With that in mind, here’s an appeal to anyone out there with firsthand experiences in Iraq today – in the military or elsehwere – to send me your own impressions of what’s going on. I don’t trust most of the journalists, I’m afraid. Here’s part of one email I just received:
I left early this morning for Mosul then to a town in Northern Iraq called Duhok. It is a Kurdish city and a bigtime market place. The people there really love the Americans… more than anywhere else. It was a very cool experience. Kids wanting to touch you and thank you for getting rid of Saddam. I had one kid saying… “mister… Saddam very bad … bush very good…” and repeating it over and over. It was a very long day and I am glad to be back at Qwest… Northern Iraq is soo pretty with the mountains and some water. The Kurdish people are very friendly and honest. One of the soldiers dropped money accidentally out of his pocket and didn’t notice. A whole group of kids came up and pointed to it saying ” Mister your money…” Most kids in shitty places like this would just steal the cash and run.
News you won’t get on the BBC. Then there’s this fascinating blog from a soldier in Iraq calling himself “Chief Wiggles.” My favorite passages:
0900 The workday begins with a quick meeting with the major. We review what has gone on over the last 24 hours and what we should focus on over the next 24 hours. We are getting prisoners every day, up to hundreds at a time, along with the ones we already have. We have a screening team, an interrogation team, counter intelligence team, our analysts, an OCE section and the rest of the operation people. Each team has a mission and responsibility for a different area of the total overall operation. We are all busily engaged in extracting and compiling information regarding the most important issues at hand, like weapons of mass destruction, etc. I can’t say in detail but we have been instrumental through our intel in capturing people, preventing hostilities, and a variety of other things. We are making a difference in the overall effort here.
0945 I go through my government email from various people stationed around the country who are forwarding information or who have requests for information.
Just an average day, making things a tiny bit better for the people of Iraq. And it’s not easy:
These are tough times for all, not just for the prisoners. All of us here are away from our families, away from our lives and have our own degree of sacrifice and suffering. There are young men here who got married right before they were mobilized, others who had a wife they left with small children, many that left a pregnant wife missing the birth of their first child, others with illnesses and deaths at home, many with financial situations, many interrupting their education or other planned events, and just missing out on our lives back home. But we chose to serve. We chose to be a good neighbor to our brothers and sisters here in Iraq. We chose to do our part to bring about the liberation of these people, to put them back on their path towards freedom and democracy.
I find such sentiments and such lives deeply moving. This is the core of what is going on: a brutal dictator was deposed and a country rescued and brought fitfully back to life. The men and women who accomplished this are, to my mind, heroes. For them we should apologize? For them we should even explain?
The Dish 