Category Archives: Troops

Short

Posted on February 27, 2007 | Comments Off on Short

Ben of Mesopotamia is so short…

"I’m even more tired of seeing MedEvac helicopters skimming above the palm trees, ferrying more wounded soldiers to the Combat Support Hospital."

Short timer malaise in Baghdad. 

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Posted in Iraq, The War, Troops

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Dustin Ross Donica, R.I.P.

Posted on February 26, 2007 | Comments Off on Dustin Ross Donica, R.I.P.

Army Specialist Donica, 22, from Spring, north of Houston, was killed by a sniper in Baghdad Dec. 28. He was the 3,000th U.S. serviceman to die during the war, and therefore the "grim milestone" of 2006 for much of the MSM. Wikipedia misspelled his name in their haste. His family, having none of it, made "a point of deflecting attention" from the fact, according to the March edition of Texas Monthly. Since then, they have put up an impressive Web site "dedicated to the memory of Dustin Donica, the Donica Family, and Dustin’s brothers in arms." The site includes photos and background Celtic music, as well as "American Soldier," a country ballad by Toby Keith. Texas Monthly eulogized Donica as one of more than 275 Texans killed in Iraq, "the highest number from any state other than California, and each one has left behind not just a family but a community."

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Posted in Iraq, Obituaries, Troops

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Majority support Bush and war

Posted on February 20, 2007 | Comments Off on Majority support Bush and war

Not what you’d expect to find in an opinion poll after so much MSM and congressional bashing, but that’s where this Public Opinion Strategies poll of voters is going:

  • 57% believe “The Iraq War is a key part of the global war on terrorism.”
  • 57% “support finishing the job in Iraq," that is, keeping the troops there until the Iraqi government can maintain control and provide security for its people.
  • 50% want our troops should stay and “do whatever it takes to restore order until the Iraqis can govern and provide security to their country” while only 17% favor immediate withdrawal
  • 56% believe “Even if they have concerns about his war policies, Americans should stand behind the President in Iraq because we are at war.”
  • 53% believe “The Democrats are going too far, too fast in pressing the President to withdraw the troops from Iraq.”

 More here, which includes a link to the complete poll in pdf. Via Instapundit.

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The view from the dark side

Posted on February 19, 2007 | Comments Off on The view from the dark side

Teflon Don gets down as he preps for patrol:

"You can think of it as duty- you have a job, and that job requires violence. You can hate- the easiest of all excuses, and the most exhausting. You can look at it as simple survival- if you don’t kill him, then he’ll kill you. However you justify it, you are still in a war, and people will still die. It wears on everyone- the American deaths, the ‘collateral damage’…the innocents killed when some faceless murderer blows himself up in a crowd. Yes, even the enemy dead take their toll."

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Shooting the wounded

Posted on February 18, 2007 | Comments Off on Shooting the wounded

Despicable Europeans still angry that cowboy Bush toppled Saddam find nasty ways of getting even:

"American transports flying badly wounded U.S. troops back to the United States, often ask European air controllers for a more direct flight path through European air space. This is in order to get the wounded soldier or marine to the American hospital more quickly. This is particularly useful when the aircraft have been turned into a flying ECU (Emergency Care Unit), and doctors are actually treating the seriously wounded in flight. The European air controllers rarely allow the direct flight."

Many of these flights are direct from Iraq to the Army hospitals in San Antonio.

Via Op-For 

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The Al Q Congress

Posted on February 17, 2007 | Comments Off on The Al Q Congress

"The message Congress just sent to them all was, ‘Hold on, we’ll stop the surge, we’re going to leave – and you can slaughter the innocent with our blessing.’" Ralph Peters writes today. "We’ve reached a low point in the history of our government when a substantial number of legislators would welcome an American defeat in Iraq for domestic political advantage."

The Republicans look ridiculous enough when they kowtow to their anti-abortion, can’t-live-without-school-prayer base. But the Democrat base now is the hard Left which is only interested in anything that’s anti-American. What the Dems are doing now is going to get more American soldiers killed, plain and simple. I think the two-party system is in need of a serious overhaul. Let the loonies form their own parties and leave the rest of us alone.

HT Yargb 

UPDATE  Republicans successfully blocked the same Dems move in the Senate. But New York Dem Sen. Charles Schumer promises that the anti-war fight has only begun: "There will be resolution after resolution, amendment after amendment . . . just like in the days of Vietnam. The pressure will mount, the president will find he has no strategy, he will have to change his strategy and the vast majority of our troops will be taken out of harm’s way and come home." And then we can wait for the next 9/11.

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B-1 over Baghdad

Posted on February 15, 2007 | Comments Off on B-1 over Baghdad

Omar at Iraq the Model posts a cellphone snapshot of a B-1 Lancer a few thousand feet over his city, apparently as part of the crackdown of the surge which, he says, already is being felt by residents:

"On the streets, checkpoints and roadblocks are becoming increasingly serious and strict in doing their job; soldiers and policemen are sparing no vehicles or convoys from searching and I personally saw a case yesterday where an ambulance driver tried to rush his vehicle through a checkpoint but the soldiers ordered him to stop and let him pass only after they checked the inside of the vehicle finding only a civilian medical emergency."

As for the B-1, its satellite-guided, 500-pound GBU-38 "reduces undesired collateral damage and is very useful in urban Close Air Support," according to Wikipedia.

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