Notes on Anaconda and butt kicking Col's

One of the biggest complaints here in LSA Anaconda is the new rules popping up all the time. The lengthy duration of this war has turned our beloved post into a garrison with all the rules of a garrison. It’s not really “in” the war zone anymore, even though we still get mortared. We’ve become more civilized and hence more rules like a garrison post.

Now we wear reflective belts when we walk at night so we don’t get run over by bezerk truck drivers. But they can’t drive too fast anymore because the Air Force is pulling people over for speeding, just like in a garrison unit. The wild, wild, west drivers who are used to the open road are not used to this more agressively ruled post. I guess the insurgents have stopped throwing themselves at the front gate and freed up some MP’s. At least now the snipers in the woods can see us better.

I got pulled over two nights ago by the new and improved Air Force MP’s, much to the laughter of my team mates here and the three other people in the truck that scrambled to fasten their seat belts which should have been buckled anyway if I’d been paying attention to them. I don’t know why they pulled me over (I was going 29 in a 15mph zone, must’ve been a new sign) but they gave me a warning, so that was nice. We’re maturing as a theater when we don’t have to kick in doors any more; we have to worry about reflective belts and fast driving LTC’s, it's a good sign.

There are a lot of people out at night around here, people stay out pretty late when the weather is nice and they chat in small groups or go to the 24-hour PX or gym for something to do. There are only 3 channels on the local TV and its all Armed Forces Network propaganda from the mother ship, so we’ve reverted back to the 40’s and 50’s mentality and talk to people or read books. I know, novel idea. I’ve been getting thru my fair share of books and wanted to thank Sara from SoldiersAngels.org for all the books she’s sent us. I’ve dutifully distributed them out to the libraries but have kept a couple of the more interesting ones for myself. Visit their site if you would, please, they do wonderful work supporting the troops in the field around the world.

For the most part it’s safe here, but we’ve had a couple of assaults on post, maybe 3 or 4 per month, so it happens. At one point, someone had the idea of issuing women whistles in case of an attack, but since everyone’s trained to use a weapon that idea didn’t float too long. We’re all armed here, everyone carries a gun with ammunition and that’s also one of the reasons they don’t have any ATM’s in country for us to use, at all.

We have Iraqi officers assigned with us now and they fly on some of our missions, accompanied by interpreters. One of them is a Colonel (P) who lit into some Jundee at one of the depots we visited last week. The Colonel started barking orders in Arabic as they walked into the depot and everyone jumped to their feet. He grabbed one of the Jundee’s (private) rifle and field stripped it in front them, ran his hand along the inner parts which came away black and he lit into them a whole bunch more. Our Major K was with them, one of the guys on our team and he was dumbfounded about how upset the Col was, he just stood out of the way while he ranted at them. They obeyed him immediately and then he complained to Major K that we were being too soft on them.

I don’t think we’re going to slip into a civil war here, there’s a lot of Iraqi’s standing up now like this Colonel and taking responsibility and those are very positive steps. Many good Iraqi’s have died standing up to be counted or taking a leadership position and they are truly heroes to us over here. It’s a tough country when everyone’s armed. We often find some of those leaders in a ditch along the side of the road, killed, and a lot of those names don’t make it into our hometown newspapers. But they’re just as much a hero to their families here as we hopefully are to ours back home. Most of these people just want to go to work, raise a family and get on with their lives.

Our liaison Col wanted to get home last week but they can’t just walk off our bases in uniform, they’d be identified and killed. It’s OK to be in the Iraqi Army, but not collaborating directly with the “occupiers” of the country. That’s why a lot of Jundee are recruited at one end of the country and assigned to the other end. Our Colonel lived in Baghdad, but the roads have been shut down and a curfew implemented. Major K escorted him to a city he felt safe in just south of Baghdad and then got him out to the Entry Control Point at the FOB and worked with our guards to get him off post. You can’t just drive in and off post, you have to have authorization and he was in civilian clothes carrying a handgun and cell phone. Usually when we find people like that on the roads and without the right papers they’re arrested, or worse. FYI, cell phones are the preferred method to detonate IED's.

This country is different from ours in many ways. We’ve learned the value of hard work to gain end results, but sometimes people need discipline to get the work done. It’s tough on us as Coalition soldiers, because we pull our hair out trying to show them how to get ahead, when they sometimes could really use a boot up their ass like the Colonel demonstrated. It wasn’t too long ago that the U.S. military use to take care of its problem soldiers by taking them behind the woodshed and kicking the snot out of them. The Marines only stopped hitting their recruits back in the 70’s, or so they say. It’s an interesting situation building an Army from scratch with our western values.

There are a lot of stories floating around about the MiTT’s we have embedded with the Iraqi’s, out in the Iraqi Army Divisions, Brigades and Battalion. The MiTT’s (Military Transition Team) are regular U.S. forces assigned to IA units. It could be a team of 10 embedded in a battalion of 250 Iraqi’s. Much like the storied Green Beret, they’re mentors, coaches, technical assistants who live, eat, sleep, drive, train and work with the Iraqi’s 24X7. They have HMMWV’s and radio’s to keep in contact with their U.S. home base, somewhere over that hill. That’s dedication and it takes a certain kind of soldier to make it work. The stories coming out of there will make a great movie some day. The good news is that the Iraqi’s adopt them; they take care of them and have even protected them in many cases.

Lots of work going on supporting the Iraqi’s and there are voices of moderation coming from high level Iraqi positions now. That's good news for all of us.

Best wishes from Iraq