Patrols
A few days ago M113s APCs and a Hmmwv drove by. Apparently, now they are starting to do patrols again. This I haven’t seen any armored vehicles move down through this neighborhood in awhile. I must reiterate that they are M113s, this is a light armored vehicle. To me, this just screams “Ambush me,” as I’m quite sure an RPG could quite easily pierce it. This is a city, it is very easy to ambush armor, haven’t they learned anything from previous wars, like the Soviets losing so much armor from Ambushes when they were busy taking Berlin, or Somalia. The only way I’d really feel comfortable doing a patrol in a armored vehicle, is if I was in a Bradley, RPGs aren’t effective against those, for the most part they’ll just bounce off. To my amazment, I found out that an IED exploded by a m1 Abrams, and somhow a piece of it’s shrapnel pierced the turret, these things are nearly invincible, it must have hit a soft spot.
A week ago, I was talking to an Iraqi that lives a few houses down the way. He can speak english extremely well, and he is very educated. He usually stops by for alittle bit and we talk about politics. He is wealthy, so he doesn’t need to work right now, but he doesn’t have anything to do, so he works with 1st Amored Division Military Police at some checkpoint. His job is to just translate for the Military Police. He was talking to me that the Iraqi people feared but didn’t respect the Iraqi Police before the regime went away, but now the people respect but don’t fear the Iraqi Police. He said his checkpoint used to get about 100 reports of car theft from Iraqis, now after the Iraqi Police have been around for alittle while, the car theft reports have gone down to about 2 a day for his checkpoint. Plus, a lot of criminals are afraid to commit crime because Iraqi Police have time and again just shot the criminals because the criminals were carrying weapons, so now they are starting to think twice about what they do. From being in Baghdad since May, I have noticed a huge change in Iraq, despite the attacks, there has been a lot of progress. When I’m doing guard in the morning, I watch these taxi cabs come by and stop at the houses of Iraqis and pick of their children who are wearing school uniforms and taking them off to school. Also you see big buses of all sorts packed with kids in school uniforms and driving off to school.
A week ago, I was talking to an Iraqi that lives a few houses down the way. He can speak english extremely well, and he is very educated. He usually stops by for alittle bit and we talk about politics. He is wealthy, so he doesn’t need to work right now, but he doesn’t have anything to do, so he works with 1st Amored Division Military Police at some checkpoint. His job is to just translate for the Military Police. He was talking to me that the Iraqi people feared but didn’t respect the Iraqi Police before the regime went away, but now the people respect but don’t fear the Iraqi Police. He said his checkpoint used to get about 100 reports of car theft from Iraqis, now after the Iraqi Police have been around for alittle while, the car theft reports have gone down to about 2 a day for his checkpoint. Plus, a lot of criminals are afraid to commit crime because Iraqi Police have time and again just shot the criminals because the criminals were carrying weapons, so now they are starting to think twice about what they do. From being in Baghdad since May, I have noticed a huge change in Iraq, despite the attacks, there has been a lot of progress. When I’m doing guard in the morning, I watch these taxi cabs come by and stop at the houses of Iraqis and pick of their children who are wearing school uniforms and taking them off to school. Also you see big buses of all sorts packed with kids in school uniforms and driving off to school.
