The Real Story Behind the April 9th Insurgency in Iraq (must-read by a US soldier who was there)

Intellectual Conservative ^ | 17 May 2004 | Jarob D. Walsh, U.S. Army Specialist

[Cannoneer No. 4]

Ping to Soldiers in Iraq too vulnerable, says Army specialist .

Your perspective, please.

[arjay]

I was a little surprised. I emailed him and got back an answer rather quickly.

We have some amazing folks in our military.

[Travis McGee]

Sweet Jesus..... what a story. What a day in this young hero's life. OMG...

Question: Where were the helicopter gunships? Where were the helos? This giant fat juicy convoy had no helicopters, even on QRF standby?????

Gunships in the first 5 or 10 minutes would have saved a lot of Americans.

[Travis McGee]

Alright...simple question... Why no helicopter escort?

My question also. Not even on the pad armed on standby as a QRF?

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Brave kid. God bless him.

One thing that jumped out at me from his narrative:

Matt was seen on the Al-Jazeera network as a hostage, and is believed to be still in their custody.

It seems that he makes no distinction between Al-Jazeera and the scum he was fighting in Iraq. In his mind they are one and the same. Interesting.

[RightOnline]

Unbelievable. Simply unreal. God bless 'im.

[Professional Engineer]

ping

[beebuster2000]

bump

[justshutupandtakeit]

Wow, what a story. Too bad the RATmedia has no use for stories of heroism and glory.

[pbear8]

read later

[hobson]

read later - Sounds like a must read.

[ExSoldier]

"basic load of ammo - 100 rounds."

I thought a "basic load" was actually 200 rounds of ammo. That's what it was when I was an infantry officer. Is it different for support guys? What about sidearms? What's that basic load?

[Poohbah]

Question: Where were the helicopter gunships? Where were the helos? This giant fat juicy convoy had no helicopters, even on QRF standby?????

They may have been busy elsewhere.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

ping

[Cannoneer No. 4]

ping

[Travis McGee]

I don't buy that for a second. Soldiers in hot contact getting shot up always take priority. Normal recon and other missions automatically divert to provide CAS. You can't tell me that all of the helo gunships in the Baghdad area were at that moment providing critical CAS to troops elsewhere who were getting chewed up even worse than this convoy. If that was true, we would have lost dozens of soldiers in combat on that day, and we didn't. I think that this was a major fubar snafu. I remember the reports of that day, they had groups of armed Iraqis out on the highways west of Baghdad doing the allah dance for hours, and not a helo in sight. Why?

[Travis McGee]

Helo question above.

[Poohbah]

I don't buy that for a second. Soldiers in hot contact getting shot up always take priority. Normal recon and other missions automatically divert to provide CAS. You can't tell me that all of the helo gunships in the Baghdad area were at that moment providing critical CAS to troops elsewhere who were getting chewed up even worse than this convoy.

Other possibility: troops on scene never called for CAS. Combat support troops frequently don't know how to do that.

[sfvgt]

best article to come out yet about Iraq

[Americanwolf]

Shivers down the spine...Much love and respect to this and all soldiers that are out there facing this on a day to day basis. Will keep him and all over there in my prayers.

Wonder what the army would let a 31 year old ex navy bomb tech do.... Reading this I want to join the fight...