, joined 25 members in Detachment 1, 1133rd Transportation Company at the Regina High gymnasium in Iowa City, commending them for being both members of a community and defenders of it, the Iowa City Press-Citizen reported.

“You are true patriots and you represent the best of America,” Loebsack said. “You make Iowa and our nation proud.”

Not everyone was excited about the upcoming deployment, including Jennifer — the pregnant wife of Sgt. Nile Watkins-Schoening, who is preparing for his second deployment in three years.

Jennifer said she “was a little irate” when she heard her husband would deploy again. He also missed Eve’s [his 2-year old daughter] birth, returning when she was already 15 months old after serving with the Iowa Army National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 133rd Infantry from September 2005 to July 2007.

Marshalltown

Hundreds of well-wishers gathered at the Babe Harder Gymnasium on the Marshalltown Community College campus in Marshalltown to say goodbye to 40 members in Detachment 1, 1168th Transportation Company, the Marshalltown Times-Republican reported.

Kaleb Morrow of Centerville, who was previously deployed from 2003 to 2004 to Iraq admitted that the second deployment was going to more difficult since he is leaving behind his two young daughters, including 2-year-old Emilia and 2-month-old Alexandria, and his wife, Bernadette.

“It’s going to be very rough to say goodbye,” he said before the ceremony.

Morrow said he feels they are better equipped this time around especially when it comes to more armor.

Mason City

Hundreds of family members and friends filled the Mason City High School gymnasium to help send off 115 members of the 1133rd Transportation Company, the Mason City Globe-Gazette reported.

Lt. Gov. Patty judge spoke on behalf of Culver:

“Once before you have traveled to Iraq to protect the people of America and Iraq,” said Lt. Gov. Patty Judge. “There isn’t an Iowan who isn’t grateful for your sacrifices.”

“On behalf of Gov. Culver, myself and our families, we want you to know that we will be thinking of you, following your work and you will be in our prayers every day,” she said.

Several of the soldiers are serving their second deployment, including Staff Sgt. Scott Dunning, whose wife is expecting their first child, a boy, on Sunday.

“I’m due on Sunday,” she said. “That’s in three days.”

Looking at his wife, Dunning’s voice cracked, saying, “It makes it very, very difficult to leave.”

Perry

A sendoff ceremony was also planned for 65 members in the 1168th Transportation Company Perry High School gymnasium in Perry.

"Letters from Abu Ghraib," by Joshua Casteel

In the wake of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in 2004, Casteel, 24, who served with the Army’s 202nd Military Intelligence Battalion as an Arabic translator and U.S. Army interrogator inside the prison, faced an internal struggle between his sense of duty as a soldier and his moral and religious obligations.

After he had executed over 100 interrogations, Casteel’s internal battle coalesced in the case of a 22-year-old Saudi detainee, a self-proclaimed Jihadi who never fired a gun in his life, yet came to Iraq to fill his cousin’s shoes.

Ironically, Casteel, who had already been fighting a moral struggle before the interrogation, ended up being the one interrogated.

“When the Saudi told me that I wasn’t following Jesus, I told him he was right,” Casteel told the Iowa Independent during an interview. “If anything, I should be in his shoes, because the people who are the most important to me in my life were prisoners: Jesus, Saint Paul, anti-Nazi martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King. They were never the captors.”

It was this epiphany that convinced Casteel to tell his commanding officer that he couldn’t interrogate the Saudi prisoner anymore because he saw him as a 22-year-old kid and a person, not an object of exploitation.

“I couldn’t argue with him about the virtue of nonviolence, so it was at this point I decided that I needed to make a practical decision in my life,” Casteel said. “I, too, had to lead by example.”

Casteel’s conscience and morality as a human being overcame his duty as a soldier, and it was here that he initiated the process of filing for conscientious objector status, eventually ending his military career.

“I didn’t tell anyone over there about these struggles except my best friend,” Casteel said. “Although I did process them through e-mail messages that I had been writing to my family and friends back home. These letters ended up serving as the background for my CO status, illustrating my growing resistance to violence.”

Moreover, these e-mails sent home from the confines of the Abu Ghraib prison served as the foundation of Casteel’s book, “Letters from Abu Ghraib,” which was published this year – just before Casteel began his final year at the University of Iowa nonfiction writers’ workshop.

“I had this huge vat of correspondence that showed the trajectory of becoming a CO,” Casteel said. “I never wrote these letters with the intent of publication, and it wasn’t until I got hooked up with my editor at Essay Press, Eula Biss, a graduate from the UI’s nonfiction writing program, that I decided to publish them. Since I was too close to the material, I needed Biss to help shape the material and streamline an arc that I couldn’t see.”

Casteel, who had another month-and-a-half of interrogating left in 2004 after his decision to file as a CO, wanted to complete his tour in Iraq. “After telling my company commander that I was filing for CO, I refused to go to the promotion board, because I didn’t want to say the NCO [noncommissioned officer] creed,” Casteel said. “I didn’t believe it anymore, but I [said I] didn’t want to hand in my weapon until I returned to the States. I would continue the tour and wouldn’t demand being made a noncombatant, but I told my commander that if he would rather have somebody who is not nervous about pulling the trigger, then he might want to consider that.”

Casteel completed his tour, returned to the United States in January 2005, submitted his CO paperwork in February and was honorably discharged in May.

“This is wildly fast for a CO to get processed and discharged,” he said. “I had never heard of such a quick turnaround. Under the military’s ‘Needs of the Army’ clause, a CO is a lag to morale, so the military didn’t want me around killing morale.”

Casteel soon enrolled in the UI’s graduate playwright workshop, graduating with an M.F.A. in 2008. As a student in the workshop, he wrote a play about his experiences as an Abu Ghraib interrogator, which premiered at the UI Theaters in February.

Since his return to civilian life, Casteel has been very active in spreading his message through organizations such as the Catholic Peace Fellowship, Iraq Veterans Against the War and UI Anti-War Committee, and he facilitated a panel discussion during the Winter Soldier hearings in Washington, D.C.

“I started doing a lot of public speaking after I left the military, and the more I spoke, the more people wanted copies of my speeches,” he said.

While collaborating with the IVAW, Casteel and other members formed a writing group, Warrior Writers, which recently published a book.

Casteel also shared his experiences on camera in the documentary film, “Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers,” and portions of his “Letters from Abu Ghraib” will be excerpted in the October edition of Harper’s Magazine.

Iowa Independent interview with Joshua Casteel:

Iowa Independent: Having grown up in an evangelic Christian household, what compelled you to join the military?

Casteel: I also grew up in a military family. My grandfather fought in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. My father was a captain in the military, and my aunt also served n the Army. I had ambitions of going to West Point, so I enlisted in the military when I was 17 to bolster my chances of getting in to the West Point Academy.

Iowa Independent: How did that pan out for you?

Casteel: After graduating valedictorian from Cedar Rapids Washington High School, I was accepted into West Point. Unfortunately, I hated West Point and had no idea what I was getting into. I thought I would be surrounded by a bunch of people like me, who were intellectually curious, but that was not the case. I did not like the military culture in the classroom, and this environment squelched my intellectual curiosities. I ended dropping out the first month and did ROTC for a year, before transferring to Colorado Christian University.

Iowa Independent: So how did you end up back in the military?

Casteel: 9-11 happened. Plus, I’ve always had some political aspirations, and I didn’t want people to think of me as somebody like President Bush, whose military experience is suspect. I was interested in learning a foreign language, and the only job that guaranteed foreign language training was an interrogator, so I re-enlisted and was deployed immediately after I had completed my year and a half of training at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, where I studied Arabic.

Iowa Independent: Given your religious upbringing, did you have any reservations about going over to Iraq, especially knowing what had happened at the Abu Ghraib prison?

Casteel: Yes. While I was attending the language institute, where most of the instructors were Iraqi Catholics, I watched the morning news with one of my instructors, whose family lives there, and watched Baghdad get pulverized. That personal connection really shook me up. I would go back and forth between ‘I’m in this. Let’s go the whole nine yards’ to ‘What the hell is going on? I don’t believe in violence, and I should file for CO status.’

So before deployment I decided I wanted to be a noncombatant and help soldiers, so I applied and was accepted to seminary. Unfortunately I got accepted two weeks before deployment, so I would have to wait until I returned. I left all of my pacifist literature at home and went to Iraq, thinking to myself that I should know what it is like to be a soldier before I administer to them.

Iowa Independent: Having been deployed in the wake of the Abu Ghraib prisoner scandal, did you find yourself plopped in a hostile environment?

Casteel: The locals knew about the scandal, and they were pissed. The prisoners were also terrified of us. When I was there, the world’s cameras were upon us so, but unfortunately this did not stop the dark activity that had been going on; it just moved away from the prison. Special forces teams and mobile interrogation units were still using questionable techniques.

Iowa Independent: What do you mean by dark activity and questionable techniques?

Casteel: Special forces units, private contractors and the CIA were using induced hypothermia, sensory deprivation, stress positions, sleep deprivation, and smashed prisoners fingers with hammers as a means of extracting information. A really common technique used was shackling a prisoner’s ankles and hands to a loop at the bottom of a shipping container while blaring music and flashing lights for extended periods of time, thus inducing sensory and sleep deprivation. Sometimes dogs would be used as well.

Iowa Independent: What was your role as an Arabic translator and interrogator?

Casteel: I served specifically on a team that interrogated terrorists and foreign fighters. My job was to find information that would help battlefield commanders with missions.

The textbook definition of interrogation is to exploit the greatest amount of information in the least amount of time. We would use the phrase “tactical exploitation” causally all of the time. I was reading Pope John Paul II at the time, and he described the current age as “the culture of death,” which he defines as any time one reduces a human being to an object as a means to an end of exploitation, you participate in the culture of death.

I conducted over 130 interrogations, and I can count on one hand the number of people who were guilty of anything more than being Arab.

Iowa Independent: So who were you interrogating?

Casteel: I interrogated taxi drivers, laborers and young fathers. Units would go out looking for four people and would come back with 80. The problem was that all of the linguists, those who had cultural training, were back with me, so soldiers with little knowledge of the culture were rounding up anyone who looked suspicious in their mind, which meant carrying an AK-47.

What they didn’t know is that the terrorists involved in the violence were a maximum of 2 percent. Political insurgency, people tied to political movements, was 30 to 35 percent. Most of the violence came from the Tribal Defense System, which is like neighborhood watch with guns. They are mainly trying to keep their people safe, and they might be fighting other Iraqis, coalitions or anyone they deem as a threat to their neighborhood. So our soldiers would see these guys and would suspect they may be working for Osama bin Laden, whereas they may just be guarding an alley for safety reasons.

Iowa Independent: When did you begin sensing that your religious faith and your sense of duty as a soldier were clashing?

Casteel: There was this painting at the chapel we used in Abu Ghraib which had this huge, beefy-looking Jesus, who looked like Brian Uhrlacher, a barrel-chested linebacker. He was surrounded by soldiers in combat poses with M-60s and M-16s, and there were a bunch of blue-skinned angels with gold, glowing swords flying about. After meeting the Saudi, I felt like this painting was a good metaphor for America and how things worked out in American Christianity. The painting conveyed the message that Combat Jesus helps me kick my enemies’ ass.

I didn’t like that idea.

Iowa Independent: What do you see as your new calling in the post-Abu Ghraib, post-military world?

Casteel: I’m interested in spreading the notion of political nonviolence and teaching Christians about their faith. There is no such thing as Combat Jesus. The single most important issue when it comes to Christianity and violence is nationalism. It is the single most divisive thing that can push a Christian from a discussion of ethics to a discussion about law. I never heard a Christian say that violence is a good thing and hating people is OK. But there has always been a way to frame it so that violence is no longer personal. It is policy.

What I experienced in Iraq is that I had a unique view from the battlefield. I actually had to talk to the enemy. I knew the names and ages of their kids. How long it had been since they had seen their wives. They had real questions about our democracy and how it worked.

The language our leadership use is always purely policy. Nations have interests, and it is no longer about people. As long as we stay within the language of policy, rather than talking about pain which is never talked about, when it comes to the politics of war. … We have given countries and institutions emotions instead of people.

Iowa Independent: What do you think should happen in Iraq?

Casteel: Nothing can happen without deep, serious conversation with Iran, Syria and Jordan. It is their part of the world. Every time I hear somebody say we need to withdraw with honor, I want to throw my shoe at the television or radio. When did Iraq’s stability have anything to do with our honor? We need to fess up to the fact that we did a very dishonorable thing; that would be the honorable thing to do.

We are always concerned about our interests in the long run. The building of the 14 permanent bases in Iraq needs to stop immediately. On the one hand I am more concerned about individuals than policy and using the political power of “no.” I don’t simply think the war in Iraq is the fault of a bunch of neocons; it is the fault of individuals who said “yes” and bought into the myth of nationalism. People, especially the working class, need to be educated that they have no duty of passing on an aristocracy.

Here is what I would say to soldiers: ‘No soldier is obliged to follow an order that is contrary to God.’ Sadly enough our laws don’t allow the conscience the full scope of freedom. For example, we don’t have selective conscientious objection in our country. You can’t object to unjust wars. Once you are in, you are in; you cannot pick and choose your wars, which basically turns our soldiers into indentured servants.

There are plenty of European countries that have selective CO. There has been no declaration of war since World War II, which means wars go through appropriations. This means that the mechanism of fighting wars that our constitution dictates has been bypassed, so individual soldiers are no longer being represented by their elected leaders in Congress. They are being turned into mercenaries. In a democracy, it is the responsibility of individuals to hold their elected officials responsible when they are unjust.

That means we have to care about things like education in our country.

“We’ve known this day has been coming for a long time. Today’s the day. T minus zero,” Scott Blakesley, who has been in the National Guard for 16 years, told KCRG News. “I never imagined that, in my mid-forties, I’d be going off to war.”

The soldiers, who are members of the Waterloo-based Detachment 1, Company C, 2nd Battalion, 211th Support Aviation Battalion, will depart Iowa for their mobilization station at Fort Sill, Okla., where they will receive several weeks of mission-specific training. Upon completion of additional training, they will deploy to the Central Command (CENTCOM) theater of operations in support of the global war on terrorism.

This unit provides aerial medical evacuations via UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters, supplying medical service and support for patients enroute to combat support hospitals. The unit was created in 2005, comprised of the former Troops D, E and F of 1st Squadron, 113th Cavalry, all of Waterloo.

VFF recently launched a campaign, “Four Months, For Victory,” to educate the American public about why achieving success in Iraq and Afghanistan is imperative. VFF feels that some politicians and members of the media have failed to assess the situation in Iraq objectively, neglecting to report on the successes the military has achieved, especially in the last year.

Hayden will join seven other veterans who will be returning to the respective Iraqi cities where they previously patrolled as active members of their military units. He will share his real-time updates on the VFF blog and will report his on-the-ground assessment back to VFF, which in turn will review the findings as a means of presenting its case to the public and elected officials responsible for shaping policy.

“The great danger is that policy becomes divorced from events on the ground,” VFF Chairman Pete Hegseth said in a statement. “The only responsible course is to ensure that decisions on troop levels and other matters reflect the demands of the battlefield. To reduce forces ignorant of, or despite, the consequences would be to risk disaster.”

According to a VFF press release:

The analysis of the group will focus on determining the depth and durability of recent gains, the troop levels required to achieve stability, the potential consequences of a rapid American withdrawal, the proper “conditions-based” metrics needed to measure the right balance of U.S. and Iraqi forces, the status of displaced people seeking to return to their homes, and the prospects for the return of al Qaeda to Iraq, among other issues.

“Senator Obama has stated his intention to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq on a fixed timetable and without almost any consideration for facts on the ground and events in the region,” Hegseth said “A policy of effectively unconditional withdrawal from Iraq raises troubling questions. Through this on-the-ground assessment, members of VFF are committed to providing fact-based analysis of critical policy decisions.”

“This cemetery will be a fitting and honorable resting place for veterans who sacrificed so much for our freedom,” Gov. Chet Culver said in a statement prior to the dedication ceremony. “Every day will be Memorial Day and Veterans Day at this place of reverence.”“The Department is extremely excited about the opening of the cemetery,” Patrick Palmersheim, Executive Director of the Iowa Department of Veterans Affairs, said in a statement. “We are grateful for the support of the Federal [Veterans Administration], Governor Culver, former Governor [Tom] Vilsack, the Iowa Legislature, and all the Veteran service organizations for making this dream a reality.”

The official dedication of the IVC took place Thursday and was attended by a number of Iowa’s political dignitaries, including Culver, Vilsack and Sen. Chuck Grassley, who helped procure $7.6 million from the Department of Veterans Affairs State Cemetery Grant Program for the veterans cemetery.

“Those who paid the ultimate sacrifice for our country deserve a proper place for remembrance in their home state,” Grassley said in a statement earlier this year. “This cemetery will provide family, friends, and fellow Iowans with an opportunity to pay their respects to our fallen soldiers.”

The IVC is the first federally funded construction of a state-owned and -operated veterans cemetery in the state of Iowa. The cemetery serves the veteran population throughout the state and around the country, as there is no state residency requirement to be interred. Honorably discharged veterans are eligible for interment at the cemetery at no cost; the spouse of a veteran can be interred for a cost of $300. Ultimately, the IVC will provide burial space for up to 80,000 burials. Thus far, over 1,000 veterans and eligible dependents have already been determined eligible.

In 2001, a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (USDVA) study identified Iowa as needing a dedicated, state-owned and -operated veterans cemetery. The study counted over 280,000 veterans living in Iowa, with about 92,000 living within a 75-mile radius of Des Moines. This study triggered Iowa’s political leaders to get involved and help procure the necessary funding to help build, maintain and operate the cemetery.

The Iowa Department of Veterans Affairs (IDVA) began fundraising for the cemetery on Veterans Day 2004 with the sale of Bronze and Silver Iowa Veteran Commemorative Medals. In 2005, Iowa’s legislature gave IDVA the authority to “establish and operate” a state veterans cemetery.

Construction of the IVC began in July 2007, on 100 acres of land donated by the Knapp and Kenyon families. The first phase of construction has developed 40 acres that will provide for approximately 20 years of operation.

“It is an honor and privilege to serve as the director of the Iowa Veterans Cemetery,” Director Steve Young said in a statement. “Our goal for this facility is to provide first-class, respectful service so that our veterans and their families will be remembered in perpetuity.”

The online show will broadcast a new episode every Wednesday and will feature Iraq and Afghanistan service men and women and their families, who share how their lives have been impacted by these ongoing wars.

Then, in a live forum, the series host, Jan Bender, will interview the participants and lead a discussion that includes experts, service-providers and individual viewers in an interactive discussion of the issues raised. Bender is a veteran of the war in Iraq who served as a rifleman/combat correspondent in Iraq with the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, in 2004 and 2005.

“In Their Boots” Trailer

The idea for the new series stemmed from a conversation between Jim Miller of BNF and a supporter, which Miller documents in an e-mail message sent out to other supporters:

Last summer I got a call from someone who had seen some of our past work. She started off being extremely complimentary about the issues we were bringing to light, marveling at how widely we were able to distribute our short videos to not only inform, but to motivate viewers to take action. She then asked if Brave New Foundation would be interested in taking on a large project to help amplify the stories of a group of Americans whose efforts and sacrifices weren’t being acknowledged. She warned me that it would be a difficult task since it only directly affected less than 1 percent of the US population.

Being a bit headstrong (even in my middle age), I said that no task was too difficult. If there is an injustice, we could tackle it and help to make it right! But what she wanted was difficult. The task we took on was to tell the stories of service members who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Over the past several months, as we gathered our staff and began to meet the men and women who have served, we knew that it would be a privilege to be able to share the stories of these service members and their families so that the other 99 percent of the U.S. population can better understand what is happening to our troops when they return from war.

Approximately 160 Soldiers are being mobilized from Company B, 248th Aviation Support Battalion (formerly known as Company D, 109th Aviation), Iowa Army National Guard. The unit is based in Boone, with detachments in Waterloo (Detachment 3) and Davenport (Detachment 4). The unit will travel to its mobilization station at Fort Sill, Okla., for additional training before deploying to the Central Command theater of operations.

The unit’s mission is to provide aviation maintenance support to a combat aviation brigade, which includes aircraft diagnostics, repair, maintenance and testing. The unit will be serving its third deployment since the 9/11 attacks in 2001, including a mobilization from November 2001 to November 2002, and again from February to December 2003.

833rd returning home from Iraq

Meanwhile, a homecoming ceremony for an Ottumwa-based Army National Guard unit, the 833rd Engineer Company (formerly known as Company B, 224th Engineer Battalion), will be held at 1:30 p.m. Saturday at the Hellyer Student Life Center, Indian Hills Community College – the same venue where community members bade farewell to the 833rd nearly a year ago.

Approximately 120 soldiers of the 833rd were mobilized to Fort McCoy, Wis., last June, before being deployed to the Central Command Theater of Operations in Iraq. The unit is completing its second tour of duty in less than four years. During its previous deployment to Iraq from October 2004 through December 2005, the unit earned recognition for its abilities and expertise in finding and defusing improvised explosive devices.

The 833rd’s mission was to increase the combat effectiveness of United States and coalition forces by removing physical obstacles, identifying and reducing minefields and explosive devices, executing mobility missions, emplacing barriers, constructing protective positions and performing infantry missions as required.

During their deployment, soldiers of the 833rd Engineer Co. conducted 495 combat patrols and found 100 IEDs and 13 pieces of unexploded ordnance. They successfully destroyed 55 of these explosive devices in place, clearing more than 40,000 miles of roads, making them safer for coalition forces.