The New York Times > International > Middle East > Logistics: Inquiry Opens After Reservists Balk in Baghdad

"Jackie Butler of Jackson, Miss., the wife of Staff Sgt. Michael Butler, 44, said she was awakened about 5:30 or 6 a.m. Thursday by a call from an officer from Iraq. He told her 'that my husband was being detained for disobeying a direct order,' Ms. Butler said, 'and he went on to tell me that it was a bogus charge that they got against him and some of those soldiers over there, because what they was doing was sending them into a suicide mission, and they refused to go.'"

This report hit the web yesterday. It sounds as if the situation for US soldiers in Iraq has become incredibly desperate. Not only are there not enough soldiers in Iraq but ones that are there feel unsafe to the point of insubordination.

"Yesterday we refused to go on a convoy to Taji," Specialist Amber McClenny, 21, said in a message she left on the answering machine of her mother, Teresa Hill, in Dothan, Ala. "We had broken-down trucks, nonarmored vehicles. We were carrying contaminated fuel."

After the soldiers were released, Specialist McClenny called her mother again and explained that the jet fuel the convoy had to carry had been contaminated with diesel, and that because it had been rejected by one base, it would likely be rejected by the Taji base."

Now who do you think is responsable for this contaminated fuel? Could it be Halliburton?