MESSAGE FROM JELLO BIAFRA

Here is an e-mail I recieved from legendary DEAD KENNEDYS frontman, and political activist Jello Biafra.

Hey Colby,
Thanks a lot for alerting us about what's going on with you. Thanks also for the respect. Believe me, it's mutual. You have a lot of guts. No pun intended, but stick to your guns. Don't believe the hype - we are the real patriots here, not the unelected gangsters and scam artists who started this war. Real patriots care enough about our country - and the world - to speak up, stand up and fight backwhen the government breaks the law, lies, steals and gets innocent people killed. Real patriots do their buddies and the people back home a huge favor when they bypass our censored corporate media and become the media themselves - telling us from a real person perspective what war and agrunt's life are really like. History is important. As long as people in the field speak up we have a chance of preserving the truth. Otherwise it's the bullshit gospel according to Fox News and The Bush-Croft regime and people'sown memory being erased even more than we've got now. To all the troops: I and Alternative Tentacles support you. We support you by saying, "Bring The Troops Home!" as loud and as often as we can.
Stay Safe
Don't Give Up,
JELLO BIAFRA

Mass Media & Society

This was writen and forwarded to me by a Colledge student at the University of Houston who is taking a class in Mass Media and Scoiety:

Upon researching the topic on blogs I happened upon the www.warblogs website. After reading several of the web sites, I quickly became weary of the "jarhead" tone that seemed to be so very prevalent throughout the blogs that I happened upon.

For clarity, by jarhead I mean the overriding sense of testosterone gone awry. Or if you prefer, the "Kill ‘em all and let God sort them out mentality."

Now I understand that the military, by necessity, nurtures this sort of mentality in its stock of soldiers. Mater of fact, I know it does as I have had friends who have served and have witnessed the change in them first hand.

My best friend who served four years almost straight out of high school described it best when he said, "When you are placed within a group of any people you can feel yourself always stoop to the lowest common denominator. You can feel yourself dumbing up in real time as a means of coping.

"Though I know many would say the term jarhead is derogatory I do not mean it as such. In all honesty, I believe such an attitude would be necessary to cope in a hostile environment. Further, I'm sure if I were placed in such an environment I too "would find the lowest common denominator."

But be that as it may, reading blogs composed by such people does little to further my interest. I can only read so many endlessly quoted slams of Dan Rather. (Wait a sec... Did I say slams? I meant blasts. That's the new catch word us media type have decided upon this season)

The real problem with the blogs was that they never really touched upon any topic which I felt I was not acquainted before. For myself, I needed personal details which could “flesh out” and make their situation real for people such as myself. It seemed to me blogs would provide the perfect format for the stories and tidbits which were so sorely lacking in traditional news coverage.

By sheer coincidence, I stumbled upon just such a site tonight. It was entitled “My War”. Here is a brief excerpt from one of the author’s post.

“Another thing I remembered about Los Angeles, was on New Years Eve once, I was walking back home from the hidden bars tucked away in the Los Feliz hood of LA, completely inebriated, and I looked out over to the East Los sector of Los Angeles and I remember seeing celebratory gunshots being fired up in the air. The Iraqi's do the same mindless thing here too, but its every fucking night here. Religious holidays, Muhammad birthday, Saddams, birthday, weddings, job promotions, or just for the hell of it, they celebrate by firing a burst of AK47 rounds in the air. Well, tonight I was just chilling up in the tower, lighting another cigarette with the lit end of the cigarette I just consumed, when all the sudden the sounds of gunshots we're being fired from all over the city. Like everywhere. Far and near, left and right, over here and over there. I was like, holy shit what the fuck is going on tonight?!?! Is this like a signal for the start of some kind of all out fight to the death holy jihad on US Coalition Forces or something?

Bang, bang, bang, bang. So I started counting all the shots I heard fired: one, two, three, four, five, six... finally after a couple minutes the shooting silently dissipated. I was unable to count every single gunshot I heard fired, some overlapped each other, but the final tally that I came up with was 67 shots heard fired. I remember awhile ago I was up in a guard tower when it was some Islamic holiday here, like Mohammed's birthday or some shit like that, and there wasn't nearly as many celabratory gunshots fired up in the air that night as there was tonight. So I wondered to myself what the fuck was going on tonight to have all these shots fired all at once?

Then, down by the bottom of my tower, a vehicle rolled up and the TC stuck his head out of hatch and yelled up to me, "Hey, I just heard over the radio that Iraq is up! One to nothing!

"Holy shit, that's right. The Olympic soccer games are going on, and these people here are just as fanatical, if not more so, for their soccer team, than they are for their religion.

Strange, very strange.stay tuned.

Story still developing...”

This was the exact experience I was looking for in a blog composed by a soldier serving in Iraq. Deatails which made the conflict seem more real to those of us who have no concept of what it truly must be like over there.

As soon as I am finished composing this post, I intend to return to the site and read every single entry.

If such a quote as the one above interests you then I highly recommend visiting it at http://www.cbftw.blogspot.com/. You’ll be glad you did.

All Out War

To give you guys a better idea of what we're going through right now, here is an artcile on CNN's website that I found:

U.S. targeting insurgents in northern Iraq
Dozens dead in fighting at terrorist 'haven'

The U.S. military has identified Tall 'Afar -- 30 miles west of Mosul -- as "a suspected haven for terrorists crossing into Iraq from Syria."

The fighting left 45 people dead -- 22 of whom were believed to have been gunmen, hospital officials said. Dr. Rabi Yassin, director general of Mosul's health department, said many of the other victims were children.

At least 70 other people were injured, some of them children, Yassin said.
"Tall 'Afar hospital could not handle that number of wounded, so we sent ambulances from other hospitals in Mosul," Yassin said.

Yassin said "the new Iraqi army banned ambulances that were carrying medical aid from entering Tall 'Afar, although the hospital was really in need of that stuff."

A U.S. military statement said American and Iraqi forces "are allowing ambulances to enter in and out of Tall 'Afar after being searched. This precaution is necessary because terrorists in Tall 'Afar have used ambulances to move about the city."
Six people have been detained, all suspected of "anti-Iraqi" activities, the military said. U.S. and Iraqi forces have also confiscated various weapons and munitions.
Repeated attacks

"The operation comes after [multinational] and Iraqi security forces were repeatedly attacked by a large terrorist element that has displaced local Iraqi security forces throughout the recent weeks," according to the coalition press office.

"Numerous attacks in the past two weeks not only targeted [multinational] and Iraqi security forces, but civilians as well. These attacks by terrorist groups included rocket-propelled grenades, small-arms fire, mortars and roadside bombs, and resulted in civilian casualties."
Multinational forces also launched "a coordinated and precise maneuver to secure the highway surrounding the city," the military said.

"This main road has been the site of numerous attacks on multinational forces and Iraqi security forces by rocket propelled grenades, mortars and roadside bombs."
Insurgents at the Al Huda Mosque and other city buildings attacked the forces securing the highway, the U.S. military said, noting that "the use of protected holy sites to conduct these kinds of attacks violates the law of war."

Soldiers returned fire toward the insurgents.

"While hundreds of the city's citizens have fled in the last several days, many of those remaining left today in the face of the terrorist attacks," the military said.

Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, a spokesman with Task Force Olympia, said the number of anti-Iraqi forces in the city is estimated at between 250 and 300.

On Saturday, a military helicopter went down during heavy fighting in Tall 'Afar. Insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at a Stryker armored vehicle securing the site, disabling the vehicle.

The military said the Nineveh provincial Gov. Duraid Kashmoula "has been working with sheikhs and local leaders in the area to bring about peace and stability to the city.

"However, attempts at a peaceful solution have failed, resulting in the courageous decision by local Iraqi leaders to initiate operations to free Tall 'Afar of the terrorists and to restore order."
Kashmoula's son, Laith Duraid Kashmoula, was assassinated Tuesday.

Police said the son was driving to work when assailants pulled up next to his car and opened fire with small arms. He was an employee in the Iraqi government's anti-corruption office in Mosul, the largest city in the northern Iraqi province.

The governor's cousin and the previous governor of Nineveh province, Usama Kashmoula, was shot dead in an ambush two months ago.

For those of you that have been reading this site for awhile and remember my men in black post, well this shit right now makes that look like a G rated kids novel
Click here to read Read the CNN Story:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/09/09/iraq.main/index.html

"Please God turn me into a birdie, so I can fly far, far away"
-Jenny
Forest Gump

Article In Defence Today Magazine

Soldier Blog Shutdown? Stryker Diarist Stops Posting
By Nathan Hodge
Sometimes success can spoil a good thing.

A soldier with the Stryker brigade in Iraq who posted riveting online accounts of combat in Iraq has apparently made his last post, abruptly closing a Website that drew an untold number of readers.

CBFTW—the pseudonym of the online diarist, an enlisted soldier with the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division Stryker Brigade Combat Team—won a following for his frank, profane and often funny take on the life of a soldier in Iraq. He chronicled the tedium of a lengthy deployment and the occasional moments of sheer terror, including a vicious, but largely unpublicized, firefight the Fort Lewis-based unit was involved in earlier this month.

His intense, first-person account of that battle was quoted extensively in an article by Tacoma, Wash., News Tribune reporter Michael Gilbert, who traveled with the Stryker Brigade to Iraq and has closely followed their deployment. More recently, CBFTW was profiled in a story on NPR's "Day to Day" radio program.

Visitors to CBFTW's Weblog (cbftw.blogspot.com), however, can now find only one entry, posted Friday, that quotes Johnny Rotten, front man for the legendary punk act the Sex Pistols: "Ever Get the Feeling You've Been Cheated?"
The caption on the main page (posted over a black-and-white image of of Picasso's Guernica) reads: "OVER AND OUT."

In recent posts, CBFTW had hinted that he was under threat of reprimand from his superiors; the NPR story noted that he had been lectured by his commanders for possible violations of operational security, or OPSEC. A spokesman for CBFTW's unit told NPR his blog entries would be reviewed by a platoon sergeant and superior officer before they were posted.

Before the NPR story, CBFTW posted a note that cryptically advised readers to "stay tuned," followed with the full text of the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press ...").

If his commanders indeed have ordered him to shut down his blog, it won't be the first time. In October 2002, Defense Week reported on a Website run by soldiers of a medical logistics battalion stationed in Afghanistan. They launched the blog to keep friends and family informed, but enthusiastic strangers linked to the site; when the members of the battalion were swamped with fan mail, they decided to shut the site down.

Blogs are, in some way, a defining cultural phenomenon of the war in Iraq, much as psychedelic music provided the soundtrack to the Vietnam War. There are dozens of Iraq blogs, posted by ordinary Iraqis, civilian administrators living in the Green Zone, rear-echelon soldiers and combat infantrymen. One Iraqi blogger, known by the nom de plume Salam Pax, even saw his Web diary published as a book, The Baghdad Blog.

Families of deployed soldiers maintain their own informal support networks through blogs, and soldiers—who have access to Internet cafes—kill the boredom of deployment by posting their own thoughts online.

Some blogs are patriotic, others are personal rants. CBFTW—a native of the San Francisco Bay Area who listed his interests, variously, as "drinking, skateboarding, reading, [and] 7.62 fully automatic weapons" along with punk rock and barroom poet Charles Bukowski—favored the rant, his long posts unencumbered by spelling and standard punctuation. He was also an avid reader, peppering his posts with literary allusions as well as references to punk and metal classics (the title of his blog—"My War"—comes from a Black Flag song). In some respects, CBFTW's irreverent blog echoed the spirit of Dave Rabbit, an enlisted man who ran a pirate radio in South Vietnam called Radio First Termer.

CBFTW is not the only military blogger who has won notoriety. Army Capt. Eric Magnell, an Army lawyer in Iraq, also was profiled in the NPR story. On Thursday, he posted a few thoughts on the interview, as well as on the case of CBFTW, on his blog (daggerjag.blogspot.com).

It's worth quoting at length:
"On Monday I spoke with Eric Niiler from NPR about my blog and how the army is treating bloggers. ... I think the story perfectly illustrates one of the reasons why soldiers may want to tell their story on their own blog rather than leaving it to the mainstream media. I don't think that Eric was misleading or twisted our words but he definitely wanted to give the impression that soldiers are being persecuted by their leaders over blogs and that their free speech rights are being infringed by a command that doesn't want their stories told. I would disagree with this thesis on several grounds.

"As I said in the story, the information environment has changed so much and is so different than in any previous war or conflict. Here in Iraq we have access to so much new communications capabilities it really is mind-boggling when you think about it. When my father was in Vietnam he wrote letters and mailed home cassettes or reel-to-reel tapes to keep in touch with my mom and his family. Even thirteen years ago, during Desert Storm, the soldiers still wrote letters and had very, very few opportunities to call their families in the States. With these new capabilities come some very real concerns over operational security. ... We know that our enemies are computer `savvy' and may have the ability to intercept e-mails or other communications over the Internet. Every soldier has to be aware and concerned about saying or writing anything that could potentially give our enemies information. Even potentially innocent statements which, by themselves, mean nothing can provide intelligence for our opponents when matched with other innocuous open source information."

Magnell, however, puts in a word of support for CBFTW:
"I've read SPC Buzzell's blog and, while I'm not a security manager, I haven't seen anything that clearly is prohibited but I can understand his chain of command's concerns."

The Army, Magnell concludes, "isn't a sinister organization looking to trample invidivual freedoms but, as any large bureaucracy, it can be slow to react to new situations and changes in the environment."

An e-mail to CBFTW went unanswered.

Whatever

This is great. I found this over at Strykernews.com It was released by the Army and it is in regards to soldier blogs.
Note: The author of this article works for Army Public Affairs and is also stationed here in Mosul. (Which makes me kinda wonder why he didnt mention my blog in his article)

Soldiers’ blogs become more popular...
...Cause concern for security
By Spc. Blair Larson

MOSUL, Iraq-- With an internet connection, Soldiers can send and post messages around the world. Instants after an event happens, the details can be transmitted back to family and friends in the form of emails and with new simple technology, can be posted in seconds on one of the web’s fastest growing trends, a weblog.

A weblog is a personal website that contains dated entries of personal opinions, thoughts and essays. Weblogs often feature links to news articles or other “blogs” on the internet. Blogs have become popular recently because of web services such as Blogger, which make blogging possible even for those who aren’t familiar with website administration

This new technology is becoming an alternative perspective to traditional news sources. With bloggers in every country, every conflict and from every walk of life, people can access online personal accounts of daily events in addition to news coverage. Soldiers’ blogs give the public a more personalized and realistic view of the military and help to educate the public on the Army’s mission here.

“Very few people can relate to the idealized image of perfection that comes in a GI Joe box, but everybody can relate to a 19-year-old Private who has a real life, and wife, and kids, one who suffers and complains and then saddles up anyway and gets the job done like soldiers always have,” said Soldier-blogger, Staff Sgt. Jack Robison, whose blog, “An American Soldier”, highlights his life as a basic training drill sergeant.

While phones aren’t always accessible in a combat zone, many Soldiers overseas have access to the internet through Morale, Welfare and Recreation facilities. Weblogs are an alternative to emails for Soldiers to keep in touch with families and friends.
Through a weblog, Soldiers can post a running personal account of daily events that is always available for view. Soldiers can also receive and respond to comments from readers through the blog’s comments feature.

“At first, my blog was a way to keep my friends and family updated, but as folks outside my immediate family and friends began hearing about it, it grew rather quickly,” said Sgt. Chris Missick. “With more people reading it, I became much more cognizant of what it was I was writing.”

Just as blogs can provide family and friends with information, blogs can also provide an opportunity for the enemy to gain valuable information that can be used in future attacks. What may seem like innocent information could be valuable knowledge to someone who knows what they are looking for. Much of the information that is collected by terrorist organizations is a compilation of information gathered from unclassified sources.

Soldiers are representatives of the U.S. military and their words can be taken to reflect the views of the U.S. military. Something as simple as a negative comment, written in frustration, can be used by the enemy to portray the Multinational Forces in a bad light.
Because what is posted on a weblog is free to the public, it can be used by the media and quoted to represent the facts and opinions of the military. In this sense, the views of a disgruntled specialist could be published as the views of all servicemembers, putting the military in a bad light.

“I try not to divulge any information in my blog that I don’t have to. I know that things that seem innocent to most people could be put together by a skilled analyst and paint a bigger picture,” said Robison.

Subjects that are not acceptable to speak about on the phone or in letters or emails are also off limits to publishing on the web. There is currently no specific military policy regarding weblogs, but the Department of Defense lays out basic Operational Security guidance in its Directive 5205.2.

Some important areas of sensitivity in military situations are: military movements, activities, specific unit information and base security.

Specific times or dates of future operations or movements should never be disclosed. Even figures such as guard duty hours or specific work hours shouldn’t be discussed. The enemy, like a thief or robber, watches for patterns to learn when the best time to strike is.
The element of surprise is an important factor in many operations. The location of future or current operations should not be disclosed if the knowledge of this location could tip off the enemy to attack. If terrorists know there will be a raid in a specific neighborhood on a specific night, chances are they’re not going to be there.

Details about military activities can also be revealing. If a terrorist knows that “every time we raid a house we enter from the front door and we bring ten people…” or “when we go out on patrol we always leave at the same time and take the same route…” it could assist him in planning an attack.

Information about how base security is handled can help a terrorist to breach security for an attack on the base. Never disclose information about how many guards there are at the gate, the hours they usually perform vehicle searches, where the perimeter is the weakest or the location of weapons systems that are used to guard the gates to military bases.
Some bloggers have come up with suggestions about how to keep sensitive information out of their posts.

1st Lt. Jason Van Steenwyk served as the executive officer for a light infantry company in Iraq before he returned to the U.S. in March. His blog, “Countercolumn”, was seen by an average of 2000 people each day in January. His advice to other Soldiers who want to start blogging is to, “concentrate on how the war affects the people around you, and how those around you cope with fear, stress, boredom, loneliness and tell those stories honestly and you won’t violate OPSEC.”
As a communications specialist, Missick deals with Operational Security issues every day. He knows the consequences that can occur when information gets into the wrong hands.
“My one suggestion is to question everything you write. I look at every post and say to myself, does this put any soldiers’ lives or security at risk or does this reveal any information that would be beneficial to the enemy and does this portray the military in a negative light? If I ever have to answer yes to any of these questions, I simply won’t post it,” he said.

In addition to proofreading, leadership can offer suggestions and a second opinion when operational security is in question. A noncommissioned officer or officer in your chain of command can provide a more specific idea of what may or may not be sensitive information in your area of operation.

After reading his blog, Missick’s command set some basic rules and encouraged him to continue writing. “My commander said that my blog so far was great and gave me a list of items that I need to stay away from discussing. I have followed his suggestions thoroughly. From day one they never discouraged me from writing and said they felt it was beneficial for me and my readers.”

The Army has always encouraged Soldiers to write about their experiences as a way of dealing with the psychological impacts of war. Blogging can be a way for Soldiers to do this, as long as they keep operational security in mind.

“I think most soldiers, once they step back and look at the big picture, would understand the need for some moderation. I am proud of the Army and of my job, so I let that show in my writing,” said Robison.

My War Continues...

I am officially no longer writing about any of my personal experiences here in Iraq on this website.

"The people keeping CB from posting are the same people that kept him from skating the Ralphs parking lot back in the day...
that is all you have to know about liberty and freedom, the politics of skateboarding"
-DL
Comment written by a reader

Right now my unit is engaged in some heavy fighting here in the Mosul area.

Strykernews.com wrote a breif bit about what we're going through right now on their website:
TALL AFAR, Iraq - The northern Iraqi troublespot of Tall Afar remained sealed off by US-led Iraqi troops on Friday, one day after at least 45 people were killed in huge air and ground assault, an AFP correspondent said.
Thirteen hours of relentless air strikes and fierce fighting in two districts of the town left 45 people dead and more than 80 wounded on Thursday, the local hospital said.
On Thursday, the US military said up to 57 "terrorists" had been killed in the clashes against insurgents.

I wish I could tell you more about that, but like I said, I am no longer writing. What I can say is that right now, I am witnessing combat and an amazing show of force and firepower by our Army that I have never before seen, experienced, or imagined. I returned from "the shit" today to find that my gmail account bombarded with e-mails from people (surprisingly a lot of literary agents, movie industry people, and big name magazine editors, which was cool). AOL posted a brief bit about this site, and the Wall Street Journal ran a story.

Every band towards the end of its career releases a "Best Of" album with their best songs, so I kinda did the same thing. I re-posted several of my older blog entry’s, the ones I liked the most and the ones that received the most reader feedback here for you guys just now clicking in a day late and a dollar short, to see now for yourself what the hype was all about. As Chuck D of Public Enemy once said, "Don’t believe the Hype."

What I’m listening to on my ipod: "Big Time" by Peter Gabriel

The Wall $treet Journal ran an article about this website. What was cool was the writer for that article mentions my name in the same sentence with Michael Herr, which is a total honor. You can read the article in its entirety at:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/0,,SB109467899795512797,00.html?mod=todays_free_feature

I found this written recently on another persons blog, Thought it was kinda cool what he said, so I cut and pasted it here for you guys to read:
I've been reading (and really enjoying and benefiting from) the
Milblogs this past year, but a little under a month ago a new guy
arrived on the scene: CBFTW, blogging from Mosul, Iraq. He was
different from the other milbloggers. First of all, he's from San
Francisco (which is weird enough for a military man), plus he has a
Smiths album cover representing him on the blog, and his blog title is
taken from Hunter S. Thompson's famous book. So obviously he's a
fairly typical American Gen-X, punk-rock-influenced,
grew-up-in-the-nineties, "unsure what to make of it all" kind of guy.
He is probably only a few years younger than me, and I bet we've
listened to a lot of the same music and read many of the same books.
In other words, I could relate to him, and I was fascinated. And so,
apparently, were thousands of others, because his blog became an
overnight sensation. Now it appears to be in danger of getting shut
down. I understand the military authorities have legitimate concerns,
but I think ultimately freedom has to win out here. Freedom is what we
stand for, after all.
UPDATE: He's back, and positioning himself (as he should be) for his
future image/career when he returns home. Mosul, being up north, is
just about the safest city in Iraq right now, so it's understandable
that he's got time to think about his literary career. I hope it works
out for him. I still think that there's something about his unique set
of contradictions and confusions and hopes that is very 'of our
generation' - just look at his right hand nav and guffaw - and that's
a good thing unto itself. It's the beginning of "a voice" - and a
unique voice is the single most important distinguishing
characteristic of a real writer.
UPDATE II: A friend emailed to complain that this guy was already
getting too much attention. There were soldiers in Baghdad and Najaf
who were seeing far more action on a daily basis, and dealing with
much more complicated and interesting shit. Hence, I was wrong for
linking to this guy in Mosul. Well, my response to that is: yes, there
are soldiers seeing more exciting action, but they are not blogging
about it. Probably because they are soldiers. But once a man becomes a
writer (or takes on that conceit) that's what he is first and
foremost. He may sign up for the Army - especially if he was lost and
aimless and needing for "something to happen" in his life - and then
complain about it, or he may be gung-ho and ready for more, but he is always, in his mind and heart, first and foremost a writer.

My friend, who’s also a Combat Medic in my Plt, wrote a interesting piece on his blog (Candle In The Dark) called "Defacto Censorship or Keep Talking as long as you Shut Up." He pretty much talks about what I’m going through with my blog. You can read what he wrote at:
http://candle_in_the_dark.blogspot.com/2004/08/defacto-censorship-or-keep-talking-as.html#comments

There’s also a very interesting write up about this blog written by Mick down at Litblogs.blogspot.com He was also the first website to give this blog a positive review. Click here if you want to check it out:
http://litblogs.blogspot.com/2004/08/update-my-war-over-and-out.html

Here is a comment a person left on his blog about MY WAR:
Anonymous said...
I truly hope it was not the Military who shut him down. I also think that his writing was a great asset to them. He showed that our military members were not subhuman killers, were not uneducated dolts looking for a way out of poverty. He is what I've come to expect of our soldiers, a person with integrity doing a job that few choose to do. I am a conservative and know that CB was not, but I’ve found that did not matter in the long run because he was real and untarnished in his portrayal of his daily life in a war environment. He showed what most of us never get to see from the press, that our sons and daughters are good and decent people doing a hard job and doing it well.
Tricky; Former Soldier


"Somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line I knew the pearl would be handed to me."
-Jack Kerouac
On The Road

LA FUCKIN' TIMES

The LA TIMES today (05SEPT04) mentioned this website in a story that I heard appeard on the COVER. (Hell yea dude!)
Check it out:

The View From on the Ground
With American bloggers reporting on life in Iraq, the war is only a mouse click away

"Other wars produced poetry and novels and memoirs. But the war in Iraq has brought a new kind of literature. In real time, on the Internet, officers and enlisted men and women are chronicling the war on weblogs — better known as blogs. Two weeks ago, one of the most popular war bloggers, a soldier stationed near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul who identified himself only as CBFTW, was disciplined by the Army for violating "operational security." His gritty postings described both the terror and boredom of war. Last week, he removed them from his "My War" website. But the journals of many other military bloggers remain on the Web. Here are edited excerpts from the blogs of Americans serving with the U.S. military in Iraq."

The article then posts several edited excepts from the blogs of some of the soldiers. NOTICE how they printed the blogers FULL NAME. For some reason the LA Times didn’t print a sample of my blog to go with the story, which kinda bummed me out, so at the end of this I added my own sample of what they should have added.

'Getting settled in'
Beth is a 28-year-old lab Navy lab technician with a husband and a 1-year-old son named Cody back home. She arrived in Iraq late last month. Her blog, "A Labrat's Journey," is at http://www.desertdiet.blogspot.com/ .
August 30, 2004
Pretty good day
It was pretty calm yesterday and not too bad today. We are getting settled in and wondering when the others are coming. The group we are replacing can't wait to leave. For a short period of time, until the turnover, we have to double up in our rooms. The sunrise and sunsets are very pretty from here. That is about the only beautiful thing, though. The laundry is taking about five days to come back instead of overnight due to some people up and quitting. Last night they had lobster and steak for dinner. Everyone was so happy. Not quite my cup of tea, though. I ate a PowerBar. I am still leery of the food here but hopefully that changes - or I get lots of food in the mail. We have microwaves and can openers. I need a bowl with a lid. Got the webcam thing figured out and got to see Cody last night - made me cry for hours. He has already grown to be such a big boy, his hair is longer and he has gained weight.

Speak, pause, response
Sean Pearce enlisted in the Army in 1998. He served six years in the Signal Corps as a satellite technician, with tours in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and at Camp Victory, the main U.S. military complex near Baghdad airport. He returned to the U.S. in September 2003. He now lives in Virginia, where he works in communications and plans to complete his college education. He has now married the girlfriend he writes about in this excerpt. His Iraq blog is at http://www.turningtables.blogspot.com/ .
August 5, 2003
Tonight I got to talk to my girlfriend via visual teleconferencing. It went really well. I waited around until the middle of the night, and then I was escorted into the area where all the magic happens, past giant wall-sized television screens with maps and diagrams, past rows and rows of desks with computers and soldiers working around the clock on the war effort, and into the conference room, which was exactly that. I'm so used to seeing rooms and quarters converted into conference rooms. They are set up in kitchens or garages or boiler rooms. But this one was an honest-to-god conference room that I'm sure was used by Saddam and all of his buddies. Now it belongs to us, because we took it.
As I stroll in, the family of the sergeant who went before me is still on the giant screen. I see his wife trying desperately to keep her composure and get her three kids out of the room where they were filmed in an orderly fashion. Then, in the corner of the screen coming through the doorway is a very distorted shape that the camera is trying to focus on. It walks like my girlfriend. It's the same size as my girlfriend. And it is my girlfriend. She giggles, and I wave and smile.
I have to press a foot switch every time I want to speak so that the microphone turns off. Otherwise the delay will cause a killer echo. There is at least a 15-second delay that makes normal conversation useless. Speak. Pause. Pause. Pause. Pause. Response. But she is there and she can hear me and I can see her.
She's wearing the Curious George shirt I bought her on the Universal City Walk in L.A. It fits her perfectly, and her hair is beautiful. She's had three hair cuts since I left, but luckily she sends me pictures, so I stay up to date with the girlfriend fashions.
We have this silly thing that we do. It started one night when we were at a rave in L.A. To the beat, I say "girlfriend" while I nod my head. Then I say "run in place," which I do to the beat. It's a sign of my affection. So there I am, in Baghdad, Iraq, running in place in Saddam's conference room so that my girlfriend can watch me on the other side of the Earth.
I showed her my muscles, my big ol' arms that are twice the size as when I left. She was impressed - or she at least faked it for me. She's a good woman.
I left hating this place more then ever, but also feeling a bit more relaxed. I made it to my cot, and I sweated off into sleep. This is almost over.

‘COMBAT JACK’
CBFTW enlisted in the Army because, as he says,“I needed a fucking job, and at the time nobody would hire me, so I said fuck it, I’m going Infantry.” Upon graduating Basic Training from Fort Benning, Georgia, his orders sent him to Fort Lewis Washington, where he was then a part of the Army’s first Mobile Elite Stryker Brigade. After a couple months of showing up to 06:00 PT formations completely hung over and sometimes still drunk from the night before, his ass was sent to Iraq in 2003 where he has been conducting combat operations and has been placed on countless demoralizing details ever since. So far he’s been Stop Lossed and had both his R&R to Qatar and his mid tour leave cancelled. The following post is from CBFTW’s Field Journal when he was in Kuwait. His blog, “MY WAR” is at http://cbftw.blogspot.com

21NOV03
We are living out of these huge tents right now, we cant smoke anywhere near these things because supposedly they’re highly flammable. They also issued us Army cots to sleep on. They told us back at Lewis that we’d be living out of luxurious air conditioned conexes once we got here, but I haven’t seen any of that so far. The showers here suck, it always runs out of water and the water is always cold too.
About 30 feet in front of our tent we have a bunch of unsanitary port-a-shitters set up for us. These port-a-shitters are more vile and nauseating than any roadside gas station shitter I have ever seen. Almost half are overflowing with shit and piss.
Speaking of piss, a lot of people are also getting kinda pissed off about Stop Loss because most of the graffiti on the walls I noticed said stuff like “Fuck Stop Loss” or “Stop Loss=The Draft”
At night people use the port-a-shitters as jerk off booths. People will bring flashlights/tac lights/and glowsticks with them inside to give them some light to see as they flip through their spank mags. Its weird, cuz at night it turns the plastic port a crappers into like a glowing lantern when they do this.
Last night I went to use one of the port-a-johns, and I could hear the guy in the crapper next to me shamelessly manually service himself while watching a porno video on a mini portable DVD player. It was pretty difficult trying to take a dump while listening to that.

If you want to veiw the article in its entirty go to the LATIMES website at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-warblogs5sep05,1,2718442.story


"In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes."
-Andy Warhol

RADIO NPR

NPR (National Public Radio) mentioned this website on its Day To Day show. Here is a link to the article: http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3867981

Who's the f-ing weirdo that read my Men In Black post all dramatic? The bus driver from the Simpsons??
F NPR

GGGOOOAAALLL!!!

"Please god, grant me the serenity to accept the fact that the human race is all things good, and all things evil. At the same time, grant me the courage, and strength to not give up what I know is right, even though its hopeless, and please give me the wisdom to take it day by day."
-Blood For Blood

Back when I was civilian, I lived in Los Angeles for awhile. Why I moved to LA I don't know, I just did. On random nights I used to go up to the historic Griffith Observatory up in the Hollywood hills, (usually on some mind altering stimulant) and I'd sit up there for hours and hours and stare off down at the illuminating lights coming off from the urban streets and buildings down below. For some reason I always thought LA looked really cool from way up there. Good from afar, but far from good.

Now years later, I'm constrained up in some fucking guard tower in Mosul, Iraq (itching for stimulants to help me cope with the boredom) staring off at the night lights radiating from this ancient Islamic city. Working the guard tower shift sucks. There aint shit to do up in that tower but stand there and stare off into that city and fight boredom as best you can. You always have to make sure that you bring a full pack of smokes with you up in the guard tower. You're in a world of pain if you run out of smokes up in the guard tower, because there is absolutely nothing to do up there except chain smoke cancer causing cigarettes one right after another until your lungs physically hurt and you get sick from having way too high of a toxic level of nicotine flowing through your blood stream.

Thinking about shit is also a good way to stay alert and pass time up in the towers, I usually spend my time thinking about what the hell I'm going to do with myself once I get out of the Army, and if this dream gone bad is ever going to end. Even though I've spent countless hours here thinking about that very subject, I have yet to come up with a good answer.
At one time tonight I tried to my blur my vision with my eyes while I gazed out onto the city, to pretend like I was staring out at Los Angeles again, but it just didn't work. No matter how hard I tried to pretend that I was somewhere else, I was unsuccessful. I was still in Iraq.

At night here in Mosul, all you can hear the faint barking of loathsome stray dogs coming from the city, and every now and then, all at the same time, this somewhat creepy recording in Arabic is blasted from all these shitty radio shack quality speakers mounted on various mosques scattered randomly throughout Mosul. Its kinda eerie hearing these recordings, which is some guy speaking Arabic, in a monotone voice, versus and parts from the Koran. It's one of those sounds and you'll experiences here in this country that you will never forgot. Every time I hear those recordings being played from those mosque speakers, it completely hits me with the realization that I'm on the other side of the planet far away from home, and that I'm stranger in a really strange land.

Like I said before, the sounds of gunfire is also a pretty common thing to hear coming from the city at night. Every now and then you'll also witness a burst of green tracers being fired up into the air. It's no big deal when it happens. After awhile here it becomes one of those things that you just accept as a "normal" about this place, and think nothing of it.

Another thing I remembered about Los Angeles, was on New Years Eve once, I was walking back home from the hidden bars tucked away in the Los Feliz hood of LA, completely inebriated, and I looked out over to the East Los sector of Los Angeles and I remember seeing celebratory gunshots being fired up in the air. The Iraqi's do the same mindless thing here too, but its every fucking night here. Religious holidays, Muhammad birthday, Saddams, birthday, weddings, job promotions, or just for the hell of it, they celebrate by firing a burst of AK47 rounds in the air. Well, tonight I was just chilling up in the tower, lighting another cigarette with the lit end of the cigarette I just consumed, when all the sudden the sounds of gunshots we're being fired from all over the city. Like everywhere. Far and near, left and right, over here and over there. I was like, holy shit what the fuck is going on tonight?!?! Is this like a signal for the start of some kind of all out fight to the death holy jihad on US Coalition Forces or something?

Bang, bang, bang, bang. So I started counting all the shots I heard fired: one, two, three, four, five, six... finally after a couple minutes the shooting silently dissipated. I was unable to count every single gunshot I heard fired, some overlapped each other, but the final tally that I came up with was 67 shots heard fired. I remember awhile ago I was up in a guard tower when it was some Islamic holiday here, like Mohammed's birthday or some shit like that, and there wasn't nearly as many celabratory gunshots fired up in the air that night as there was tonight. So I wondered to myself what the fuck was going on tonight to have all these shots fired all at once? Then, down by the bottom of my tower, a vehicle rolled up and the TC stuck his head out of hatch and yelled up to me, "Hey, I just heard over the radio that Iraq is up! One to nothing!"

Holy shit, that's right. The Olympic soccer games are going on, and these people here are just as fanatical, if not more so, for their soccer team, than they are for their religion.
Strange, very strange.

stay tuned. Story still developing...

The National Endowment for the Arts has a great program available right now called: Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, I encourage everybody to check out the site and be a part of this. I've known of this program for awhile now, but never considered submitting my personal written accounts of this war to them, thinking there's no way in hell they'd consider my stuff. But then I recieved an e-mail from the people involved with that program saying that some of you have been e-mailing them alerting them about my this website and of my writting , and they also said that they were interested in me submiting some of my work for consideration to the project. I would like to thank everybody who did that, sent them an e-mail. Way cool of you guys to do that. Tango Mike.

NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS: MYWARcbftw@gmail.com

Stay Tuned

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

story developing...

Mad Mortar-men Goose Chase

Today we drove around somewhere to do something. All of us in the back of the vehicle brought a book to read during this ride. I brought George Orwell's, Homage To Catalonia tome. The New York Times refers to it as "perhaps the best book that exists on the Spanish Civil War." Our Combat Medic brought a thick ass book called The History Of Western Philosophy, and the other two brought a George Carlin book and the other a paperback vampire ghosts and goblins Ann Rice novel. The Medic was telling us that Ann Rice novels all have suggestive "gay" overtones to them. I've never read Ann Rice so I wouldn't know, nor do I care. To me books on Vampires are right up there with Sci-Fi romance novels. Not my cup of tea. I got a lot of good reading done on this ride, when all the sudden we all heard a loud explosion, which made all of us stop reading and bookmark our places to find out what's going on. Over the radio, they said a huge air burst mortar went off over the FOB. Then a couple minutes later, the FOB got hit with four mortar rounds. We had a Pvt from Minnesota up in the back air guard hatch, and he shouted down to us that he heard the direction from where the mortars were fired from, so we turned the vehicles around and headed full speed to that direction. I asked him if he wanted to trade places from the airguard hatch, just in case we come into contact. He just smiled at me and confidently said, "I got this one." Cool. We were now in hot pursuit to catch some crazed mortar men. So I opened up my book and continued reading. I was on page 92, the part where Orwell was frantically chasing down a fascist with a bayonet fixed to the end of his rifle. Read for a bit, then when we got to the area where we thought was the point of orgin for those fired mortars, I stopped reading and bookmarked my place in the book, and we dismounted in this really third world area of Mosul that had this really bad stench of rotten milk lingering in the air. Tons of trash littered all over the place, and a bunch of cows and stray chickens roaming around freely. Lots of little kids also came out of nowhere to stare at us. We talked to some of the locals to see if they saw or seen anything. Then something happened, and well all raced back onto our vehicle and burned rubber outta there. And we were now in hot pursuit of these mad mortar men the same way a cop races to an armed robber call in his police car. I opened up my book and continued to read. That fascist, that Orwell was chasing down with a bayonet fixed rifle, got away from him, and I was now at the part where Orwell injured some guys with a grenade of sorts, and was ready to kick some serious ass, when all the sudden we stopped suddenly, and I had to close the book back up because the back ramp dropped and we were told to dismount. We had a car pulled over to the side of the road with four middle aged Iraqi men inside, all wearing that white traditional dress thing that they wear. These guys were extremely co-operative and they gladly let us search their vehicle, we didn't find shit, then we searched this other car, didn't find shit in that one either. Then we loaded back up and went somewhere, and then we stopped and dismounted. We were now in the same area where a couple months ago we had a mounted patrol through here, and we were driving around slowly, and we were the trail vehicle, and my AG and I were sticking out of the back air guard hatches. And we were being followed by literally 100's of little kids, they were hooting and hollering, clapping and saying stuff in Arabic. So my AG looks over at me and with a mischievous smile says, "Watch this!" and then he starts chanting: "U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!" over and over again, next thing you know all these little kids, 100's of them, started chanting U-S-A!! Over and over again, each time a little loader. We were both laughing and thought this was all funny until I saw the reaction on the older people faces on the side of the road. They didn't look too thrilled about that, once I immediately noticed that, I said, "Dude, that's not cool! Make them stop yelling that shit!" But it was too late, these kids were having too much fun chanting U-S-A! Next thing you know I saw an older middle eastern lady wearing all black pick up a rock and throw it at us, which of course started a huge chain reaction of rock throwing at us. We got out of that neighborhood in a hurry after that. Lesson learned. Anyways, we were now back in the same neighborhood where the infamous U-S-A incident took place. We dismounted and searched another car, didn't find shit again. Tons of stray kids hanging out on the street corners here observing us with a watchful eye. Like I said before, every kid here in Iraq looks like those kids you see on those TV commercials where they say "for only .99 cents a day you can help feed this starving child". A real low income part of Mosul. My Sqd Ldr was trying to talk to a crowd of little kids, asking them if they saw or heard anything, and while he was asking them this one kid comes running up to us with an old empty brass 105 artillery shell, and then this other kid comes running up to us with another expired artillery shell. Both demanded money for their discovery. "Give me Dollar!" they said. Then this other kid came running over to us with an RPG fin and a handful of dirty .50 cal bullets. These kids were just finding this crap off the streets. Amazing. Then all the sudden this really skinny Iraqi kid comes running up to us with a fucking HAND GRANADE in his hand. "HOLY SHIT!!! DROP THE FUCKIN HAND GRANADE!!! DROP IT NOW!!!" We all started yelling! The little kid, still with this proud smile on his face that said, "Look what I just found" just dropped the grenade on the ground, and walked over to my squad leader and said, "Give me money!" It was an old pineapple grenade that was all dirty and rusty, it looked like something left over from the Iran Iraq war. We asked him where he found it at, and innocently he pointed to this old abandoned house that was in the middle of a field that looked like a junkyard. We secured the area, and searched the house. Didn't find shit. Then the kids pointed to another house, this one owned by a wife beater undershirt wearing Iraqi with a massive facial beard and more body hair than teen wolf. We searched his house, again didn't find shit. Finally four blue and white ICP trucks showed up packed with Iraqi Police dressed in blue khakis and strapped with AK47's. They dismounted and asked where the hand grenade was, we pointed to them to where it was and they went over, picked it up, and they like kinda laughed at us, like "You're kidding, you guys called us over here for this?!" I could hear one ICP say in broken English, "This, No-good." They took the grenade and drove off. And we did the same. My Sqd Ldr then explained to me that when the 101st was here they would give the little kids in that area money and/or MRE's if they found weapons and UXO, which is why every time when they see US Forces they always drag over shit like that and say, "Give me! Give me!"

"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing"
-Albert Einstein

Sniper Fire (?)

The other day, we went somewhere, and did something. Once we got there, we dismounted from our vehicles, and our Sqd Ldr placed us where he wanted us to be, and then told us our sectors of fire. Me and my AG went down and set in behind this burm. Today, my AG brought a new toy with him. An expensive mini hand held digital camcorder he ordered off the Internet. He just received it the other day in the mail, and he was extremely excited to have one now. Like a kid with a new toy on Christmas he kept on playing with it, filming the sky, the dirt, his boots, his weapon, the things around us, and then with a smile he pointed the camera at me and enthusiastically said, "Say hi to the camera!" I looked at him and gave him my best expressionless face that said, "Put that toy away." He got the picture, said sorry, folded his camera up and put it back in his cargo pocket. We sat there for awhile staring silently at Mosul, when all the sudden we heard, kinda off to the distance, to about to our 7 o'clock, two cracks of gunfire. The bullets kinda skimmed close to where all of us we're at, and hit this old ancient looking building that was about 200 meters away from us. We heard the bullets impact the building and make a ricochet noise. We both looked at each other, paused for a second to see if any more shots we're going to be fired, none did, and then I said, "Hey, was that fired at us?" Neither of us knew. So I cautiously walked over to my Sqd Ldr and asked, "What the hell was that?" He had the radio up to his ear, and said, "Wait one, I'm finding out right now." Nobody knew. So one of us fired a warning shot in that area to see if they'd fire back. The area where the shots were fired was about 5-600 meters away, and had a bunch of tree's and shrubbery. Nobody saw a thing and no shots were fired after that. Some of us thought maybe it was sniper fire (If it was, the guy had extremely pathetic aim) and some of us just thought maybe it was just some guy who wanted to test fire his weapon. Who knows? Time went by and we then loaded back onto our vehicles, and we drove off to a different location, dismounted, and did the same thing. Sat and waited. The sun was long gone now, and the moon was now out to take its place. From where we were at now, we were overlooking a huge section of Mosul and you could see the lights illuminating from the houses and mosques in the city. We all sat and stared at the city for awhile. Every now and then a neighborhoods electricity would go out, and several complete city blocks would be in complete darkness for awhile, and then a couple minutes later the power would go back up, and the lights in that neighborhood would turn back on. This is very common thing here. Lights on, lights off. Another very common thing that happens here in Mosul, that you're guaranteed to hear every night, are the sounds of gunfire and loud explosions going off somewhere in the city. When I first got to Iraq, those sounds would alarm me, and I would think to myself, "Oh shit! People are trying to kill each other," but now when I hear them, I think "Huh. I wonder what's going on there." A good example was last night, we faintly heard the sounds of a pretty good firefight way off in the distance from where we were at. Went on for a good 5+ minutes. None of us really thought much of it. It was just another thing that we're all now conditioned and accepted as being a "normal" thing to happen here in Iraq. Also, seeing green and/or red tracers fired up from the city into the night sky, is about as common as seeing a shooting star here in Mosul.

I would like to take this time now, to say a nice warm "Mar-Haba" (that's "Welcome" in Arabic) to all my new readers down at M.I. who are now reading this site and have this bookmarked on their computers. Glad to have you all aboard, and I hope you all like the site. Hopefully you'll find this site more entertaining than most of that other boring crap I'm sure you guys have to sift through all day.

I'm Soo Fucked

I never even knew what a Blog was until I read about them in an article in Time Magazine, about two months ago. I read the article and it mentioned how a lot of the soldiers down in Baghdad were writing about their experiences here in Iraq. After reading the article, I went down to the Internet caf‚, and checked them out, and a majority of them were just pure garbage. In fact nauseating. Its like they were written by armed forces recruiters, "Oh I love the Army, I'm soo glad to be here, oh, the Iraqi's love us, I feel like were doing the right thing" That kinda crap. Nobody was telling it like it is. So I said fuck it, I'm going to do one. I was at the point in my deployment where the letters from friends and family were getting fewer and far between, and I needed something to combat the extra time and loneliness that being on deployment hits you with when you've been here for awhile. So I though doing a blog might be a fun thing to do, help kill some time. And it worked, time started flying by once I stated this thing. I had no idea how to write or form a sentence (I still don't) but I figured what the hell, just do it. Like I said before, the Clash didn't know how to play their instruments when they started jamming, they just played, and that was the mindset I had when I started this. At first I was getting about, 50 hits a day, then 100 hits a day, then a thousand hits a day, then three thousand hits a day, then 5 thousand hits a day. That was like a month ago when I had a counter. (Some reason it disappeared one day) Its scary to think how many hits a day I get now. Since then, I've received e-mails from people in the Pentagon (saying: Everybody here reads it and loves it here!) a White House aide, a Wall Street Journal Journalist, several well known and lesser known journalists, a lady in Chicago asked if it was OK to do a play based on this blog, College Professors, One Professor who wants to bring up my blog in his class curriculum, Vietnam Vets, Gulf War Vets, WWII Vets, Police Officers, Authors, Literary agents, musicians, A girl in LA that wants to write a screenplay about this blog, a lawyer in DC who thinks my writing is a diamond in the ruff and offered for him and several other lawyers to help me pay for some of my College tuition when I get out, relatives from soldiers, soldiers in all the branches, soldiers in Iraq, lonely women, truck drivers, soccer moms, the list goes on and on. It was insane the e-mails and responses I got over time. I was also amazed by how many good people were out there. Totally heart warming. And every e-mail I received was telling me how they loved my shit and how what I was saying was soo much better then the shit the media showing. I was making the war much more real to people by sharing my experiences with them. And they were telling everybody they knew about it. One guy even told me he heard some people discuss about this blog in some pub in Europe. I had no idea it would get as big as it did, and as fast. I also knew that time was probably ticking on how long I could keep this thing up. What would Hunter S. Thomspson do in a situation like this? He'd probably "Buy the ticket, and take the ride." So I did. I continued blogging and writing. So today I'm walking back from chow, and my Plt Sgt is outside my door waiting for me and he said, The Col. wants to see you, hurry up and go shave, I'll be back in 15 to take you down there. My heart sank. Shit. I know exactly what this one is about. Its like that feeling you get in high school when you'd fuck up, and they'd call your name over the loud speaker and tell you your presence was needed in the principles office, and you know the police are there in the principle's office waiting for you. Not good. I stepped inside my room, and my roommate was inside and he said, "Shit man! The B.C. was just here looking for you!!" Fuck. I'm dead. I felt more scared now then I did on the 5th of Nov. The Battalion Commander AND the Col wants to see me?! All of this reminds me of the classic 80's movie, Pump Up The Volume, where the main character is in high school, and who is kind of a loner, listens to punk and skates, and does that underground radio station, which nobody at his school knows about, and it gets bigger and bigger until finally he gets caught and busted. Nobody here in my Plt knew of my site till about a week ago. I told a couple close friends. Just last week I had a soldier tell me, yea, I just talked to my aunt, she knows nothing about the internet and she asked me about a "blog" thing that she reads done by a soldier in the Stryker Brigade. A couple days ago at the Internet caf‚, I looked over at the person next to me and he was reading my Blog, totally unaware he was sitting next to the author. So I saw this one coming. The Full Bird Col. wasn't around so my Plt Sgt walked me down to the BC's office, and all I could think about was latrine duty, being a Pvt again, loss of pay, or worse. When I got to his office I was sweating a lot. I don't think I was sweating from the heat, I was probably sweating more from being freaked the fuck out. My heart was beating at an accelerated rate as well now. The BC is a pretty intimidating guy, he's like Patton meets Vince Lombardi with a little bit of Knute Rockne. Total hard charger kinda guy. The kinda guy infantrymen love. As I stepped in his office (I scanned the room with my eyes for MP's), he told me to take a seat and I did, nervous as all hell. My Plt Sgt sitting right next to me. He looked at me, offered me a cup of coffee, I declined and then as he walked to his desk he said, "You're pretty well read. I can tell right away that you're a reader." Now I'm really shitting in pants. First off, he knows about my writting, second, I know from numerous experiences and bump ins with Judges, Probation Officers, principles, and police officers how something like this works, they always first start off with a nice compliment, and then they fry your ass. He said "Youre a big Hunter S Thompson Fan, arnt you?" (pause) I said, "Uhhh, yes Sir." He said, "Me too, but I thought the movie was just pure garbage. Didn't do the book justice." As I'm sitting there waiting for the guilty death penalty sentence to come out of his mouth, he asked me if I ever read "such and such by such and such." I was soo nervous and had soo many thoughts flying in my head I wasn't even registering what he was saying, I just said, "No sir, heard of him, but never read him." And then he said, "I'll let you borrow a copy of his book sometime, you'll really like him" Then he sat down behind his desk and on his desk he had a huge file that looked to me to be about as thick as The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich. With his right arm that had his Ranger Bat. Combat Patch sewn on it, he started turning the pages, I could see the painting of Guernica on the first page as the flipped through it, and every single page had something I wrote highlighted in bright florescent yellow ink and a bunch of weird forms attatched to it and a bunch of papers. I could feel the sweat dripping down my face. He calmly looked up and told me that my shit was really good, and he liked reading my stuff, and that I was a good writer. He even mentioned something about including it in the units history and archives. That didn't relieve me one bit, like I said, it made me more freaked out. I'm waiting for him to say the word: "BUT" followed by my punishment. Then we discussed things, and he pointed things out, and told me things. I agreed with 100% of everything he was saying, and the final conclusion from what he told me was that I could continue writing, but maybe have my Plt Sgt read my stuff before I post. He stressed that he didn't want to censor me and that I still had the freedom of speech thing, as long as I wasn't doing anything that would endanger the mission. I totally 110% agree with him on that one. I thanked him and I told him that I of course would not want to do anything that would endanger anybody here or back home, which is of course true. He suggested that I should look into getting this stuff published and made into a book someday. Finally I walked out of his office, with a feeling that I had just dodged a full mag of AK47 bullets. I went back to my room, and my roommate was waiting for me all wide eyed and said "Well, what did he want?!?!?! What Happened?!?! You busted?!" I told him all about what happened. And then I said, "Well, the positive thing is that, at least he knows who I am now." And he looked at me and said, "That could be a good thing, or a bad thing."

This might be my last entry, I haven't decided yet to end this, or continue this. I don't know what to make of all this yet.

"These words I write to keep me from total madness."
-Charles Bukowski

Purple Heart Ceremony

Today at 15:15 we had a Company Mass Formation for a Purple Heart Ceremony for the fire fight that happened several days ago. My Plt Sgt who was standing next to me when we got ambushed was one of the soldiers today to receive a purple heart, for that bullet that almost killed him that went completely through his CVC helmet. This Purple Heart Ceremony was by far the largest Purple Heart Ceremony we've had so far here in Iraq, a lot of people were getting them today, about a dozen. Most of the Purple Hearts awarded were for RPG shrapnel and grazed bullets from AK47's. When they put out a time to be at a formation, like 15:15, what they really mean is be there at 15:00, you always have to be at a formation 15 minutes early, then at 15:15, you stand in formation, at the position of Parade Rest till the big shots show up. Today is was the Battalion Commander, the Command Sergeant Major, and the Full Bird Cornal. They didn't show up till almost 15:40. So for about 40 minutes we had to stand in the hot sun, sweating our asses off in our DCU's. For completely selfish reasons, I always hate award ceremonies, because you get to watch other people receive medals, and your standing there in formation with bunch of guys who are thinking the same thing your thinking, "Hey, how come I didn't get one", which isn't really too fun. At award formations every now and then when somebody gets pinned a medal, you'll hear somebody in the formation cough the words "bullshit" under their breath, or whisper "What the fuck? THAT guy?!" But that childish behavior never happens at Purple Heart Formations, in fact, that's the one awards ceremony that I'm always glad I'm not one of the guys out there getting a medal. Finally an Army Captain finally came out, and we all stood at the position of attention as he said his "Attention To Orders, these men are awarded the Purple Heart" speech. I only got to watch about 20% of the ceremony, because it was soo damn hot and we were standing in the sun for soo long that the sweat that was pouring down my face was getting into my eye balls, and the sweat was all salty and stingy because I've never washed my hat. (gross huh?) So when they pinned the third guy in the long line of awardies, I had to shut my eyes closed, because the salty sweat was getting into my eyes, and it would sting painfully if I tried to open them. You can't move your body at the position of attention, so I couldn't wipe the sweat from my eyes and face. I physically couldn't keep them open. So for about 80% of the ceremony I had to stand there with both my eyes closed. Finally, when everybody was pinned, they told us to stand at the position of Parade Rest and I was able to touch my face again, and wipe the sweat off from around my eyes and be able to see again. Our Commander then gave a brief speech, I couldn't hear what he was saying, because he didn't really talk that loud and I was way in the back. All I heard was "you guys whooped them" or something. When he was done talking, it was all over and they released us. And exactly when they released us a Sgt showed up and yelled "QRF had been activated! 3rd Plt get your asses to the motor pool!" When they activate QRF that means something's going down in Mosul and they need US Forces to be there. As the guys from third Plt ran off to the motor pool to go deal with whatever they have to deal with I overheard one guy say "You guys don't get hurt, I don't want to stand around in another Purple Heart Ceremony."

Last night I was sitting down smoking a cigarette outside my room with a guy from my squad (from Michigan). And I was staring up into the stars over Mosul, when I saw a flash of a white streak across the night sky, and I freaked out and yelled, "Oh Shit!" and stood up. I thought it was a mortar or a rocket, but instead it was just a shooting star. My friend just laughed at me. That's pretty bad when you start thinking shooting stars are mortars.

"Green" Gunner

I recieved an e-mail from B Abell Jurus, the author of the book Men In Green Faces, which is about Navy Seals in Vietnam, and she forwarded me an e-mail she recieved from Ed Fitzgerald, one of the Original Green Berets. He read my Men In Black blog entry, and said some really interesting things, and double taps on the confusion that happens in a situation like that. Check out what he said about the blog:

That "green" gunner captured vividly the total confusion, the terror of that situation he was suddenly thrown into. He shows us clearly something that is very true--the fact that in the middle of a firefight like that, you only can track about 1/10th of what is happening.(Maybe 1/40th of what is going on for the most experienced and coolest guyson the scene, those with many previous firefights). So often in fiction (and in the bullshit tales told by people who were never in a real firefight) we read these accounts where the "hero" both "sees" andtells you you step by step in minute detail every single thing that is taking place--in a situation where he could easily be killed or horribly maimed. Mostly, that's just crap. The way this guy described it (with all the warts--not sure what he is hitting most of the time, shooting too closeto his own men, etc.)--that is indeed how it is in a situation like that.
Too often, even in otherwise very well-written action books, there is no hint of that confused desperation which hits people when they are suddenly in it up to their eyebrows, with death or serious injury an all too real possibility. Loved the way that "green" gunner captured the reality of that kind of firefight--he nailed it right on the money. Ed

AL QAEDA

Those psychopaths that attacked us the other day wearing all black were all members of Al Qaeda.

Today we had a Company formation and our C.O. came out and talked to us. We told us we all did an incredible job and was proud of all of us. He said we all executed our jobs perfectly. He also informed us that the people that were wearing all black were actually insurgents from Iran, members of Al Qaeda. He said the Army estimated that there were at least 100 of them out there attacking us the other day. The C.O. also compared the ambush to what those Rangers went through in Mogadishu. Our battle lasted 9 hours, there's lasted 18. But it was kinda like the same thing. Definitely not as many attacked us as them (again, they estimated that it was only 100 Al Qaeda attacking us, those rangers had way more than that) but we did have people engaging us with AK fire and multiple RPG fire from all directions from these building that were along the street we were driving down. Kinda like what they went through. Our CO said he stopped counting the number of RPG's fired after the number 12. He also said that if there were ever going to be a movie about the Strykers, the other day would have been the perfect story for it.

We also had the Chaplain walking around yesterday, checking up on us and available for us just in case we wanted somebody to talk to. There was no need for me to talk to him, I did enough talking to god the other day.

Today was spent cleaning out our vehicle inside and out, which was no easy task. No matter how well we try to clean it, we're always finding brass shell casings and links somewhere. We also fixed whatever was broken. I cleaned the .50 Cal inside and out. I discovered the remains of a smashed up impacted 7.62 bullet that had my name on it by my hatch. I put that in my pocket. If I ever have kids, and I get all old and have grand kids, I could show them the bullet that Al Qaeda tried to kill me with. Have them bring that in for show and tell at school.Later on in the day we had an OP (Observation Post). It was weird exiting the FOB , I was super paranoid, I was flinching from the smallest thing, and I was totally looking for anybody dressed in all black. What's up with the all black wardrobe anyway? Are these guys like Goth Terrorists or something? Whatever. Once we got to our OP, I was feeling kinda hungry, so I grabbed an MRE from the top of the vehicle, and there was bullet hole right through it. My Plt Sgt who took that bullet right through his Helmet the other day, is still in the Hospital. He was wearing a CVC helmet, which is made of Kevlar. He got a major concussion from it, and they're keeping their eyes on him at the hospital. The TC for 23Victor, who took some rpg shrapnel to the face, is ok now and should be back to work any time now.

I had a NCO who was with me a majority of the day when they attacked us read my entry that I wrote the other day, I wanted to make sure it was as close to being correct and accurate as possible. And he told me I left out a lot of glory type stuff that everybody was doing that day. I told him it would be impossible, and I didn't have the time to write down everything that happened that day. He did correct me one part of the story I left out, because I didn't not know that it happened till he brought it up, was that when we went to the bridge by the Mosul Hotel, and loaded back up to get back to the fight where we were ambushed, we were the only vehicle from our Plt that went back down there to engage the enemy. There was plent of other guys there from other PLT's already there, but we were the only vehicle from our Plt to go there. It was just my vehicle and the guys from 3rd Squad. (Their vehicle got tore the fuck up from 3 RPG's) So they all loaded into our vehicle and used both 240's and AT4's that we had in the back. Almost used up all the ammo as well. All the other vehicles in my Plt stayed at the bridge. We drove back down to the ambush site with the a couple Strykers from another Plt, and we were the only vehicle that dismounted its troops in that area, which was 400 meters away from the traffic circle. I provided cover fire for them while they moved around, which they complemented me on later. (Had to toot my horn right there, sorry) After he read my take on what happened the other day, he said that I was pretty dead on, and he commented me on my writing and said, "Your pretty good with words and writing. You know what, I'm going to have you help me out with writing the awards out, and the paperwork were turning in." Damnit.

Men In Black

This is what CNN wrote on their website about what happened yesterday here in Mosul:

Mosul clashes leave 12 dead
Clashes between police and insurgents in the northern city of Mosul left 12 Iraqis dead and 26 wounded, hospital and police sources said Wednesday.
Rifle and rocket-propelled grenade fire as well as explosions were heard in the streets of the city.
The provincial governor imposed a curfew that began at 3 p.m. local time (7 a.m. EDT), and two hours later, provincial forces, police and Iraqi National Guard took control, according to Hazem Gelawi, head of the governor's press office in the Nineveh province.
Gelawi said the city is stable and expects the curfew to be lifted Thursday.

Now here's what really happened:
I was in my room reading a book (Thin Red Line) when the mortars started coming down. Usually when we get mortared it'll only one, maybe two mortars. But this mortar attack went on for almost 20 minutes. Each one impacting the FOB every couple minutes. Something was up. My roommate ripped open the door and yelled "Get your guys, Go to the motor pool! The whole BATTALION is rolling out!" Holy shit, the whole Battalion? This must be big. So I ran over and woke my guys up, yelled, "Get your fuckin shit on and head down to the motor pool! Time: Now!" I grabbed my shit and started running to the motor pool, hearing small arms fire off in the back ground. By now everybody was running to motor pool. Putting their cloths on while they were running. At the motor pool, everybody was strapping on there shit and getting ready. One by one a Stryker was rolling out of the motor pool ready to hunt down whoever was fucking with us. People were hooting and hollering, yelling their war cries and doing the Indian yell thing as they drove off and locked and loaded their weapons. These guys that are attacking us just fucked with the bee's nest, and now they're getting the swarm. As I got the vehicle ready to go I overheard on our radio that shit was hitting the fan all over Mosul, large amounts of people attacking us with small arms, RPG attacks, burned vehicles, and there was a bunch of people in all black armed with AK's over Mosul. Fuck. I overheard one of our iraqi interpreter say in broken English, "Give me gun, I want to kill these motherfuckers!" As we rolled out the main gate, our FOB was getting attacked, we had soldiers laying down in the prone up on the outer perimeter of the FOB firing there weapons out. We rolled down the main exit out and drove down a busy two way street. I was the T.C. for our vehicle, my job is to be behind the .50 cal, and operate the system, which allows me to fire it. This was only my second day as a T.C. Sitting right next to me out the hatch was my Plt Sgt.. Shortly as we were driving down the main street leaving our FOB, a man, dressed in all black, jumped out from the side corner of a building, pointed his AK47 right at me. Right at my fucking head and all I saw was the fire from his muzzle flash leaving the end of his barrel and brass shell casings exiting the side of his AK as he was shooting directly at me. I heard and felt the bullets whiz literally inches from my head, hitting all around my hatch and 50 cal mount making a "Ping" "Ping" "Ping" sound. I ducked the fucked down in the hatch. I yelled "We're taking fire! 3 O'clock!!! Turned the gun around towards where the guy was and fired a burst. I fired a burst right over our back air guard hatch where our First Sgt was sticking out of and shooting. He yelled "Tell him to stop fucking shooting over my head!!!" Shit. My bad. I looked over and my PLT Sgt who was sticking out the hatch next to me a couple seconds ago was now dropped down from the hatch and now on his back. He was yelling, "I'm Hit! I'm hit!" I looked at his helmet and a bullet went right through his helmet and exited through the other side. Holy shit! I didn't see any blood on him. He looked completely dazed though. He took his Helmet off and observed the holes in his helmet. No fucking shit, the bullet entered his helmet, and exited through the other side, missing his upper forehead by like 1-100th of an inch. A fuckin miricale. He was standing right next to me, that's how close the bullets were from hitting us. We continued driving. We had to drive to the Mosul Bridge that was right next to the Mosul hotel about a couple miles away. There was reports of a buncha people, wearing all black armed with AK's hanging out there. Our job was to locate and kill them. We were driving there on that main street, when all of the sudden all hell came down all around on us, all these guys wearing all black (Black pants, and a black t-shirts tucked in), a couple dozen on each side of the street, on rooftops, alleys, edge of buildings, out of windows, everywhere just came out of fucking nowhere and started firing RPG's and AK47's at us. I freaked the fuck out and ducked down in the hatch. I yelled "WE GOT FUCKIN HAJI'S ALL OVER THE FUCKIN PLACE!!! THERE ALL OVER GOD DAMNIT!!!" Bullets were pinging off our armor all over our vehicle, and you could hear multiple RPG's being fired and flying through the air and impacting all around us. All sorts of crazy insane Hollywood explosions bullshit going on all around us. I've never felt fear like this. I was like, this is it, I'm going to die. I cannot put into words how scared I was. The vehicle in front of us got hit 3 times by RPG's. I kind of lost it and I was yelling and screaming all sorts of things. (mostly cuss words) I fired the .50 cal over the place, shooting everything. My driver was helping me out and pointing out targets to me over the radio. He helped me a lot that day. They were all over shooting at us. My PLT was stuck right smack dab in the middle of the ambush and we were in the kill zone. We shot our way out of it and drove right through the ambush. The street we were driving down to escape, had 3 to 4 story high buildings all along each side, as we were driving away all you could see were 100's and 100's of bullets impacting all over these buildings. Finally we went over to the area we were supposed to be at. We parked the vehicles there, and dismounted the guys. The Pepsi bottling building across the street was all up in flames. Then after a couple minutes, we were told to load up and go back to where we got ambushed. I'm not going to lie, I didn't want to go back. Fuck that shit, I don't want to get killed. That was the last place on earth I wanted to be. I was scared to death. But we had to go back, and we did. On the way back I was up out of the hatch, scanning , I saw people running down steets that we passed with AK47's, I didn't have a shot at them with the 50, cuz we were going way to fast and how the gun was positioned. We past several men with a AK's running down a street, I pulled out my Berretta and fired a several shots at them. We rolled back to the area where we all just dodged death, and we were taking fire from all over again. Again, I fired and fired and fired and fired and fired. At everything. We were taking fire from all over. I was just 360ing the 50 cal and shooting at everything. We were taking fire from all over, and every single one of us had our guns blazing. At one time I saw a dog try to run across the street, and somebody shot it. Again, at one time I had the 50 cal traversed and pointing all the way back of the vehicle and I was firing at some guys who were shooting at us up on a rooftop, and I didn't know I was shooting right above the guys heads who were in the back airguard hatchs on our vehicle. My roommate (Sgt from Idaho) tapped my arm, which startled the hell out of me and I quickly jerked back and looked at him and he yelled, "Hey!! Get that gun to the 12!!! Let that one go!! Your doing good!!!" He later told me, when he tapped me on the shoulder, and I jerked back to look at him, I had this crazed look in my eyes that kind of freaked him out. Hovering up above we had Army Kiowa and Apache helicopters flying around. At one time I had to grad something from outside, and on top of the vehicle. So with my hands I did the sign of the cross thing on my chest, said a prayer (Please god, I don't want to fucking die) and as my Plt Sgt layed down some suppressive fire, I got up out of the hatch, got my whole body completely outside of the vehicle and went over, got what I needed and went back to the hatch, as fast as possible. Scared out of my fuckin mind as I did this. RPG's were still whizzing by and non-stop gun shots were being fired all over. We had our guys in 3rd Sqd dismounted, they had both 240's with them and they were in heavy contact with the enemy, firing AT4's and everything they had at them. Strykers were also launching missiles back at them. I got down in the hatch and started scanning my sector with the 50. Suddenly about 300 meters away I saw 2 guys creeping around this corner, they were hunched down sneaking around hiding behind a stack of truck tires. I could tell by their body language something was up. I placed the cross hairs right on them, but I didn't fire, because I didn't see a weapon on them and I wanted to wait. Next thing you know, I saw another guy come out of that corner with an RPG in his hands. I freaked the fuck out and yelled "RRRPPPPGGGGGGG!!!" My hands was shaking like crazy, my cross hairs were bouncing all over the screen. I gathered my composure as fast as I could, put the cross hairs on them and engaged them with a good 10 round burst of some 50 cal, right at them. Get Some. My Plt Sgt said "good job!". I didn't see anybody move from behind those tires after that. Shortly after that the vehicle parked directly in front of us took an RPG. This gunfight went on for 4 1/2 hours. A Stryker got fucked up with three RPG's, and their TC (The guy who wrote SOF magazine that letter) took shrapnel to the face, and had to go back for medical attention. So 3nd squad was now going to roll in our vehicle because there vehicle was all fucked up and had go back to the FOB to be repaired. The ING's showed up, and they were clearing the buildings on the street. 3nd squad was helping them, and I was providing over watch for them with the 50. Then all the sudden mortars started impacting around us. These bastards were now firing mortars at us. Time passed and we were extremely low on ammunition and all out of water. My entire DCU uniform was completely wet from sweat and filth. So we all mounted up and drove back to the FOB to get more ammo, water and re-fuel. On the way to the FOB we passed a watermelon stand, all the watermelons had bullet holes in them. In fact, everything on that street had bullet holes in it. The cars, the buildings, everything. There were thousands and thousands of brass shell casings littered all over the streets. Our vehicle was also covered inside and out with brass shell casings and links. Once we got to the FOB, and parked near the motor pool to re-supply, a Sgt ran up to us holding all his gear and his kit and asked, "Hey you guys rolling back out? Do you have room for one more?" This guy who asked us if he could ride with us back out, was in that vehicle that was right in front of us earlier that got RPG'd. They had to drive back to the FOB because the LT was seriously hurt. And now he was now asking us if he could come with, to go give em some more hell. We had no room for him in our vehicle, we were jam packed because we had the guys from third squad with us because there vehicle was out of commission from multiple RPG hits. Since there was no room for him, he gave us all the ammo and his water he had on him, and told us "Go get em." By now it was night, and we were now fully stocked and ready to roll back out. I didn't want to go back out, but you don't have a choice, you have to. Right when we were about to leave the gate, they told us to go back to the motor poll and stand by. So we drove back packed the vehicles, and waited. I was chain smoking right now, one right after another. My nerves were completely shot and I was emotionally drained and physically exhausted. My hands were still kinda shaking. I was sitting up against the tires by myself on the side of the vehicle smoking a cigarette. I've never been through anything like that. I've never felt fear like that. And I've never seen anything like that. Usually these guys do this hit and run bullshit, but these guys today were on the offensive and showed no fear of us. My friend from San Diego, came over and sat next to me. Asked if I was O.K., and I told him "I don't know." We discussed everything that happened today, how it went down, what he did, what I did, what they did. Then the Battalion Commander came by the motor pool to check up on us and told us all we all did a great job today. Finally they told us to go back to our rooms. I went back to my room, thanked god, and passed out on my bed.
Note: I dont think CNN's report of only 12 dead is accurate.

Quote of the day: "I just want this day to end."

One Enemy K.I.A.

I got a new Pvt. on my gun team. In his room up on the wall by his bed, he has an 8X10 photo of the farm he grew up on, and a bunch of inspirational quotes from the bible taped up. I didn't know people still grew up on farms. Kid barely looks 18. He's been in the Army just as long as me, but he's been cursed and damned with bad luck so far his entire army career, getting kicked out of this squad and that squad, thus the reason why he's still a Pvt. In fact when they brought him over to me to tell me that he was now on my gun team, he had his rifle tied down to some survival chord that was tied off and wrapped around his waist. He left his weapon unsecured, so as corrective training and punishment for the next two weeks he has to have his rifle tied down on this string that's connected and tied off to his body so he learns not to go anywhere without his weapon. Like I said before, if there's a problem, the Army has a solution. They sent him over to me, hoping that maybe I can straighten him out a bit. I'm a Team Leader for Gun #2 in my Plt, so I'm in charge of him now. I'm his boss. Last night we had a brief drive around Mosul and an OP planned for us. In the motor pool before the mission, be both met a little bit early so I could give him a brief class on the M240Bravo Machine gun, how to load it, clear it, and fire it, the basics. Since we're missing a couple guys from leave, they're having me operate the .50 cal on our vehicle for the next couple days. My job usually is to operate the 240 machine gun that's mounted on the back of our vehicle, but for now I'm having the new guy pull "Air Guard" and operate the 240 out the back air century hatch on our vehicle, while I cover down and operate the .50 cal that's on the front of our vehicle for the next couple days. Get him comfortable and familiar with the gun. I figure it would be good training for him. I was teaching him how to mount the gun on the mount that's on the back of the vehicle when I asked him if he had any questions, he told me no. But I could tell there was something disturbing him, he was smoking his cigarettes very nervously and he looked kinda pale. So I pulled him over to the side and asked, "Hey man, are you all right? You look disturbed." he paused for awhile, and then without making eye contact with me he said softly "I'm not all right. I don't want to pull air guard." What? He doesn't want to pull air guard? WTF? So I asked him, "Why man, what's up?" He said, "I'm scared to be out the hatch. I don't want to do it. I was in 21Victor when we got hit with those IED's and ever since then I don't pull air guard because I'm too scared." The story: a couple months ago we were doing a patrol and 21 Victor (A Stryker) got hit with two daisy chain 155mm Artillery rounds that were converted to IED's, both ignited at the same time. Two of our guys received purple hearts from Shrapnel. 155's are fucking huge. I was riding in the vehicle that was following 21 when they got hit, and that explosion was soo big and loud, that I actually thought our vehicle was the one that got hit. Anyways he was inside that vehicle the day it got hit and he's been creeped out ever since. I have no idea what the fuck to say or do in a situation like this, a soldier scared to do his job. Damn. In the movies the guy always says something cool in a situation like this to his soldier, but I had no idea what the fuck to say to something like that. So the big brother in me kinda stepped in and I told him, "Look man, you'll be all right, we're not going to be out too long, and nothings gonna happen to you. I know how you feel man, fuck, I feel the same way too sometimes, but you just gotta do it. You'll be all right man, nothings gonna happen, O.K.? It'll be all right." I hate telling half-truths to people. But it worked, he looked a bit more relieved, and he paused and thought for a second about what I just said, and shyfully told me that he didn't want to do it, but he was going to do it anyways. I told him not to worry about a thing, and if he had any questions or anything to talk to me. While we were driving around Mosul, I constantly looked back to see how he was doing, he looked nervous as hell, but overall, looked all right. We drove around a bit, and then when it got dark, we pulled an OP. We parked our vehicle, dismounted the guys, and I began my shift of scanning my sector with the 50 cal. In case anything happens I'm there to reach out and touch somebody. It was later in the night and I overheard on the radio the squad leader from 1st Squad whisper over the radio: "We have a man creeping up on us, break. He's wearing a white man-dress, break. And he has a loaded AK47 in his hand, over." It was impossible for me to see the guy from where I was positioned, so I didn't have a shot at him. But what happened, from the story I collected from the guys from first squad was, this guy was creeping up on them with an AK, got close, saw that it was American soldiers, started yelling at them in Arabic, charged his weapon, pointed it at them and started firing. Almost hit one of our PFC's from Texas. They returned fire and ended him. Now in the movies, when they kill people, they just leave the body there, and Charlie Mike (continue mission). Not us. We don't work like that. No, we police up our dead. We secured the area, and we had the guys in our vehicle go put the guy in a black body bag and throw him in the back of our vehicle so we could drop off the body at the local Mosul Police Station. My guy was a part of that detail. As soon as they threw the body in the back of our vehicle it filled the vehicle with a very unpleasant aroma of a really bad stench, in a way I guess you could say it stunk like death. The zipper on the body bag was busted, and blood was drooling all over the place. The guys who carried the body in, had blood smear marks here and there on their BDU's. Once we had the dead body in the back of our vehicle we took off and started to drive to the nearest police station, which was about 5 minutes away. One thing I've noticed about me since I've been here is that I've developed a really warped, dark, sick sense of humor out here. I have a headset on my helmet that allows me radio communication with the driver. Here's the conversation the driver and me had on the way to the police station while we had the dead guy laying down in the back of our vehicle:
DRIVER: Hey, did you ever see those old Police Academy movies?
ME: Yea.
DRIVER: Remember that one where they put the body in the body bag and he comes back alive?
ME: Yea!
Both Of Us: (laughter)
ME: Hey, you remember that Chris Farley movie, the one with him and David Spade where they're driving that car, and they hit a deer, and they both think its dead, so they put it in the back seat of the car and they drive off, and then all the sudden it comes back alive and goes psycho and fucks the car up?
DRIVER: Fuck yea, that shit was funnier than hell!
ME: That'd be funny if the guy started coming back alive and shit like that deer! All kicking around and shit!
Both Of Us: (Laughter)
I am soo going to burn in hell. I have a fuckin dead guy in the back of our vehicle and I'm cracking funnies. So not cool. On the way to the police station I was concerned about the new guy. He wasn't up in the back air century hatch behind the 240 anymore, they had someone else up there now. My guy was now sitting down in the back of the vehicle on the bench, with the dead guy on the ground by his feet. I looked back to check up on him, and I could tell right away from the expression on his face that he was all fucked up. Fuck, god damnit, I didn't want him sitting down in front of that body bag. Why did somebody switch out with him? Why the fuck is he sitting down on the bench? That shits going to fuck him up, I didn't want him sitting down in front of the body bag, he should be up in the hatch away from that. But it was too late, we were almost at the police station. When we got to the police station we dropped the back ramp, grabbed the body bag and handed the ICP's the body and the weapon that he used, which was an AK47 that was completely missing the buttstock and handle. Ghetto. After that we drove back to the FOB and we all went to midnight chow at the chow hall. They have a midnight meal available from 23:00hours to 01:00. I wanted to make sure I sit down next to my guy, make sure he was ok. I looked all over for him, but I didn't see him anywhere. I found my Sqd Ldr, sat down next to my Sqd Ldr, and I asked him, hey, where the hell is the new guy at? He told me that when we parked the vehicle to go to chow, he said that he wasn't hungry and didn't want to eat, and he just wanted to go to his room. So he left and walked back to his room from the chow hall by himself.

Check out: mobyrebuttal.blogspot.com She said some very cool things about this site.

Vote? As If!

A couple days ago my Squad Ldr wanted a list of names of everybody who wanted to vote via-absentee ballot. He said raise your hand if you want to vote. Nobody raised their hands. No, I take that back, one person did, but then realized nobody else raised theirs, and so he put his hand back down. The Army is professionals at fixing problems. That's what the Army does best, fix problems, big and small. Problem: Low absentee voter turn out. Solution: Company mass formation 08:00am, bring your ID cards and a pen.
So at 08 this morning we had a formation and an Army Captain came out and said, "Men, nobody's forcing you to vote, BUT..." and he said a bunch of stuff like, its UnAmerican not to vote yadda yadda, basically gave a brief little speech to get us motivated to vote. It worked. I said fuck it, I'll register to vote. He had a bunch of tables set up, divided by states, and each table had a form you fill out to register to vote. I went to the California table and filled out the paperwork, which took 30 seconds. I was a little confused when they asked for party affiliation, so I put down Independent, even though that's become a really trendy thing to do nowadays.
I seriously wasn't planning on voting in this election, neither candidate excite me. I've voted in every election since I was 18, but I was planning on taking a break from this one, because I don't really feel like voting for the lesser of the two evils. The first election I voted in I was still in High School, and my father (who's a lot like the dad on that TV show the Wonder Years with Winnie Cooper) forced me to register and vote. He said, "Look you live in my house, you don't pay rent, you and all your deadbeat skateboarding buddies eat all the food my house, the least you could do for me is vote!" So I did, on Election Day, he woke my ass up and dragged me to the balloting place, which was some ladies house down the street. On the way there I asked, "Hey dad, how do you vote?" His answer, "Oh, voting is easy! All you do is vote for every single person that has the words: "Republican" next to it." I said, "But dad, what if the democrat is better than the republican?" His answer, "Impossible, there's no such thing as Democrat that's better than a republican, you figure the worst Republican is still ten times better than the best Liberal."
That was my first lesson in voting. Needless to say I'm a little bit, actually way more moderate than my father, but he taught me lesson, when its time to vote, you get off your ass and you vote.
I can't say anything negative about my Commander In Chief, so I wont. But I also can't vote for a person who threw his medals at the White House. You just don't do something like that. Like, if I did something like that, to protest this war, that would be a total slap in the face to all my brothers in my Platoon, all the people serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, all the people who lost their lives here, all the POW's, all the Vets, all the guys in all the other branches, and all my Drill Sgt's at Benning, and I wouldn't do something like that to them. It's hard enough as it is. Disagree with me all you want on this, but that's just how I feel.

The soldiers I know in the Army who are voting for Kerry in this election (which is a lot more than people would think) are voting for him because they're pissed off at Bush. They're pissed off because of Stop Loss, tour extensions, underestimating the amount of troops needed for Iraq, the Weapons of Mass destruction thing, the legitimacy of coming to Iraq, and they feel Kerry might also get us out of here faster. Stuff like that.

The soldiers I know who are voting for Bush are voting for him because they support him 110% on his Global War On Terrorism, and there is no shadow of a doubt that we did the right thing coming to Iraq. They feel Bush is doing a great job so far out here. A lot of the guys remember what happened to the military the last time a Democrat was in office. The guys I know who served in the military during the Clinton years, tell me all sorts of horror stories about the budget cuts. How they couldn't get any good training done, because they had no money for ammunition or anything. In training, if they ran out of bullets to fire, they would yell "Bang! Bang! Bang!" or yell "Budget Cuts! Budget Cuts! Budget Cuts!" to simulate shots being fired. Since Bush has been in office, we've never had those kinds of problems and there has been nothing but improvements in the military, we've had a couple small pay raises, and the quality of life has gone extremely up for people in the military.

And then there's people like me, who just might vote for Ralph Nader, just because he's the F-U vote.

Quote Of The Day: "Vote?! Our job is to protect Democracy, not be a part of it!"

I Dont Want To Live Alone

The entire time I've been here in Iraq, I've been behind a M240Bravo machine gun. On raids my job is to cover my PLT's ass while they assault the target house. If all hell breaks loose I'm there to provide a rein of 7.62 cover fire. I have an A.G. and and A.B. working with me. The Assistant gunners job is to be my second set of eyes and to point out targets to me, tell me rates of fire, sectors of fire, etc. He carries the Tripod, spare barrels and a shit load of ammo. My Ammo Bearers job is to carry a chunk of my ammo and he pulls rear security on my gun position, makes sure nobody sneaks up behind me and shoots me in the back. For this raid, one of the line squads was missing a guy due to leave (lucky bastard), so they handed me an M4 rifle and placed me with a line squad with a bunch of trigger pullers, and put my A.G. behind the 240. I requested a shotgun for this raid. Request: denied.
The best way to describe a Raid to somebody who knows nothing about these sorts of things, is, a Raid is like SWAT team stuff. In a nutshell: We show up, surround the house, blow the fuckin front door up with explosives, storm into the house, throw a bunch of flash bang grenades around, apprehend the target individual or individuals, blindfold them and zip tie em, search the house, and throw the detainees in the back of the vehicles, drive off and take them in for questioning or a one way all expenses paid trip to beautiful Guantanimo Bay Cuba. Badda bing, badda boom.
We received a Warning Order for this raid yesterday, and today we received the OP (Operation) Order. This one was a pretty big mission, with a very high profile target. After dinner chow we performed rehearsals. That's where we all get together and practice the raid together as a team to prevent any possible confusion and make sure everybody is 100% on the same page on what each persons task and job is. We go over the raid countless times and thru multiple scenarios.
I never take uppers like caffeine pills, Hydroxycuts, Ripped Fuels, Red Bulls, or any of that heart attack crap before a Raid, because as soon as you show up to the target house and that ramp drops and you dismount from the back of the vehicle, your heart is going a thousand Rpm's and your wide awake from the adrenaline. You have no idea what the hell your about to get yourself into or what lies ahead, how chaotic its going to be, if the house is booby trapped, how many people are armed in the house, how hostile the situation is going to be, if the target individual is in the house or even if your going to enter the right fucking house. You know absolutely nothing about what you might face.
Before the raid, you do personal PMCS (Preventative Maintenance Checks and Services) on all your gear. Make sure everything is up to standard. Check your NOD's, make sure they have fully charged batteries. Make sure you have a full combat load of ammo. (I always pack a little bit more, I'm a psycho like that) Clean your weapon, oil the bolt, tie down all your sensitive items, and perform functions checks. You go over the OP Order over and over in your head until its memorized. Your squad Ldr will come over and double, triple check your shit, to make sure that everything is up to standard, and quiz you on the OP Order. I usually like to listen to mellow music before a raid while I'm doing PMCS on my equipment in my room. Today the soundtrack was the Cure, The Smiths, and a little bit of the old school U2.
This was a pretty cool raid. My Plt was the main effort for this raid and the squad I was placed in was to be the assault team once the front door was taken down by another squad. Since I'm kind of a big guy, my job was to carry the 50 pound battering ram. I'm not as big as Henry Rollins or anything like that, but I lift weights, listen to Black Flag, and write in a journal like Rollins. Anyways, it was at night and the target house was in a way old school neighborhood, a lot of the building looked like they were from ancient biblical times, which they probably were. Way cool. We crypt silently in the shadows through these really narrow mazed alleys for almost a half hour before we finally located the house. My shoulders were killing me from carrying the battering ram. As we silently prowled through these narrow alleys, you could hear people inside the houses watching T.V. and talking to each other in Arabic, totally unaware that we were outside creeping around in the dark. We communicated with soft wispers and hand signals. My PLT was main effort on this raid and the squad I was placed in was to be the assault element, we stacked outside the main door. Once that door was taken down, we instantaneously stormed in there as fast as we could, weapons up and cleared the room. As soon as we entered the house, the attack helicopters showed up out of nowhere and was now hovering up above. The trick to clearing rooms is Violence Of Action, once you commit and your going in, there's no going back and its all out full. And you want to be quick and forceful so they don't have time to react to a damn thing. These people never knew what hit them. We busted in right when they were having dinner. Scared the living shit of them. Half a dozen little kids, a women in traditional all black Arabic clothing, and the target individual, all sitting around this small table full of food that stood one foot off the ground. The kids were screaming in fear and crying and so was the lady, who was probably the guys wife and the kids mother. We separated the target individual in another room, tied his hands up with a plastic zip tie and put a blindfold on him. Had our PL and interpreter questioned him as we searched the house for hidden weapons. We had a bunch of people with us searching and investigate the house with all sorts of crazy toys that would make the guys on that popular TV show C.S.I. jealous. Tons of fucking cockroaches in this house, crawling all over the cement walls. These people live like Ghandi, they hardly own any worldly possessions. All this dusty old house had inside of it was tubs of rice, a small foam mattress that laid on the dirty cement floor, and a small dresser drawer. That's it. Once we got our guy, and finished searching the house, we leave. On the way out, I walked past the kids and the lady, who were still at the dinner table screaming and crying. The Iraqi lady was hysterically hitting herself in the chest repeatedly and sobbing something in Arabic out loud. I asked the interpreter what the hell she was saying, and he told me that she was saying, "Don't take him away! I don't want to live alone!" that sort of stuff, over and over again. Just like that, with no warning whatsoever her life changed forever and you can't help but feel sorrow for that lady and her kids, and wonder what's going to happen to them now. But this guy that we got was a real piece of shit, killed a shit load of innocent people, and their families are forever changed and alot of Iraqi people are spending the rest of their lives alone because of this scumbag. Bottom line is Iraq is now a way safer place now that he's off the streets. But regardless, you still feel kinda sorry for the lady and the kids.

"We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm."
-George Orwell

I'm Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today

Last night at around 01:00am I was at the Internet cafe, right about to check my e-mail, when a SGT stormed into the Internet cafe and yelled that everybody was to report back to their squad Ldrs and back to their rooms, time: NOW. So I logged off and went back to my room, checked in with my sqd ldr. I asked him what the hell was going on and he told me that they wanted to get 100% accountability on everybody because, they don't know if its true or not but there was a report that they just captured three US Military personnel as hostages here in Iraq, and they wanted to make sure it wasn't any of us. That shit boils my blood with rage like nothing else, the hostage taking crap.
These next couple of weeks are going to be a little bit hard for me. Today was the day I supposed to be on a plane to go be with my wife during my two weeks of mid tour leave. Moral is kinda low for me right now. They canceled my leave, something to do with Stop Loss, they say I might still get to go home, maybe, but I'm on the bottom of the list with the rest of the guys who are stop lossed, and there's a bunch of people in front of me. This sucks, all day today I was subconsciously thinking, damn, I could have been on a fuckin plane right now, getting sloppy drunk off airline drinks until that flight stewardess cut me off, and on my way home to be with my wife who I haven't seen in almost 10 months. The last time I saw her was at the SeaTac airport right before I left for Kuwait. I remember exactly what she was wearing and everything. It was weird, today, all day I was thinking in the back of my mind that if I was going to get hurt out here, of course it would be on a day that I wasn't even supposed to be here. Story of my life. Its like that Kevin Smith movie, Clerks, where the guy has to work on his day off and all that crazy shit happens and he keeps on saying "I'm not even supposed to be here today." And you think about the guys from the 101st who were on their way to go home on leave on a helicopter and right when they left the airfield, they shot the helicopter down, and all the guys died. The guys that got IED'd on the way to the airport to go on R&R. The other day at finance, the guy in line in front of me told me that this guy was going home on leave and the day before he was supposed to go a mortar killed him, or that civilian contractor who got killed and had his letter of resignation and plane ticket was literally on him. The guy that got the Red Cross message and was able to go home on emergency leave, but stayed here with his men instead, and died a couple days later. I could go on and on with stories like that, of people getting waxed the day before they were supposed to leave or on a day they were here instead of there. I'm not superstitious or anything like that, but it kinda fucks with your head, when you start thinking coulda, shoulda, woulda, what if, type of scenarios. Like this morning, I caught myself being A LOT more cautious out there on our patrol, and I was like, why am I acting like this and being more cautious and looking around more? And I even caught myself ducking down more in the hatch from the slightest littlest thing. And then I realized I was like subconsciously aware that I wasn't supposed to be here, like it was instinctive that I was reacting the way I was. Weird. Strange how the human mind works at times. I don't know, but from talking to the lucky bastards who already went home on leave, I heard I'm not really missing much, they tell me its all completely weird back home, they cant really describe it or put it into words, but everything is soo alien to you, you feel completely out of place and you find yourself not wanting to hang out with anybody, you don't know what to say or act and you don't really feel like going out and partying or hanging out with people. They tell me that after a couple days home, you feel like coming back here to Iraq. I find that hard to believe but I've heard this from people who I would least expect to hear something like that from.
This morning we had a patrol. This time I was up in the T.C. hatch manning the .50 cal and filling in as vehicle commander. We just drove around a bit, this time in a neighborhood which had a lot of houses made out of mud and garbage. Real poor part of town. We dismounted and did a brief foot patrol. A little kid came up to us and told us that he knew where some RPG's were. He took us to a house that was being constructed. We searched the house and didn't find shit. It happens all the time. Then we piled back into the vehicles and drove back to the FOB, just in time to make lunch chow. Had pizza and a side of onion rings.

Another State Of Mind
"Well I'm in another state, another state of mind, I wish that I could be there right next to her This road leads to this,this one leads to that,Her voice sends shivers down my spine. These scars in my flesh, I'm bruised and I'm bloodied Only she know the pain that I've been thru. Talk to her a thousand miles away, There's tears in her eyes. If I make it back I'm gonna show her, she's the one for me."
-Mike Ness / Social Distortion

Attacked On An O.P.

Last night in the middle of the night (03:30am) I woke up to a very loud explosion. At first thought it was another bad dream, but my roommate also heard it and woke up, and said "Hey, did you hear that?!" Yea, I told him. We stayed up for a couple minutes silently after that, wondering what the hell was that, and then we both went back to sleep. We later found out that it was an IED. This morning we all went to breakfast and when we returned I dropped a dose of a malaria pill (today's malaria Monday) and went to my room. Shortly after that my squad leader banged on my door and said that our PLT just got placed on QRF (Quick Reaction Force) and to stand by and be ready to go at any minute, today might be another 24th of June. The main gate to the airfield to our FOB just got hit by a Vehicle Borne IED (car bomb) and there's mass casualties. We later found out and there wasn't as many casualties as was first originally thought, several dead, and a handful wounded. The vehicle borne IED was a toyota pickup with a female driver. The airfield here also got mortared several times today.

The other evening we had an OP. It was at night and the visibility was almost zero. Had our night vision goggles on to see. We set our gun position down up on this hill. I layed down in the prone position and scanned my sector. I was only on the ground for like 30 seconds when I started feeling a tingling sensation all down my back and up my arms. I was like, what the fuck is that?? I had my NOD's (Night Operating Devices) on and I looked down on the ground, and I was laying down on a huge pile of literally 1,000's and 1,000's of ants. I looked at my arms and there were 100's of ants crawling all over me, in fact I could hear them crawling on me. The ants here are not like the itty-bitty house ants back home, the ones in Iraq are fucking huge, like as big as the ones at Ft Benning. I freaked out, they were all over me, crawling all up and down my back, up my arms, on my face, everywhere. I jumped up, threw my helmet off, tore my vest off as fast as I could, swearing and cussing every profanity in the fucking book, slapping and hitting myself all over trying to get them off of me as fast as I could. Every now and them I could feel one of them biting me and I'd grit my teeth in pain. I yelled at my assistant gunner to help me out and start slapping them off me as well. He found all this very comical. I tore my top off, my t shirt, they were down my pants as well now. That wasn't too pleasant of a feeling. Lesson: Don't be a fucking idiot like me, and always look before you lay down anywhere, especially in this country.
On the way back to the FOB, our shocks and hydrolics to our vehicle completly went tits up and the vehicle was bouncing up and down like an East L.A. lowrider Impala the whole way back. It was sorta fun for like the first couple minutes, but then after awhile I started feeling sea sick, and I almost barfed up my Beef Enchilada MRE. Spent a majority of today at the motor pool fixing the vehicle.

The RTO in my PLT, SPC Lafferty, wrote a letter to Soldier of Fortune magazine, concerning an article they printed several months ago where they talked breifly about the Stryker vehicle, and they actually printed his letter in this months issue. Here is the letter they printed:
Title: Strykers Strike Out?
"I was very disappointed to read in this magazine that I have been reading for 24 years. As a member of the Stryker BDE, I can say that it was the most inaccurate thing I have ever seen from SOF. If we are such a flop how did we roll up more "bad guys" in the two weeks we operated in Summara than 4th ID did the previous three months? Why did the locals give us the nickname "ghosts"
We lost one victor in Sammara from an IED hit with no injuries to the crew. Since then we have survived numerous other iED's and RPG hits losing only one victor here in Mosul only because a fuel can ignited. Again, no injuries. The article stated we are too big for the back streets of Mosul. I only know of one street in my sector we couldn't go down and that was because there were two semis parked side by side.
As for us learning the ropes... well, our one BDE replaced three from the 101st here in Mosul and we've been most assuredly holding our own while being tasked out to other areas of the theater as well, What a let down. Some on SOF, get it right."

Thanks, But No Thanks

We had a patrol bright and early this morning. It was in a neighborhood way the fuck out there, on the other side of the river. It was a nice change of scenery for us, we've never been to this neighborhood before. New things to look at. I noticed something bizarre about this neighborhood though, the women in our AO usually wear the traditional dresses with a scarves around their heads, and they hardly ever make eye contact with you, when they walk they usually look straight down. In this neck of the woods, a majority of the women wore no headgear, and wore T-shirts and summer pants and sandals. These women were extremely friendly, almost too friendly, and they'd all smile and wave like crazy at us. Weird. Then I noticed a small little liquor store on a street corner. (!!!!) I've NEVER seen a liquor store here in Iraq before, ever. The outside of the shop had several beer advertisements of European brands I've never heard of. I had to do a double take to make sure I was seeing what I was seeing. The shop owner in the store saw my facial expression and wide eyed reaction at the sight of a liquor store and he chuckled at me. I haven't seen or steped in a liquor store or had a drink in 9 months. Damn. Anyways, it seems like every street in Mosul that has shops, usually has a store that sells tombstones. I guess there's a high death rate here, the cemeteries here are huge, so the demand for tombstones must be high. Well anyways, a couple shops away from the liquor store was a small shop that sells tombstones, on a couple of the tombstones outside the shop was a bright red engraving of a Christain cross. Then I pieced it all together and I realized that we were in a Christain part of Mosul. I've heard about this place, but we've never been here. We drove around for a bit, parked the vehicles, and did a brief dismounted patrol, and then loaded back in the vehicles and drove off. As we were driving away a bunch of little kids chased us, waving, smiling and cheering.

I thought briefly about extending my tour out here today, its still dangerous here, and people are still getting killed here everyday, but things are just way different now. I only signed up for 2 years, and my window for re-enlisting opened up as soon as I arrived here in Iraq. I scored kinda high on my ASVAB test, and your eligible for two year enlistments if you score above 70. I completely bombed on the math part of the test, like I'm at a 7th grade dumb dumb level, but my written and word comprehension was off the charts, so that jacked my score up a bit. My recruiter told me with my asvab score being what it was, I could choose any job in the Army. The only job I wanted and cared for was the Infantry. He pulled me to the side and said, look, you could learn a skill and get out of the Army with a good job if you chose a different MOS, there's no jobs out there looking for Infantry guys, maybe you should consider a different MOS. I didn't care about all that, my heart was dead set on being a trigger puller in the Infantry and I told him there was nothing else out there that interests me in the Army besides the Infantry. Since I've been here they've constantly asked me to re-enlist, and every time I tell them "No way-Jose." Not because I dislike the Army, I have no regrets at all about serving and I actually like the Army a lot believe it or not, but I've chosen not to re-enlist because there's other things I want to do with my life when I get out. So many more paths less traveled that I want to venture down. They have all sorts of crazy re-enlistment plans going on now, one of them is extending for another one year tour out here with the guys that are replacing us. You get an extra tax free grand a month if you do. I told em I wouldn't do another year here for an extra 30 grand a month, tax free. They asked me, well what plans do you have when you get out of the Army? Do you know how hard it is finding a job now? I honestly have no idea what the fuck I'm going to do when I get out, but one of my favorite movies is Taxi Driver with Deniro, so I told em I thought about maybe being a cab driver in NYC, maybe for a Veterans Cab Association or something, grow my hair out, wear my field jacket with my Combat Infantry Badge on it, drive around the bad parts of NYC, chill out, etc. A lot of the cabbies there speak Arabic, so maybe I could be down with them and shit. They looked at me crazy and told me good luck. But now they have a thing where you can extend for an extra 3 months doing something with some big shot and they'll give you an extra grand a month. I thought, what's an extra three months, that's three more months of tax free combat pay with an extra grand on top, and this might be a cool gig. So just out of curiosity I flirted with the idea of extending and went to find out more about what exactly the job is and they told me "Oh, we need people to drive around town in a Hummvee and...." Stop right there I said, no need to tell me any more, I'm not interested, all you had to say was Hummvee. I've seen way too many blown up Hummers out here to know better. I don't know how the hell those guys can do it, like the MP's and shit. Anybody who drives around in Iraq on a Hummvee should get like a special medal or something. I was the machine gunner on the 1st Sgt's Hummvee on the road trip thru hell convoy from Kuwait all the way thru Iraq up through Baghdad to Sammara, the whole time I was like, please god, don't let us get RPG'd or IED'd, I swear I'll never sin again. In the vehicles we operate out of now, the Strykers, mobile elite, an IED feels like a speed bump, and we have pretty good armor to protect us from these Chinese made rockets they like to fire at us and RPG's. In fact, iff it wasn't for the armor on that thing, I wouldn't be here right now.

"I used to think if I died in an evil place then my soul wouldn't make it to heaven. Well, fuck. I don't care where it goes as long it ain't here."
-Chef from Apocalypse Now

Conversation with my recruiter:
Recruiter: Since your only enlisting for two years you probably wont be deployed anywhere which is good.
Me: But, I want to be deployed.
Recruiter: Oh, well, umm, I meant ummm, Afghanistan, you probably wont go to Afghanistan. You never know, now with this whole Global War on Terrorism thing, we're sending troops all over. In fact the way the world is now, I can almost guarantee you that in your two years in the Army, you'll be deployed somewhere, probably Iraq or something. In fact I'm pretty sure you'll be deployed somewhere.