Real Stories From Iraq

Yes, I agree Tread, but I was speaking of the man who completed that which was enacted by Bush Sr. It was Clinton that ordered the SOC (Special Operations) to activate several Delta detachments, along with Ranger teams, from Ft. Bragg to be assigned to Mr. Bush's brew in Somalia, which, of course, as you noted, he did enact.

Bush sent about 30,000 troops in December of '92, right after he lost his election, and approximately a couple of months before Clinton took the Chair.

And though it was indeed a humanitarian effort, it turned out to be anything but.

Thanks for the note.

Every soldier who serves with honor is a hero. At least to my thinking. It sounds to me like you are anti-war. How does your brother feel about your stance? Perhaps that is the reason he doesn't talk to you?

in my experience, most soldiers that have seen combat don't really want to talk about that part of their time in uniform. for instance, my father, a veteran of 2 wars, loved talking about all the crazy **** that went on in in boot and right after v.e., but rarely said anything about the blood and guts stuff.

it took an occassion (the night before a serious heart operation at 82 years of age) when he thought we might not speak again, for him to tell me some of the harsh details.

although i've always respected my father and knew that he was a tough sob from some of the close combat he'd taught me, the things he told me that night were positively hair raising.

when i asked him why he'd never told me about this stuff before, he simply told me that it really wasn't anything that anyone else needed to hear. it was war, he did his job and lived to try to forget it.

by the way cj, during the vietnam years, although my father personally drove me to the draft board (whaddya mean ya haven't registered yet ? it's been 4 days since ya turned 18!!! ), he never once criticized my anti-war stance.

he did, however, criticize the neighbor's kid who blathered on and on about stinkin' hippies and cowards and such until his number came up. and then magically he suddenly had high blood pressure. strange considering he'd been on the local hardball team, ran track and even spent a little time on the volunteer fire dept.

get my drift ?

I don't think I deserved a lecture, considering the question I asked.

That is not a lecture; it is an informative comment, and a set of such comments does not constitute a lecture.

I used to be a lecturer. :wink:

CJ-- I said my brother's not talkative, and that's what I meant. He doesn't talk about himself because that's who he is, not because he thinks his crazy anti-war sis will judge him. I don't think my words "I question the motivations" of the war warrant your suggestion that I've alienated my brother with my "anti-war" stance. I see the war as having both positive and negative sides, as I think any reasoning person would.

Well, I do not know what it is like in Iraq- or I should say the battle-zones in Iraq- but I could give you an educated guess.

Everyone is afraid, and rightfully so- the parents, the children, the soldiers, their commanders, and even the animals. This war does not involve trench warfare, as in World War Two, or jungle warfare, as in the Vietnam War. Urban warfare is not as old as one would think; that is, it has not been studied by our military schools to the point of sufficient competency in the field. And, it being a recent format of warfare, it is frightening, to say the least. The only works I have seen on this format is by the SAS Regiments, and this only in the past fifteen years.

I can only imagine what it must be like to patrol a dense urban area at night for several hours at a time, let alone to engage in a fire-fight, not knowing from which window or building it is coming from. I, personally, find it terrifying, not to mention nerve-racking to the point of nervous exhaustion. I can not believe how collected one must be to enter such a zone.

As for the rest of the war- that is, its justification and consequences- I can only assume certain elements and nothing more. Concerning the regular trooper on the ground, or the rational trooper I should say, I commend him.

I only hope that no more children and their parents will find themselves in a crossfire or on a mine thinking it is a canister of food. As for the soldier, I wish him the best.

It was different this time. Mixed feelings.
Formerly 5th Marines - OIF 1;

now reservist - 3/24 - OIF 2.

The first time I was over, it went by extremely fast. Sporadic gunfighting, but to be honest the sound I remember most was the humvee. The people were very gracious and swelled with joy to see us and this one fellow I recall, he just kept talking about how when Bush was elected in 2000, he thought that Americans would cast out the "devil." It was entertaining and it put some humanity into the constant moving we did. By the 3rd week in country, I don't think any of us were sleeping because our sleep patterns had been so jacked up. When we finally did get to stop for a while, right before we took Baghdad, it got real funny. There was this canal, and on our side, it was operated by 1st Marine Division. The opposite side, it was the AO (area of operations) for some army unit. Every night we kept hearing gunfighting on the other side of the canal. After none of us could sleep for a few nights, we kept bugging our platoon sgt. to let us go find out what was going on. Of course, back in those days, most of us were all freshies and the sound of a single rifle shot two miles away could wake you up. Now, after being there twice, and especially after OIF 2, I could likely sleep through a damn mortar attack. More on that in a minute. But back to the story... so, we got authorized to find out what was going on. We had a recon team go out and sit concealed at a location to where they could see what was going on with this bridge. See, you're not allowed to conduct missions in another units area of operations (except for dire circumstances and with permission), but we had a suspicion that these idiots were coming from our side at night, since we never heard anything in the day. After observing for two nights, we found out who they were. So, the next day we all, very non-chalantly, just positioned ourselves with some sandbags and built a blockade to where they couldn't see it, then, we just sat, and waited. Sure enough at about 0140, two pickup trucks full of fighters were "rolling into combat" in the name of Allah. We opened up and needless to say, there was not much left. Guess what I did the rest of the night... SLEPT!

I was with 3/24 for OIF 2, and we were stationed at FOB Abu Ghraib, and at this time, I'd like to thank the f---ing press for almost getting me killed in April last year. We got pelted with mortars. What happened is, when they released the story about the prison abuse, the army unit that had done all that had already left country. They hadn't been there in months. Thankfully no one was hurt, but like 25 prisoners were killed and closer to 100 were injured. So, we got to take the fire because that piece of sh!t Dan Rather decides to go open his mouth, instead of waiting for the prison to close, which plans were underway to do so last year. We all made a pact in our squad that if one of us bought it, the rest of us would slay Dan Rather - who oddly enough - was a Marine. He's a disgrace though.

It also became evident as time went on how badly the Army needed to redistribute its elements in theater. They were still trying to operate as division size elements, and it made it hard for them to mobilize. There was this unit that became infamous for doing stupid stuff. They were called Fox 4/25 if I remember. I do recall after returning, there were press releases about their 'adventures.' These guys were a bunch of clowns!!!! I don't even know if anyone in the entire United States Army knew they were in Iraq because they were detached from their parent unit, assigned to the Ghraib, and never got assignments. They literally did whatever the hell they wanted. They went out one day to "patrol" and we were like, "Oh awesome! They finally got some orders." So they get right outside the perimeter walls of FOB Abu Ghraib, and head toward this area where a bunch of roads met. There was actually a farmer standing in the field, when they did this, fortunately he wasn't hurt or killed. These idiots just started opening up on nothing. They just started shooting! The guys in tower 4 called it in initially I believe, so we grabbed our stuff and took off for the vehicles because we thought they were getting ambushed right outside the walls, perhaps a mile away. Then the RO called up to 1st Cav's command element and requested information about enemy activity close to our position. It came back a negative. Then, after being out for, I don't know, 10 minutes, these jackasses come back and say "Oh, we were conducting a recon by fire." And we were like, "WHAT THE F---? It's the Goddamned desert! You can see a mile each way!" For those of you who don't know, recon, or reconnaissance is used to locate enemy positions and activity. A recon by fire was used primarily in the South Pacific in WW2, and in Vietnam, where much of the time, you couldn't see the enemy if he was near, so you fire off shots as a bluff, essentially to make the enemy think that he knows you're there, and get him to start moving. This is without purpose in a damn desert. Also, the people were very different second time around.

As far as my support for the war. I think Iraq is better off since we were there. I am still constantly amazed at how stupid many Americans are though. People, who can sit and say that we weren't lied to by our leaders in the reasons to justify this war, and folks, let's get it right here, our intelligence was not inept. Our intelligence was just fine. The administration PURPOSEFULLY skewed the data that WAS given to them.

Also, when people come up to me and say, "We really appreciate what you guys do," I used to say, "Oh, thanks a lot." It felt good. But I think now it is the guilty conscience of a generation of hippies who spat on the troops, the DRAFTEES nonetheless, from Vietnam, and they think that by telling us thank you they are vicariously apologizing to those whom they insulted. And thereby, perhaps they feel exhonerated for their antics.

So, on one level, I think that the invasion is justified on a moral level, but on the other level I think the administration should stand trial for perjury. And start with Condy Rice, then work upwards. If you want to know the reason we're in Iraq, you need to talk to find out about Halliburton and the Caspian oil reserves. I also think that the longer we're there, the worse it's going to get. I don't think people truly understand this either. One of our translators told us something interesting, he said: "If you were to compare my people to westerners.... Westerners are like cats... if two cats are fighting, and a human walks up to break them up, they don't attack the human. They keep trying to fight each other. The people of this culture, are more like snakes. If a person tries to break up two snakes from fighting, the snakes will attack the person trying to break it up."

I've thought about this everyday since then, and the more I read, and the more I learn, and the more I turn Foxnews off, the more I realize, we aren't going to win this war, because you can't defeat people who are willing to blow themselves up. They are not fighting FOR a concept, they are fighting against it. This enemy is a ghost. How do you fight something you can't see most of the time?

This war was never about national security, or terrorism. It was about big corporations who deal in oil drilling and war-profiteering. If you follow the paper trail of this administration, you can see that this was planned as far back as the early 1980's.

I also wanted to comment about the students at Santa Cruz. Had I been there, I would have started throwing blows, and breaking faces. Do something productive and protest the government, but not the troops, or the military. A good number of the troops don't even support the war, and with good reason. Part of the reason for the sympathy for the Vietnam War (NOT THE VETS, NOT THE VETS, NOT THE VETS) was because of the way that people insulted the troops. It gave the government and foreign policy makers something that they could use to fixate the minds of the public on. Be a protestor fine, but insult my Marine Corps, let me hear it, and you'll likely never walk again.

But I did wanna close by saying to mysteryman... "Semper Fi" We love you guys, and you don't just serve with Marines. You guys ARE Marines! Especially the grunt corpsmen. You guys can wear my eagle, globe, and anchor any and everywhere.

welcome to a2k, quentedlin...

very good stuff you posted. this is what i was looking for, the thoughts of the guys and gals that have done or are doing a hitch in iraq.

thanks for kicking in along with mystery man. hopefully we'll see more from others as we go along.

dtom

your post was fascinating and insightful, quentedlin. You are the perfect example of my belief that it is completely possible to have nothing but respect and honor for our troops and yet still question the wisdom of the government behind the war. Our government makes decisions that may have many different (and not always honorable) motivations behind them, but our soldiers are heroes nno matter what. Thank you quentedlin, and by the way, i'm not thanking you to appease my conscience for Vietnam vets-- wasn't born then, and had I been, I would have thanked them too.

Really interesting cat/ snake quote, quentidlin. Thanks for your story.