Baghdad, Iraq – U.S. soldiers and Marines filed into the marble hall of Sad dam Hussein’s former Al Faw Palace on Independence Day as foreigners at home as well as in Iraq. But they left the room as American citizens.
Standing under a glittering chandelier, 161 service members took the oath of citizenship Wednesday, the largest group to be naturalized at once in Iraq since the conflict began in March 2003. The mostly young, mostly male troops with last names such as Toledo and Serrano stitched across the back of their caps vowed to “support and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America against all enemies,” an abstract promise with a deeper daily meaning in Iraq.
“You chose to endure the same sacrifices as your fellow comrades in arms to preserve the freedom of a land that was not yet fully yours,” Army Gen. David Petraeus, military commander in Iraq, told the gathering in Baghdad. “It is the greatest of honors to soldier with you.”
About 800 personnel filled the room, including 585 service members re-enlisting as part of the ceremony, with onlookers straining to see from crowded balconies and stairwells.
Among them were Arizona Sen. John McCain, a Republican presidential candidate, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., both veterans who flew in for the occasion.
Near the front of the hall, Pfc. Mark Ayson, with a black brace on his wrist and an M-4 rifle slung across his back, had tears in his eyes.
Ayson, 26, of Pensacola, Fla., was born in the Philippines and immigrated to the U.S. with his family at age 8. Less than a week before the ceremony, he was riding in a Humvee when it was hit by a copper-plated explosive in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Adhamiya. A fellow soldier lost a leg in the attack, but Ayson escaped with two damaged eardrums, shrapnel in his right leg and a bruised left wrist. He was back to work within 72 hours.
Ayson said the experience underlines why he joined the Army, came to Iraq nearly a year ago and became a citizen Wednesday.
“We’re fighting for a cause,” he said.
A large contingent of Mexican-Americans from California milled around, carrying American flags along with their citizenship certificates and pieces of a red, white and blue sheet cake.
Pfc. Cecilia Rodriguez, 19, of Fresno, immigrated to California in 1997 from Pastor Ortiz in the Mexican state of Michoacan. Her parents, two sisters and a brother are legal residents, but Rodriguez is the first in her family to become a citizen.
“It was a dream that my dad had for us, to come over here and have more opportunities,” Rodriguez said of her new homeland.
U.S. immigration officials swore in 325 service members as citizens across Iraq on Wednesday. As of May, 1,186 service members had become citizens in Iraq since the beginning of the conflict, according to the Defense Department.
Wednesday’s Baghdad ceremony was dedicated to some of the 126 noncitizen service members who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, 70 of whom received posthumous citizenship.
Sgt. Luis Ochoa, 35, of Fayetteville, N.C., said he wanted to avoid becoming one of those noncitizen casualties after fighting in Afghanistan and while on his second tour in Iraq.
“I wanted to die an American. I wanted to die happy,” said Ochoa, who came to the U.S. in 1984 from Tijuana, Mexico.
Ochoa wanted his wife and four kids with him to show off his new citizenship certificate stamped “July 4, 2007.”
Instead, Ochoa returned to Forward Operating Base Justice northeast of Baghdad, to continue his duty, now as a U.S. citizen.
“I got a patrol,” Ochoa said with a smile. “I got work to do.”
