Posted on 05/08/2004 2:57:27 AM PDT by PokeyJoe
XXXXing howdy.
Mister M. here, from Al Thawra, Baghdad, Iraq.
Although right now you can call me Specialist M.
For some of you, I suppose I could use an Introduction. I am 23 years old, and I used to be a columnist for 8BM.com before I joined the U.S. Army. My military occupational specialty is that of a 13B, an artilleryman.
I was deployed to the Middle East as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom on April 1st, 2003, as some kind of sick April Fool's joke. On April 10th, I crossed the berm from Kuwait into Iraq near the village of Safwah.
I guess I should stop here, momentarily, for a disclaimer. My purpose in this bit of digital prose is not to sway you either way in your view of the war in Iraq, nor to make some kind of abstract political statement. My purpose is this: to relate to you the facts as I see them, and my revelations regarding myself, my country, and the American viewpoint. Take them with however many grains of salt you wish.
To continue; Like I mentioned, my job is that of an artilleryman, but my current assignment is a driver for my squadron Operations Sergeant major. It is a fairly prestigious position, or at least it is intended to be.
My squadron is comprised of light cavalry scouts, for the most part, so I am basically a fish out of water. I have infantry skills, but the scouts generally ride around on HMMWVs with gun turrets in a recon and security capacity. I am learning as we go along.
My first day in-country, myself and a few mechanics that stopped to recover a damaged trailer were mortared from behind the berm. Needless to say, we XXXXing hauled XXX. It was the bitter taste of bile in my mouth, the too-bright sunshine in my face, and the thuds of splashing rounds as I gunned the HMMWV that I remember most clearly.
We traveled from Safwah to Al Samowah, which we occupied for a few nights, living in the desert outskirts of this war-ravaged city. The destruction I witnessed was awe-inspiring in it's sheer size and scope. It was like something out of a XXXXing Heironymus Bosch painting.
Unreal.
I slept on top of my HMMWV, through some of the most ferocious sandstorms I've ever seen. The winds were so forceful that they tried to blow my rifle from my side, and my skinny XXX right off the roof of the truck. Every morning I awoke covered with a sepia-toned silt, spending an hour or so removing this same dust from my weapon and equipment.
From Al Samowah we moved to An Najaf, where we occupied a Fedayeen training compound. An Najaf is where we received our first lessons in the complex dynamics of Arab culture, and the relationship of Islam to these desert people. We cleared ammo and unexploded ordnance (UXO) from schools, cleared minefields, and generally met with the people to perform our duties in some kind of useful capacity.
From An Najaf, we were launched into Baghdad shortly after the initial forays into the city proper. I was told that we were going to occupy the ghettos, and live in a cigarette factory. In a way, what I was told was correct, except for one thing: ghetto is too mild of a word for what we live in. This place is the pinnacle of everything a mere ghetto hopes to be.
Al Thawra is formerly known as 'Saddam City', a dumping ground for oppressed Shiite Muslims, criminals, malcontents, and every other kind of "undesirable" person.
The fighting has been pretty dynamic here, with a motley assortment of criminals, terrorists, foreign backed dissidents of one kind or another, psychopaths, and rogues, in addition to the more prosaic Fedayeen. Everything from RPG attacks to grenade attacks to snipers to random potshots to three assholes on a motorcycle with guns.
As of this writing, the US government has not confirmed the fabled WMD that we expected to find.
So what was the point of this war? Why did we spend untold amounts of money, ruin countless marriages of US servicemen, and risk a potentially disastrous political gambit?
Well. I suppose that is a point for debate. What I can honestly say is that the magnitude of the suffering and poverty, the horrendous acts of barbarism by Saddam's regime that I have witnessed has been enough, in my mind, to justify this war. And I am ground-zero, my friends. I am not a signal corps guy sitting in an air-conditioned truck somewhere bXXXXing about missing TV. We are sitting here catching the XXX as much as any soldier.
Maybe I can help you understand.
I was manning the gun-turret of a truck for the Colonel of my squadron one day, for a meeting with an Imam. (An imam, in case you wonder, is some kind of Islamic religious leader. Most of them are dirty as XXXX, with ties to various unfriendly countries and their hands in all the nasty business that pisses us off.) While we were sitting in the imam's compound, we were approached by two men.
The men spoke halting and broken english, but they seemed friendly enough. It's always wise to be paranoid, though, so we always kept a weapon trained on them. One of them began telling us a story, using a lot of body language and universal hand-signs, about how his mother, his father, his wife, and his children were all killed by Saddam's people. His brother, the other man, showed us a picture of himself, beaten to a pulp. It was a kind of mugshot. He explained how they tortured him, showing us the bullet holes in his calves and the massive scar tissue from where they stripped the skin from his left foot. The men told us how much they are glad the Americans got rid of Saddam, and thanked us heartily in the Arabic manner. The man gave me his prayer beads as a token of thanks from an impoverished man, and I keep them still.
The Iraqi military felt it necessary to mine or trap seemingly random places, and I cannot count how many children I've seen dead or dying, mortally injured from whatever they stepped on.
There is a compound in this area formerly occupied by the Iraqi Intelligence service. There are things in that compound that would sicken you beyond belief. It is amazing how much information was gathered on the people of Iraq by it's government. It rivals any '1984' style conspiracy theory offered by your average delusional paranoid. I have a feeling that the torture chambers and the medieval methods of torture employed by the regime will haunt me forever.
When the government fell, and anarchy became the order of the day, looting was suddenly in vogue. The poor people of Al Thawra began looting everything in site, including portions of the buildings themselves. It was not anything of particular value that was taken, either. It was things like wiring, roofing material, wood to burn in stoves, jugs, bricks, furniture, anything used to build, burn, or sell. These people were so desperately poverty-stricken that a bag of raw concrete dust was worth risking their life for.
I also observed the contrast between the privileged few of the upper echelons of the Ba'ath party and the average Iraqi citizen. For example, the poor schools were filled with missiles, guns, mines, and everything else under the sun, while the private school of Saddam's cohorts was lavishly furnished. I saw the elementary school photo of Qusay Hussein's son, dressed in fatigues and wielding an AK47, fierce look on his little face.
When we got the schools operational again, the Iraqis were so happy, it was amazing to behold.
I've also been to the palaces, and the tacky opulence was astounding. Not only was Saddam a dictator, but he had very bad taste. Of course, thinking of the money spent to upkeep these monstrosities of the elite and the conditions the poor of Iraq live in made me XXXXing sick. It is a damn shame.
I also learned some things about myself. About how even I, Mister M, self-described warrior poet, armed hippie, womanizer, fighter, skinny XXX white guy, have failed in my personal strivings to elevate myself above the Ugly American syndrome. I have taken things for granted that I shouldn't have, like love, laughter, and good food. I have even been guilty of the sin of self-righteousness, the singular American flaw that causes us so much grief, both individually and as a nation.
The voice of opposition to this war is largely the voice of ignorance. They are smug in their rightness, by and large, and have no idea what it is like to truly suffer. We fought a war we should have fought ten years ago, and suddenly everyone thinks they have the right opinion about it. Guess what? No matter what your opinion is, chances are, you are wrong. Until you look into the eyes of a starving child, or drive through a fucking river of sewage, or see the pain of a single woman whose family was summarily execute by men in black, you don't have a XXXXing clue.
Maybe this war is about oil. Maybe it is the ambitions of a power-hungry Texan. To the Iraqi people who have suffered, it is about freedom, and trying to make right what has been wrong for 3 decades.
What I have seen and done here has changed me forever. It has yet to be seen whether for good or bad, but I think perhaps it is good. My advice, borne from the fire and dust of this place, is that you all should count your fucking blessings. Your toilet flushes, your children are healthy, and no one comes to your home in the night and whisks away your family. The streets are free from heaps of offal steaming in the sun, there are relatively few corpses lying in your neighborhood, and believe it or not, you have freedom. Maybe it's dwindling, but that's no one's fault but your own for being complacent.
I'm not going to play the angel here. I've engaged in some pretty riotous buffoonery out here, partly because I'm a twisted XXXX, partly to keep my sanity in this stressful environment. But I've kept the atrocities to a minimum. A little dog-spearing here, a little butt-stroking there, nothing too horrendous. Keeps me in good spirits.
With that, I think I will go.
btw - dog-spearing is used to control ferral dog populations around US camps. Dogs found that Americans would share food with them. BUT - SgtMaj's don't like dog crap all over camp from 40 dogs. Soldiers use a long pole with a bayonet attached to the end to "control" the population of dogs - removing aggressive ferral animals, or pregnant dogs.
Butt-stroking... (???) I'm not sure. Anybody recently back care to comment?
Anyhow.... I thought this was a good "read" from a young soldiers point of view. Our young men in battle are not necessarily warrior saints.... just warriors.
Semper Fi
(He doesn't cuss as much as I used to while wearing a pickle suit)
Easy- a butt-stroke is giveing someone a loving caress with the stock (butt) of your rifle.
I'm not recently back- just remembering bayonet training from almost 20 years ago (was '85 really almost 20 years ago? It just doesn't seem possible).
A rifle is still an effective weapon in trained hands, even if you are out of ammo. That reminds me- about two years ago my wife injured her ankle and had to use a cane. I trotted out my bayonet techniques to teach her how to defend herself with it.
Boy, flashbacks from when I worked in Venezuelan oil camps.
One of the guys who came down from the States was a dog lover and was horrified at the way dogs were treated down there (as in abused). He started buying "hamburgesas sin sibolla" (hamburgers without onions) and feeding the strays.
He was pulled aside and told to knock it off for the reasons cited above - and for the fact that the day workers who showed up at the gate looking for work were starving - and watching the dogs being fed.
One expat down there, "Mata Perro" [Dog Killer], was greatly feared by the locals. He was working at a drilling site and found a bunch of locals poking a stick at a dog inside the machinery layout, trying to prod him out. "Hell, I just walked in, drew my .357 and shot the dog - we couldn't hold up production for a mutt."
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