Boston Globe: As Iraq veteran, Moulton torn on OK for troops

WASHINGTON — For Representative Seth Moulton, who served four tours in Iraq, traveling to the war-torn country for the first time in more than six years this week was a bittersweet return.

“I spent three years of my life there,” said the Salem Democrat, who traveled to Baghdad on a fact-finding tour for the House Armed Services Committee. “I have a lot of Iraqi friends. In that sense, it was good to be back.”

But as the freshman lawmaker flew in a helicopter over the scarred landscape where he became a decorated Marine Corps officer — in a war he later said he disagreed with — he was on a very different mission: to decide whether to vote to possibly send more US troops back to fight there.

President Obama has asked Congress to formally authorize the five-month-old US-led air campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The vote will be personally wrenching, Moulton said, especially with signs that the United States is sliding toward reinserting combat troops.

“These are very difficult decisions ... about putting young Americans in harm’s way,” Moulton said in an interview Friday after returning from a week-long trip that took him to Iraq, Afghanistan, and several other countries in the region.

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