Replies to post #45113 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

Thank You F6 ... ;( .. this very fine man , with the experience of 'being there' + his children 'being there ' & 'returning there ' + with one wounded and not being able to 'return' there - along with his lovely wife teaching 3rd grade, married for 35 .. 37? ....years ... ... wrote a meaningful story of Iraq and America .... it left me shaking, sick to my stomach .. and then rage .... the rage .... ! ...then tears .... .. then helplessness ....nausea is still with me . Oh..!! .. how could we ever have come to this .. ???? .. I hold the American people responsible .. ! .. responsible for being the dumbest fk*s in the whole world ..! .. why ..?? ... how ...?? .. sheeeesh ..! ..

.."..Today I see a world of strong, democratic and free countries hoping and praying for America, their model, to once again find her bearing and lead the world in freedom, strength, integrity, as a force against those who would seek to derail mans progress into a future of liberty and justice for all. I believe they do want America to succeed for they know our downfall could well mean their own destruction.

When President Bush took office in 2000, America was a healthy, free, culturally expanding society whose reach and influence for good in the world was being embraced by friend and potential foe alike. During the preceding President Clinton years, the countries of the Middle East were looking to the U.S.A. to be the true and honest broker for peace. Israelis and Palestinians alike were beginning to believe that real peace could come to them after so many decades of war and suffering.

America had no debt to the world, after having been a debtor nation under the previous administrations of George Bush Sr. and President Ronald Reagan, President William Clinton was able to lead America out of debt and indeed left a surplus of over 250 Billion Dollars in the U.S. Treasury when he left office.

Now, under the leadership and authority of President George Bush Jr., America is between 8 and 10 Trillion dollars in debt to nations who do not consider us as real friends. Nations like China who holds over 1.3 Trillion Dollars of American Treasury Bonds. Bonds President Bush permitted them to buy. Consequently, we are broke, broken and groping for vision and leadership in America as the whole world watches the spectacle George Bush and the Republican Party has made of my country.."

And then I read some of these posters on ihub ... reckless, feckless , ignorantly greedy to the 1st degree ... yelling , screaming , lying babies ... or just plain mean old racist ones ...

they appear to not know what they had or what they lost .. nor how long and hard it will be for us to just 'break even' .. how very much 'stuff' .. we just have to get out of the way before we can really even begin to be a beacon of light anywhere - anymore ... stand on strong financial ground ??? .. well .. that I do not know about .. but I sure do know about the ethical ground we lost .. how many years will it take to redeem that ???

[StephanieVanbryce]

AFTERMATH

By U.S. Army First Lieutenant Sangjoon Han



Qasim was only a few paces from the road when he caught his first glimpse of the approaching vehicles. His heart jumped into his throat as he dropped the clump of soil he'd been examining. He knew something was about to happen. The town on the far side of the road was suddenly empty.



The three trucks drew steadily closer and were soon just a hundred meters away. From this distance Qasim could make out the faces of the individual soldiers. It was the closest that he'd ever come to them, he realized, and he was still studying their expressions when the explosion engulfed the last truck in the convoy.



The noise was deafening, and the old farmer felt the ground shake beneath his feet, but Qasim stood fixed in place, observing the aftermath. He wanted to see what the Americans would do. The answer was not long in coming. The Americans started shooting.

He turned to run.



Sergeant Price was kneeling just a few meters away from his humvee, taking aim with his rifle.

“If they’re running, they’re guilty.” The credo had been drilled in their heads over and over again, and it was what went through the sergeant’s head as he knelt to take aim. He desperately wanted the man to stop running before he squeezed the trigger.

The rifle kicked back against his shoulder where it was braced, and Price could see a small puff of dirt rising a few meters ahead of the man. There was no way the Iraqi could have missed it, and yet he kept on running.

“Stop!” Price shouted at the man’s back. He gave the man another second, then skipped another round in front of him.

It would be so simple for the man to stop, Price thought, as the silent anger rose up inside of him. Just stop running, his mind screamed at the man. The son of a bitch was going to make him shoot. Price hated the man at that moment. He wanted the man to die for the sin of forcing Price to kill him.

“STOP!” he shouted only a half-second before he fired again.






Qasim kept his jaw clenched tightly shut. He refused to look down at his abdomen for fear that the sight would fill him with horror and he would cry out or weep. He was less than two hundred meters from his house. Inside, his wife would be huddled in the far corner—the smallest children gathered around her while the older ones hid elsewhere in the field.

He saw the outlines of the Americans when he opened his eyes, though the world had taken on a terrible brightness. There was something about them that made them soft, almost pudgy. They were people used to luxury, and soon they would go back to their old lives while he would be dead and his children left fatherless. At last, he could feel anger cutting through the pain.





Sergeant Price knew it was hopeless the moment he saw the ground under the man turning into dark, bloody mud. Still, the Iraqi was alive and conscious, and the only alternative to trying to save him was to return to their humvee and watch him die from the side of the road.

About the only thing he could do was to give the man an IV to try to keep up his blood pressure. It was absurd, he thought to himself, that he was holding a little plastic bag over a man whose vital organs were sitting in a pile on top of him. But he simply didn’t know what else to do.




Qasim could feel the American helicopter taking off. How would his wife and sons ever be able to bury him now? He didn’t even know where they were carrying him.

He silently cursed his own stupidity. He also cursed the Americans for their guns and the young men who attacked them with their bombs. He almost cursed God, but just barely caught himself. He was going to die, and there was nothing he could do about it.

He looked around the helicopter once more, trying to catch a few last glimpses of his surroundings. On the far wall was a window, the blue Iraqi sky beyond.

Across from him there was an American soldier clenching his eyes shut and shaking slightly. Qasim could see that for all the fabulous technology that his country had sent with him, the soldier was still filled with terror. He is a boy, Qasim said to himself.



It will be over soon, Qasim thought as each breath grew more labored than the last. He took one final look at the soldier and closed his eyes.



http://www.pbs.org/weta/crossroads/about/show_operation_homecoming_writings.html

[F6]

US surge is failing, says UK's Iraq envoy

By Colin Freeman, Chief Foreign Correspondent, and Philip Sherwell in New York, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 11:29pm BST 19/05/2007

The "troop surge" by American soldiers in Iraq is not working, one of Britain's senior military officials in Baghdad has said.

In a pessimistic assessment of the strategy designed to pull Iraq back from all-out civil war, Alastair Campbell, the outgoing defence attaché at the British Embassy in Baghdad, claimed that extra US forces were not achieving the desired drop in violence.

Mr Campbell, whose remarks may cause embarrassment to Downing Street and anger in Washington, said that the casualty figures for April - in which 1,500 civilians are believed to have been killed - provided no "encouraging" evidence.

Speaking on the record last week to a public audience at Chatham House, the London-based foreign-policy research institute, he said: "The evidence does not suggest that the surge is actually working, if reduction in casualties is a criterion. The figures in April were not encouraging."

In unusually candid comments, Mr Campbell also disclosed that American commanders had decided that the criteria for the "success" of the troop surge would be nothing more than a reduction in violence to the level prior to last year's al-Qaeda bombing of the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra, which destroyed its golden dome.

The destruction of the shrine, one of the most important Shia sites in the world, led to a dramatic escalation in sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shia factions, peaking at 3,500 deaths in September last year. Casualty figures had been running at 800 a month before that, a level that few would regard as anything approaching peace.

While the United States military has made little secret of its view that the bloodshed in Iraq can now only be contained, rather than stamped out altogether, the suggestion that 800 murders a month in the country would be a measure of success is an indication of how far the coalition has been forced to reign in its expectations.

Mr Campbell, who holds the rank of colonel, left Baghdad in February and is about to retire. His remarks that the troop surge seems not to have succeeded may also be a premature judgment.

American generals have insisted that the success - or otherwise - of the surge cannot legitimately be assessed until September, when Gen David Petraeus will present a six-month review of the year-long operation to the US Congress. Gen Petraeus, the commander of coalition forces, has said that even by then, there may be no "definitive" conclusions, as many of the 20,000 soldiers involved in the surge will not arrive until next month.

Jack Keane, a retired US general and one of the co-authors of the "surge" blueprint, rejected claims that the tactic was failing, citing a marked drop in sectarian violence since the extra troops began arriving in January. "From a security perspective, the surge is making steady progress," he told The Sunday Telegraph. "The major indicator is the reduction in sectarian violence. We will get the full effect after the last brigade arrives in June."

The casualty count for April of 1,506 civilian deaths, from Iraqi government figures, was 20 per cent down from March, when 1,861 civilians were killed. The figure for February was 1,645.

Dan Goure, a Pentagon adviser, confirmed that the use of the Samarra benchmark was common among military commanders. "If we get back to pre-Samarra levels, then that's a significant reduction in violence, especially sectarian violence, and will provide the momentum for further improvements."

The Ministry of Defence said Mr Campbell was speaking only in a personal capacity. "We are in agreement with the Americans, that it is too early to give an estimate of the impact of the troop surge yet," said a spokesman.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tony Blair made his farewell visit to Iraq yesterday as Prime Minister, his seventh trip since toppling Saddam Hussein four years ago.

He met with Iraqi leaders in the capital's US-guarded Green Zone, and then headed to Basra to spend time with British troops. At both locations insurgents fired mortars designed to disrupt the visit.

Accompanying him was Martin Amis, the novelist who is writing about Mr Blair's final days in office. Downing Street declined to say whether Mr Amis's work was of a biographical nature.

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2007

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/20/wirq120.xml