Iraq war into 6th year, same old story...

[MDS]

The usual, some Jews, mentally retarded kids, old people, teh AIDS.

[ice grillin you]

I've got 45,000 Marines in my back yard and damn near all of them will tell you this war sucks and is pointless.   And they'll say it publicly too

wouldnt you agree sarge that there is a small segement of the military that are the gung ho send me anywhere for any reason no matter how wrong or right and let me kill people...the kind you often see portrayed in movies

but by and large the military is no different than the population at large in that they are capable of looking at the big picture and making a rational intelligent call on whether iraq is a place we should have gone and should be in

people too often peg them as mindless robots who cant seperate duty in carrying out a mission and the mission itself

[Sgt PSN]

I've got 45,000 Marines in my back yard and damn near all of them will tell you this war sucks and is pointless.   And they'll say it publicly too

wouldnt you agree sarge that there is a small segement of the military that are the gung ho send me anywhere for any reason no matter how wrong or right and let me kill people...the kind you often see portrayed in movies

Well, yes and no.  Oddly enough, I encountered more Marines in the late 90's who had the the gung ho mentality who wanted to just go anywhere and kill people than I do now.  I can only imagine that's because there was very little going on in the world in the late 90's that required our attention so Marines were just itchy for action.  Now that they're getting it, they don't want it. 

[Diomedes]

The usual, some Jews, mentally retarded kids, old people, teh AIDS.

how could you leave out the blacks or the poor (insofar as they are different?)

[MDS]

Should I grab my Klan hood and swing by igy's house?

[Diomedes]

No doubt he's ready and waiting with pants hanging off his ass and "an original" DVD of Stop Snitching to prove his membership.

[Rome]

The usual, some Jews, mentally retarded kids, old people, teh AIDS.

Funny.   

[tnt4philly]

I know very few in the military

Perhaps this sums your post up best?

Great job of taking my post way out of context. With over 25 years in the military, I think I know a few more than the average person.

[Phanatic]

A kid in my neighborhood was back from Iraq on leave. I've known him for about 4 years now. His Mom just died so he got leave to come home to the funeral before going back to Iraq. So I picked his brain a little bit about what is going on over there.

Described a scene where they were going to search someones house for some reason. The man of the house resisted and punched him in the face, but he had no weapons. They held the guy down and cuffed him with zippy ties. They proceded to perform their jobs uninterrupted.  They cut the guy lose when they were done. The guy they tied down filed a complaint somehow and he actually lost rank over the incident. He was very bitter about it. The intensity that this kid now carried with him was very disturbing though.

From the soldiers perspective he was trying to do the job they sent him to do. The people there don't want him there and he doesn't have a lot of repect for them because of his day to day struggles with them. He's a 19 year old white kid from Missouri and he's now added quite a few prejudice's to his pshyche. I imagine this is a common problem for guys over there.

From the Man who was zippy tied, he was just trying to protect his home. He most likely resented the intrusion like any of us would. I see a lot of lose lose coming out of this situation.

Of course this is all from the soldiers perspective and there are two sides to every story. It was a glimpse for me though. Certainly different from what I experianced in Storm.

[ice grillin you]

a limited action
but really
not good


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19070463/

[Seabiscuit36]

Its not Iraq but did anyone see the National Geographic: Inside the Green Beret's special?  It was really an eye opening 10 day documentary, the ending sucked though

[Diomedes]

There are a lot of good things happening in Iraq...

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/18/opinion/ednivat.php

Life in the 'red zone'
By Anne Nivat
Wednesday, July 18, 2007

It was hard enough to organize my trip from France to Baghdad. But once there, it proved even tougher to get to get into the "green zone," the American military and diplomatic headquarters and construction site of a new American embassy that will be the largest in the world.

I had an appointment with an aide to General David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq. A press officer offered to meet me at one of the main checkpoints. I advised him by cell phone how he would recognize me: "Don't look for a Western-looking woman. I'm dressed like an Iraqi."

He met me in full combat gear. Between the first checkpoint and the parking lot of the U.S. Embassy, still based in Saddam Hussein's Republican Palace, a distance of about a mile, I was checked six times. I had come from the "red zone."

The "red zone": that is to say, all of Baghdad outside the fortified American enclave. The "no-go zone." The sprawling capital city that is home to more than 10 million people. That's where I lived for two weeks to get "the other side" of the story. To do that, I had no choice but to blend in.

Dressed in a loose black tunic with long sleeves called an abbaya, I strapped on sandals, tucked my hair under a scarf tied at the chin and blended into the crowded streets of Baghdad. Only my contacts knew that I was a foreigner and a reporter, and I didn't tell anyone where I was staying or for how long. I was careful never to speak in public.

My contact and I got around in a gray Peugeot. Ali, whom I knew from a previous trip, had traded in his BMW because it was too conspicuous - residents of Baghdad have to consider how every detail of life could impact on their very survival. They assume as low a profile as they can, then wait fatalistically for the day that "something happens."

"The only sure thing here is that we have lost our trust. Can you believe that we are terrorized in our own homes?" Ali, 32, chose to remain in Baghdad while the majority of his friends and relatives joined the hoards of refugees in Syria and Jordan (for the less fortunate) or Sweden (for the others).

"I am Shiite," Ali said. "My uncles and cousins were murdered by Saddam's regime. I wanted desperately to get rid of him. But today, if Saddam's feet appeared in front of me, I would fall to my knees and kiss them!"

The temperature outside is nearly 130 degrees, but the capital has no electricity most of the time. Those who own private generators have become the most powerful people in every district. They sell the precious energy eight hours a day.

On the eastern bank of the Tigris River, where I stayed, the government could provide electricity only between 6 and 7 a.m. All the appliances would burst into action, waking up the household. For those who can afford it, a small generator fills in the gaps in power. But a generator consumes up to 20 gallons of gasoline a day, an enormous amount in a time of shortages.

Under Saddam Hussein, 40 gallons of gasoline cost half a dollar. Today, you'd have to pay $75 for the same quantity on the black market - or you could stand in line for four to five days at a gas station and pay about $35.

"You spend all your time preoccupied with either getting gasoline or getting electricity - not to mention worrying about violence," says Ali. "If they go out, my sisters could be kidnapped or killed by a bomb.I travel by car only if it is absolutely necessary."

Day after day, morning till night, residents of Baghdad are confined in an oppressive state of waiting. Because there is nothing else to do and no one to trust, everyone hunkers down. Sometimes they race out on foot to buy food or other necessities, but mostly they sit and watch television.

Of Ali's six sisters, only two are married. Even in these troubled times, Ali's father continues to receive "applicants" for the other four. But he has decided not to consent to their marriage so long as the U.S. Army is in the country and the Iraqi militias are killing each other. Better, he feels, to keep them safe at home rather than let them move elsewhere, even if it's to a nice family with a beautiful home, but in a district that may be more dangerous.

Mustansiriya is a mixed Sunni-Shiite district which has begun to splinter under sectarian pressures. More and more Sunni families are moving to the other side of the river, where there is a Sunni majority.

One afternoon, we meet a widow of 30, mother of seven, who is about to leave. "I am going to exchange houses with a Shiite family from Adhamiya," she says. That's a stronghold of the Sunni insurrection, the last place Saddam appeared in public after the Americans took Baghdad.

Today, the Americans are building a tall, strong wall around the district, purportedly to protect the Sunnis inside from the Shiite militias around them. "I'm leaving my furniture here, and they're leaving theirs in their home. After that, we'll see. . ."

I learn that this type of housing exchange is becoming more common as the country segregates itself along sectarian lines. A new breed of real-estate agents has developed, with lists of properties available for such exchanges. Interested parties sign a contract in which they agree to live in the house of the other family "until the situation improves."

When will that be? "Even the Americans can't answer that question," says Ali.

Everyone is afraid of being kidnapped, tortured or seized. Many people have received threats on their cell phones, which are the insurgents' preferred means of communication.

Iraq was the last country in the Middle East to get cellular service. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, a mobile phone has become the top status symbol in Iraq. However, since the intensification of sectarian violence, cell phones have also become the means most used to send threats (by text message) or to demand a ransom (by calling the family of the kidnapped hostage). People often change their numbers before they give up altogether and move to a safer district.

Today is Friday, the Muslim holy day. To avoid crowding at the mosques, there is a curfew from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The city practically comes to a standstill during this interval.

I must wait until mid-afternoon to return to Sadr City, the stronghold of Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who opposes the American presence in Iraq. I plan to meet a woman doctor who works in the emergency room of the Ali Ben Ali Talib Hospital, one of 14 public hospitals in Baghdad. Rana is only 26, but one doesn't need to have practiced medicine a long time in Iraq to lose one's illusions.

"In this district, the patients don't respect us. They don't even bother to disarm when they come here, despite all the notices at the entrance," she says. "Sometimes doctors are directly threatened. You get used to it."

A non-practicing Shiite, Rana does not wear a veil. In blue jeans and a white blouse, her small, elegant silhouette is easily recognizable in the corridors of the hospital, where she spends four days a week.

It is not surprising that in this ultra-conservative district of Sadr City - an enclave entirely controlled by the Mahdi army, al-Sadr's militia - many of the patients, mostly illiterate, refuse to be treated by a female doctor.

Exasperated at repeatedly having to justify herself to the patients, Rana dared to go and complain to the representatives of Moktada, with the support of her veiled female colleagues.

To her own surprise, they took her side by not asking her to veil herself. That was probably because there is so great a shortage of doctors. Since 2003, more than 200 have fled the city, and the exodus continue.

Rana makes a bitter observation: "Besides those wounded by gunshots or victims of explosions and attacks, there are more and more cases of young women who have tried to commit suicide. For the most part, they have set themselves on fire with gasoline. They are brides who, in addition to the general tension in the country, cannot cope with their new family life."

Harassed, exhausted and filled with bitterness, Rana carries on. For $250 a month.

Just before I leave Baghdad by car for Erbil, in the northern Kurdish territory, to fly from there back to Europe, there is a second bomb attack on the Shiite Askariya mosque in Samarra, north of the capital.

An exceptional curfew is declared for 3 p.m. on only two hours notice, causing general panic. Crying women descend on cars, begging for rides to get home in time. Drivers abandon their vehicles in the congestion to get wherever they were going more quickly on foot. The curfew lasted four days - dragging Iraqis even further out of the world.

Anne Nivat is a French journalist whose books include "Chienne de Guerre: A Woman Reporter Behind the Lines of the War in Chechnya" and "The Wake of War : Encounters with the People of Iraq and Afghanistan."


farging Disneyland Middle East, right Joel?  How about you head over there to help out??

[ice grillin you]

be careful or we will bring democracy to your country

[Butchers Bill]

farging Disneyland Middle East, right Joel?  How about you head over there to help out??

Your empty rhetoric is as predicable as an Andy Reid game plan.  Just because its not all bad in Iraq its now a Disneyland?   

And yeah, I've done my time in the military.  Have you? 

[Diomedes]

I didn't have any time to do.

You like this war, sign up again.  Go over there and help make things better for Iraq, like Bush would want.