Do you think the amount of “insurgency” is more or less than a year ago? Do you see any improvement?
Do the people have more electicity service now than before the U.S. became involved? Or is it less, or the same?
Well, without talking about the ‘why in the first place’ I will say that once we were in the fight we needed/need to focus on winning it and staying until they are strong enough not to become another Iran. But more specifically sometimes we wondered why with all the billions slated for rebuilding we couldn’t do more for their power generation and water purity.
Their roads were in surprisingly good shape, considering the ave. annual income of the populace they had quite a few 2-4 lane paved roads besides the 6 lane freeway. They were always asking for help to get the, what I would call alley way type streets, paved before the rains. By the time I was sitting in on the town council meetings as my commanders rep. we had already pushed most of the responsibility on to the new gov. elected in JAN 05. So that means the council would say ‘the council agrees that need #1 is paved roads’ and I would say ‘Coalition Forces (CF) want to support the people in petitioning your Provincial gov. in requesting more paved roads.’ and they would say ‘the Prov gov has stated we are under CF government, so we need help from you. The children of the town will always consider it a gift from CF to have paved roads.’ and I would say, ‘we govern no one, we are here as brothers to help Iraq not as fathers to dominate you…’ and so on and so on.
I’m just a grunt and no electrical eng (like my dad) but thought, hey spend $100 million on generators and see if that helps anything… Well my dear old man started bringing up probs like ‘well they would all have to be in phase etc etc’ Generally speaking we were frustrated sometimes by not being able to do more, some of that frustration was/is due to our ignorance on what the practical realities were/are. Of course it doesn’t help when Zarqawi blows up the pipelines.
On the water issue we really spent some effort. We had the Army eng design water towers (the canals from the Euphrates were everywhere for water supply) that would treat the water and provides 4-6 weeks supply of clean water should the pumps break. But, alas, there were problems even there. We were told (I don’t know how acuratly) that in the summer time with 130+ degree temps the clorine used to purify the water would turn to gas and we all remember the fun of Cgas from WWI.
This leads to another frustration. What I saw of the TERRIBLY socialist food distrobution etc led me to think that the ave. joe had come to see work projects as a gift form on high that did not really involve them personally (THEY didn’t pay any taxes to have it built, THEY didn’t know how it was built, THEY didn’t know how to fix the thing when it broke, and THEY were only going to wait for the guy who did know to show up sometime in the next 20 years. Nevermind that 20%, or so we were told, of the babies ended up with some birth defect due to poor qual. water in that 20 yrs. In short why should they care.)
On a seperate issue with the war conduct, I think of the talks to give amnesty to former insurgents if they would stand down. At first the CF poo pooed this because ‘it would give amnesty to forces that were responsible for CF deaths’ (this is a horrible cite, all I can remember is that it was from the Stars and Stripes in mid May). I was thinking, OUR JOB IS TO GET THEM SET UP SO WE CAN GO HOME!! I DON’T CARE IF THAT GUY KILLED SOMEBODY LAST YEAR, GET HIM TO QUIT TRYING TO KILL ME NOW!!
Of course, I do care that he killed someone last year on a personal level but in the intrest of the nation, the war, and ending it before my kids can serve in this same war, let’s give them amnesty. This has become an accepted position on the part of CF since (again as I recall from a S&S’s article in the last part of '05)
Well before I say something to send me to the pit, please realize that yes we did keep a tally (thankfully 0 for us), as did most every unit and it is nothing but a point of saddness and shame when an innocent does occur.
THE GRUNTS ARE NOT BABY KILLERS, WE CRY EVEN AFTER OUR RETURN HOME TO REMEMBER THINGS THAT HAPPENED.
The closest my unit came was shooting a guy (who was treated by CF with a full helicopter evacuation) who ran from one of our units into a field and then picked up an AK-47. Turned out the weapon was a piece of junk and he was mentally handicapped. We went to his fam and told them what happened and gave them food etc to at least help out for a few weeks until he could return. (which he did in healthy form)
In a similar incident a sister unit hadn’t fired on the guy before figuring out he was not fully mentally capable. They went to his mother to warn her to keep track of her son (he was digging in a recent hole from a road side bomb, a common insurgent tactic) because ‘we almost shot your son.’ She told them she was sorry they hadn’t killed him, that he had been a burden his whole life. A lot of comments were later made ‘I’m glad my mom doesn’t think that…’
Every brief I recieved before going to Iraq listed the numbers of innocent died and the guy who told of a time he found out a family had been mixed in with the enemy vehicles that they had destroyed was visibly emotional. He didn’t take it lightly, he had scars from the fact.
As for me, I know that rules were added and added to prevent any sort of civilian death. I got to be a pretty fair hand at Arabic cursive from all the signs I made up warning people to not act in a hostile manner that might be misread. We spent a lot of time and effort to prevent a wrongful death and my unit was successful.
Well once, we got home we were back in the ‘beloved’ black beret, we all think it is silly and want our boonie caps back (you know those fisherman’s hats with the bill all the way around? love them, keep the sun off real well.)
I’m not fully able to answer this 'cause I don’t frankly have a huge take on what the tube has been saying for a year. Our access to CNN and Fox was a bit limited! 
I think mostly that America hears of so many roadside bombs etc and when I realized one day that the one on the news had been one of us and that all it did, so to speak, was take that track off the vehicle and destroy the road wheels and the suspension arm right where the IED had hit. No one hurt, kinda a non-event later except for the ~$70 G’s to repair the damage.
Is this an official tally?
Thanks for answering my question about the armor.
Welcome back. I’m sorry you had to waste so much time and risk your life for no reason.
What would you say is the general attitidues of the troops on the ground towards the necessity of the war and towards the administration in general?
Where in Iraq were you operating out of? I was there from Feb '04 to Feb '05 close to Baqubah. We also spent a little time in Al Najaf and Fallujah(Nov '04 offensive).
I’m glad to see this thread got started. I’m learning things I didn’t think to ask you over our late Christmas and the barbeque. (Yes, this is my second brother, Aaron, y’all.)
What was the funniest thing that happened there? Feel free to include things that happened to other people. What was the scariest? What made Americans say, “Those wacky Iraqis!”? What made you look like crazy foreigners? What would you like to change if you were SecDef? What things did you learn there that are significant?
We should get your pictures of the approaching sandstorm posted online so we could put links on here.
Oh, and dad was an industrial engineer, not an EE.
Well done, and welcome back.
Thank you for your part in restoring Iraq’s freedom and defending ours.
Interactions with locals were a bit limited on my end. Most of the interaction, by far, I had was with local national interpretors. They of course were a bit educated, they spoke english after all, but english isn’t all that exceptional because Iraq, like most of the rest of the world outside the U.S. studies another language for years in school before turning 18.
That said not all folks were so educated, the average farmer types are the typical example of not so educated. Thankfully their kids, boys and girls alike, are going to school in ever great numbers in better schools, with supplies shipped to them by ave. american folk (we recieved small packages, and entire international shipping containers full of school supplies from folks in the states).
The thing that was notable with all Iraqis that I dealt with was their polite kindness. One could say, ‘how would you expect them to act when you stand outside their homes with guns a-plenty?’ I don’t have anything concrete to prove my point besides my subjective opinion, but they smiled as we pushed our rifles behind our backs and played soccer with their sometimes toddler age children. Wouldn’t you pull the kids inside? They would send cokes out to the armed vehicles for the guys to drink, we would of course have to spend 15 min convincing them that they should accept payment. They would insist that it was a gift of hospitality and we would insist, and so on. When they brought the kids out upon our arrival to ask for medical help of some sort, they obviously thought we could help, and we tried. If our medics couldn’t help we refered them to the iraqi clinic we had set up on the base with iraqi doctors on our payroll.
The only really glaring thing encountered from people of every class was their misconceptions about world history, not knowing who won WWII, ouch.
I’m glad you got your ass back stateside all intact, welcome back!
I get impressions from the news that most Americans spend the bulk of their time holed up in Green Zones, essentially fortresses, and that they don’t venture outside without an armed guard for fear of kidnapping. You said you attended town council meetings, did you need an escort?
How was our freedom threatened by Iraq?
So how was the poontang
Declan
Thanks for your reply, glad you made it back in one peice - are you due to go back out any time soon?
Ah, good to be home. Travel 6,000 miles back to the states and you get to enjoy some good old fashioned American rudeness and lack of social skills.
Take this to another thread, Dio.
What progress are you seeing? I understand the economy is booming. What is the attitude of the locals toward you?
How has this war changed ‘my’ army? How is IOBC (and 11B AIT) nowadays? What can be done to improve training?
(Also, if this was your first time down this way, what did you think of our summer? Amazing, ain’t it?)
Thank you for your service, and please ignore the jerks coming out of the woodwork.