Ignorant People

Today I took the trouble of going to a politics chat room on the Internet. This one seemed to have alot of people who do not live in America or are just plain ignorant. Now, it's one thing to dislike a politician, but it's quite another to sit there and call the United States a fascist regime. I told the people inside I was a United States soldier who served in OIF from march 03 to march 04. They started with asking me really dumb questions like "it must feel good to kill people who were no threat to you." I couldn't help BUT laugh at these morons who are so ignorant. It is really sad that people are so out of touch with reality. Sure, maybe Bush is a scum bag to many people, but that doesn't mean we are a fascist government.

More than 100 Iraqi civilians die at the hands of the "glorious" resistance. This is totally crazy that also people in the chat room I was in, some of them were supporters of the resistance. This really really REALLY REALLY got me extremely pissed off. Anytime someone would say that when an American got killed I wanted to strangle them and beat them to a bloody pulp. The military is like a family. Those brave men and woman over there are my brothers and sisters. Yet, the ignorant people don't understand that when I want to go over there when people Americans die. It's deeply personal to me.

N'other Day At The Range

Today was a nice a sunny and hot day. The M249 SAW gunners and M240 Bravo gunners had to go to the range and zero and qualify with their weapons. I had alittle rough time doing this, we all have our bad shooting days. Even the best shooters in the world have days where it seems they can do everything perfect and the bullets wont go where they want them too. Somehow, we ran out of SAW ammunition, so not everything got to qualify with their SAWs. Good job, XO. However, the 240 gunners had PLENTY of ammo and they all got to qualify with their machine guns. This training and live fires and CQB (Close Quarter Battle) training we've been doing has been alot of fun, but it's really making me tired. I get back from the range at 7:30pm and I just wanna take a shower and go to sleep, but I have things to get squared away before I can do that.

Hillarious Political Flash Movie

This is a link to a very very  funny flash movie that was made. It has Bush and Kerry singing "This land is your land" and trading insults all the way through the whole movie. No matter who you like, this movie is hilarious, I showed it to other guys in the Army and they loved it too. I wish they could put this on national television as just an amusing commercial. We hear so much negative in the news, this would help lighten some people's days.

http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/af/content/this_land Just go there and click on the button on the left side of the screen that says "watch film."

Why We Fight

Our new Company Commander is a hard core guy. He was originally an NCO, and reached all the way to E-6 before becoming an officer. The unit he was in before was the 75th Ranger Regiment. Which is an elite infantry unit. It's a regiment that are infantryman, except they train more and alittle harder than regular army units and are alittle tougher on their soldiers, discipline wise. They have to be, because their are like being shock troopers. Though many regular army units such as mine believes they are alittle just infantryman that go to the field alittle more and given a hugh budget, so they get all the best equipment. Anyway, he has been really on our ass about training. All we have been doing is train train  train and train. We have been done a TON of CQB (Close Quarter Battle), which is good, because I love training for and doing CQB. He has also been really gung-ho about physical fitness. If we don't get at least a 70% on our Physical fitness test, we will have to do a couple hours extra physical fitness with the CO. Usually when we run as a company, we don't run that fast in case some people fall out, but this guy makes us run FAST and if we aren't sounding off as loud as we can, then he makes us stop and starts making us do a ton of pushups and sit ups and other exercises to punish us while he is cursing at us. It's a big change of pace for us, because we just got back from Iraq and expected to be taking it easy for awhile, but that went out the window when our Brigade got sent to Iraq and we are slated to go back sometime around the new year. So, now we are training pretty hard and will start to go to ranges all the time and going to the field and doing all kinds of missions. It's true like they say though, the more you sweat and bleed in peace time, the less you bleed in war. So, I think we may hate all this right now, we'll be thankful for it once we get back into the sandbox.

You don't realize how much you really depend on the guy to your left and your right until you start to train and really go off to war. In a urban battle, you totally have to depend on the guy to cover any area while you cover a different one totally ignoring it knowing he has it covered. Like when entering and clearing a room, the first guy covers one corner and the other guys covers the other corner and you don't even look at the other corner hoping the other guy has it covered. You cannot survive in a war without being a team player, it is essential to survival. You have to cover your buddy and he has to cover you. We soldiers go to war and fight for one another. We are really a family. The way we look at each other is that we are all a family, and very close knit family. Alot of people call us brainwashed and war mongers. They don't understand it's not about that, it's about the men next to you, and that's all it is.

The Marines killed 25 insurgents and captured 20 plus others. It was a good example of the Marines professionalism and skill in fighting.  I wish the news could cover more stories like this, but they are happening fewer and fewer, because the US military is now mostly letting the Iraqis do the tough grunt work. In the past I think the military tried to avoid bragging about it's victories over enemy combatants because of what happened in Vietnam when people claimed we kicked the Vietcong's ass and yet it was percieved that we lost the war militarily.

GET SOME!

A house in Fallujah purportedly being used as a safe house sheltering Abu Musab al-Zarqawi cronies. The air strike was approved by the Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. There is nothing that would please me more than to have that son of a bitch, al-Zarqawi, blown to kingdom smithereens. He DOES not serve the interest of Iraqis. His whole strategy is to kill as many innocent people as possible and cause as much chaos as possible. Though, I don't like any militant groups, the only ones that belong in Iraq are the Iraqi military, I still think it is funny that even Iraqi militias have threatened to kill this bastard. He should be shown the same amount of mercy he showed Nick Berg and other people he and his people mutilated.

News Flash From Iraqi PM

Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said there is going to be more violence in Iraq. Wow, thanks for clearing that up buddy. The Iraqi government has been passing emergency laws to fight these insurgents. Surprisingly, the new Iraqi government has been fiercely fighting the insurgents since they transfer of power. Their own intelligence seems to also be pretty accurate.

Me and my friend Zeyad who I met in Iraq (no, this is not the Zeyad that has a weblog called "healingiraq"). He owns a few businesses in Iraq, and spoke English extremely well. We often talked about politics. After the war, and when the IP, Iraqi Army, and ICDC were being built, he would always tell me that the US Army is being asked to do too much. He always said the Army needs to take a break from all the work and start to let the Iraqis help. His theory was that the Iraqis would be better at spotting people up to no good then we would. I still agree with that.

Victory for Terrorists?

Manila has now given into the growing sentiment going on in it's own country to leave the United States. I didn't even know these guys were in the "Coalition of the Willing." So, now a hostage is being released. This sounds like a victory for the terrorists. Is there any nation that exists today that has the balls to fight something worth fighting for? Frankly, seeing that the Iraqis seem more than ready and willing to pick up where the Coalition left off and are doing most of the tough grunt work. What is really pathetic is this country can't even band together during a war. I mean, in WWII, there was no better way to unite us than to attack us and start a war with us. Now, if you attack us, we will be united for a few months and then we'll start fighting with each other again. How pathetic is this, this must be really encouraging for terrorists to watch on TV.

Frusterating Times

I finally arrived back on "post" last night just in time to log back in at Battalion. I had quiet an interesting journey I guess you could say. Everything was fine, from the drive from Michigan through Canada to Upstate New York. However, when I reached about 20 miles from Post, I hit an animal. Pretty sure it was a Raccoon. So noticed I hit the animal pretty hard, and was really worried about damage to my car. So, I sped up to get off on an exit just up ahead. When, I passed a car which I did not even notice was a damn State Trooper. So, all of a sudden I see in my rear view mirror, flashing lights. Then, I get pulled over and find out I was doing a 96 in a 65 speed zone. So, then he tells me he will probably have to put me in jail. So, noticing it's 11:30pm, I say "officer I am on leave and was trying to get back to base on time." So, then he was like "I can't believe you didn't see me." The trooper was driving along too, but I didn't even pay attention to what kind of car I was passing cause my mind was probably off in "I hope I didn't fuck my car up too bad" land. He said at that speed and not seeing him, I would probably goto jail and he said I should hope to have money on me to pay for bail. So, I explain to him I'm in the military and trying to reach post before 12am. He tells me he will have to call the court and see if that will make any difference. So, he later got out of the patrol car and told me because I'm in the military and in the current situation, I will be allowed to go back to post. He gave me a ticket, saying I have to be in court such and such date. I called my parents and told them when I got back, they were like "oh we are just happy you are safe and everything is ok, don't worry about it right now." All I can think of is I've never been in trouble with the police and never had to goto court. So, of course I'm pretty nervous about it.

More US Soldiers die. Now, I notice more soldiers appear to be dying now that we don't have control over the country. How is this happening? This is not making any sense. I thought since now the country is back in the hands of Iraqis, they would be doing all the dangerous work, and the US Army would more or less supervise and help alittle bit. I know the Iraqis are mostly doing the raids and being the ones sent into danger, so how come we are losing more men and woman? I also some something on TV that was really desturbing. A Western Journalist given unprecedented access to the Iraqi insurgents. They showed some scary footage that upset me. It's hard being back from Iraq to still believe that all the Iraqis I talked to, and how firmly I used to believe that most of them wanted us there. That after watching all this depressing footage to still believe in all that.

4 US Soldiers and 1 Iraqi Soldier killed

In another town which many people don't know about. Samarra, there was a mortar attack on a National Guard headquarters in the central part of the city. 4 US soldiers and 1 Iraqi soldier were killed. 20 US troops and 3 Iraqi soldiers were wounded. The attacked forced the headquarters to collapse.

Wow, this is very interesting. The Iraqi mortar fire is usually inaccurate and no one usually gets hurt. My bet is, they insurgents kept walking to mortars in till it hit target. Then again, that should have given the soldiers time to seek cover, but it seems like that didn't happen. Soon after the attack, radar that detected the point at which the mortars came from, quickly retaliated with 4 120mm rounds. I've talked about the system that detects incoming RPGs, Mortars and Rockets and can instantly calculate the exact point from which they came and give the exact co-ordinance to fire back at. A few times we retaliated we were lucky enough to kill some of the culprits. Maybe the radar thing wasn't secret, but I kept quiet about it just in case. Hopefully they nailed the bastards that carried this out.

A new Blog has been opened up. It is in my links called "my war." He calls himself CBFTW. He is a machine gunner for the US Army Infantry who IS currently serving in Iraq. Everyone go check out his site and give him support.

Saddam Sees His Day In Court

Saddam appeared for court and so did many of his cronies. He defiantly said his charges were unlawful and that the real criminal was President Bush. Many Iraqis had mixed views, some saying this is not the right time, others saying it appeared that Saddam was running the court room and there were other mixed views as well. To me, it's not really surprising he would act so defiantly, he's always envisioned himself as a hero to the Arab world. So, it's no surprise he would try to act tough and be defiant. I just hope the Iraqi people actually give him the right to defend himself, as right which he denied millions of his own people.

Now to offer my other feelings, seeing from how Iraqis are today. I can understand why he justified he had to rule with an Iron fist. Some Iraqis are really good people, and I met alot of them, but it's funny when all of them say the US Army is too nice, and the militias and terrorists take advantage of this kindness to kill Americans and Iraqi civilians. I hope the new Iraqi government will have the courage to do what our politicians could not, which is be alot more tough so they can root out these terrorist cells and fighters. Once that is done, they can relax. After all, America had to pay a very painful price of her own to really have our freedom, and it required the lives of 600,000 young brave Americans.