Posted on 12/17/2004 10:43:16 AM PST by presidio9
Dec. 20 issue - Predators know to hunt the weakest animal in the herd. So do the Iraqi insurgents. It is an essential truth about the Iraq war that's ingrained in soldiers like Pvt. Daniel Rocco, a Humvee gunner with the Second Battalion of the 82nd Field Artillery Regiment. Rocco's unit is an artillery regiment trained for conventional warfare, not escorting convoys. But the "Steel Dragons" of the Second now spend most of their days protecting the weak: VIP visitors and 18-wheel trucks loaded with food or other supplies on the road to Baghdad. In the process Rocco's unit gets hit regularly with small-arms fire, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and even suicide car bombs. He displays reddish pockmarks and scar tissue up his right arm, the effects of an IED from last May. "I really can't close my right hand," he says. And Rocco's Humvee is, today, equipped with "Gypsy racks"—steel-plated cages around the gunner—and other add-on, improvised hardware, known as "hillbilly armor." "It's Mel Gibson 'Road Warrior' stuff," says Capt. John Pinter, the battalion's maintenance officer. "We're not shooting for pretty over here."
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This is the ugly reality that National Guard Spc. Thomas Wilson was apparently trying to convey to Donald Rumsfeld in Kuwait last week. There is no front line in Iraq. Or, to be more precise, the front line is wherever the insurgents decide it is. And very often they decide it should be trucks and unarmored Humvees at the back of supply lines—what used to be known, in other wars, as the rear area. Because the insurgents present a 360-degree threat, the most vulnerable units are often the ones the Army pays the least attention to: poorly equipped National Guardsmen or reservists in supply and transport companies.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
But as the death toll climbs to nearly 1,300, some soldiers and defense-industry officials insist that much more could be done. Eighteen months after Bush declared that "major combat operations" in Iraq were over
Liberals will never get over this. He lefties, guess what: The American people know what he was talking about on that Aircraft carrier no matter how hard you try to make him look like a dumbass.
Same old same old...
Wow!
I think that guy on the back of that boat is taking a leak!
Giving more likely...
Looks like some of the cars around here!
Nah, he's fishing.
Been there, done that. ;-)
Is that a Confederate flag I see?
yup, so un-PC.
Yyeeeeehaw!
I think that guy is on the front (bow) of the boat.
That actually is the stern. No sailor would ever take a leak over the bow. These are command boats, they are rather boxey.
So he's not fishing?
Recycling beer most likely.
(Looks like a barge with all sorts of stuff [including something that looks like a B-17 propeller blade] atop it.)
I thought this was about the Clintons' corsets.
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