Subject:
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The Essay (was Re: The status of Iraq from a soldier who is there.)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 30 Apr 2004 18:02:59 GMT
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Viewed:
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850 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Don Heyse wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Don Heyse wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Thomas Stangl wrote:
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You want to give the gist of it?
I refuse to sign up at every danged news site across the world just to
pick up one story here or there.
Mike Petrucelli wrote:
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http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/8515323.htm?1c
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Looks like a typo in the link. Try this.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/8515323.html?1c
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I got the same sign in screen from yours as I did from Mike’s...
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Yeah, it’s weird. I got in somehow without signing up. I think I
pasted the link into the URL bar and fixed it up to end with .html.
Then it served up the article and also must’ve redirected me to
the odd looking mangled link. Now I get the register dialog with the
.html link and the article with the .html?1c link.
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Odd. When I tested the link in the post preview page it worked. Now I can’t even
get to it using the article search on www.philly.com. Must be after a few days
it goes to only registered users. Quite annoying.
Given that the newspaper has already made their money selling papers and the
original writer wanted this published to provide information on the subject, the
fair use provision on copyright law does permit “non-profit for informational
and discussion purposes” reproduction so...
Posted on Sun, Apr. 25, 2004
Without hatred in our hearts
GS12 Michael Meoli is a Navy SEAL (Sea, Air and Land special warfare team)
medic who, for the last six months, has been on authorized absence from his
reserve team to work as a contractor for the U.S. government in Iraq, patrolling
and keeping the peace. Meoli sent the following essay and photos via e-mail to
friends and relatives back home, and he gave The Inquirer permission to print
them because of his belief that the “liberal media” are misreporting the
progress of the war and U.S.-Iraqi relations. Note: Because of the danger of
reprisals, we have withheld mention of locale and photos of Iraqis who cooperate
with American forces.
Introduction: Iraq
The Iraqi people as a whole love us. You read it right: They love us.
Terrorists may hate us, and radicals in different ethnic groups within Iraq
may hate each other, but in general, the common Iraqi people, Shias,
Sunnis, Kurds, Chaldeans, Turkomans, all have one thing in common: For
once, they have hope for themselves and their children, and that hope
centers on one group: Americans.
We are helping train Iraqis to protect themselves with sound moral and ethical
procedures. But while teaching adults is important, educating children is
the key. So a lot of money is going into rebuilding schools in Iraq and
getting rural children to attend for the first time in history.
The U.S. Marines have shown appropriate reactions in Fallujah since the March
31 murders of four U.S. contractors, one of whom I knew. As for the rest of
us, we will respond with lethal force when our lives or those of others are
threatened, or when we are impeded from carrying out a critical mission.
Our ROEs (rules of engagement) may change depending on the threats we face.
But we are moral and civilized and will never degenerate to the kind of
barbarism seen in Fallujah.
Here are three examples of how we Americans behave when dealing with Iraqis in
crisis situations. All these missions took place in March, just outside
the gates of our base.
Mission 1: Force Protection/MedEvac
A taxi from Baghdad approached our front gate. Unknown to the guards, he was
carrying one of our translators. He was ordered to slow down. When he didn’t,
he was forcefully ordered to stop and get out. In panic, he floored the gas.
Appropriately, the gate guards fired eight 5.56 caliber rounds into the taxi,
which veered off into a field. No one inside was seriously injured. After a
search, we decided that the driver’s mistake, though nearly fatal, had not
been deliberate. Had the guards been bloodthirsty, they could have continued
to fire until both Iraqis were dead. But they are professionals, and they
followed their current ROEs.
After tending to our translator’s minor wounds, I noticed the cab driver
holding his chest with a clenched fist. He reported severe pressure on
the left side of his chest radiating to his left shoulder and arm. His
pulse was irregular. Our electrocardiogram monitor showed potentially
life-threatening heart rhythms. I determined he had unstable angina, the
beginning stages of a heart attack.
Because he was outside our gates, we had no legal obligation to treat him and
could have let him suffer and die. But we do not have hatred in our
hearts. We brought him into our compound and put him on oxygen. I
administered nitroglycerin, and started an IV and gave him morphine and
other appropriate drugs. And we packaged him for flight and called in
an American Dust-off MedEvac Crew. I flew with him to the closest
combat surgical hospital, where, for 24 hours, he received the same
medical care any American soldier would have received. He was given
medicine to take home and was turned over to an Iraqi ambulance when he
was stable. An American civil affairs officer is helping him process
his claim and get his cab repaired or replaced. One week later, he
returned for his cab, and he made it very clear he doesn’t hate us,
either.
Mission 2: Civil Affairs
A few days ago, the son of a local shepherd reported that the family dogs had
returned home but not his father. Some of the sheep had been found outside an
unsecure ammunition supply point (ASP) still full of live unexploded ordnance
(UXO). Fearing the worst, the son asked us to help find his father. We found
the shepherd’s body next to a small detonation crater. He had been trying to
strip a piece of ordnance of its brass casing, for which there is a vigorous
black market.
If we were barbarians with hatred in our hearts, we could have done things
barbarians do to bodies, which perpetuates more hatred. But we are
professionals. We carefully collected and documented his possessions and
placed the remains in a body bag. We took our translator out to the family
to notify them and provide grief support. At the family’s request, we
brought them in to see their loved one and touch and caress the one intact
limb for the last time. We waited while they said Muslim prayers; some of us
added silent Christian ones. Then the Army expedited the arrival of Iraqi
police authorities to bury the remains before sunset, as is their tribal
custom.
Mission 3: Interdiction
On March 31, the same day the four contractors were murdered and desecrated in
Fallujah, I was activated to patrol with a quick-response force. We returned
to the same ASP site where we found the shepherd. But this time, we had to
go much farther in. The UXO were as thick as a carpet underfoot.
We’d encountered much smaller groups of looters here before, looking for
ordnance and scrap metal. We can’t let them sell intact ordnance; that’s
the kind of stuff used every day to blow someone up from here to Israel.
This day we found 15 looters, then 20, then 20 more. Soon, we had more
than 100. Our team had started with only eight of us contractors and three
regular Army infantry soldiers. Two of the soldiers found themselves
isolated with more than 50 looters. The soldiers asked for help, so we
split into two three-man teams and patrolled in on foot.
At least two looters shot at us with AK-47s, which were extinguished by
immediate fire. My team joined the two soldiers in the middle of the ASP. We
now had 148 looters in all. Anyone still holding weapons would have been
shot. But none were, and almost all had discarded the ordnance they were
stealing. Now, each of us were carrying more than 250 rounds of ammunition,
and we could have lined the looters up and shot every one. Or we could have
forced them to walk back through a mine field or any number of unspeakably
worse things done in Iraq by the previous government. But that’s not the
American way, not the model of behavior we wish to perpetuate here or take
back home. So we kept order and discipline and carefully searched each of
them. When we were sure everyone was safe and we knew exactly where the Army
would meet us, we carefully marched them in columns out of the ASP. We ended
up with almost 200 looters, too many for the Army to incarcerate that day.
So we methodically took digital pictures of each one, including identifying
marks, scars or tattoos. We recorded first names, father’s names, tribal
names, and birthplaces. Later, we turned them over to military intelligence
officers.
That night, we saw films of the charred remains of our brothers hanging on a
bridge in Fallujah amid screams of jubilation.
Pure thuggery has ruled Iraq for years. A few thugs are standing in the wings
around here trying to vie for power because that’s all they know. It
doesn’t matter what variation of Islam they are spouting. They are nothing
more than mob bosses, and the Iraqi people, in general, are tired of it.
Add some out-of-country terrorists to the mix, and add the American
liberal media in an election year, and these thugs think they are going to
win. And the good and decent people of Iraq are scared that we will
abandon them and allow the thugs to wholesale slaughter them after we
leave. I pray American voters see that we must finish this one the right
way. God bless America.
Quite interesting yes?
-Mike Petrucelli
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