Sitting in a bunker in the sun, while staring at a bridge for 4 hours gives me some time to think. There's a few things that have been pissing me off lately. The top of the list today is the phrase "I support our troops." I want to know how. In case you haven't been watching the news, some guys from 3rd ID spoke for the bulk of us when they said they'd like Rumsfeld's resignation. This was reitterated in the July 29 Doonsbury. So what are our "supporters" doing exactly? I haven't heard reports of a widespread demand for the resignation of the top civilians in the DOD. I haven't heard of anyone surrounding the UN building and demanding a mandate so that these other countries will send their troops. I haven't heard of any marches on Washington demanding the dissolution of NATO as a result of the reluctancy of our partners to participate. So far, all this "support" has been lip service. If we wanted lip service, we'd hire prostitutes! Another thing, where are the Million Mom Marchers? There has been a shit load of gun violence going on here. Almost every house has an AK47. Not a single person I've come across has the first clue about weapon safety - they usually run around with the selector on auto. I guess their purpose is shreading the Constitution, not ending gun violence. Why is it that certain groups can field a thousand people to protest the WTO, but they can't get a single person to protest the use of military forces in Iraq. This isn't a miliary mission - it's a humanitarian one now - send in the Peace Corp. Finally, why do we send in infantry - people who are trained to kill from day one - to do police work? People bitch and complain about the excessive use of force in capturing or killing people. The civilians have no clue what's going on over here. We are slated to work for 365 days straight - none off, working at least 16 hr days, and on call 24 hours a day. That in itself is stressful. Throw in a hot environment, 50 pounds of gear that doesn't breathe, and a workplace where people are actively trying to kill you, but you can't do anything about it, and you have a shit load of stress. When people are under stress long enough, they tend to revert to reflexive actions. That means that using infantry as police is going to result in some civilian getting shot because he moved his ca forward after being told to stop while US forces were crossing a road. It almost happened the day we were ambushed. Luckily the guy on the trigger is used to a bit more stress than most people. One of our 18 year old probably would have ventilated the guy. If you want to stop crime, you use police. If you want to go house to house searching and try to minimalize collateral damage, you pick infantry. We aren't trained to be nice. Our doctrinal mission is to close with and destroy the enemy, not sit back and wait to be attacked because we don't want to offend the local populace by cordoning off their neighborhoods, kicking their doors in, and searching for things hat can kill us. This whole mission could be accomplished by a few MPs, the CIA, and the peace corp.

I am sorry bro. I feel for you. I appreciate what you are doing. Being in the Navy, we never get in the shitty situation that you guys get in, but is still shit. The only thing you can do is move on when it is time for you to re-enlist or get out. When retention plummits because of the way they are treating you guys, then they will start to wonder and care about what they are doing wrong. Get out when you are done, you have done your time. It is now somebody else's turn. Good job, hang in there, and come home safely!

Suck it up soldier. They have one more person to kill before they start pulling troops. You should know that. Are you in an S-1,2, or 3 shop or are you in a line company?

Well, at least you can take comfort in knowing that Pres Bush is taking your vacation for you. He'll be at his ranch for the rest of the summer while you guys get shot at. Comforting isn't it?

And no, this isn't rubbing it in when you are already venting. It is just to point out the outrageousness of this idiot in charge.

Hey W! There are a few things that need your immediate attention!!!!! A war. A failing economy. N Korea. Afghanistan. (Remember that one?) A world that now hates us.

Oh forget it.

I'll just vote to get you out of office. Oh. That doesn't work either!!

Nor will you. Personally, I applaud all of them.

Who is "they"?

Maybe there aren't any protests because the majority of the people *support* the use of force over there.


All of the above difficulties you mentioned....believe it or not there are guys out there who LIVE for that stuff..actually enjoy it, relish it and miss it when they aren't right there in the mix of things. That's why many people enter the military to begin with..for the exact reasons you are complaining about.

And my .02 on the guys who called for Rumsfeld's resignation is that they should shut the F up and go AWOL if it's so bad. A lot of those guys joined the military for a free ride and are now bitching because they are being shot at. Uh...duh...that's what happens in war. They want the public's support, but don't want to support their own leaders? Buncha yella-bellies.

Anyway, I'm not saying your complaints aren't valid and justified, just offering a different viewpoint is all.

Hey,

I feel for you. Ex Air Cavalry here and you need to learn that civilians never get it, not ever.

You are right, you were trained to do one thing and do it well and then your told to do another. That's the world today, tomorrow you may need to just rock and roll......................

My world was easier, the military was just that, the military. Do your best for yourself everyday and you'll be fine.

Americans are great at running their mouths and not following up, why does it disappoint you or surprise you? You sound young, you must have known in your heart that you would not always be supported, now use your head to understand it as well.

American soldiers are the backbone of world freedom and liberty, never forget that and never expect a pat on the back for doing it.

For what it's worth my personal opinion is that the "war" should have been handled in the most aggressive manner possible with all the ugliness it entails but that's why I'm not running the show, I'm much too violent for today's politically sensitive world.

Keep your head up and watch your back, try not to think too long and hard about things and you'll be fine. Drop a private message if you just want to talk to an ex military guy.

"If you run, you'll just die tired"

"Hooah soldier"

Just be glad you didn't have to serve with us during Viet Nam. I hated my treatment back home worse than in country. Don't think you were drafted were you?

We support you and YES some of us know what you are going through and applaud you.

Wish our present government and it's policy makers were in charge back then. I bet things would have been a lot different.

That is why we are called 11BooHoo my brother. Hang tough dude. I do wish I had the answers for you.

Kurt

Foreign policy is easy when you are not behind a trigger.

I agree that we shouldn't use our troops as police officers, but what is the alternative? We destroyed the government of Iraq, now it has to be rebuilt. That takes time and if it wasn't for our troops, the whole country would be in anarchy. I'd consider that at least as dangerous as having Saddam in power.

We all want you guys back home, but more importantly, we want the job completed first. (That's what we taxpayers are paying you for.) If its any consolation, I think most Americans don't have a problem with "excessive use of force" issues, the press and those who oppose the Commander-in-Chief are the ones who blow it way out of proportion.

As far as Rumsfeld goes, welcome to the real world soldier... I doubt you'll find a single corporation or organization where the grunts don't hate the CEO's guts, decisions, etc. I wouldn't count on your complaints getting him fired though, it never seems to work in the corporate world, it just leads to the employee getting in trouble.

My advice, learn to deal with the disappointment of having Rumsfeld in charge. You may not like him, some of your buddies may not like him, the press may not like him, but the public seems to support him and he is the boss. No amount of complaining is likely to change that.

I may be a civilian who "doesn't understand", but I grew up on military bases, I was a military brat during the tail end of the Vietnam war, we were all very aware that my father could be shipped over there, but he wasn't drafted, he volunteered. And he was going to accept whatever the decision was even if he didn't like it. There are lots of things that people do to "support our troops." From sending care packages to troops stationed overseas, to just a simple prayer for the safety of our troops. Don't snap at those who wish you the best.

See my post under Liberia.

Maybe there aren't any protests because the majority of the people *support* the use of force over there.
Problem is, the only force being used is by the enemy against us. A squad in our battalion was crossing a road when some guy jumped out of a car with an AK47. They lit him up, making him quite dead. The family claimed he was trying to turn it in - even though it was not inside a clear plastic bag, with the magazine removed - and the battalion commander got mad and said they used too much force. So basically, we are supposed to just be targets here.
To further increase morale, Washington has decided the we no longer need hostile fire pay, separate rations, family separation pay, SAVE pay - compensation for the living conditions - and that we need to pay taxes. This supposedly starts with the new fiscal year. Originally we were supposed to get more money for being deployed longer than 180 consecutive days. The biggest thing is the hostile fire pay. Is the enemy going to stop shooting just because we aren't being paid? Seems like we are being punished because someone higher up made a mistake in planning.
I know we are better off than the Viet Nam guys with respect to the people back home, but at least they could damage the enemy and do their job. I realize that there is a need for some military force, but it needs to be the right force for the job. I'll say it again, infantry are not trained to be nice on the battlefield. We are trained to use as much force as we can get to get the job done and get our people home safely. It takes a while to build a good team and we can't afford to lose someone to something stupid. That's why we fire 12 TOW missiles into a house. The use of force spectrum is for police. The infantry one goes straight from presence to lethal force. It's very irritating to think that if you pull the trigger on a perceived threat, someone is goign to armchair quarterback it.
Where would you suggest someone go AWOL to in Baghdad? That's just stupid. And no one is complaining about being shot at - it's not being able to use our assets to fight back. If someone fires an RPG at us, we can't hose that area with a .50 because of civilians. We are under constant observation by the enemy. We even have some of them working in our compounds - or at least their spies - there's a reason we know this. Do we do anything about it? Nope - too many pansies in charge. In WWII, we executed spies. Back then, if someone was caught attacking and not wearing a uniform, they could be held as a spy. Today, we ship them to a holding pen.
This is just a really frustrating mission. It was poorly planned, poorly executed. In the race to get to Baghdad, we left enemy in our rear. The enemy dresses like the civilian population, uses protected places as their base, and has the support of many of the locals. This is going to be a protracted guerilla war, and fighting it with conventional tactics isn't going to work. Reduce morale with stupid stuff doesn't help.

Are you talking about American's? If so I totally agree with you, I saw a soldier chamber a round on an unarmed 8 year old and laugh like it was a joke. I don't think he understood the ramifications if he acidentally pulled the trigger and killed one of the people we're supposed to be saving.
Sometimes I feel safer around the locals because they don't wave loaded weapons around like toys. The problem is that the army spends so much time practiceing with unloaded weapons they don't respect them when they have a magazine in them.

As for Rumsfield I've noticed that nobody over here likes him since I saw him make a speech on TV in January. It was at the mess hall in Arifjan and he said something about how are soldiers over here will wait as long as it takes for the UN to come around. Everybody started booing and people started yelling they want to go home. The same thing happened a few a months ago when he said that the hot summer won't affect the soldiers, "They spend all their time training for this." Sure but that doesn't mean we want to stay here, GET US THE FUCK OUT!

I'm glad there are still sodliers like you that keep thinking of us leaving. Here in Doha everybody has access to cold water and A/C and they feel that it's worth keeping soldiers here because they make bank sitting in a airconditioned room surfing the net. :rolleyes:

The bleedin heart commie liberal pacifists democrats got what they wanted.......Another politically correct war run from congress and the media.

And dont forget those bastards at the State Department. Infx, I do feel for you guys. But media scrutiny and pressure, and certain sectors in our government are so worried about public relations it is affecting your ability to protect yourselves. That is wrong. If it were up to me I would reinstate hostilities officially and put you back on a war footing. That means shoot first, clean up later. These people (Iraqis) are idiots but they are not dumb. If they are coming at you with a weapon that is not emptied and not being held over thier heads, they are the enemy and should be put down. They should know better. Only Fox is reporting it anywhere near like you have described it.

The State Department isn't running this war, Rumsfeld and his cronies at the Department of Defense are.

Thank you troops and thank you Pres. Bush for protecting our freedom and taking out evil do-ers. Hang in there and keep you head up. You guys are held with most respect. Don't let the wrongies... err lefties get you down. They wish they had half the man Bush was on their side. Hell, they just hate him because he's a conservative and simply wish he was one of theirs. If he was a liberal, you wouldn't hear any bitching from either sides because we conservatives know what he's doing is right and don't care about the politics behind it and the lefties would just be happy he's one of theirs. Sadly, not the case. Anyway, come home safe and remember the one's who can put the political bs aside are with you and the president. Go U.S.A!!!

PS And please stay away from people like this jackass:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,93938,00.html

Yes, but the State Department handles diplomatic and foreign relations. Thier policies dictate to Rumsfeld what he can and cannot do in terms of how our military is used. It may be the military's job to shoot and kill, but its the state department who tells them who and where and if they can or cannot.

Do you have any idea how hypocritical this statement is after what you typed right before it?

Lovely, you pick out my hypocritical statement over the Bush bashing one's. Gee, I wonder why that is.

Uh...because at least they weren't posting hypocritical statements? Or at least not obvious ones.

It would have been better if you had said, "Anyway, come home safe and remember the ones who aren't anti-american liberal commies are with you and the president" instead of "Anyway, come home safe and remember the one's who can put the political bs aside are with you and the president."

(p.s. - supporting the troops but not Bush is not hypocritical, so don't use that)

No, I mean the Iraqis that are hired to be "security" Half of them have fedayeen tatoos - but they are ok because they signed a paper disavowing allegiance to the Ba'ath Party. They carry their weapons on full auto. It's true that we have charged our weapons around kids - it's the best way to get them away from you. The kids are being given frags and paid $100 to attck us. They are more afraid of a weapon being charged than having it pointed at them. Also, they are more afraid of a 9mm than an M4 for some reason.

Do you have some special connection at Doha that allows you access here? At New York, they quickly killed access to this site after I visited it a couple times. I thought the server was out of Doha.
Guido is correct to a point. State had begun devising a plan for post war Iraq eleven months before it began. DOD waited until after it started. The generals wanted 400K troops - enough to flood the country and arrive in force. The civilians only gave us 140K or so. That's why the situation is as it is right now. The bad guys melted away and when they realized that we were spread too thin, they started attacking - and have become more bold. When we first got here, no one shot at us. Even Baghdad was pretty quiet - mostly just people killing off Ba'athists. Falluja wasn't even touched until after the war. Now, it's the hottest place out here.

No I'm at the Multimedia Center, I only get 30 minutes at a time to use the internet so I usually don't get to spend much time on XOC.

29 minutes for pr0n, 1 minute for XOC !!!1! LOL WTF !!1!!11!

Watched soem very grapichal scenes on BBC las night, looks like you guys are in the shit, I admire what you do and realize it must be hell not knowing if the guy passing you on the street is a good guy or bad guy.

I hope the shitheads doing these attacks are not fueled by the media attention they are getting. Nice to see you have a "shoot first ask 2nd" policy (speaking about the aparent gun dealers in Tirkrit)

Stay safe....

Ok, glad they got some unrestricted stuff down there - is it free? We're paying $2/hr, so it limits you that way. There's talk of moving me to brigade for some S3 job, and I don't think they have anythoing except those AKO only machines.