ustxtxb_obs_2003_05_23_50_00011-00000_000.pdf

RIGHT: Susan Ives was selling encyclopedias on U.S. military bases when she decided to join the Army. “I started thinking that if the only people who went into the military were the people who wanted to get out there and kill, then we’d get exactly the type of army we deserved,” she says. She discovered that she enjoyed her life in the military, but left the service after the first Gulf War. She had been working as a media liaison for the Army’s “Operation Provide Comfort” to repatriate the Kurds, when she found herself alone one day out in the field. A Kurdish woman approached. “And the first thing I did was I put my hand on my hip and released the safety of my .45,” she recalls. “And then it was like, ‘What are you doing?’ Here’s a woman walking towards you and the first thing you’re thinking of is ‘I gotta kill her’ and it just scared me to death that that was within me:’ Ives, pictured here with a photo of herself during the first Gulf War, now works with San Antonio’s peaceCENTER. BELOW: According to Jonathan Steed, President of the Aggie Democrats and a Delta Tau fraternity member, there hasn’t been an antiwar protest at Texas A&M since 1967. But students like Steed, 21, and Kristin Wilbourn, 22, an Aggie Democrat and member of the Delta Gamma sorority, managed to break the silence. “In the past, a lot of people have been afraid to speak out because it is a conservative school. I think we made a monumental step,” says Steed. “I would say that my fraternity probably is just like most of America: Most people supported the war, some of them didn’t. I’m not in the frat because I agree with them politically. I can put aside our political differences:’ What he can’t put aside are his feelings about the war in Iraq: “War orphans make great terrorists. We’ve given Al Qaeda the best recruiting tool they could possibly have:’ Says Wilbourn: “I’m frustrated with this war. I don’t see why we’re the ones who can say who can and who can’t have chemical weapons and how they should treat their people. I don’t see why Iraq first. To me it just seems like it’s a personal vendetta:’