Antiwar.com Blog

Jo Wilding took a second trip into Fallujah Saturday. Here’s how it went:

Sergeant Tratner of the First Armoured Division is irritated. “Git back or you’ll git killed,” are his opening words.

Lee says we’re press and he looks with disdain at the car. “In this piece of shit?”

Makes us less of a target for kidnappers, Lee tells him. Suddenly he decides he recognises Lee from the TV. Based in Germany, he watches the BBC. He sees Lee on TV all the time. “Cool. Hey, can I have your autograph?”

Lee makes a scribble, unsure who he’s meant to be but happy to have a ticket through the checkpoint which all the cars before us have been turned back from, and Sergeant Tratner carries on. “You guys be careful in Falluja. We’re killing loads of those folks.” Detecting a lack of admiration on our part, he adds, “Well, they’re killing us too. I like Falluja. I killed a bunch of them mother fuckers.”

I wish Sergeant Tratner were a caricature, a stereotype, but these are all direct quotations. We fiddle with our hijabs in the roasting heat. “You don’t have to wear those things any more,” he says. “You’re liberated now.” He laughs. I mention that more and more women are wearing hijabs nowadays because of increasing attacks on them. … read more

Marcus Epstein spares us the drudgery of re-reading what the kids at National Review were saying about war and Wilsonianism last year. Arthur Silber re-reads Jonah Goldberg and gets the willies.

UPDATE: I fixed the second link. Sorry.

Sadr’s Army Has a Humvee

Gutted Humvee becomes trophy for cleric’s troops

Raed Jarrar writes:

A funny image of AlMahdi Army soldiers going around Kufa today driving an American Hum-vee, the military Hummer was left behind after some clashes around the city. That happened after AsSadr announced that no more attacks on the Spanish army are going to happen, and that Shia are happy with the withdrawal thing. I don’t think things would be funny or happy next week though.

I think it’s likely that Sadr’s Mahdi Army is in way better spirits than the miserable American soldiers around Najaf. I’m going to put some more information on this situation together later, but for now, here’s a quote from an LAT piece:

When 2,500 American troops swung south from Baghdad to confront the militia, it responded with ambushes that left at least one soldier dead and destroyed bridges over Iraq’s wide rivers.

The new troops arrived to Forward Operating Base Duke, an empty swath of desert outside the holy city of Najaf, to find a logistical nightmare.

Military buyers had signed contracts with local vendors to supply everything from water to portable tents. But the contractors were balking at delivering the goods.

“When the security situation gets bad, they don’t want to deliver, and that’s what’s happening now,'” said Army Capt. Ron Talarico, who is helping coordinate supplies.

A temporary water shortage was remedied, but the camp still has only six portable toilets for the 2,500 troops because the company that provides them is reluctant to travel the highway.

There are no showers or laundry facilities. A shortage of tents forces soldiers to sleep in their vehicles in 100-degree weather and blistering sandstorms.

“It’s a wasteland here,” said 1st Lt. Matt Nethers, 24, of Los Alamitos. “The Army logistical system isn’t what it could be.”

Doesn’t camping out around Najaf sound wonderful? These troops have been there a week now.

It seems that there are quite a few troops held over in Iraq that have worse problems than still lacking the body armor they were supposed to get and haven’t yet. Some of them don’t have anything at all.

23 News has learned that the 333rd Military Police Unit in Freeport, which just had their tour in Iraq extended, may not be adequately supplied for battle.
That’s because everything they own was shipped back home. The 333rd is presently sitting on the Kuwaiti border awaiting orders, but they have since surrendered their equipment, such as radios and armored vehicles to the troops who replaced them.

But now since the 333rd is going to remain in Iraq they are without any supplies. Even their personal belongings were sent home, including spare uniforms, boots and toiletries.

The soldiers only have what they are wearing and are being forced to purchase new uniforms and some equipment out of their own pockets. Military families have been receiving their soldier’s footlockers the past few days and are now frantically re packing boxes and sending all of this gear back at their own expense.

This has angered families who don’t believe the military thought this redeployment through. And they have caught he ear of some politicians.

“How demoralizing it is to be promised that this was over and that they’re finally coming home and they’re finally going to get back to their life as usual and then to have the rug pulled out from under them and it’s happened time and time and time again. Extremely poor planning by the department of defense, said Senator Dick Durbin, D-Illinois.

Great planning, Rummy! You’re handling this “extension” about as well as you’ve handled the occupation. Oh, wait, that’s Condi’s job.

Here’s a military wife, writing from Germany:

I am the wife of a soldier who was just officially extended yesterday. He has been in Iraq for nearly one year. He has proudly served his tour, and we were planning for his arrival home next week. Here’s a true story. A group of soldiers from his unit went to BIAP to wait for their return flight to Germany, where we are based. They were turned away and told that they were being kept in Iraq indefinitely. On the way back to their base in Baghdad proper, they were ambushed. The unit had their first casualty that night. My husband should have been with them, as he is one of their medics, but he was supposed to drive the ambulance to Kuwait the next day, so they told him to stay back and get some rest. I am sickened by this whole betrayal of trust and abuse of our volunteers. If Bush and Co. get reelected, start moving your military age men to Canada, because the draft will be reinstated. Nobody deserves this kind of a back stabbing. Least of all the men and women who have signed up to protect our country. This extension was a death sentence for that poor soldier. This extension cost three children their father. And it will cost much more. And now, to touchstone: My husband signed up so that he could go to college. If we would have forseen this, there is no way that he would have put his name on that dotted line. He has missed the birth of his third child…..he could die out there. He’s supposed to be sitting safe in Kuwait right now, but instead, he’s in a tent because their barracks were taken over by 1st Cavalry soldiers who went in to replace them. They haven’t got enough food right now, because there are too many soldiers on that base, and DoD was too short sighted to think that they might end up needing more troops. All their stuff is out to sea at the time being, so they are just sitting ducks waiting for their equipment to come back. This is a fiasco and a logistical nightmare. DoD and Rummy have been denying that there is a troop shortage for MONTHS! General Shinseki predicted this and was forced to retire. In November, Senator McCain called for at least 15,000 more troops. Well, shucks, seems they were right after all. I pray that John Kerry wins this election. It’s so important to vote this year.

Doing all I can from Germany!

Oh, yeah, that’s how to Support Our Troops.^TM Apparently they’re just numbers.

General: We need 20,000 more troops in Iraq.

Rumsfeld: No problemo! We got your 20,000 right here!

General: With underwear and socks and everything.

Rumsfeld: Isn’t there a WalMart in Baghdad?

The saga continues. Boudreaux says the image is doctored; the Marine Corps has “reopened” the case. If the Corps reopened the case after Boudreaux screamed foul play, that indicates to me that the initial investigation (the results of which have not been released) found him guilty–though, of course, the Pentagon has been wrong about a few things within recent memory.

Thanks to Tex for the link.

ANTI – IRAQI FORCES FIRE ON MARINES FROM MOSQUE

This is an actual headline from a “Centcom” press release. Think about this for a minute. “Anti-Iraqi” forces fired on Marines from a mosque? What the hell are “anti-Iraqi” forces? Why would an anti-iraqi person care about firing on marines? Wouldn’t they fire on Iraqis? The Iraqis they’re “anti?”

Who do these morons in Centcorn think they’re fooling. What stupendous arrogance.