Thread: taking a cue from nana

A letter from my uncle in Baghdad.

16 January 2005

It is now two weeks before the elections and everyone is being very cautious. Our contractors have had so many death threats against them, that while they still take them very seriously, they have become somewhat numb to them. It is much the same for us. While we have not had a rocket or mortar attack on the base in almost a week, when they do come it becomes at most a momentary excitement.

I don’t say where the rockets land in these emails, for I do not wish to be an accidental forward observer for the enemy. That is part of the problem with the instantaneous press coverage, as often it becomes a forward observer for the enemy, where they can adjust fire based on where the press showed the last one landing. Let’s just say one of my employees has a "there I was" story she can tell her grandchildren some day.

Several of our employees say they have a hard time adjusting to the slower pace of life back home after their tour of duty here. They notice people back home have a very lackadaisical attitude about many things. People who serve over here know the value of five minutes, or even one minute. They know that the friendships with the Iraqi’s who work here are fragile, precious things, as they might not be alive tomorrow. They see a struggling people who live and are happy with so much less material things than we have.

We have a high rate of returns over here, that is, people, like myself, who volunteer for second and sometimes now third tours of duty. Some work for one agency one time and for a different agency the second time. I have a few soldiers who come by the office almost every week looking for a chance to come work for the Corps of Engineers in Iraq after their tour of duty in the reserves is over. A lot of them are in the engineering trades back home, but see better opportunities over here, along with a more purposeful life.

Our contractors will soon be on Eid, the holiday after the Hajj, so most of our Moslem contractors will not be working from the 20th to the 25th, and many are going to hide out until after the election to see what will happen. Most of them are going to vote if it is safe enough. It looks like we won’t be getting a lot done for around a ten day period. At least my people can catch up on their paperwork during that time.

No one knows what is going to happen after the election. We suspect the insurgents will try their best to disrupt the elections, and they seem to have no compunction about killing women and children as they stand in line. We keep capturing them, often from local people telling us where they are, and yet there always seem to be more. Hardly a day goes by when we are not raiding some house based on information given to us by the local people, often capturing a lot of known insurgents, usually with weapons, detonators, and explosives.

After talking with many Iraqis, I understand now just how huge Saddam’s intelligence network was. All of these former agents know their lives are in jeopardy because of their former occupation, and they had grown accustomed to the pampered treatment they used to have. They are definitely not going quietly, and have no remorse for any action, however savage. All of them have blood on their hands, some of it fresh. When Saddam was in power, these agents had the power of life and death over everyone they saw, and used that power often. These are remorseless killers who will have to be excised from this land.

Not only will they have to be expunged, but the attitude that allows people to believe that they have the right to behave in this manner must be removed too. I hope democracy will replace the rule of the gun. What I cannot fathom is the European countries, that supposedly favor democracy for themselves, but are perfectly willing to deal with such monsters as Saddam. Do they not truly believe in democracy, or are they applying the rule of law and freedom of choice only to the selected few? And if only a selected few, who will be doing the selecting, and what happens to the others? Our European brothers have already taken a dive into the pool of full rights for the selected few in the past century, and they should be careful they do not start to covet that same pool again. Goose stepping is goose stepping, no matter how you change the dress, music, or the rhetoric.

From a friend in MUr's unit - only 21 years old. Looking better for Mur's unit.



Hey everyone,

It's been a few weeks since my last email. Lately, we've been running
missions dubbed the "Iraqi Express", which is a 4 day up-and back
mission to a camp in central Iraq. These are scheduled runs, unlike
our typical missions which are by-demand.

Today, Gen. Johnson, who oversees the movement of all supplies into
and out of Iraq, including the missions we run, came to pay us a
visit. A few days ago we learned that we were being extended for 14
days. We're now scheduled to leave on the 28th of March. This is
something that we've been hearing as a rumor for a while, and now
it's fact. It's not a huge deal, and as soon as we got notice of that
we also got a schedule for our redeployment work, i.e. wash the
vehicles, pack everything up, etc. So, it could be a lot worse. We're
taking part in the largest movement of equipment since World War II
with the current rotation from Operation Iraqi Freedom II to
Operation Iraqi Freedom III. Complicating matters is the fact that
this rotation is going on during Iraq's first free elections since it
became a country 70 years ago. Due to these factors, they're
extending everyone until the end of the month they got here. Some
units in our Battalion got here in the beggining of Feb 04, but they
wont be leaving until the end. Same for us, we wont be leaving until
the end of March. We'll be at the trailing end of the all-out blitz
of OIF II units back to Kuwait and out of theatre heading home.

All that basically says is, we gotta move the new guys in, the old
guys out, and we follow them out the door. Around the 5th of April or
so (most likely) I'll be released from Active Duty and will return
home. Until that point, we're all going to be very busy!

Take care,
Chris