Hey, Everything Is Just Peachy Keen In Iraq

Soldiers for the Truth ^ | Pissed Off Army Officer

[StatesEnemy]

Dear Col Hackworth,

I am currently on the ground in Iraq and have been since I came over the LD on 31 March.

While the Army did a great in winning the war, what is not being covered is how broke the Army logistics system is and the damage it is doing to the long term readiness and moral of the Army. The Army seems to have this NTC rotation mentality, which consists of f*** it live in the dirt and filth you only have to be here for a month. That works at NTC, but it seems no one has thought of how to sustain an Army in the field for weeks and months at a time. The answer has always been, "after a month or so, we will contract with the locals for everything."

The problem is that outside of a few areas in Kurdistan and the north, Iraq is so poor that there is nothing to contract for. Moreover, we don't trust the locals enough to contract with them even if they did have something of value. Units all over the Army came to Iraq without basic things necessary for life support in the field. I a m talking about portable sh*tters with cans that you can burn. You can't live somewhere and have everyone sh*ting in cat holes for weeks at time. Units came here without tents. The 855th MP Company, a guard company from Arizona was allowed to mobilize without any tents. They lived on the ground in the most God awful piece desert you have ever seen for over two weeks. Units came here without proper heaters for the water in their MKTs, so that when they started serving T rats, they didn't cook them enough and didn't clean the serving treys properly and everyone who ate from there got sick. If its not a life or limb issue, its nearly impossible to get medical care.

Soldiers get literally hundreds of flea or mosquito bites and they can't cream or benedril to keep the damn things from itching. The army issued mosquito netting, but didn't give anyone any poles for their cots, so the stuff is basically useless. I am not talking about bringing in the steak and lobster every week. I am talking about basic health and safety issues that continue to be neglected by the Army. Even beyond that. If we are going to be here for a year, we need to start thinking about MWR and R&R for people. You can't just lock people up in a compound and feed them T-rats and MREs for a year and expect them to be as effective at the end as they were at the beginning. To my knowledge no one has given any thought to any kind of pass or MWR activities for soldiers. Division staff sits around in their air conditioned vans watching satellite AFN goofing off on the internet and just don't give a shit about anyone else.

Meanwhile, soldiers are living in the dirt, with no mail, no phone, no contact with home, and no break from the daily monotony at all. I went to a division rear in May and practically got in a fist fight with this Captain up there over letting my private, who hadn't contacted home since we left the U.S., send an e-mail over his office's internet. This clown spends his days sending flowers to his wife and surfing the net and he won't let my private send an e-mail to her husband. F*cking disgraceful and all too typical of today's army.

The fact is, soldiers can put up with anything and will do the right thing. The problem, however, is that at some point they are going to go home and hit their ETS date. I can tell you right now, a lot of good people are going to get the hell out over this deployment. The good soldiers won't put up with this crap. They will get out and get good jobs on the outside. We are breaking the Army and the reserve corps with this deployment needlessly. I understood when the war was going on.

But the war is over. This is peacekeeping and guerrilla warfare. Our supply lines are clear. There is no excuse why basic health and safety issues and moral issues like mail cannot be addressed. They are not being addressed because the army doesn't know how anymore. Units spend their lives preparing for 2 week warfighters and one month NTC rotations and never think, "okay, how are we going to live out here for six months or a year." Its just not part of the Army's thinking anymore and it s a shame.

Pissed Off Army Officer

[Travis McGee]

It squares with what I am hearing from many sources.

Now keep in mind one unit, for many reasons, may be able to swing a roof over their heads, hot food, showers, etc.

Down the road, another unit is in their 6th month of living on the dirt, with no showers, eating MREs.

And their morale is crap, and they are going to quit the Army in DROVES when we will need them the most.

[ladyinred]

People DO send these things. This is more garbage in a week filled with it. I am so sick and tired of this. God help us if these people don't stop undermining our security and those of our troops with this political agenda pack of lies.

[Miss Marple]

Travis, I have no desire to see the troops treated badly.

Hackworth being the source of this story is my problem.

If there is another, credible source about this issue that backs him up, I will be the first one firing off a nasty letter to Bush, Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs.

It isn't that I don't have sympathy with poor conditions and the miseries caused by lazy supply-line people; it is that Hackworth has been so wrong on so many things and he has a definite animus against Rumsfeld, that I mistrust anything he prints.

[Travis McGee]

I won't argue that the dogface soldier had it rough slogging across Europe in WW2.

But this is not now a crusade to end Hitlerism in a total war.

This is endless-seeming occupation, and there is no excuse for having troops living on the dirt eating MREs for months.

They are not dogs! Treat them like dogs, and they will get out the first day they can.

[Travis McGee]

Thanks you for 82!

And when the dogface soldiers of the 3ID see a group of SEALs or EOD guys living like "McHales Navy" with improvised showers, a bar, ten times the water per man, etc etc etc, how do you think that affects morale in the 3ID?

Like CRAP is how it affects morale! Almost as bad as delivering a message to a staff officer's trailer, and feeling that blast of A/C, and seeing their TV and fridge.

ARGGGHHHH!!!!! People here DO NOT UNDERSTAND!!!!!!

[Travis McGee]

Every body read 77!!!!!

Well there ain't no 'rear area' over there and we are watching a garrison army floundering to become a field army.

[RightOnline]

"They just don't seem to want it that much."

You're absolutely right. It's cultural. In the Arab culture, you consistently (throughout their history) see a pliant, subserviant populace kow-towing to strong leaders. It's one of the main reasons I have absolutely ZERO respect for the Arab culture. They're, in a collective sense, a bunch of boot-licking cowards. Chest-thumping little humps who run screaming like little girls when it comes to a stand-up fight with a strong enemy...........and let tinpot a**hole dictators run their lives for decades on end. It's as if they just love it.......like it's expected.

If you can't tell, I have ZERO confidence in Iraq's future.

Iran?? Shoot........................they aren't Arabs. I have lots of confidence in their rank-and-file citizenry, and I firmly believe they'll overthrow the Muslim theocracy and seek democracy entirely on their own.

[Travis McGee]

86 is RIGHT ON!

[JoeSchem]

but this 'nation-building/hearts and minds' crap is NOT THE MILITARY'S MISSION!!!

Well, it needs to be someone's mission, otherwise we're ousting a tyrant to put in a mobocracy, and the result in the end will be another tyrant.

We somehow managed to win hearts and minds in Japan, Germany, and South Korea, and maybe we can do it here, too, if we remember that we are Americans and we can, God willing, do anything.

It is somewhat unseemingly for a group of highly trained intelligent brave and self-sacrificing Americans to be saying, "We can't do this!" You're Americans, you can do it. But certainly we first need to provide them with the resources so that they can do it.

[caisson71]

I served my time, in the jungles, no rear area base, hot showers, maybe, every couple of weeks. It was a different time, different place. An Army officer that belly aches because his troops - his Private, doesn't get to email home?? How pathetic! Because his boss is a Captain, I am supposing this guy is a Lt, probably a 2Lt, still we wet behind the ears. I'm surprised the 1st Sgt hasen't pulled him aside to tell him he's making his job difficult. He sounds like he still needs his mommy. I'm willing to bet he's aome REMF on top of it. Better yet, if i were his Capt, I'd send him on some patrols to remind him why he's there in the first place.

[Travis McGee]

"Son, your attitude and performance has caused this flight to be late, and I'm going to personally see to it that you are not just reprimanded, but punished."

The poor guy says, "Sir, with all due respect, I'm not your son. I'm an Enlisted Airman in the United States Air Force. I've been in Thule, Greenland for eleven months without a furlough, and reindeer are beginning to look pretty good to me. I have one stripe, it's two thirty in the morning, it's twenty degrees below zero, and my specialty here is to pump sh*t from an aircraft. Now just what form of punishment did you have in mind?"

I think there are tens of thousands of troops in Iraq getting to that point now.

[Poohbah]

And when the dogface soldiers of the 3ID see a group of SEALs or EOD guys living like "McHales Navy" with improvised showers, a bar, ten times the water per man, etc etc etc, how do you think that affects morale in the 3ID?

When I was in the Stumps in '88, and saw the SEALs from Coronado living la vida loca in 100% kit-bashed manner (showers, an open-sided bar, etc), I went back and asked, "Hey, Gunny, what the heck can we do to get the cool stuff the SEALs got?"

It turned into the Sgt Major telling us, "If y'all can do it, and I don't hear about how it came about, great. If I have to apologize for any of you knuckleheads, you'll be doing a 20-mile forced march in MOPP-4."

We were living in luxury inside of a week. Never had to do that MOPP-4 march. :o)

Necessity is the mother of strange bedfellows...

[hattend]

This is from another thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/948527/posts
post #13

POSTED ON STRANGE COSMOS TODAY:

A "Dispatch" from the front (Iraq)
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2003, 11:09:09 GMT

Hey Guys, sorry it's been so long since


I've sent anything but a quick note to you individually.
However things have been pretty hectic since the end of hostilities and the start of the real war. Despite what the assholes in the press like to say over and over:

1) We did expect some armed resistance from the Ba'ath Party and Feydaheen;
2) It isn't any worse than expected;
3) Things are getting better each day, and
4) The morale of the troops is A-1, except for the normal bitching and griping.

My brief love affair with the press, especially the guys who had the cajones to be embedded with the troops during the fighting, is probably over, especially since we are back being criticized by the same Roland Headly types that used to hang around the Palestine Hotel drinking Baghdad Bob's whiskey and parroting his ridiculous B.S.

I'm in Baghdad now, since SpOpComm 5 relocated here from Qatar. It looks, sounds and smells about the same but at least you can get Maker's Mark at the local OC. We came up in mid-June to help set up operation Scorpion and Sidewinder. It represents a major (and long overdue) shift in tactics.

Instead of being sitting ducks for the ragheads we now are going after the worthless pieces of fecal matter. [OD NOTE: VERY understated!] I'm no longer baby-sitting the pukes from CNN and the canned hams from the networks, but have a combat mission coordinating a bunch of A teams, seeking, finding and rooting out the mostly non-Iraqis that are well-armed, well-paid (in U.S. dollars) and always waiting to wail for the press and then shoot some GI in the back in the midst of a crowd.

The only reason the GIs are pissed (not demoralized) is that they cannot touch, must less waste, those taunting bags of gas that scream in their faces and riot on cue when they spot a camera man from ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN or NBC. If they did, then they know the next nightly news will be about how chaotic things are and how much the Iraqi people hate us.

Some do. But the vast majority don't and more and more see that the GIs don't start anything, are by-and-large friendly, and very compassionate, especially to kids and old people. I saw a bunch of 19 year-olds from the
82nd Airborne not return fire coming from a mosque until they got a group of elderly civilians out of harms way. So did the Iraqis.

A bunch of bad guys used a group of women and children as human shields.
The GIs surrounded them and negotiated their surrender fifteen hours later and when they discovered a three year-old girl had been injured by the big tough guys throwing her down a flight of stairs, the GIs called in a MedVac helicopter to take her and her mother to the nearest field hospital. The Iraqis watched it all, and there hasn't been a problem in that neighborhood since. How many such stories, and there are hundreds of them, ever get reported in the fair and balanced press? You know, nada.

The civilians who have figured it out faster than anyone are the local teenagers. They watch the GIs and try to talk to them and ask questions about America and now wear wrap-around sunglasses, GAP T-shirts, Dockers (or even better Levis with the red tags) and Nikes (or Egyptian knock-offs, but with the "swoosh") and love to listen to AFN when the GIs play it on their radios.They participate less and less in the demonstrations and help keep us informed when a wannabe bad-ass shows up in the neighborhood.

The younger kids are going back to school again, don't have to listen to some mullah rant about the Koran ten hours a day, and they get a hot meal.

They see the same GIs who man the corner checkpoint, helping clear the playground, install new swingsets and create soccer fields. I watched a bunch of kids playing baseball in one playground, under the supervision of a couple of GIs from Oklahoma. They weren't very good but were having fun, probably more than most Little Leaguers The place is still a mess but most of it has been for years. But the  Hospitals are open and are in the process of being brought into the 21st Century. The  MOs and visiting surgeons from home are teaching their docs new techniques and  One American pharmaceutical company (you know, the kind that all the hippies like to scream about as greedy) donated enough medicine to stock 45 hospital pharmacies for a year.

Safe water is more available. Electricity has been restored to pre-war levels but saboteurs keep cutting the lines. And the old Ba'ath big shots are upset because they can't get fuel for their private generators. One actually complained to General McKeirnan, who told him it was a rough world.

The MPs are screening the 80,000 Iraqi police force and rehabbing the ones that weren't goons, shake-down artists or torturers like they did in East Berlin, Kosovo and Afghanistan. There are dual patrols of Iraqi cops and U.S./U.K./Polish MPs now in most of the larger cities.

Basra has 3.5 million inhabitants.

Mosul is a city of 2 million.

Kirkuk has 1 million.

How many and hundreds of other small towns have not had riots or shootings?

The vast majority.

The six U.K. cops were killed in a small Shiite town by the ex-cops they were re-habbing. According to a Royal Marine colonel I talked to, the town now has about twenty permanent vacancies in its police force.
Mick, he's a big potato eater from Belfast named Huggins and knows how to handle terrorists after twenty years fighting with the IRA. He sends his regards and says he'd love to have you here. Thinks you'd make a great police chief, even though the cops would be more frightened of you than the local hoods (then he laughed) I heard one doofus on MSNBC the other night talk about how "nearly 60" GIs have been killed since 01 May.
The truth is that 21 GIs have been killed in combat, mostly from ambush, from 01 May through 30 June, Another 29 have been killed by accidents or other causes (two drowned while swimming in the Tigris).

The [MSNBC turd] is the same jerk who reported on the air that "dozens of GIs" were badly burned when two RPGs hit a truck belonging to an Engineer Battalion that was parked by a construction site. The truck was hit and burned, three GIs received minor injuries (including the driver who burnt his hand) and three warriors of Allah were promptly sent to enjoy their 72 slave girls in Paradise. Hell of a way to get laid.

A mosque in that shithole Fallujah blew up this morning while the local imam, a creep named Fahlil (who was one of the biggest local loudmouths that frequently appeared on CNN) was helping a Syrian Hamas member teach eight teenagers how to make belt bombs. Right away the local Feyhadeen propaganda group started wailing that the Americans hit it with a TOW missile (If they had there wouldn't have been any mosque left!) and the usual suspects took to the streets for CNN and BBC. One fool was dragging around a piece of tin with blood on it, claiming it was part of the missile.

The cameras rolled and the idiot started repeating his story, then one of my guys asked him in Arabic where he had left the rag he usually wore around his face that made him look like a girl. He was a local leader of the Feyhadeen. We took the clown in custody and were asked rather indignantly by the twit from BBC if we were trying to shut up "the poor man who had seen his mosque and friends blown up." I told the airy-fairy who the raghead was and if he knew Arabic (which he obviously didn't) he'd know he was a Palestinian. I suggested we take him down to the local jail and we'd lock him and his cameraman in a cell with the "poor man" and they could interview him until we took him to headquarters. They declined the invitation.

Guess what played on the Bullshit Broadcasting System that evening? Did the Americans blow up a mosque? See the poor man who is still in a state of shock over losing his mosque and relatives? Yep. Our friend the Palestinian.

Our search and destroy missions are largely at night, free of reporters and generally terrifying to those brave warriors of Allah.

The only thing that frightens them more is hearing the word "Gitmo".

The word is out that a trip to Guantanimo Bay is not a Caribbean vacation and they usually start squealing like the little mice they are, when an interrogator mentions "Gitmo".No wonder the International Red Cross, the National Council of Churches and the French keep protesting about the place.

They know it has proven to be very effective in keeping several hundred real fanatical psychopaths in check and very frankly would rather see them cut loose to go kill some more GIs or innocent Americans, just to make W. look bad.

We have about 200 really bad guys in custody now and probably will park them in the desert behind a triple roll of razor wire, backed up by a couple of Bradleys pointed their way, if they decide to riot. Maybe a few will get to Gitmo but most are human garbage that wouldn't take on your five-year old grandson face-to-face. The more we go after them and not vice-versa I think we will see the sniper attacks go down. Yeah, they'll get lucky now and then, but it's showtime, fellows.

Our first objective is to get the die-hards off the street (or make them too scared to come out in them) and destroy their caches of weapons (we have collected more than 227,000 A-47s and that is only the tip of the iceburg; Curly bought nearly a million of them from our pal Vladimir), then cut off their money supply, mostly from Syria and Lebanon. We must continue to get public services up and running, so the local families can get water, sewage and garbage service; electricity, public transportation; oil fields and refineries working and a dinar that won't halve in value every month.

It's going to be a long haul (remember it took 10-15 years in Japan and West Germany) but if we don't stick with it, nobody else will, and we'll have some other looney running the place again.

This place has greater potential than Saudi Arabia (bunch of goat-herders who struck black gold) or Iran (weird dudes who can't run a rug bazaar much less a major country).

Armageddon, here we come. Remember, it's located on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

Enough of that cheery speculation. The good news is that General Schoonmaker is going to appointed ChiefArmy and the old man is coming to Tampa to run the SpOps desk at CentComm. He's tops and will be getting his second star.

To me it means that SpOps will be more predominant in future operations and after 18 years as a GB maybe I'll have a shot at a bird-level combat command.The old man asked me to come to MacDill and be his ACS but I told him after I spent four months changing the diapers of the media types, I wanted to go back to action. Hence, my current gig.

As the movie quoted old General Patton, "God help me, I love it." I do.

Nothing more satisfying than working with the BEST damn soldiers in the world, flushing real human poop down the drain and giving some folks a chance at trying freedom for a change.

They may learn to like it and then my great-great-grandson won't have to worry about some maniac trying to destroy the planet.

My tour is over at the end of August, and I plan to return to Tampa, brief the old man, then head to San Rafael and see my two sweethearts. I'd like to visit my parents in Toronto and my brother in London, before taking on a trip across the country. Just like any other family. It will charge my batteries before I end up back in some other shit ... er, interesting and challenging location. I hope to see most of you and ask for some advice, not support. I know I've had that all along.

Thanks.

Now about that Maker's Mark.
God Bless America
Mark.

"War doesn't determine who wins, war determines who is left"

[Travis McGee]

Thanks for your reply. I think even every few weeks, showers etc makes a big difference. If it was just this LT bitching, I'd be with you. But I am hearing similar tales of rock-bottom morale from returning troops. It's no good to say "tough it out" in an all-volunteer military, they will just get out.

This is not WW2 or VN, there is no next year's draft to rely on to get all the troops we will need. If they get out, and tell their friends and little brothers not to enlist, what will we do for an Army next year or two?

[Travis McGee]

LOL! It all comes down to leaders, don't it?

[Prodigal Son]

If it was just this LT bitching, I'd be with you. But I am hearing similar tales of rock-bottom morale from returning troops.

This is a good point. We have had other threads where some of the troops complained in an unprofessional manner and they have been slammed and I was among those posters dogging them. Not for their complaints but for the manner in which they complained- and I will stand by my comments. I just think if you want to complain to the world you ought to do it in an honorable manner.

But, having said that... You do have to add all this "chatter" from the troops up to a coherent picture after a while. I, personally, am not ready to make a judgement. I know there's a lot going on in Iraq at the moment and that the media is predatory in nature. I want the best for the troops but I would still hope they act in a professional manner whatever there current circumstances. This is not to say I don't want them to bitch or not to bitch regardless of their situation- I just don't want them to act in a way that brings shame on themselves and the Army (I'm an Army guy and I served in the 3rd ID "Rock of the Marne"- my prejudices are set).

But these "bitching and complaints" are useful intel for us over here comfortable in our homes. If you hear enough of it, there's something there. If the 3rd's gotta stay longer the least we could do is get them the things they need. We are not, after all, Russia. We are the richest nation in the known universe and like it or not, Iraq is our newly claimed frontier. We need to get those guys what they need if they don't have it.

This doesn't have to be a partisan matter. It doesn't have to be like "Bush fails troops". It simply means that since Vietnam we don't have any experience with supporting a long term mission. If we all focus on "supporting the troops" instead of hanging some politician out to dry for their problems we will be more effective in alleviating their problems.

That's the way I see it. I was just a little guy in the military but that's my opinion.

[Cogadh na Sith]

The heater in this thing takes 14 minutes to heat your food, the MRE takes about 5. It's extremely bulky, and you have much more waste (trash) with this thing. It sucks.

Nah, you just have to know how to treat them--when you get issued your rats, tear them all apart, throw away all the extraneous boxes, and crap leaving only the meal components intact. Save one main meal component box to use the heater in and one plastic bag you cut carefully to put spent brass in or to carry water in, or to take a leak in if you are in a vehicle.

Divide all the components up into main meals, snacks and accessories and store them in different appropriate places in your ruck. Put the snacks in a thigh pocket and snack on them as you are moving...

You can heat the main meal in the heater in the box you saved in your thigh pocket while you are still humping if you are careful to vent the fumes out of the bag out of your pocket.

Also, you can have a bit of fun by holding the main bag you saved over the heater fumes (mostly hydrogen) upside down and then putting a lighter near it--pretty big bang...

[caisson71]

If we have no Army, so be it. Maybe when we citizens zip up the body bags of our relatives, kids, on our own soil - like the Twin Towers in New York, it won't seem so bad that someone who is sworn and paid to defend us is uncomfortable for awhile. Would we want to defend ourselves in the sands of Iraq or the city streets of New York? I can tell you that defending yourself from enemy fire, with 7 of your fellow soldiers dead on the tailgate of your APC is much more "unpleasent" than not having a shower. Thunder runs at night that practically invite and ambush was also unpleasent as the heat, humidity, etc. Where has there been a pleasent war? When I say a shower, I mean an Australian shower bag, hung over the barrel of a 50 cal. off the side of the track, with about 2-3 gallons of water.
It doesn't take much to clean up if you use a little ingenuity and that has always been the trademark of a US trooper. Have we lost that too? I can take an enlisted soldier bitching more than an officer. Any officer, no matter what rank, has a right and obligation to look out for his troops within the chain of command. If his troops suffer to the point of becoming ineffective in accomplishing their mission than their Lt is a sorry sack of S--T.

[UnBlinkingEye]

War sucks. No one wanted this one...

It was an attack on a nation that hadn't attacked us and had little or no ability to do so. Someone wanted this.

[Squantos]

So that army of one commercial is true these days .......:o) I'm suprised our PC nation even lets the DOD have ammo .

Stay Safe !!