by Ann Froines

A soldier back from Iraq on a national tour speaking out about the war joined a city resident whose mother is serving there Feb. 2 at Tufts University forum on American policies in Iraq.

“I didn't feel we were helping the Iraqi people," said Kelly Dougherty, a former Colorado National Guard sergeant in the 220^th Military Police Company.  She served in the theater for eight months.

Dougherty is the co-founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War, one groups sponsoring her tour, she said. The local sponsor of the event was Tufts Coalition Opposed to War in Iraq.

Our war in Iraq and our occupation of its land has had a negative effect on its people, she said.

Joining Dougherty at the forum called "Iraq War Veterans Speak Out" was Somerville resident, Rose Gonzalez.   

Gonzalez, a member of the antiwar group Military Families Speak Out (MFSO), said 46-year-old mother, a member of a Massachusetts National Guard Unit, was sent to active duty in Iraq recently. 

"I was in denial about it until the day she left," she said. "She's a grandmother!"

She read from a letter her mother wrote describing the difficulties she encountered in Iraq, which concluded: "Pray for me."

Dougherty provided the audience with an insider’s account of the daily life of a soldier. "We guarded gasoline tankers traveling from Kuwait into southern Iraq," she said.

She said the chaotic situation that frequently developed when tankers or trucks transporting goods into Iraq would break down or get stuck in the mud. 

Iraqi people would gather around, she said, and the Guard unit's task was to prevent Iraqis from taking items from the trucks or gasoline from the tankers.

    "The people were living in poverty, and sometimes didn't have enough to eat,” she said.

After a whole day of guarding the trucks against the restless crowd, an order would invariably come down to burn the trucks and the goods on them, she said.

One time, the Dougherty’s unit was ordered to burn a truck filled with food, she said.

For two months for two months we had to burn trucks nearly every day. 

Close to tears, Gonzalez said she questions the Bush administration's changing justification for the invasion of Iraq, and how the war is affecting her family and our country's future.

A member of the Somerville-Medford United for Justice with Peace group, activist Abby Yanow, said local peace groups working with IVAW and MFSO can end the war in Iraq and bring the troops home.

Students from sponsoring organizations urged audience members to join them in protesting the war by participating in an anti-war rally March 19 in Boston.