Got this little gem from the New York Times edition of August 25th, 2007. It seems that the papers are finally starting to report on what motivates Iraqis to blow up American and Coalition forces. The gist of the story is that the surge is causing more Iraqis to be detained in Coalition-run prisons. The military has known this for some time now; I am just amazed that the so-called "Liberal News Media" hasn't call the Derelict in Chief on this:
"Nearly 85 percent of the detainees in custody are Sunni Arabs, the minority faction in Iraq that ruled the country under the government of Saddam Hussein; the other detainees are Shiites, the officers say...
"...[M]ilitary officers said that of the Sunni detainees, about 1,800 claim allegiance to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown extremist group that American intelligence agencies have concluded is foreign-led. About 6,000 more identify themselves as takfiris, or Muslims who believe some other Muslims are not true believers. Such believers view Shiite Muslims as heretics.
"Those statistics would seem to indicate that the main inspiration of the hard-core Sunni insurgency is no longer a desire to restore the old order — a movement that drew from former Baath Party members and security officials who had served under Mr. Hussein — and has become religious and ideological.
"But the officers say an equally large number of Iraqi detainees say money is a significant reason they planted roadside bombs or shot at Iraqi and American-led forces.
“'Interestingly, we’ve found that the vast majority are not inspired by jihad or hate for the coalition or Iraqi government — the vast majority are inspired by money,' said Capt. John Fleming of the Navy, a spokesman for the multinational forces’ detainee operations. The men are paid by insurgent leaders. 'The primary motivator is economic — they’re angry men because they don’t have jobs,' he said. 'The detainee population is overwhelmingly illiterate and unemployed. Extremists have been very successful at spreading their ideology to economically strapped Iraqis with little to no formal education.'
"But the detention system itself often serves as a breeding ground for the insurgency and a training opportunity for those who, after they are released, may attack Iraqi or American-led forces, military officers say.
"According to statistics supplied by the headquarters of Task Force 134, the American military unit in charge of detention operations in Iraq, there are about 280 detainees from countries other than Iraq. Of those, 55 are identified as Egyptian, 53 as Syrian, 37 as Saudi, 28 as Jordanian and 24 as Sudanese."
Where do I start? They Iraqi men are angry because they have no jobs? They are illiterate and unemployed? And we have KBR here, bringing in Pakistanis and Indians and others from all over the Third World, doing manual labor (for next to nothing) while the Iraqis have no jobs--in their own country? Wouldn't that make you a little bit angry? The unemployment rate in this country is over 40% but we import people to work at the bases. Maybe the locals would be more trustworthy and we wouldn't need to bring folks from other countries if they sensed that we were here to help them and not exploit them!
And even better--the American people are told that, "we're fighting them over here so we don't fight them at home." Of the 24,000 detainees in this country who are being held for attacking Coalition forces, Task Force 134 can positively identify exactly 280 that are non-Iraqi. Wonderful. We're going to this expense to fight the equivalent of two rifle companies over here. And--oh, by the way--we don't have any idea how many people are being held by the Iraqi government. "According to John Sifton, a researcher with Human Rights Watch...[T]he American military in Iraq will not provide numbers for detainees held by the government of Iraq.
“'The allegations of abuse are far worse for Iraqi facilities than for those detainees in U.S. custody,' he said. 'It is difficult to know the Iraqi detainee population. There are both official and unofficial Iraqi detention systems.'”
That is just peachy. This lying has got to stop, folks. Write your reps in Washington; I have. They can ignore us when we do it individually; they can't if we do it collectively. See ya 'round...
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Almost forgot...
Yesterday, as a sign of progress in Iraq, insurgents blew up a pipeline leading to an oil refinery. This picture was taken in the afternoon after it had been burning for a few hours. I don't know how far away it was, but that is a very big plume of smoke...
This is the same plume of smoke as seen from a different location on the installation about 2 1/2 hours later:
+00009.jpg)
I heard last night at chow that it was a pipeline, but I wanted to wait until I saw that in the paper before I posted the pictures. This morning the sky was really obscured. I think it was probably the residual smoke.
This is the pond right next to where I took the last picture. That's a mosque to the right and an incomplete watch tower to the left. The watch tower was started by Saddam's people. I liked how still the water was...sometimes the geese swim in it.
+00004.jpg)
Okay---last but not least today, here are some Marine aviators getting ready for a mission...
This is the same plume of smoke as seen from a different location on the installation about 2 1/2 hours later:
+00009.jpg)
I heard last night at chow that it was a pipeline, but I wanted to wait until I saw that in the paper before I posted the pictures. This morning the sky was really obscured. I think it was probably the residual smoke.
This is the pond right next to where I took the last picture. That's a mosque to the right and an incomplete watch tower to the left. The watch tower was started by Saddam's people. I liked how still the water was...sometimes the geese swim in it.
+00004.jpg)
Okay---last but not least today, here are some Marine aviators getting ready for a mission...
Reality Check
Hey folks! It's been a few days since I posted...I hope the last post made you laugh a little. That's what it's all about--making it through this deployment with my ass and my sense of humor still intact. I'll keep everyone posted on any interesting developments or reactions. Maybe "Cheryl" will even grow some breasts, who knows. She definitely won't grow any testicles. But seriously, chickenhawks are scum. Bigtime scum.
So the White House is already starting to minimize expectations about the report on the surge here in Iraq. That can NOT be a good sign. I have felt for a long time that people like Casey and Petraeus were being set up as fall guys. The guys in uniform do what the guys in suits tell them to do. When the guy in the suit says, "The commanders on the ground determine the requirements, and they tell me they don't need more troops," what does that say to the commander who may have said that once but doesn't feel that way anymore? It tells him he needs to sit down and be quiet.
The president once said when Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) head L. Paul Bremer was here that no one was requesting more troops. When Bremer leaves, he finally says that he requested 40,000 more troops during late 2003 or early 2004 and was told, "no." Don't hold me to the dates, I think that was the time frame; he left in June 2004 anyway, so it was no later than June 2004. But Bremer was a tool, anyway. God, the catastrophic mistakes that guy made by disbanding the Army and forced de-Ba'athification of the civil service. Those two blunders will be seen by historians as where this violent, intractable fiasco traces its roots to. Had things gone differently then I might not have ever been here to put this blog together. But here I am, and Bremer, four years after he did that, is back in the States living safely. And I bet it never weighs on his conscience, either.
Which brings me to an enabler for this disaster to continue. The president spoke at a convention for the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) last week. War is good for business for these veterans groups, and I'll tell you what, business for them has been pretty good. It seems that anytime Bush wants to take a break from exploiting the uniformed military, the veterans groups call a conference so he can be the keynote speaker. Last week it was the VFW, next week it's the American Legion. I am more familiar with the Legion than the VFW because my Dad is involved in the Legion. Frankly, I think both of those groups are a bunch of bloodsuckers. What on earth are they trying to do? Do they think having some love-fest with a walking, talking, disaster of a man will draw in new members? Has direct mail gotten so expensive that they need to angle for free news coverage to drum up business? How pathetic; how sadly, horribly pathetic. And these are organizations that are supposed to be devoted to the continued welfare of the veteran!!! Jesus, with friends like that who needs enemies?
Another thing that angers me is the coverage. The so-called Liberal News Media just regurgitates his garbage with vacuous reporting. The story is, "Here's the president, and here's what he said, back to you, Katie," when they ought to be taking some time to digest what the statements being made really mean. I saw the Full Of eXcrement (FOX) News Channel report that he was comparing Vietnam to Iraq, and I said out loud, "Isn't it a little bit late for that?" Hey, I thought it was humorous, but some of the guys around me didn't. No one said anything. So Fox reports that, and the average Fox viewer agrees with the president. Most of the rest of the country doesn't buy the BS. But where is the "Liberal News Media?" If they are going to be called Liberal, they damn well ought to start acting Liberal, but they don't and they won't. They ought to have a headline story about how unwilling the president was to serve in Vietnam, and juxtapose that lack of service over his repeated admonitions that "there is tough work ahead." Hey, major combat operations were supposed to be over in May 2003. Why are there 20+ brigades of soldiers here now? I guess he was lying then, because I read the papers everyday and I never remember him saying that major combat operations had flared back up.
Really--what's up with that? Why isn't that moment of theater staged at taxpayer expense constantly being replayed on the news as a demonstration of how discredited this administration is? I see the tape of Bill Clinton saying he didn't have sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky more often than I see the Mission Accomplished moment. And Bill Clinton's libido isn't responsible for 3,700+ dead soldiers and hundreds of thousands of dead civilians. The first President Bush must be thoroughly ashamed of his son, considering how refused to drive on all the way to Baghdad in '91. What do they talk about at the cookout on the 4th of July? They sure can't talk current events.
The point I was originally trying to make, that these older veterans groups act as a stage for the exploitation of veterans, is important. Organizations represent people. It is assumed that an organization speaks for their membership. The president doesn't make speeches like the one he made last week on the steps of Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He makes them where his handlers and puppeteers can manage the images and create their own reality. Spending time with the wounded and the families of the dead forces him to confront the truth that the rest of us see. No one represents the families of the fallen, and their grief is so private that no one should try. I hope that when folks see that the VFW or the Legion are buying into the BS, they recognize that the soldiers in the fight know what's going on. I have no interest in joining them, and if they ever make the mistake of calling my home or knocking on my door to get me to join, I will blast them so hard they'll wish they had never even seen my name. Anyway, onto more interesting things...
...like more T-wall art. I took these pictures today. Like I said, there are some very talented and creative people here on this installation. Take a look at these:
How would you like to have to drive this piece of equipment? It might get a little bit claustrophobic...
I love the sense of humor some people have. Look closely at the blade on the Stryker vehicle to the left...
Back to some T-walls...
The one kid died the day after Christmas...
And another one...
I'll post some more next time. See y'all in a little while.
So the White House is already starting to minimize expectations about the report on the surge here in Iraq. That can NOT be a good sign. I have felt for a long time that people like Casey and Petraeus were being set up as fall guys. The guys in uniform do what the guys in suits tell them to do. When the guy in the suit says, "The commanders on the ground determine the requirements, and they tell me they don't need more troops," what does that say to the commander who may have said that once but doesn't feel that way anymore? It tells him he needs to sit down and be quiet.
The president once said when Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) head L. Paul Bremer was here that no one was requesting more troops. When Bremer leaves, he finally says that he requested 40,000 more troops during late 2003 or early 2004 and was told, "no." Don't hold me to the dates, I think that was the time frame; he left in June 2004 anyway, so it was no later than June 2004. But Bremer was a tool, anyway. God, the catastrophic mistakes that guy made by disbanding the Army and forced de-Ba'athification of the civil service. Those two blunders will be seen by historians as where this violent, intractable fiasco traces its roots to. Had things gone differently then I might not have ever been here to put this blog together. But here I am, and Bremer, four years after he did that, is back in the States living safely. And I bet it never weighs on his conscience, either.
Which brings me to an enabler for this disaster to continue. The president spoke at a convention for the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) last week. War is good for business for these veterans groups, and I'll tell you what, business for them has been pretty good. It seems that anytime Bush wants to take a break from exploiting the uniformed military, the veterans groups call a conference so he can be the keynote speaker. Last week it was the VFW, next week it's the American Legion. I am more familiar with the Legion than the VFW because my Dad is involved in the Legion. Frankly, I think both of those groups are a bunch of bloodsuckers. What on earth are they trying to do? Do they think having some love-fest with a walking, talking, disaster of a man will draw in new members? Has direct mail gotten so expensive that they need to angle for free news coverage to drum up business? How pathetic; how sadly, horribly pathetic. And these are organizations that are supposed to be devoted to the continued welfare of the veteran!!! Jesus, with friends like that who needs enemies?
Another thing that angers me is the coverage. The so-called Liberal News Media just regurgitates his garbage with vacuous reporting. The story is, "Here's the president, and here's what he said, back to you, Katie," when they ought to be taking some time to digest what the statements being made really mean. I saw the Full Of eXcrement (FOX) News Channel report that he was comparing Vietnam to Iraq, and I said out loud, "Isn't it a little bit late for that?" Hey, I thought it was humorous, but some of the guys around me didn't. No one said anything. So Fox reports that, and the average Fox viewer agrees with the president. Most of the rest of the country doesn't buy the BS. But where is the "Liberal News Media?" If they are going to be called Liberal, they damn well ought to start acting Liberal, but they don't and they won't. They ought to have a headline story about how unwilling the president was to serve in Vietnam, and juxtapose that lack of service over his repeated admonitions that "there is tough work ahead." Hey, major combat operations were supposed to be over in May 2003. Why are there 20+ brigades of soldiers here now? I guess he was lying then, because I read the papers everyday and I never remember him saying that major combat operations had flared back up.
Really--what's up with that? Why isn't that moment of theater staged at taxpayer expense constantly being replayed on the news as a demonstration of how discredited this administration is? I see the tape of Bill Clinton saying he didn't have sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky more often than I see the Mission Accomplished moment. And Bill Clinton's libido isn't responsible for 3,700+ dead soldiers and hundreds of thousands of dead civilians. The first President Bush must be thoroughly ashamed of his son, considering how refused to drive on all the way to Baghdad in '91. What do they talk about at the cookout on the 4th of July? They sure can't talk current events.
The point I was originally trying to make, that these older veterans groups act as a stage for the exploitation of veterans, is important. Organizations represent people. It is assumed that an organization speaks for their membership. The president doesn't make speeches like the one he made last week on the steps of Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He makes them where his handlers and puppeteers can manage the images and create their own reality. Spending time with the wounded and the families of the dead forces him to confront the truth that the rest of us see. No one represents the families of the fallen, and their grief is so private that no one should try. I hope that when folks see that the VFW or the Legion are buying into the BS, they recognize that the soldiers in the fight know what's going on. I have no interest in joining them, and if they ever make the mistake of calling my home or knocking on my door to get me to join, I will blast them so hard they'll wish they had never even seen my name. Anyway, onto more interesting things...
...like more T-wall art. I took these pictures today. Like I said, there are some very talented and creative people here on this installation. Take a look at these:
How would you like to have to drive this piece of equipment? It might get a little bit claustrophobic...
I love the sense of humor some people have. Look closely at the blade on the Stryker vehicle to the left...
Back to some T-walls...
The one kid died the day after Christmas...
And another one...
I'll post some more next time. See y'all in a little while.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
More of the same...
Hello from Baghdad, where today it was 114 degrees, and man did it feel like it. Whew. I was out doing my thing and decided to take some more pictures. By the time I got back to the office it was after 1:00 pm and I was just totally smoked. My PT suffered tonight as a result. It was hard to get motivated and I reached muscle failure pretty early.
My PT has been a good news/ bad news story. I am building muscle, but I'm not burning fat quickly enough. I weighed myself tonight and I'm 185 lbs. My goal at the start of this deployment was to get down to 169. I'm definitely going in the wrong direction, but that's not hard to do here. The amount of food they serve here is just out of control. You have to tell them to slow down on what they dump on your plate or before you know it you're working a 4,000-calorie diet each day. I took a "before" picture a couple of weeks ago; if I hit my target I'll post them side by side so people can see the difference. If I don't hit my target weight, all photos will get quietly and permanently deleted...
So one of my last posts dealt with chickenhawks. They are a subspecies of that most disgusting of contemporary animals, the Cowardlius Republicanus. Well. I have an acquaintance, a guy I'll call "Cheryl," who is the poster child for this kind of animal.
Wait--I know what you're thinking..."Pat, you said that this is a dude but he's got a chick's name. What's going on?"
Very observant. This person was born male, but only grew to be half a man, hence the chick's name. It's not "his" real name anyway. She knows who she is. Anyway, I'm digressing...back to the story.
So I'm here, in a war zone, where soldiers aren't shooting at paper targets so they can feel good about themselves, they're shooting at bad guys (who are shooting back, by the way) in order to save their ass. This chick thinks it's funny to quote Democrats who were equally gutless and didn't fight to keep the president from invading this country four years ago. You know what I mean--the ones who said junk like, "Saddam Hussein, bad bad man, needs to be removed from power, etc.," mostly during the year prior to the invasion. Oddly, she never mentions the times Bush and Cheney expound at length about why invading Iraq and destroying the Hussein government is such a bad idea. She gets selective amnesia about how Bush and his cohorts, seven short years ago, would sneer at the idea of nation-building (exactly what we're doing right here, right now). But hey, that's to be expected. Nation-building sucks; nation-building when Kellog, Brown, and Root (KBR) is performing the work under non-competitive contracts--buddy, that's called a retirement account when you leave office.
Damn it, I'm digressing again. Anyway, "Cheryl" is sending these silly f***ing e-mails, just peppering my inbox with 'em. I'm like, screw it, she'll get bored and start playing with dolls--sorry, poseable action figures--again anytime now. I go work out, go hit the showers, and go to bed. That was Tuesday night. So I'm sitting here in my office yesterday afternoon, about to go to chow, and she starts sending them AGAIN! I'm like, Jesus Christ, is this chick stalking me? Like, I'm done with this whole business, I actually have a war going on here that sort of has my attention, and this woman is still going at it. She wouldn't serve when it was her chance--in Vietnam, where lots of women served--but she'll put on the cheerleader's outfit, wave the pom-poms, and enthusiastically send other people's kids off to war. She just wouldn't let it go.
Well, yesterday was the wrong day for that kind of junk; we had incoming here that was a little unnerving, and 14 soldiers died in a helicopter crash in the hills up north. 14 soldiers who had hopes and dreams to go back to after the Army. 14 people who had families that were worried every minute they were here, and friends, and all of them now are beside themselves with grief that this chick "Cheryl" will never, ever know. And she just keeps sending this garbage. Not only is it immature for a woman approaching retirement age to do something like that, it's just downright disrespectful. So I told her to show some respect for the dead and knock it off. Tell me--what do you think was the response? Was it (a) silence, or was it (b) more verbal diarrhea? If you selected (b) give yourself a chuck on the shoulder and a 20 oz. bottle of red Gatorade from the Dining Facility (the DFAC, pronounced "dee-fack").
I was just enraged. It definitely motivated me for my workout after dinner (think Robert De Niro in "Cape Fear"). You know, it must really suck to be like "Cheryl." I mean, having to go through life, masquerading as the tough girl when the seminal event of her generation is a war; you know, the time when someone who wants to play the tough girl can actually play the tough girl, and she passes it up. Okay, fine--so she chose to Park in College for a few years until things cooled off; whatever, lots of other people did the same thing. They just didn't come out of the experience with such an abundance of self-loathing that they decided the only way to feel better about avoiding the war was to cheer for other wars to start so that they could act tough with their friends. Again, it must suck to carry that kind of shame. But I wouldn't know--my country called and I answered. The person calling the shots this time happens to be a dangerously ignorant, semi-retarded chickenhawk like "Cheryl," but I think that's why she loves the guy so much. They were cut from the same bolt of cloth.
It's the same kind of cloth used for diapers.
But am I bitter? Nah...why be bitter?
I'll be blogging at you later, so stay tuned...lots of interesting things go on here every day, and I'll be back to tell you about 'em. Thanks for reading.
My PT has been a good news/ bad news story. I am building muscle, but I'm not burning fat quickly enough. I weighed myself tonight and I'm 185 lbs. My goal at the start of this deployment was to get down to 169. I'm definitely going in the wrong direction, but that's not hard to do here. The amount of food they serve here is just out of control. You have to tell them to slow down on what they dump on your plate or before you know it you're working a 4,000-calorie diet each day. I took a "before" picture a couple of weeks ago; if I hit my target I'll post them side by side so people can see the difference. If I don't hit my target weight, all photos will get quietly and permanently deleted...
So one of my last posts dealt with chickenhawks. They are a subspecies of that most disgusting of contemporary animals, the Cowardlius Republicanus. Well. I have an acquaintance, a guy I'll call "Cheryl," who is the poster child for this kind of animal.
Wait--I know what you're thinking..."Pat, you said that this is a dude but he's got a chick's name. What's going on?"
Very observant. This person was born male, but only grew to be half a man, hence the chick's name. It's not "his" real name anyway. She knows who she is. Anyway, I'm digressing...back to the story.
So I'm here, in a war zone, where soldiers aren't shooting at paper targets so they can feel good about themselves, they're shooting at bad guys (who are shooting back, by the way) in order to save their ass. This chick thinks it's funny to quote Democrats who were equally gutless and didn't fight to keep the president from invading this country four years ago. You know what I mean--the ones who said junk like, "Saddam Hussein, bad bad man, needs to be removed from power, etc.," mostly during the year prior to the invasion. Oddly, she never mentions the times Bush and Cheney expound at length about why invading Iraq and destroying the Hussein government is such a bad idea. She gets selective amnesia about how Bush and his cohorts, seven short years ago, would sneer at the idea of nation-building (exactly what we're doing right here, right now). But hey, that's to be expected. Nation-building sucks; nation-building when Kellog, Brown, and Root (KBR) is performing the work under non-competitive contracts--buddy, that's called a retirement account when you leave office.
Damn it, I'm digressing again. Anyway, "Cheryl" is sending these silly f***ing e-mails, just peppering my inbox with 'em. I'm like, screw it, she'll get bored and start playing with dolls--sorry, poseable action figures--again anytime now. I go work out, go hit the showers, and go to bed. That was Tuesday night. So I'm sitting here in my office yesterday afternoon, about to go to chow, and she starts sending them AGAIN! I'm like, Jesus Christ, is this chick stalking me? Like, I'm done with this whole business, I actually have a war going on here that sort of has my attention, and this woman is still going at it. She wouldn't serve when it was her chance--in Vietnam, where lots of women served--but she'll put on the cheerleader's outfit, wave the pom-poms, and enthusiastically send other people's kids off to war. She just wouldn't let it go.
Well, yesterday was the wrong day for that kind of junk; we had incoming here that was a little unnerving, and 14 soldiers died in a helicopter crash in the hills up north. 14 soldiers who had hopes and dreams to go back to after the Army. 14 people who had families that were worried every minute they were here, and friends, and all of them now are beside themselves with grief that this chick "Cheryl" will never, ever know. And she just keeps sending this garbage. Not only is it immature for a woman approaching retirement age to do something like that, it's just downright disrespectful. So I told her to show some respect for the dead and knock it off. Tell me--what do you think was the response? Was it (a) silence, or was it (b) more verbal diarrhea? If you selected (b) give yourself a chuck on the shoulder and a 20 oz. bottle of red Gatorade from the Dining Facility (the DFAC, pronounced "dee-fack").
I was just enraged. It definitely motivated me for my workout after dinner (think Robert De Niro in "Cape Fear"). You know, it must really suck to be like "Cheryl." I mean, having to go through life, masquerading as the tough girl when the seminal event of her generation is a war; you know, the time when someone who wants to play the tough girl can actually play the tough girl, and she passes it up. Okay, fine--so she chose to Park in College for a few years until things cooled off; whatever, lots of other people did the same thing. They just didn't come out of the experience with such an abundance of self-loathing that they decided the only way to feel better about avoiding the war was to cheer for other wars to start so that they could act tough with their friends. Again, it must suck to carry that kind of shame. But I wouldn't know--my country called and I answered. The person calling the shots this time happens to be a dangerously ignorant, semi-retarded chickenhawk like "Cheryl," but I think that's why she loves the guy so much. They were cut from the same bolt of cloth.
It's the same kind of cloth used for diapers.
But am I bitter? Nah...why be bitter?
I'll be blogging at you later, so stay tuned...lots of interesting things go on here every day, and I'll be back to tell you about 'em. Thanks for reading.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Question
Before I forget--When Chuck Norris gets drunk, he doesn't throw up, he throws down!
Okay then...
Is there anything worse in this world than someone who would expect others to do what they themselves are unwilling to do?
Is there anything in this world worthy of less respect than a coward?
In my opinion, no. Cowardice comes in many forms. I chose, 18 years ago this past March, to enlist in the Maryland Army National Guard as a Private. It was 1989. The Soviet Union was still a country. They had been forced to leave Afghanistan my mid-1988, and it seemed that they were weakened but by no means as weak as they would become. There was no hot war involving the US at that time, but the Cold War was still very much alive and well.
I chose to join the Guard primarily for money to use for college. As an infantryman, I was trained to fight the nation's wars, not study. I knew that at some point I could be called upon to fight, but let's face it, in 1989 the Guard was seen as a strategic reserve force, not the operational reserve it is today. While possible, the likelihood of mobilization for war then seemed pretty remote.
Within two years of my enlistment, we invaded Panama, Kuwait, and southern Iraq. The Soviet Union, for all intents and purposes, imploded and ceased being a conventional military threat to Western Europe. Hearing that term these days, "Western Europe," brings back memories of when Europe actually was divided between East and West. If you didn't live at that time, it's a hard concept to really relate the full flavor of what it was like. Bottom line, the world changed dramatically and a lot of amazing and important things happened in a very, very short period of time.
But I stayed in. I was offered a shot at Officer Candidate School which I took, and became a commissioned officer in the Maryland Guard in 1994. Still, even with the increase of OPTEMPO for the active component, the Guard was seen as a strategic reserve--break glass and use in case of war; otherwise leave it on the shelf. But we still trained for war. When March 1995 rolled around, had I remained enlisted, I could have ETS'ed (allowed my enlistment to expire and get out) but I didn't. I didn't because I enjoyed being in the Guard and I felt that it was important to be ready to defend our country. It would have been really easy to leave; hell, nothing really was going on that was incredibly violent with regard to the deployment of ground forces. We had peacekeeping missions all over the world, notably in Bosnia, but these weren't "hot" wars. Bosnia had the ability to flare up and get violent, but it never did to any appreciable degree after the Dayton Accords of 1995.
So here comes September 11. Within the first few months after that event, in the Guard you had a pretty clear choice: either stay in and risk getting mobilized and deployed somewhere, or finish your service and move on. Some of my more conservative friends chose the latter course. Whatever. I mean, there just aren't a whole lot of flaming liberals like myself in the military anyway, which is frankly disappointing, but that's another discussion for another day. But with the guys I hung with in the Guard, I was pretty surprised how many thought invading Iraq was the right thing to do. These were educated, company-grade officers.
When my unit was mobilized to go to Andrews AFB in January 2003 to augment the Air Force Security Forces unit there, the men got separated from the boys to a degree. Those who were unable to deploy because of physical problems (but the Guard had carried, anyway) couldn't go with us. Some were more or less put out, or allowed to ETS and not brought back. Some of the officers I knew who were cheerleaders for the administration suddenly realized that they might actually have to back up all the bluster and B.S. I was really surprised when a close friend of mine, who was a supporter of invading Iraq, got excused from the deployment and subsequently resigned his commission. I was pretty stunned. He was a good guy, but this is what he turned out to be when it counted:
I think what he told me was, and I am paraphrasing, that if he got mobilized (on that deployment) he would have to leave law school in the middle of the year, it would set him back with getting internships, he wouldn't be able to pay off his loans because he wouldn't be able to get the job he wanted, etc. Again, for a supporter of the war in the first place I was pretty surprised to hear him put it like that. I was like, damn, he's not even trying to rationalize it, he's just telling it flat out.
Well, he wasn't the only person I knew like that in the Guard. Their numbers started to thin as each new deployment came up. Until December 2004 they were pretty much CONUS, or Continental United States, deployments. in December 2004 we mobilized a rifle company to come to Iraq. Again, another round of should I stay/should I go with some people. Not with me. I still wanted to serve my country, even if it meant deploying in support of a complete fiasco like this one.
So now I'm getting to my main points--what kind of person asks sacrifice of others when he/she is unwilling to make that same sacrifice? And is there anything worse than being a total coward? I can now answer both questions. The kind of person who expects others to be willing to die for his country when, as a young, able-bodied student he stayed in college and declined to serve is a low form of life, indeed. There are many names for people like this--wuss, chicken hawk, punk...choose your favorite. We all know people like this; sometimes we realize it, sometimes we don't. Sometimes we assume that the guy standing next to us with a beer in his hand, talking a good game and dizzy with testosterone, has served in the military. maybe it's his love of guns; maybe it's his interest in military history. Heck, maybe it's because when he talks military stuff to you and he says, "A friend of mine who was in the Special Forces in Vietnam told me..." you want to believe that the person is a patriot; you want to believe he's a warrior.
Well folks, someone I know talks a very, very good game. But that's all he's got--all talk, no game. When his country needed him, this is what he turned out to be:
And that's quite a shame. It's a shame that chicken hawks survived the Vietnam War and 58,000+ patriots were sent to their deaths. In my opinion that is what's happening here in Iraq. The guys from the last war (see above) are feeding these guys into the meat grinder:
The punks from the Vietnam generation are trying to redeem themselves with the blood of the lions, the warriors, of this nation's youth. How does it feel to be half a man? How pitiful is someone so filled with self-loathing that they strain to bask in the reflected glory of those of us who do risk our lives, who will go to war when told to do so, who live the Army Values? What does one really feel, when looking in the mirror, when they realize that this nation needed them and they were too selfish or cowardly or weak to answer the call? If they use that experience to become more judicious in their call for military action (or renounce military action totally), I say they have earned a measure of my respect. If they become old, selfish, embittered, and lonely souls, devoid of self-respect and the respect of others, I say they got what they deserve. I'll drink a beer and smoke a cigar with a pacifist any day of the week because their philosophy is consistent. I turn my back and feel contempt for the ones who act as cheerleaders for this administration who never served in uniform themselves. Their children will be the ones putting the pieces back together. And some of their children are going to die.
OUT
Okay then...
Is there anything worse in this world than someone who would expect others to do what they themselves are unwilling to do?
Is there anything in this world worthy of less respect than a coward?
In my opinion, no. Cowardice comes in many forms. I chose, 18 years ago this past March, to enlist in the Maryland Army National Guard as a Private. It was 1989. The Soviet Union was still a country. They had been forced to leave Afghanistan my mid-1988, and it seemed that they were weakened but by no means as weak as they would become. There was no hot war involving the US at that time, but the Cold War was still very much alive and well.
I chose to join the Guard primarily for money to use for college. As an infantryman, I was trained to fight the nation's wars, not study. I knew that at some point I could be called upon to fight, but let's face it, in 1989 the Guard was seen as a strategic reserve force, not the operational reserve it is today. While possible, the likelihood of mobilization for war then seemed pretty remote.
Within two years of my enlistment, we invaded Panama, Kuwait, and southern Iraq. The Soviet Union, for all intents and purposes, imploded and ceased being a conventional military threat to Western Europe. Hearing that term these days, "Western Europe," brings back memories of when Europe actually was divided between East and West. If you didn't live at that time, it's a hard concept to really relate the full flavor of what it was like. Bottom line, the world changed dramatically and a lot of amazing and important things happened in a very, very short period of time.
But I stayed in. I was offered a shot at Officer Candidate School which I took, and became a commissioned officer in the Maryland Guard in 1994. Still, even with the increase of OPTEMPO for the active component, the Guard was seen as a strategic reserve--break glass and use in case of war; otherwise leave it on the shelf. But we still trained for war. When March 1995 rolled around, had I remained enlisted, I could have ETS'ed (allowed my enlistment to expire and get out) but I didn't. I didn't because I enjoyed being in the Guard and I felt that it was important to be ready to defend our country. It would have been really easy to leave; hell, nothing really was going on that was incredibly violent with regard to the deployment of ground forces. We had peacekeeping missions all over the world, notably in Bosnia, but these weren't "hot" wars. Bosnia had the ability to flare up and get violent, but it never did to any appreciable degree after the Dayton Accords of 1995.
So here comes September 11. Within the first few months after that event, in the Guard you had a pretty clear choice: either stay in and risk getting mobilized and deployed somewhere, or finish your service and move on. Some of my more conservative friends chose the latter course. Whatever. I mean, there just aren't a whole lot of flaming liberals like myself in the military anyway, which is frankly disappointing, but that's another discussion for another day. But with the guys I hung with in the Guard, I was pretty surprised how many thought invading Iraq was the right thing to do. These were educated, company-grade officers.
When my unit was mobilized to go to Andrews AFB in January 2003 to augment the Air Force Security Forces unit there, the men got separated from the boys to a degree. Those who were unable to deploy because of physical problems (but the Guard had carried, anyway) couldn't go with us. Some were more or less put out, or allowed to ETS and not brought back. Some of the officers I knew who were cheerleaders for the administration suddenly realized that they might actually have to back up all the bluster and B.S. I was really surprised when a close friend of mine, who was a supporter of invading Iraq, got excused from the deployment and subsequently resigned his commission. I was pretty stunned. He was a good guy, but this is what he turned out to be when it counted:
I think what he told me was, and I am paraphrasing, that if he got mobilized (on that deployment) he would have to leave law school in the middle of the year, it would set him back with getting internships, he wouldn't be able to pay off his loans because he wouldn't be able to get the job he wanted, etc. Again, for a supporter of the war in the first place I was pretty surprised to hear him put it like that. I was like, damn, he's not even trying to rationalize it, he's just telling it flat out.
Well, he wasn't the only person I knew like that in the Guard. Their numbers started to thin as each new deployment came up. Until December 2004 they were pretty much CONUS, or Continental United States, deployments. in December 2004 we mobilized a rifle company to come to Iraq. Again, another round of should I stay/should I go with some people. Not with me. I still wanted to serve my country, even if it meant deploying in support of a complete fiasco like this one.
So now I'm getting to my main points--what kind of person asks sacrifice of others when he/she is unwilling to make that same sacrifice? And is there anything worse than being a total coward? I can now answer both questions. The kind of person who expects others to be willing to die for his country when, as a young, able-bodied student he stayed in college and declined to serve is a low form of life, indeed. There are many names for people like this--wuss, chicken hawk, punk...choose your favorite. We all know people like this; sometimes we realize it, sometimes we don't. Sometimes we assume that the guy standing next to us with a beer in his hand, talking a good game and dizzy with testosterone, has served in the military. maybe it's his love of guns; maybe it's his interest in military history. Heck, maybe it's because when he talks military stuff to you and he says, "A friend of mine who was in the Special Forces in Vietnam told me..." you want to believe that the person is a patriot; you want to believe he's a warrior.
Well folks, someone I know talks a very, very good game. But that's all he's got--all talk, no game. When his country needed him, this is what he turned out to be:
And that's quite a shame. It's a shame that chicken hawks survived the Vietnam War and 58,000+ patriots were sent to their deaths. In my opinion that is what's happening here in Iraq. The guys from the last war (see above) are feeding these guys into the meat grinder:
The punks from the Vietnam generation are trying to redeem themselves with the blood of the lions, the warriors, of this nation's youth. How does it feel to be half a man? How pitiful is someone so filled with self-loathing that they strain to bask in the reflected glory of those of us who do risk our lives, who will go to war when told to do so, who live the Army Values? What does one really feel, when looking in the mirror, when they realize that this nation needed them and they were too selfish or cowardly or weak to answer the call? If they use that experience to become more judicious in their call for military action (or renounce military action totally), I say they have earned a measure of my respect. If they become old, selfish, embittered, and lonely souls, devoid of self-respect and the respect of others, I say they got what they deserve. I'll drink a beer and smoke a cigar with a pacifist any day of the week because their philosophy is consistent. I turn my back and feel contempt for the ones who act as cheerleaders for this administration who never served in uniform themselves. Their children will be the ones putting the pieces back together. And some of their children are going to die.
OUT
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
More cool pictures
Here are a few pictures I took this afternoon--more T-wall Art. Cool stuff. These were around a medical unit here on Camp Victory.
Got some real talented people that come through here.
I have lots of other pictures depicting the daily life of units here. Over the course of the next 8 months I'll post the interesting ones.
OUT
Got some real talented people that come through here.
I have lots of other pictures depicting the daily life of units here. Over the course of the next 8 months I'll post the interesting ones.
OUT
Mixed bag
Hey guys! Not much going on here that doesn't happen on a daily basis. Spent this weekend working. Spent last week working. I'll definitely spend this week working. Like I said, Same thing going on.
So what I do in my own time is what keeps my mind sharp and keeps me loose. A few weeks ago we had some comedians do a show up on Camp Liberty. They were pretty good, the typical "blue" comedy you'd expect, but they were pretty funny. One of the jokes one dude dropped was that Kuwait isn't a country it's a button on a microwave. That's a fact. The birds down there hunker down in the shade during the day and their mouths are wide open, like they're gasping for air. It was a funny observation if you've been there and experienced it. When I went to get my hair cut it was so hot outside that they would hit you with a blow dryer that blew cool air in order to dry the sweat on your head. THAT is hot!
So when we were in Kuwait, like I said, it is just like being inside an oven, with a fan blowing hot air on you. There is no indoor plumbing in the transient tent areas--every drop of water used in the camp gets trucked in. So guess what that means--porta johns. Yep, plastic chemical toilets left out in the sun to simmer. They had these small hard-stand kind of toilets, but they stunk even worse than the porta johns. You go in there and you better don your M40 protective mask, and they didn't have lights. So anyway, you're in these porta johns just trying to get it done to minimize your time inside, and people would find the time to write some pretty entertaining graffiti. At Camp Buehring there is great appreciation for Chuck Norris. Not just his body of work on film or on television, but for the principles for which he stands: truth, justice, and The American Way. There is a website everyone who reads this blog should visit: http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com
Some of my favorite entries:
--Chuck Norris sleeps with a pillow under his gun;
--Chuck Norris is suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs;
--There is no chin behind Chuck Norris' beard. There is only another fist;
--CNN was originally created as the "Chuck Norris Network" to update Americans with on-the-spot ass-kicking in real time;
--Chuck Norris' calendar runs from 2 April to 31 March. No one fools Chuck Norris;
--Chuck Norris can lead a horse to water AND make it drink;
--Chuck Norris uses pepper spray to spice up his steaks;
--Chuck Norris is the only human being to display the Heisenberg uncertainty principle -- you can never know both exactly where and how quickly he will roundhouse-kick you in the face;
--Chuck Norris can hit you so hard that he can actually alter your DNA. Decades from now your descendants will occasionally clutch their heads and yell "What The Hell was That?"
Okay, last one...
--Chuck Norris once ate a whole cake before his friends could tell him there was a stripper in it.
NOPE!!! One more...
--How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could Chuck Norris? ...All of it.
When you're sitting in a plastic box that's so hot it could melt just trying to get 'er done and go back inside the tent, this stuff makes you laugh out loud. Check out the website.
The last thing I wanted to do today was show some pictures of what I call "T-wall art." T-walls are the concrete slabs that stand up and protect buildings, tents, and containerized housing units (CHU's) from shrapnel and small arms fire. It's not uncommon to see them decorated by units that come through here with unit crests and so on. Camp Buehring was fat with the painted ones. I've found some pretty good ones here that people ought to see, so here are a few:
Time for me to do other things. thanks for coming by.
So what I do in my own time is what keeps my mind sharp and keeps me loose. A few weeks ago we had some comedians do a show up on Camp Liberty. They were pretty good, the typical "blue" comedy you'd expect, but they were pretty funny. One of the jokes one dude dropped was that Kuwait isn't a country it's a button on a microwave. That's a fact. The birds down there hunker down in the shade during the day and their mouths are wide open, like they're gasping for air. It was a funny observation if you've been there and experienced it. When I went to get my hair cut it was so hot outside that they would hit you with a blow dryer that blew cool air in order to dry the sweat on your head. THAT is hot!
So when we were in Kuwait, like I said, it is just like being inside an oven, with a fan blowing hot air on you. There is no indoor plumbing in the transient tent areas--every drop of water used in the camp gets trucked in. So guess what that means--porta johns. Yep, plastic chemical toilets left out in the sun to simmer. They had these small hard-stand kind of toilets, but they stunk even worse than the porta johns. You go in there and you better don your M40 protective mask, and they didn't have lights. So anyway, you're in these porta johns just trying to get it done to minimize your time inside, and people would find the time to write some pretty entertaining graffiti. At Camp Buehring there is great appreciation for Chuck Norris. Not just his body of work on film or on television, but for the principles for which he stands: truth, justice, and The American Way. There is a website everyone who reads this blog should visit: http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com
Some of my favorite entries:
--Chuck Norris sleeps with a pillow under his gun;
--Chuck Norris is suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs;
--There is no chin behind Chuck Norris' beard. There is only another fist;
--CNN was originally created as the "Chuck Norris Network" to update Americans with on-the-spot ass-kicking in real time;
--Chuck Norris' calendar runs from 2 April to 31 March. No one fools Chuck Norris;
--Chuck Norris can lead a horse to water AND make it drink;
--Chuck Norris uses pepper spray to spice up his steaks;
--Chuck Norris is the only human being to display the Heisenberg uncertainty principle -- you can never know both exactly where and how quickly he will roundhouse-kick you in the face;
--Chuck Norris can hit you so hard that he can actually alter your DNA. Decades from now your descendants will occasionally clutch their heads and yell "What The Hell was That?"
Okay, last one...
--Chuck Norris once ate a whole cake before his friends could tell him there was a stripper in it.
NOPE!!! One more...
--How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could Chuck Norris? ...All of it.
When you're sitting in a plastic box that's so hot it could melt just trying to get 'er done and go back inside the tent, this stuff makes you laugh out loud. Check out the website.
The last thing I wanted to do today was show some pictures of what I call "T-wall art." T-walls are the concrete slabs that stand up and protect buildings, tents, and containerized housing units (CHU's) from shrapnel and small arms fire. It's not uncommon to see them decorated by units that come through here with unit crests and so on. Camp Buehring was fat with the painted ones. I've found some pretty good ones here that people ought to see, so here are a few:
Time for me to do other things. thanks for coming by.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
One more thing...
I was just about to sign off of my computer when I saw this entry on the Neiman Watchdog, from the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Amazing, must read stuff:
http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=background.view&backgroundid=00199
Read it. I couldn't agree with the guy more.
And on a completely different subject, here's another interesting piece:
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=roves_blind_spot
Cut and paste them into your browser. Have a great read, everyone.
http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=background.view&backgroundid=00199
Read it. I couldn't agree with the guy more.
And on a completely different subject, here's another interesting piece:
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=roves_blind_spot
Cut and paste them into your browser. Have a great read, everyone.
Just Living The Dream
Yeah.
That's right. Just living the dream here in Baghdad, Iraq.
This last week was really busy, hence the lack of posts. I had a lot of things to do. A lot happened last week; most notably the murder of about 500 Yezeri's up in the Tall Afar area in Northern Iraq. That is just nuts. When we were at Ft. Dix going through pre-deployment training we learned a little bit about them. Apparently, the Muslims don't like them at all because they consider them to be Satan worshippers. This goes back many hundreds of years. If I'm not mistaken, the Muslims wanted to impose Islam on these people, who didn't want it. They decided that they would worship everything that was the opposite way of Islam; if Allah was good in Islam and the devil was bad, to the Yezeris Allah was bad and the Devil was good. Or something like that. The upshot is that, though they are a very small minority and mostly keep to themselves, the Muslims really hate 'em. So I guess they blow 'em up. That was so messed up.
Going back to Ft. Dix for a minute...what a waste that training was for the most part. They trained us on Warrior Core Tasks and Warrior Core Drills and that was it. Nothing, save for a 4-day command post exercise at the end, related to what we are doing here and now in Iraq. They call themselves the premier mobilization and training post for reservists in the US. If they are, Good God. We have a soldier in the unit who used to work in their Mobilization Branch who would sit in on the briefings where the trainers would brief about how many soldiers they were training, and on what, etc. The briefings made it seem like all kinds of great stuff was going on. When he actually went through the training he was pretty stunned. He was like, "man, if this is the way it really is, the guys in charge are not getting the real deal on what's going on."
I did have one of our Public Affairs dudes, SSG Jon Soucy, capture me on film in one of the little mock Iraqi villages in the training areas. I looked like such a warrior (LOL!)
Anyway, I don't think they knew what the hell to do with us; we weren't the typical unit with the typical mission they were prepared to train, so there really was no program to train us for our jobs. We're fortunate that we have many, many people on this mission that are qualified to be doing what they are assigned to do. The learning curve for this place has been a little higher than we're comfortable with, but you suck it up and drive on through it. We have a lot of skilled people on this deployment, and it could be a lot worse. I tell my friends and family at home that the morale here is pretty high from what I can tell. That doesn't mean we're a bunch of "stay the course" block heads, though there are some of them. I think most people have a realistic sense of what the real deal is. I've had conversations with some people that are definitely conservatives who are pretty frustrated with the way this whole thing has been done. In fact, actually may have confirmed their worst fears about the way this war is being played.
First of all, it is ALL about the money, people. The contractors are here for one thing--the greenbacks. It's a little sick, really. The low-level folks, the worker bees, they work hard and do their jobs. The American ones (or maybe I should say, the native English-speakers) pretty much are here for the money, in my opinion. Why the hell else would you come here if you're not obligated to??? The others, the Asians, from India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, etc., those guys are pretty much treated like indentured servants. They get paid little, they company they work for holds their passports, and they are almost completely unable to switch jobs if they get here and the job sucks, or they can make a little money somewhere else, etc. If they want to go work for another place here on post, they can get sent home.
As an example, the guys who work in the DFACs here (Dining Facilities) are usually Indian or Pakistani. The ones that I know of make about $700.00 a MONTH. I know this because a service member who is a friend of mine is a naturalized American citizen from India and he's chatted with a few of them, and they told him. KBR, the subsidiary of Halliburton responsible for food service here, gets a lot of money to serve soldiers here. Yes, it is expensive to have six different flavors of ice cream at a given time in the DFAC. Yes, it is expensive to have 12 different kinds of cake. But Jesus, these guys are raking in the cash from us, the taxpayer. Disclosure: Okay, so here I'm paying very little if any tax, but my wife at home is, and I was a taxpayer for the three years following the "Mission Accomplished" moment, in addition to the preceding 21 years. Anyway, KBR is going to these third-world countries to hire these people, who can't leave, at next-to-nothing wages, and the Government allows it.
It would be nice if the security situation was so good here that you could actually hire local nationals who weren't thoroughly embittered toward us by what's happened over the last few years here. You know, I'm no economist, but that would definitely boost the economy in this country, instead of us having to buy poorly made Iraqi products that wear out or break and need to be replaced frequently. But unfortunately the oil was the only thing the crew in charge was focused on. In the last 4 years that bunch has been totally discredited, and with good reason. I'm getting off track--the people who work here from other countries, Third-Country Nationals (TCN's) are without a doubt being exploited. If we hadn't screwed up things by the numbers in the summer of 2003, I guarantee the war would have turned out completely different. Completely. The civilians sent here by DOD and State were political hacks and cronies who who didn't know their ass from a light socket when it came to the essential elements of running a government for people of a much different culture than ours.
This is turning into a rant and I better stop. Here's a picture of the lake around Al Faw Palace I took last night...maybe it will help me relax. I'll get back at it this week. See you later...
That's right. Just living the dream here in Baghdad, Iraq.
This last week was really busy, hence the lack of posts. I had a lot of things to do. A lot happened last week; most notably the murder of about 500 Yezeri's up in the Tall Afar area in Northern Iraq. That is just nuts. When we were at Ft. Dix going through pre-deployment training we learned a little bit about them. Apparently, the Muslims don't like them at all because they consider them to be Satan worshippers. This goes back many hundreds of years. If I'm not mistaken, the Muslims wanted to impose Islam on these people, who didn't want it. They decided that they would worship everything that was the opposite way of Islam; if Allah was good in Islam and the devil was bad, to the Yezeris Allah was bad and the Devil was good. Or something like that. The upshot is that, though they are a very small minority and mostly keep to themselves, the Muslims really hate 'em. So I guess they blow 'em up. That was so messed up.
Going back to Ft. Dix for a minute...what a waste that training was for the most part. They trained us on Warrior Core Tasks and Warrior Core Drills and that was it. Nothing, save for a 4-day command post exercise at the end, related to what we are doing here and now in Iraq. They call themselves the premier mobilization and training post for reservists in the US. If they are, Good God. We have a soldier in the unit who used to work in their Mobilization Branch who would sit in on the briefings where the trainers would brief about how many soldiers they were training, and on what, etc. The briefings made it seem like all kinds of great stuff was going on. When he actually went through the training he was pretty stunned. He was like, "man, if this is the way it really is, the guys in charge are not getting the real deal on what's going on."
I did have one of our Public Affairs dudes, SSG Jon Soucy, capture me on film in one of the little mock Iraqi villages in the training areas. I looked like such a warrior (LOL!)
Anyway, I don't think they knew what the hell to do with us; we weren't the typical unit with the typical mission they were prepared to train, so there really was no program to train us for our jobs. We're fortunate that we have many, many people on this mission that are qualified to be doing what they are assigned to do. The learning curve for this place has been a little higher than we're comfortable with, but you suck it up and drive on through it. We have a lot of skilled people on this deployment, and it could be a lot worse. I tell my friends and family at home that the morale here is pretty high from what I can tell. That doesn't mean we're a bunch of "stay the course" block heads, though there are some of them. I think most people have a realistic sense of what the real deal is. I've had conversations with some people that are definitely conservatives who are pretty frustrated with the way this whole thing has been done. In fact, actually may have confirmed their worst fears about the way this war is being played.
First of all, it is ALL about the money, people. The contractors are here for one thing--the greenbacks. It's a little sick, really. The low-level folks, the worker bees, they work hard and do their jobs. The American ones (or maybe I should say, the native English-speakers) pretty much are here for the money, in my opinion. Why the hell else would you come here if you're not obligated to??? The others, the Asians, from India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, etc., those guys are pretty much treated like indentured servants. They get paid little, they company they work for holds their passports, and they are almost completely unable to switch jobs if they get here and the job sucks, or they can make a little money somewhere else, etc. If they want to go work for another place here on post, they can get sent home.
As an example, the guys who work in the DFACs here (Dining Facilities) are usually Indian or Pakistani. The ones that I know of make about $700.00 a MONTH. I know this because a service member who is a friend of mine is a naturalized American citizen from India and he's chatted with a few of them, and they told him. KBR, the subsidiary of Halliburton responsible for food service here, gets a lot of money to serve soldiers here. Yes, it is expensive to have six different flavors of ice cream at a given time in the DFAC. Yes, it is expensive to have 12 different kinds of cake. But Jesus, these guys are raking in the cash from us, the taxpayer. Disclosure: Okay, so here I'm paying very little if any tax, but my wife at home is, and I was a taxpayer for the three years following the "Mission Accomplished" moment, in addition to the preceding 21 years. Anyway, KBR is going to these third-world countries to hire these people, who can't leave, at next-to-nothing wages, and the Government allows it.
It would be nice if the security situation was so good here that you could actually hire local nationals who weren't thoroughly embittered toward us by what's happened over the last few years here. You know, I'm no economist, but that would definitely boost the economy in this country, instead of us having to buy poorly made Iraqi products that wear out or break and need to be replaced frequently. But unfortunately the oil was the only thing the crew in charge was focused on. In the last 4 years that bunch has been totally discredited, and with good reason. I'm getting off track--the people who work here from other countries, Third-Country Nationals (TCN's) are without a doubt being exploited. If we hadn't screwed up things by the numbers in the summer of 2003, I guarantee the war would have turned out completely different. Completely. The civilians sent here by DOD and State were political hacks and cronies who who didn't know their ass from a light socket when it came to the essential elements of running a government for people of a much different culture than ours.
This is turning into a rant and I better stop. Here's a picture of the lake around Al Faw Palace I took last night...maybe it will help me relax. I'll get back at it this week. See you later...
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
No title for this post...
Hey guys! I'm back at it. Today in Baghdad it was a balmy 114 degrees. It actually does feel cool in the morning when it's, like, 92 or something. When the humidity is down and you're in the shade, a breeze will cool you off.
I read this morning on the Internet that Karl Rove is leaving this administration. I think that it's a dangerous decision because who is going to tell Bush what to do now? Cheney? Dear God...it's about time he left. The Democrats might come out of their defensive crouch now and start showing some moral courage on some of the issues, like NSA wiretaps or executive branch oversight. Grow some cajones, people. Stop quivering in the corner--the party is right on the issues. Now it's time to get right with the party members and the rest of the voters.
On to other things...I also saw on the web today that our hometown team--the Baltimore Ravens--crushed the Philadelphia Eagles in preseason play yesterday by the score of 29-3. Nice! I haven't seen that game replayed on AFN yet, even though I've seen the new Orleans game at least once and the Denver/San Francisco game twice. What's up with that? The Ravens are a Super Bowl team this year; Denver is going to choke like they always do. They'll start off 5-1 or 6-0, end the season 9-7 or 10-6, and lose in the first round. It happens every year. Yeah, I know the Ravens choked against the Colts last year; it ain't going to happen again. Two plays in that game--two blown plays by the Ravens--cost them the game. Hold Peyton manning to 15 points and you should win the game.
The Orioles stink, as usual. Man, if the Red Sox and Yankees fans didn't buy those tickets no one would. The real sad part of it is that the team has a lot of good young players and a few decent veterans; the problem is the idiot in charge of the team--Peter Angelos. It will be a long time before I go back to one of those games. My little one likes soccer anyway. And football. But baseball? If I'm not talking about it or getting excited about it, neither is he. I wish I was home right now...
You know, the job I do here could be a whole lot worse--I could be driving a truck between here and Mosul, or doing dismount walking patrols...things could be much worse. But there just isn't a whole lot to do other than read, do some professional development, and do my job, and sleep and eat. I have to be extremely careful about eating. The expression here is, "Get fit or get fat." They pile so much on your plate that you have to tell them," too much, too much" so they'll take some off. I'm trying a 12-week program of cardio, weight training, and diet modification. Wish me luck...I'm taking photos along the way to track my progress. If they are too disgusting I won't share them. If I'm buff at the end of 12 weeks I'll post those pictures. It keeps me motivated to set goals, because when people don't set personal goals and routines during a deployment they end up getting depressed. Then it becomes a VERY long deployment.
Well, time to shower and get ready for bed. Until next time...
I read this morning on the Internet that Karl Rove is leaving this administration. I think that it's a dangerous decision because who is going to tell Bush what to do now? Cheney? Dear God...it's about time he left. The Democrats might come out of their defensive crouch now and start showing some moral courage on some of the issues, like NSA wiretaps or executive branch oversight. Grow some cajones, people. Stop quivering in the corner--the party is right on the issues. Now it's time to get right with the party members and the rest of the voters.
On to other things...I also saw on the web today that our hometown team--the Baltimore Ravens--crushed the Philadelphia Eagles in preseason play yesterday by the score of 29-3. Nice! I haven't seen that game replayed on AFN yet, even though I've seen the new Orleans game at least once and the Denver/San Francisco game twice. What's up with that? The Ravens are a Super Bowl team this year; Denver is going to choke like they always do. They'll start off 5-1 or 6-0, end the season 9-7 or 10-6, and lose in the first round. It happens every year. Yeah, I know the Ravens choked against the Colts last year; it ain't going to happen again. Two plays in that game--two blown plays by the Ravens--cost them the game. Hold Peyton manning to 15 points and you should win the game.
The Orioles stink, as usual. Man, if the Red Sox and Yankees fans didn't buy those tickets no one would. The real sad part of it is that the team has a lot of good young players and a few decent veterans; the problem is the idiot in charge of the team--Peter Angelos. It will be a long time before I go back to one of those games. My little one likes soccer anyway. And football. But baseball? If I'm not talking about it or getting excited about it, neither is he. I wish I was home right now...
You know, the job I do here could be a whole lot worse--I could be driving a truck between here and Mosul, or doing dismount walking patrols...things could be much worse. But there just isn't a whole lot to do other than read, do some professional development, and do my job, and sleep and eat. I have to be extremely careful about eating. The expression here is, "Get fit or get fat." They pile so much on your plate that you have to tell them," too much, too much" so they'll take some off. I'm trying a 12-week program of cardio, weight training, and diet modification. Wish me luck...I'm taking photos along the way to track my progress. If they are too disgusting I won't share them. If I'm buff at the end of 12 weeks I'll post those pictures. It keeps me motivated to set goals, because when people don't set personal goals and routines during a deployment they end up getting depressed. Then it becomes a VERY long deployment.
Well, time to shower and get ready for bed. Until next time...
Monday, August 13, 2007
Routine Weekend
Hey folks,
Just getting back to the blog after two days of no network access. The truck that comes to clean out the porta johns backed into the overhead fiber optic cable and ripped it down Saturday morning. We didn't come back up until about 1500 Sunday.
There's just something poetic about being in this place and having our link to the outside world brought down like that.
I spent some of the offline time on Sunday reading a fascinating trip report written by a defense analyst in Washington named Anthony Cordesman. He is a guy who is on CNN sometimes explaining military tactics and terminology and what not, and commenting on military operations. Definitely a smart guy. He spent 8 days over here at the end of last month, and his trip report is available here for downloading:
http://www.csis.org/component/option,com_csis_pubs/task,view/id,3994/type,1/
I have to admit that when I was reading it I had to get up a few times and take a break. It is a little dry, and after 18 years in the military I am used to dry reading. However, I was able to read it in about an hour or two, probably less. The most striking part of the report to me is how he completely rips the administration's conduct of the whole war. He doesn't pull punches. He makes the statement that, "[T]he US is rightly seen as having gone to war for the wrong reasons, as having consistently mismanaged the 'peace' that followed and been largely responsible for the suffering of some 27 million Iraqis" by the world community. Amen, brother Tony. I recommend that anyone who sees this blog go and download the trip report.
A few of the other gems he drops in there:
-- it is "absurd" to think that the US does not have a direct moral and ethical responsibility for the immense suffering that is touching every ordinary Iraqi;
-- he calls the new US Embassy in Baghdad "an extraordinary monument to human folly even by the demanding standards of the Middle East;"
-- there have been plans or ideas put forth that the US forces can basically transition over to fighting Al-Qaida in Iraq and sealing or protecting the borders so the Iraqi Police, Iraqi Security Forces, and the Iraqi Army can deal with the insurgent and sectarian fight; Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) has made statements to that effect. Cordesman, concludes that, "[T]he idea that the US can somehow simply stand aside and deal with Al Qaida or the Sadr militia by relying largely on air power and Special Forces is equally absurd. The US could not target, it could not cover the country, it could not secure its bases, and it would lack the force numbers to act decisively without relying on Iraqi forces. Such concepts are little more than childish in practical military terms." Yes, that one was always a head-scratcher for me;
-- Iraq's international debt is crippling its ability to rebuild, ignoring for a moment all other challenges to infrastructure reconstruction;
-- "The current F-Troop in Washington--and the F-Troop that existed in Iraq during the key initial years of the occupation--has been replaced by the A-Team." For those of you as old as I am, you may remember a TV show called "F-Troop" about a bungling Cavalry unit in a frontier outpost in the Old West. They were morons; confused obtuse morons. They understood nothing about the culture, language, and mores of the native tribes of the area. Sounds VERY familiar;
-- and finally, as a result of the A-Team being on the ground, "professionalism has replaced the vacuous ideological reliance on hope that crippled much of the initial US effort." OUCH! So the CPA was a bunch of boobs and right-wing ideologues with an agenda. Who knew?
Time to get back to work here. Read the whole paper. It's very interesting, and it crisply written and clearly lists some of the challenges here. Yes, it is titled "The Tenuous Case for Strategic Patience in Iraq," but he makes a very compelling case not for "staying the course" but for changing course and taking responsibility for the catastrophe that has occurred here. Bye for now...
Just getting back to the blog after two days of no network access. The truck that comes to clean out the porta johns backed into the overhead fiber optic cable and ripped it down Saturday morning. We didn't come back up until about 1500 Sunday.
There's just something poetic about being in this place and having our link to the outside world brought down like that.
I spent some of the offline time on Sunday reading a fascinating trip report written by a defense analyst in Washington named Anthony Cordesman. He is a guy who is on CNN sometimes explaining military tactics and terminology and what not, and commenting on military operations. Definitely a smart guy. He spent 8 days over here at the end of last month, and his trip report is available here for downloading:
http://www.csis.org/component/option,com_csis_pubs/task,view/id,3994/type,1/
I have to admit that when I was reading it I had to get up a few times and take a break. It is a little dry, and after 18 years in the military I am used to dry reading. However, I was able to read it in about an hour or two, probably less. The most striking part of the report to me is how he completely rips the administration's conduct of the whole war. He doesn't pull punches. He makes the statement that, "[T]he US is rightly seen as having gone to war for the wrong reasons, as having consistently mismanaged the 'peace' that followed and been largely responsible for the suffering of some 27 million Iraqis" by the world community. Amen, brother Tony. I recommend that anyone who sees this blog go and download the trip report.
A few of the other gems he drops in there:
-- it is "absurd" to think that the US does not have a direct moral and ethical responsibility for the immense suffering that is touching every ordinary Iraqi;
-- he calls the new US Embassy in Baghdad "an extraordinary monument to human folly even by the demanding standards of the Middle East;"
-- there have been plans or ideas put forth that the US forces can basically transition over to fighting Al-Qaida in Iraq and sealing or protecting the borders so the Iraqi Police, Iraqi Security Forces, and the Iraqi Army can deal with the insurgent and sectarian fight; Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) has made statements to that effect. Cordesman, concludes that, "[T]he idea that the US can somehow simply stand aside and deal with Al Qaida or the Sadr militia by relying largely on air power and Special Forces is equally absurd. The US could not target, it could not cover the country, it could not secure its bases, and it would lack the force numbers to act decisively without relying on Iraqi forces. Such concepts are little more than childish in practical military terms." Yes, that one was always a head-scratcher for me;
-- Iraq's international debt is crippling its ability to rebuild, ignoring for a moment all other challenges to infrastructure reconstruction;
-- "The current F-Troop in Washington--and the F-Troop that existed in Iraq during the key initial years of the occupation--has been replaced by the A-Team." For those of you as old as I am, you may remember a TV show called "F-Troop" about a bungling Cavalry unit in a frontier outpost in the Old West. They were morons; confused obtuse morons. They understood nothing about the culture, language, and mores of the native tribes of the area. Sounds VERY familiar;
-- and finally, as a result of the A-Team being on the ground, "professionalism has replaced the vacuous ideological reliance on hope that crippled much of the initial US effort." OUCH! So the CPA was a bunch of boobs and right-wing ideologues with an agenda. Who knew?
Time to get back to work here. Read the whole paper. It's very interesting, and it crisply written and clearly lists some of the challenges here. Yes, it is titled "The Tenuous Case for Strategic Patience in Iraq," but he makes a very compelling case not for "staying the course" but for changing course and taking responsibility for the catastrophe that has occurred here. Bye for now...
Friday, August 10, 2007
Working through this
Hi everyone! I know that no one has even seen this site yet, but it seemed like the thing to say.
I'm still trying to get down with this blogging stuff. It's hard for me to get to the site through the network here, and when I try to go straight to it I'm blocked by the network Spetnazis. Oh well, I'll just have to get a little more creative and figure the stuff out. A family member showed me how to do this who is much more Internet savvy than I am. Anyway...now I think I'm getting it. That brings a smile to my face.
Weather here is hot, but hey, it's actually not too bad. It was 100 degrees this morning by 0800, but it felt okay. The humidity was down. A week ago the heat was just insane, and hey--I'm not one of the superheroes who leave the camp and go on dismount patrols in this weather. Those guys are the badasses. I just have a desk job in a climate controlled environment. It has been sunny almost every day we've been here, with a few days of just intense haze from the humidity and the dust (like in the pic below) . I'm getting a great tan on my neck and ears; unfortunately the rest of my body is as white as foot powder.
I have seen on the web that there's a lot of commotion about this soldier who was blogging for The New Republic. Yeah--it's amazing how the Weekly Standard got the scoop that this guy was supposedly stretching the truth or lying altogether. I haven't been outside the walls, but I've been around long enough to know that just about anything is possible here. Running over dogs with a Bradley? Playing with body parts of skeletons? Tasteless, absolutely, but that doesn't make it false. People in horrific situations come up with coping mechanisms when they get subjected to this stuff day after day. Just ask any cop or paramedic--you make light of some pretty disgusting stuff to try and keep it away and not have to think about it.
Anyway, I hope for the kid's sake he was being truthful and that it all comes out in the wash. But again, the chickenhawks on the Right always seem to be able to smell a fishy war story without ever having served in the military themselves.
That's probably why they disbelieve and why they try so hard to debunk stuff like that. They have no earthly idea what being in a war zone is like. When they do come here, if they leave BIAP at all, they go to the IZ (International Zone, a.k.a., the Green Zone) and nowhere else. I could probably walk around Baghdad like John McCain if I had a rifle company escorting me and an attack helicopter company flying overhead. The fact remains that for all the "progress" this surge is supposed to be making the security situation for American military personnel is unchanged. And oh, by the way, the Iraqis still do without power for at least 18 hours a day. Americans would go batsh** if that happened to them. Look how societal norms broke down in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. I really feel for the Iraqi people, who have suffered almost non-stop since 1979. It's no wonder that they cling to family and tribe identities when the government has been an instrument of oppression for so long. There are two generations of Iraqis that are growing up not even knowing what a government for the people is like AT ALL.
Okay, time to get back to work here. It's now 1440 here, so it's 0640 on the East Coast, where they are undergoing a "heat wave," as I understand. Well, I hope it all cools off for you. Talk to you later. Liberally yours,
Pat
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
First Post
Hi everyone! Welcome to my blog. This is the first time I have tried this, so be patient with me as I go along with this. I have never tried to write a blog, but I feel like I am in a position to write and record some interesting stuff.
As my friends and family already know, I am a soldier serving in the United States Army in Iraq. I have been here long enough to form some observations, and as we go along I want to share them. My intent with this blog isn't to bitch, whine, and moan my way through a 12-month deployment; rather, it's to record my experiences in an online journal that others can read, too, and see what I see. If I have opinions to share, they are entirely my own. I don't pretend to represent the institution of the Army in what I say--just look at the title of my blog. I just want to bring my experiences (and how I feel about them) to the web so anyone can get one man's take on what is going on here. I have a unique opportunity to share my perspective and that's what I'll do.
Through my observations, my humor, and my pictures I hope you find my blog to be funny, interesting, and above all--entertaining. Some lofty aspirations...I'll do my best to live up to them. Goodbye for now; I'll be writing again soon. You can count on it.
As my friends and family already know, I am a soldier serving in the United States Army in Iraq. I have been here long enough to form some observations, and as we go along I want to share them. My intent with this blog isn't to bitch, whine, and moan my way through a 12-month deployment; rather, it's to record my experiences in an online journal that others can read, too, and see what I see. If I have opinions to share, they are entirely my own. I don't pretend to represent the institution of the Army in what I say--just look at the title of my blog. I just want to bring my experiences (and how I feel about them) to the web so anyone can get one man's take on what is going on here. I have a unique opportunity to share my perspective and that's what I'll do.
Through my observations, my humor, and my pictures I hope you find my blog to be funny, interesting, and above all--entertaining. Some lofty aspirations...I'll do my best to live up to them. Goodbye for now; I'll be writing again soon. You can count on it.
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