Here's the most irritating thing to me. We aren't doing squat over there anymore. Maybe a few special ops guys and intel types, but the majority of the force is simply trying to stay alive. The last 3 months I was there, the bulk of my time was spent guarding our quarters, walking around looking for IEDs - funny how that has become a common term nowadays - and dodging incoming mortars. We conducted maybe 12 raids, 4 "cordon and knocks", and a few more presence patrols. We captured 6 wanted bad guys. Because of the rules, the bad guys can shoot at us at will with no threat of retaliation. The US used to be known for giving back twice what it received. The Air Force still can. If someone shoots at a plane, they can drop a bomb on him. We weren't even allowed to respond in kind. An RPG is an anti-tank weapon. Did we ever fire one of our anti-tank rockets back at an attacker? No, sorry, you can only shoot a machinegun and hope you wound someone. Did we ever fire mortars back at the location from which they were fired (called counter-battery fire). We just had to suck it up, and tend to the wounded. What ever happened to the notion of with us or against us? You can guarantee that even if we just fired smoke rounds onto the mortar launch sites, the people in those neighborhoods would think twice about letting Ahmed and Hassan fire mortars at the Ameriki. I can guarantee if an AT-4 blows up outside your back door, after coming through your wall, you won't let the boys come around with their RPGs anymore. America has become soft. We are now a nation of pussies. We want to get rid of the bad guys, but not hurt anyone around them. We would rather lose 18 of our soldiers in a single night than unintentionally kill one family that decides to ignore the guys setting up a tube outside their house. What happened to the America that existed in the 40's? We used to call our enemy names because we didn't like them. Now, we don't want to offend them. Do people actually think that there's weren't Germans in the US army in 1944? Those same men were calling the soldiers of the Third Reich krauts and Jerrys. It's time to have a bowel movement or exit the toilet. America needs to decide whether they want another Vietnam or another Operation Overlord (That's the 1944 D-Day in Normandy to some of you). Right now, it's looking like Vietnam. We have no clear cut objectives and no clear exit strategy. Is this how we want to start the 21st Century? We can't beat the insurgency - minus forced sterilization and genocide. As long as we are in Iraq, there will be fundamentalists that will hate us for whatever reason - we killed great-grandpa, we walked too close to the mosque, we did somethign with our left hand, we pointed a rifle at mom, we stopped a car, we're breathing their air, etc. A lot of Iraqis would make great professional Welfare recipients. It's time for us to stop babying them and leave, or get busy with the eradication of the bad guys, even if it means taking a few innocents with them.