Thank you very much for your service.
My own was with the Navy, and I am much less current about Army tactics and operations. I’ll be reading this thread closely to learn a bit more, and might have some questions later.
Again, welcome home.
There’s nothing rude about it. We went there for no reason. That’s not the OP’s fault.
A highly debatable point, in an inappropriate forum for such.
If you wanted a debate, you know where to go.
Not everyone wants to turn everything into a political discussion, Diogenes. When I was in the Navy, and certain people wanted to pester us enlisted sailors with political hoo-ha, they were dismissed as jerks or worse.
I wasn’t trying to debate anything. All I did was welcome the OP back and express regret that he had been placed in harm’s way for no reason. There is nothing rude about that.
I was once in the Navy too, by the way.
Yes. I know that you have served. Thank you for that.
Imagine now, if you will, coming back from service in a war you hadn’t supported, and having someone congratulate you for helping out in our great national struggle, one we should all be behind.
You might get mad, you might be dismissive. But if you did not agree with this guy, or even if you did, you would probably be amazed at his gall in assuming your political affiliations, and thinking a welcome home greeting would be an appropriate place to express those.
You have expressed a similar amount of gall, IMHO. I have my own opinions about this war, but when I meet current military members or recent veterans (and I meet quite a few, given my job) I keep these to myself, and express greetings of a very general nature.
Okay, stop.
I’ve already said that a debate isn’t welcome here. If you, Dio, want to argue over a patriotic one-off line someone threw into a thread started by a service member, start a new thread in GD and link to it in here.
If the rest of you want to argue with Dio about what he’s said here, do it in another thread. Stop hijacking this one. Any more hijacks like this and all those involved will be warned.
Thought of an actually good question.
How good were the communications/liasons between your group and other nation’s forces in the coalition? Did you work together much?
Crap. I wrote that post thinking, “I forgot to say thanks last time, i’ll say it now”…and then promptly forgot again :smack:. I know you didn’t represent my country, but thanks for your service . 
Hey man, welcome to the boards and welcome back!.
Next DopeFest I see you at, I’ll buy you a beer.
Tripler
Hell, I’ll buy us a keg.
Did you or your unit work with any allied troops at all? If so, what was that like?
What is the official story for where the bulk of the rebuilding budget is going, in light of the frustrations you’ve expressed with the things that weren’t being done with it?
I can’t speak for others, but as for me I can tell you I participated in operations at two bases where we were not replaced by other US troops but rather the base was shut down and local control of security was established in addition to local gov control. That is what we considered to be VERY good. Our job, we kept saying, was to make ourselves obsolete. We did our best. Everyone wanted to move things along as much as possible, if only for the selfish reason of never having to go back. Things changed in my unit and people became a bit jaded when we lost our first soldier. He was a tent mate of mine and every took it hard. Some of this was due, in my opinion only, to the perspective of the command two levels above me that kept saying things to the effect of ‘the job is to get everyone home.’ To anyone that has served this stinks of a lack of some key thing. The job is to get the mission done, tactically sound operations (offensive ones in this case) are inherently safe operations. We know at all times where any friendly forces are located around us on the ground and in the air above. My thought was/is ‘if the job is to get home safe then why send me from the states?’ But of course my job is to do the mission, so let us do it!! ‘Mission first and people always’ is a common Army phrase and you can’t seperate the two, but it was disappointing to see senior folk put the cart before the horse.
Obviously to us 2 bases closed down was a sign that attacks had been at zero for such a length of time that the bases served no purpose. Those were happy days to see them closed. The final base I served at saw insurgent attacks drop dramatically. They gave us the final stats the last week of our time in Iraq (of course they didnt know about the mortar attack we got for Christmas that almost hit us sitting on the helipad waiting to fly out, thank Providence that the two closest ones were duds). I will see about getting the firm Num’s to post here. I do recall that when we were operating S of fallujiah that the rate of IEDs went from ~135 in 3 mo. down to 2 in the 3 mo. after we got there. In short there was VAST improvement, and I’ll get our offical stats ASAP.
On the elec. issue, well I think KwH are close, but still shy, of pre war levels. I would say, in my opinion only, that we the mighty US has to have been able to do more than we have for the elec. issue. We’ve spent almost as much time in Iraq as we did fighting WWII and by '45 we were producing a ship a day, plus tanks, rifles, helmets, socks, jeeps etc etc so we have to be able to do SOMETHING more, but again i’m no expert.
I hate to give this one away, 'cause I think this is the stuff of greatness but our unit version was ‘your f***ed up like a football bat.’
The M-16 is now somewhat replaced by the carbine version which is labeled the M-4. You are likely to find any Air Force or Navy guys walking around with these (or pistols if the m-4 is too heavy) and the grunts with about a dozen per 100 (in our unit). Now with a mind to offending the libs and femi’s or what ever with weak knees, we all like the m-16 and its variants for what they are, easy to use, reliable, accurate (the human has always been the weak link there). BUT they still do not have the knock down power that most desire. When you fire your weapon you are only doing so after having reached a point that demands its use (we don’t just fire for any ole reason) and when you do fire you want the threat to cease to exist, one shot- target goes down and stays down, period. Some of my peers have begun looking for alternatives and in fact the old m-14 is making a comeback for its 7.62x51 cartridge, it gives a hearty ‘hello’ instead of a flippant little ‘hi’.
You ought to see all the widgets we have on our rifles now, scopes or red dot sights, lasers, tactical flashlights etc all zero’d to the weapon, a gear heads dream.
What choice of weapon do you have? I’ve seen shotguns and was told they are for breaking doors.
The comm prob was just a little worse than we experienced with the marines, AF or what ever. The Poles were our main ‘other CF buddies’ although we ran into some nice folks from So. Amer. and a couple of Brits. The Poles I worked with the most were members of a surgical unit assigned to our base. They all spoke english, (and proper english at that, no the funny stuff we couldn’t understand from the brits) and we all enjoyed seeing the weapons that were meant for us to kill each other with now working together. Let me tell you, (*WARNING WAR STORY TO FOLLOW!) this one time (at band camp) a soviet Hind attack helicopter flew right over as I came out of my hooch, the thought KILL IT QUICK!! and the urge to drop to a knee and begin firing was real. Even now when we train shooting down helicopters with our Bradley main guns its to a hind shaped target.
Our zero civilians killed is not official number, I just know I kept track in my head and besides the incidents already related in 23 we had no contact with innocent locals that involved rifle fire hitting anyone.
I started off just N of Najaf (the base there is a third base that was closed by our brigade) in Karbala (base closed) then we got moved to a base just about right in between Karbala and Fallujah on the W. side of the Euphrates (base closed) and then went up to the base between Ramadi and Fallujah for about 90 days. Finally spent some time S of Baghdad on the freeway to KU. Thats where I ended my tour.
There was the time there was huge roaring sound of an incoming chinese rocket and half the guys took off running from their tents to the bunkers, breaking doors etc (our tents were protected from anything but a direct hit so if you got to the ground anything ‘just close’ would be ineffectual) and it ended up being a marine f-18 buzzing the FOB. I could hear them cussing and kicking chairs all over the place etc. the rest of us just fell out laughing.
The other time has to be when my buddy thought he saw an IED, so he called to have it inspected. After the inspection they said ‘nope, just trash.’ So he went up there clean up so no one else would be fooled too, well as he lifts up the trash he’s staring two 6-8 inch rounds in the face so, figuring he was as good as dead, he just pulled out a kinfe and cut the wires. Everyone kept it on the DL for a few months and finally I spilled the beans to the commander who nearly hit the roof. He called my buddy over on the radio and we all had a good laugh, in hindsight of course.
as for scariest it has to be when I was playing PL for some iraqi (see#1) army guys with some US HMMWV support and we couldnt drive to the objective as planned. So I finally say ’ screw it! we’re walking!’ I had one other American advizor type guy with me and so we start walking, trying to explain to the Iraqi’s (this is also prob. the wacky Iraqi moment) that when you walk in tight single file one bullet can kill you all. So we were yelling and waving ‘spread out’ while i’m talking through the interp. and using my fingers to show Mahkmed, their platoon seargent, how it is better to spread out. We make our way through this little paddy complete with those trees with the long, thin, dangly vine like limb/leaf thingys (I ONLY use technical terms you see) and I realize we didn’t bring a radio… :smack: now i’m in decent shape if I get hit, but other advizor has got me by about 60 pounds so humping him out to a medevac if he gets hit is going to be a feat. We were planning on the Iraqi Army (IA) spliting if anything happened. Working with them was affectionatly known as hearding cats. So here I am in my own little rice paddy with trees, vietnam style (or so I imagine) walking without a radio to an objective with no machine gun support thinking ‘Mom would be PISSED if she could see me now!’ Nothing ended up happening, but as pathetic as it is, that is my scariest moment.
Now, if I were SECDEF, what would I change? My salary, my retirement plan, and the car I drive. Seriously though, I woudl institute some policies to return some of the militarys methods for developing discipline to the way they were in the good ole days. I would ensure more complete enforcement of the various standards blah blah blah. Enough of the boring stuff.
The sig. thing I learned there was yet more confirmation of the goodness of Providence.
What do you mean by ‘libs and femis’? I’m not familiar with this idiom.
Liberals and feminists, I’m guessing? I’m not sure why the OP thinks that either of those groups are “weak-kneed,” though or why he thinks they would be “offended” by M16s.
By the way, I’d kind of like an answer to my question about the feelings of troops on the ground towards the administration and about the whether they feel the invasion was justified. I’m not asking for the OP’s personal opinion, I’d like to know the majority opinion.
I just want to say 1) Thanks for answering, and 2) I’m really glad you’re posting here. All I know of the situation is what I’ve head or read in the news, and about half of that is statements by Bush and friends, and (my opinion only) I don’t trust anything they say. So I really do thank you for the real information.
p.s. – and I’m glad you came back safely.
Your welcome, you guys are collectivly the reason I want to serve.
‘The Green Zone’ is specifically the embassy area in Baghdad. The rest of us always lived on a base (sometimes as small as a single house, sometimes as big as an entire airfield). I wouldn’t say that we didn’t go outside of the base for fear of kidnapping, my honest feeling is that those insurgent turd balls were such weak idiots they only killed innocent folk in the towns, really only left IED’s for us, though they did do a fair job of commiting suicide. The US officers did have something like $10k on their heads, and no one ever let it phase them, really became just a joke about how we could say on our resume’s that we’d had a price on our heads.
As for security in general its just as a function of being in the military that security is always maintained 360 degrees and in 3D. We just never had any idea when something was going to happen, if I recall correctly it was on the way to that very council meeting that our vehicle was hit by sniper fire. We were in Brad’s so it just scratched the paint, but the point is that all kinds of stuff would randomly happen, so you always played it safe, pulled security and prayed.
Honestly to be kidnapped would be exceptional for the troops, they’d have to get you alone, and your never alone going through the towns and shops, and every troop has at least 210 reasons (7 x 30 round magazines) and a knife to think they would win in a fight. Iraqi’s can’t hit the broad side of a barn with an AK, they really do just spray and pray.
not in the forseeable future, although never say never in the service!
I think the economy is up 17%, once they can get the oil sales stabilized and use the dough to build some production infrastructure I think they’ll do well. Thanks to how the euro’s drew the map back in the day Iraq isn’t landlocked so there ought to be decent import/export prospects. In our area, a whole set of shops opened in one hamlet (it did need some help after it took two suicide car bombs, way to help out the locals Mr. terrorist) and another hamlet turned into a full fledged town with a great market area thanks to the road intersections that ran by.
The locals were happy and welcoming. See #31 for more info on this.
IOBC is still a fairly effective general infantry course and pre-ranger course, learned lots there. As for improvements to training? Sticks, or bamboo switches.
The summer was HOT, it took me till DEC to stop feeling like 80 degrees was freezing.
We spent ~ 5 mil on rebuilding so we did do something, but as for the rest of the 80 bil that didnt get split up between the units like us I don’t have a clue, write your Sen’s and Rep’s. I already said it seems like we could have done more, at the same time though, I did feel like the locals expected everything on a gold platter. I would tell them 'it took the US a century from independence to become totally self sufficient politically and economically, so not having everything fixed in 3 years wasnt horrible.
We had m-16’s and variants, some pistols, loads of machine guns, the beloved mk-19 fully auto, belt fed, 40mm grenade launcher, and then the 25mm bushmaster chaingun on the bradley. The shotguns we got just before deploying and they were to be used in part to breach doors etc, although one sister unit used one rather effectively on a bad guy who hit one of our guys as he was being cuffed and took off running, well he tried anyhow, one shot, one cough and he was no more.
just trying to crack a joke (trying being the operative word here) about liberals and feminists, those groups that lots of servicemen, regardless of party (i’m no registered repub. for instance) like to make fun of when they think of all the gun laws in the states. I actually heard one lady in my local sporting goods while shopping during Christmas '04 say quietly as I looked at a shotgun ‘honey… are those guns… that like, kill people?’ I had to do one of the mental conversations like Homer S. ‘don’t turn around and look at her, don’t turn around…’ go figure guns that kill people, come on people, people kill people- guns dont kill people. Before I start another topic, I just wanted her to realize that cars kill something like 10-15 times as many people in the US as guns do. (those were the rough figures I recall while writing papers back in college.)
Its just that I went to a famously lib/femi Uni. and was called a baby killer enough to make me realize, the ave. one didn’t understand basics about guns or gun safety, they seem to think they are icky . But enough on that feeble attempt on my part at being funny.
I think most of the young guys didnt think about it too much, they just wanted to go home, like most citizens my age they probably didnt vote for bush, and believed what was on the TV (right or wrong) without much personal research or true personal opinion, politics hasn’t been cool in high school. Most of my peers were (and still maybe are) just concerned with getting some. They just wouldn’t have anything substantive to say about the Patriot Act for instance, I may agree with bush about some things but maybe no so much on wiretaps w/o some sort of warrant. etc etc etc.
I’m kind of curious about something, and it’s kind of selfish. I subscribe to the Bob and Tom Show and for awhile they partnered with the USO to send care packages to Iraq and Afghanistan. For $25 the USO would send a package worth something like $90 to a soldier. So being one of the few things I could do, I “sponsored” 2 packages. Part of the packages were greatest hits CDs from the show. I also “donated” 2 years of Maxim magazines.
Did your group ever get any of these? I figure odds are low that any one soldier would receive them, but it would be kind of neat to know if you or anyone you know got any of this stuff. Plain hubris, I’m sure, but it would still be neat to know.
And welcome home, Sir! Good luck to you and your family in the future. We all hope this can end before you need to go back into harm’s way for us misfits.
And Dio, STFU. There are a dozen threads at any given time for you to remind us you hate Bush. This isn’t the place. And it was real classy to basically tell our friend here that he risked his life for nothing.