A Message to the Troops

Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2003 7:51 PM
Subject: From Iraq: Message to the Troops

This is from an Army special operations officer written less than a week ago. I would like to see it passed around. Straight from the horse's mouth. Sanitized slightly to protect the innocent. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Hey Guys, sorry it's been so long since I've sent anything but a quick note to you individually. However things have been pretty hectic since the end of hostilities and the start of the real war. Despite what the assholes in the press like to say over and over:

My brief love affair with the press, especially the guys who had the cajones to be embedded with the troops during the fighting, is probably over, especially since we are back being criticized by the same Roland Headly types that used to hang around the Palestine Hotel drinking Baghdad Bob's whiskey and parroting his ridiculous B.S. I'm in Baghdad now, since XXXXXXXXX relocated here from Qatar. It looks, sounds and smells about the same but at least you can get Maker's Mark at the local OC. We came up in mid-June to help set up operation XXXXXXXX It represents a major (and long overdue) shift in tactics. Instead of being sitting ducks for the xxxxxxx(natives) we now are going after the worthless pieces of fecal matter. I'm no longer baby-sitting the pukes from CNN and the canned hams from the networks, but have a combat mission coordinating a bunch of A teams, seeking, finding and rooting out the mostly non-Iraqis that are well armed, well paid (in U.S. dollars) and always waiting to wail for the press and then shoot some GI in the back in the midst of a crowd. The only reason the GIs are pissed (not demoralized!) is that they cannot touch, must less waste, those taunting bags of gas that scream in their faces and riot on cue when they spot a camera man from ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN or NBC. If they did, then they know the next nightly news will be about how chaotic things are and how much the Iraqi people hate us. Some do. But the vast majority don't and more and more see that the GIs don't start anything, are by-and-large friendly, and very compassionate, especially to kids and old people.

I saw a bunch of 19 year-olds from the 82nd Airborne not return fire coming from a mosque until they got a group of elderly civilians out of harm's way. So did the Iraqis. A bunch of bad guys used a group of women and children as human shields. The GIs surrounded them and negotiated their surrender fifteen hours later and when they discovered a three year-old girl had been injured by the big tough guys throwing her down a flight of stairs, the GIs called in a MedVac helicopter to take her and her mother to the nearest field hospital. The Iraqis watched it all, and there hasn't been a problem in that neighborhood since. How many such stories, and there are hundreds of them, ever get reported in the fair and balanced press? You know. Nada.

The civilians who have figured it out faster than anyone are the local teenagers. They watch the GIs and try to talk to them and ask questions about America and now wear wrap-around sunglasses, GAP T-shirts, Dockers (or even better Levis with the red tags) and Nikes (or Egyptian knock-offs, but with the "swoosh") and love to listen to AFN when the GIs play it on their radios. They participate less and less in the demonstrations and help keep us informed when a wannabe bad-ass shows up in the neighborhood. The younger kids are going back to school again, don't have to listen to some mullah rant about the Koran ten hours a day and they get a hot meal. They see the same GIs who man the corner checkpoint, helping clear the playground, install new swing sets and create soccer fields. I watched a bunch of kids playing baseball in one playground, under the supervision of a couple of GIs from Oklahoma. They weren't very good but were having fun. Probably more than most Little Leaguers

The place is still a mess but most of it has been for years. But the hospitals are open and are in the process of being brought into the twenty-first century. The MOs [medical officers?] and visiting surgeons from home are teaching their docs new techniques and one American pharmaceutical company (You know, the kind that all the hippies like to scream about as greedy.) donated enough medicine to stock forty-five hospital pharmacies for a year. Safe water is more available. Electricity has been restored to pre-war levels but saboteurs keep cutting the lines. And the old Ba'ath big shots are upset because they can't get fuel for their private generators. One actually complained to General McKeirnan, who told him it was "a rough world".

The MPs are screening the 80,000 Iraqi police force and rehabbing the ones that weren't goons, shake-down artists or torturers like they did in East Berlin, Kosovo and Afghanistan. There are dual patrols of Iraqi cops and US/UK/Polish MPs now in most of the larger cities. Basra has three-point-five million inhabitants. Mosul is a city of two million. Kirkuk has one million. How many and hundreds of other small towns have not had riots or shootings? The vast majority.

The six U.K. cops were killed in a small Shiite town by the ex-cops they were re-habbing. According to a Royal Marine colonel I talked to, the town now has about twenty permanent vacancies in its police force. Mick, he's a big potato eater from Belfast named Huggins and knows how to handle terrorists after twenty years fighting with the IRA., sends his regards and says he'd love to have you here. Thinks you'd make a great police chief, even though the cops would be more frightened of you than the local hoods (then he laughed).

I heard one doofus on MSNBC the other night talk about how "nearly sixty" GIs have been killed since 01 May. The truth is that twenty-one GIs have been killed in combat, mostly from ambush, from 01 May through 30 June. Another twenty-nine have been killed by accidents or other causes. Two drowned while swimming in the Tigris. The [MSNBC turd] is the same jerk who reported on the air that "dozens of GIs" were badly burned when two RPGs [rocket propelled grenade] hit a truck belonging to an Engineer Battalion that was parked by a construction site. The truck was hit and burned, three GIs received minor injuries (including the driver who burned his hand) and three warriors of Allah were promptly sent to enjoy their seventy-two slave girls in Paradise. Hell of a way to get laid. A mosque in that shit hole, Fallujah, blew up this morning while the local imam, a creep named Fahlil (who was one of the biggest local loudmouths that frequently appeared on CNN), was helping a Syrian Hamas member teach eight teenagers how to make belt bombs. And, right away the local Feyhadeen propaganda group started wailing that the Americans hit it with a TOW missile. If they had, there wouldn't have been any mosque left! And then the usual suspects took to the streets for CNN and BBC. One fool was dragging around a piece of tin with blood on it, claiming it was part of the missile. The cameras rolled and the idiot started repeating his story, then one of my guys asked him in Arabic where he had left the rag he usually wore around his face that made him look like a girl. He was a local leader of the Feyhadeen. We took the clown in custody and were asked rather indignantly by the twit from BBC if we were trying to shut up "the poor man who had seen his mosque and friends blown up! ." I told the airy-fairy who the raghead was and if he knew Arabic, which he obviously didn't, he'd know he was a Palestinian. I suggested we take him down to the local jail and we'd lock him and his cameraman in a cell with the "poor man" and they could interview him until we took him to headquarters. They declined the invitation. Guess what played on the Bullshit Broadcasting System that evening? Did the Americans blow up a mosque? See the poor man who is still in a state of shock over losing his mosque and relatives? Yep. Our friend, the Palestinian.

Our search and destroy missions are largely at night, free of reporters and generally terrifying to those brave warriors of Allah. The only thing that frightens them more is hearing the word "Gitmo". The word is out that a trip to Guantanimo Bay is not a Caribbean vacation and they usually start squealing like the little mice they are when an interrogator mentions, "Gitmo". No wonder the International Red Cross, the National Council of Churches and the French keep protesting about the place. They know it has proven to be very effective in keeping several hundred real fanatical psychopaths in check and very frankly would rather see them cut loose to go kill some more GIs or innocent Americans just to make W. look bad.

We have about two-hundred really bad guys in custody now and probably will park them in the desert behind a triple roll of razor wire, backed up by a couple of Bradleys pointed their way, if they decide to riot. Maybe a few will get to Gitmo but most are human garbage that wouldn't take on your five-year old grandson face-to-face. The more we go after them and not vice-versa I think we will see the sniper attacks go down. Yeah, they'll get lucky now and then, but it's show time, fellows. Our first objective is to get the die-hards off the street or make them too scared to come out in them and destroy their caches of weapons.

We have collected more than 227,000 AK-47s and that is only the tip of the iceburg; Curly bought nearly a million of them from our pal, Vladimir, who then cut off their money supply. They came mostly from Syria and Lebanon. We must continue to get public services up and running so the local families can get water, sewage and garbage service; electricity, public transportation; oil fields and refineries working and a dinar that won't halve in value every month. It's going to be a long haul. Remember, it took 10-15 years in Japan and West Germany but if we don't stick with it, nobody else will and we'll have some other looney running the place again. This place has greater potential than Saudi Arabia (bunch of goat-herders who struck black gold) or Iran (weird dudes who can't run a rug bazaar much less a major country). I keep telling myself even the Democrats can't be that self-destructive. But then I look at the current line-up. The cream of the crap. If that lying, lesbian bitch ever gets elected we're really in trouble. By we, I mean the whole world. She'll slide just plain Bill in as the Secretary-General of the U.N. and then the whole world will be trying to take our great country. ...the greatest ever (and that's coming from an ex-Canuck)....down and Civilization with it. Armageddon, here we come. Remember, it's located on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

Enough of that cheery speculation. The good news is that General XXXXXXXX is going to be appointed ChiefArmy and the old man is coming to XXXXX to run the SpOps desk at CentComm. He's tops and will be getting his second star. To me it means that SpOps will be more predominant in future operations and after eighteen years as a GB maybe I'll have a shot at a bird-level combat command. The old man asked me (!!!) to come to MacDill and be his ACS but I told him after I spent four months changing the diapers of the media types, I wanted to go back to action. Hence, my current gig. As the movie quoted old General Patton, "God help me, I love it." I do. Nothing more satisfying than working with the BEST damn soldiers in the world, flushing real human poop down the drain and giving some folks a chance at trying freedom for a change. They may learn to like it and then my great-great-grandson won't have to worry about some maniac trying to destroy the planet. My tour is over at the end of August, and I plan to return to Tampa, brief the old man, then head to San Rafael and see my two sweethearts. I'd like to visit my parents in Toronto and my brother in London, before taking on a trip across the country. Just like any other family. It will charge my batteries before I end up back in some other shit ... er, interesting and challenging location. I hope to see most of you and ask for some advice, not support. I know I've had that all along. Thanks.

If you have a bump list of those vets and freepers in general who would like to get some "real" news about Iraq, please forward. Please immediately inform and admin if you think any info here is too sensitive.V's wife.

Thank you for the ping, Jen. Thanks for posting the letter, ventana. I hope it travels around the world - to so many homes the wankers will no longer be able to sell their stories.

Check out the link near the top of my homepage:

8 Unapologetically Pro-Coalition News Links and Articles

I begged Freeper Lexington Green to let me post this thread, e-mailed Andrew Sullivan and he ran it along with other letters from the troops and a terrific column the following Sunday which ran in the Sunday (London) Times.

Still passing it on...

Ahhhh, the truth is told. Your brother is 60 miles away from me. We are taking it to them, even in the Transportation Corps. A convoy was attacked two days ago, and the guys killed one. Our biggest problem with convoy ops is that we don't shoot back-unbelievable. Since I have started my threat briefings at my node, the my fellow TC guys have begun to take matters into their own hands. It is working. We have seen a reduction in ambushes on convoys. Many thanks to guys like your brother for their dedication and willingness to beat the bushes {sand piles actually :)}

Thanks, AntiJen and my pleasure. I would love to have this posted in the general forum as well, as I think rank and file Freepers need to hear the truth and not the manufactured news from CNN and the other usual suspects. I am so proud of our military. God bless them and God bless America! V's wife.

Not my brother kjfine. This was forwarded to me by my girlfriend whose son just returned from Iraq. This was an e-mail her son received and which is being passed among military families. I think of Freepers as being part of one big family, and so the post. I thought of Freeper Vets first.

V's wife.

Thank you for serving our country! ~~~~~SALUTE~~~~~ from a former USAF public affairs officer who served in the first Gulf War. I detest the lying, liberal media. I hope more military members will tell us what is really happening and that those reports will get spread all across the country. Aren't you glad Algore invented the Internet (*snicker*) which allows us other news sources than the 'lamestream' news media? ;-)

PatriotZone

I would love to have this posted in the general forum as well, as I think rank and file Freepers need to hear the truth and not the manufactured news from CNN and the other usual suspects.

I agree. Why don't you repost it in the General Forum so it will get more exposure?

I was a medic during GW I, and was lucky enough not to have to go. Thank you for being there. Check this out. Over the last four days, because we are taking the fight to these gorilla "warriors", I have seen a dramatic decrease attacks on the roads. In fact, it has gone to 0 attacks! I have also seen a dramatic increase in raids on weapons cache's and on suspected Baath party and other terrorist organizations. We are hitting them where it hurts...in the leadership. Like in the beginning when we went directly after the gov't bldgs (with your Air Force), just on a much smaller scale. BTW, Al Gore is my hero! Yeah, right. Speaking of the media and all those who like drivel....what do you think their reaction would be to a real war (and you know what I mean)? The war on terror is small scale stuff so far. One other thing..if you want to get really angry, go to MoveOn.org. Sometimes it isn't bad to see the other side. Study your enemy etc. etc. Take care.

Check this out. Over the last four days, because we are taking the fight to these gorilla "warriors", I have seen a dramatic decrease attacks on the roads. In fact, it has gone to 0 attacks! I have also seen a dramatic increase in raids on weapons cache's and on suspected Baath party and other terrorist organizations. We are hitting them where it hurts...in the leadership.

Thanks for that good news! Keep up the good fight soldier. Thank you for serving our country. Please tell all your troops that real Americans support them and to not believe the lying liberal media.

RC, pinging you to more good news from one of the troops in Iraq.

My favorite pings of all, thank you, Jen.

kjfine, thank you for your service and for your comments.

Jen's right, we're finding and spreading the news - and keeping score. Check out my homepage at #6 - updated daily - and LisaFab's (see #10) offer to the troops.

Lisa has a column at the internet news site Toogood Reports - and is asking the troops to e-mail her. Check out her offer here:

8 Email From The Front, The Real Story In Iraq?

Please extend Lisa's offer to others - and thank you for keeping us safe - and informed.

Passing it on...

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