AND THE IRONY HERE IS that some female servicemembers upon learning of possible deployment or extended field duty in the near future, will get pregnant precisely so they DON'T have to go.

A Marine gave birth aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Boxer in the Persian Gulf last month, marking what Pentagon officials believe is the first time an active-duty woman delivered a baby on a combat ship in a war zone.

As a rule, the Pentagon does not deploy pregnant service members to war zones. Navy regulations, which also cover the Marine Corps, require a pregnant servicewoman to notify her commanding officer no later than two weeks after diagnosis.

A Pentagon official said the Marine in this case told superiors that she did not know she was pregnant.

"She never told anybody she was pregnant," the official said. "I think she claimed she didn't know she was pregnant. The good thing was the Boxer has a complete hospital on board, so that was not a problem."

Read the rest here.

OFF TOPIC BUT TIMELY and good reading. Extracts from Jonah Goldberg's commencement address at Hillsdale Academy.

Instead I'd like to give you some advice I think might be useful for anybody going to college.

First, don't ever date anybody in your dorm for at least the first semester. It won't work out and it will make your life really complicated.

Second, don't buy a mini-fridge until you're sure your roommate hasn't got one.

More important: Understand the difference between clichés and wisdom. Kids today, for good or ill, are pretty well-trained when it comes to finding the deficiencies of ideology. But clichés are not only accepted without question on campuses today, they are far too often deemed to be a substitute for actual thinking.

We've all heard something along the lines of "better ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be punished." This sort of thing is spouted on campuses across this country as if it is an argument, as if it's a self-evident argument. It's not. Maybe it's a sentiment. Or an expression of principle or even a priority. But more often it's a copout for kids — and professors — who wish to sound intelligent rather than be intelligent.

Why is it better that ten guilty men go free? Ten career criminals will do far more damage to society out of prison than the price society will suffer with one innocent man in jail. By the way, we call them "career criminals" for the same reason we refer to "career accountants" — they make a living out of being criminals. A strict utilitarian might say, better to punish the one innocent man for the sake of the larger society. On the other hand, a civil libertarian may ask "Why ten men? Why not 100? Or 1,000? Why not let them all go?" After all, we can say with pretty high confidence that somebody in jail today is innocent. We just don't who he is. So why not let them all go in order to make sure the innocent aren't punished? In other words, if you want to say that you'd prefer to err on the side of protecting the rights of the innocent, fine. But that's easy to say, and more important, it's not an argument.

Read the whole thing here.

AND JUST FOR FUN Dave Letterman's Top Ten Reasons I'm Proud to be an American, presented by soldiers of the 622d Movement Control Team, Fort Eustis, VA.

7. "I don't see Yao Ming playing basketball in Belgium"

THE TIMES THEY ARE A'CHANGING. CPT Patii's YBIL (Younger Brother in Law, aka Helo Boy) sends this story.

In A Massive Shift, U.S. Plans To Reduce Troops In Germany (Wall Street Journal, June 10, 2003, Pg. 1)

The Pentagon plans to significantly shrink the U.S. force of 70,000 troops in Germany, a military stronghold for half a century, and put far more American forces in Africa and the Caucasus region. The move-part of the most radical redeployment of American forces since the end of the Cold War-is driven by the increasing importance that the United States is placing on protecting key oil reserves in Africa and the Caucasus region near the Caspian Sea, as well as addressing concerns about combating terrorism.

We touched on this subject earlier here with this story

A group of Army wives took some serious jabs Monday at the Bush administration’s notions for restructuring U.S. military bases in Europe.
These weren’t just any wives. Those speaking out included Holly Petraeus, wife of the 101st Airborne Division’s commander Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, and the wives of several field-grade officers.

They testified at Fort Campbell, Ky., at a field hearing of the Senate Committee on Children and Families to talk about problems military families face during deployments.

A proposed shift of bases from locations in Germany, where families accompany service members, to new sites in Eastern Europe where families wouldn’t come along, popped up in the hearing when the women spoke about the family stress sparked by the ever-increasing pace of deployments.

Petraeus said the top concern in the minds of many at Fort Campbell is that a downsized military is being called on for too many deployments.

Moving to unaccompanied unit rotations in Germany instead of accompanied tours “will be perceived as just one more deployment added to the load that they already bear,” she said.

Meanwhile, Secretary Rumsfeld has made an unusual move, potentially recalling a retired officer to active duty to take on the job as US Army Chief of Staff. Rumor around the Army is that Rumsfeld is so hard to work for that nobody wants the job. The other idea is that Rumsfeld's transformation ideas are so, well, out there that none of the 4 stars want to be associated with what they perceive to be the gutting of the greatest Army on Earth. And note the interesting tid bit about body language costing a 3 Star General a shot at it.

Leaking the news of Rumsfeld's choice for the position, which becomes vacant with Wednesday's retirement of Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, was viewed as a "trial balloon." The secretary wants to see who shoots and who salutes a rather controversial move.

If Schoomaker is formally nominated, he would be the first general summoned back on active duty to serve in a top job since President John F. Kennedy called back Gen. Maxwell Taylor from retirement in 1962 to become chairman of the joint chiefs.

Rumsfeld has been feuding for a long time with Army leadership, and he passed over nine active-duty four-star generals.

The rest of that story is here.

And one more take on the story...

The extraordinary break with convention is the latest episode in a series of confrontations between Mr Rumsfeld and the US army leadership.

Gen Tommy Franks, commander of US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Gen John Keane, the army vice-chief, both opted to retire rather than take the top job in their service.

Recently Mr Rumsfeld sacked Thomas White, the army secretary, and publicly berated Gen Eric Shinseki, the retiring chief of staff, for suggesting on the eve of war that hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed in post-conflict Iraq.

Read it all here.

OK - I'll try to post some more later today...but for now I've got other stuff to do.

HMMMMM. If true, then the enterprising Iraqi ought to compare the going rate Saddam is paying for Americans with what the Americans would be willing to pay for Saddam. That math ought to be a no brainer.

If the sightings are bogus then we see the remnants of the fear of the tyrant...or we see someone with an agenda invoking that fear. Either way it is ugly.

Saddam Hussein has been seen north of Baghdad and is paying a bounty for every American soldier killed, the leader of an Iraqi exile group said yesterday.

The whole story is here.

HOT ENOUGH FOR YA?

Baghdad, Iraq-AP -- One soldier in Iraq says it's like "someone's holding a hairdryer to your face."

The legendary Mesopotamian sun hammers down and drives afternoon temperatures to 110 degrees. But Iraqis say June is mild -- it could be 130 degrees in July and August.

Sheesh...read about it here. And send more cold packs.

I HAVE VERY MIXED FEELINGS about this story. The Associated Press has gone to great lengths here to quantify the number of civilian dead as a result of the war. Fine, that is a legitimate thing to want to know.

My heartburn begins, however, when I consider that reporters were in Iraq in the years leading up to this war (remember the CNN Scandal...accused of not reporting the truth in order to maintain "access" to Iraq?) I wonder where was the same zeal and effort to chonicle the estimated 300,000 Iraqi's who simply disappeared at Saddam's hand and now are being uncovered in mass graves.

And Human Rights Watch...where were you? And Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, do you have an adjunct organization called Campaign for Innocent Victims Under Ruthlessly Brutal Dictators?

No? I didn't think so.

The AP's finding: At least 3,240 civilians died throughout the country, including 1,896 in Baghdad. The count is still fragmentary, and the complete number — if it is ever tallied — is sure to be significantly higher.

Several surveys have looked at civilian casualties within Baghdad, but the AP's is the first attempt to gauge the scale of such deaths from one end of the country to the other, from Mosul in the north to Basra in the south...

...In the 1991 Gulf War an estimated 2,278 civilians were killed, Iraqi civil defense authorities said. No official U.S. count is known to have been made. That war consisted of seven weeks of bombing and 100 hours of ground war, and did not take U.S. forces into any Iraqi cities.

This time it was very different. In a war in which Saddam Hussein's soldiers melted away into crowded cities, changed into plain clothes or wore no uniform to begin with, separating civilian and military casualties was often impossible.

Adding to the civilian toll was the regime's tactic of parking its troops and weapons in residential neighborhoods, creating targets for U.S. bombs that increased the casualties among noncombatants...

..."Did the Americans bomb civilians? Yes. But one should be realistic," said Dr. Hameed Hussein al-Aaraji, new director of Baghdad's al-Kindi Hospital. "Saddam ran a dirty war. He put weapons inside schools, inside mosques. What could they do?"

...Some of the best record-keeping was in Baghdad, where AP journalists visited all 24 hospitals that took in war casualties. Their logs provided a count of 1,896 civilians killed. There were certainly more civilians dead. A few hospitals lost count as fighting intensified...

...It will take months or more before anything like a final count emerges. One survey is being done by the advocacy group Human Rights Watch, another by the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, which hopes to win U.S. compensation for victims or their relatives.

A SAD STORY ABOUT THE PRESSURES on a young soldier standing sentry in the night.

"I don't think anyone understands how it gets when you have to stare in your zone for so long," Dresel, 24, of Stamford, Conn., said later. "There came a point where I thought, 'What's that over on the left?' 'What's that over on the right?'"

They were the kind of questions that many GIs would face in a war of blurry battle lines, where the priority of preserving American lives bumped up against civilians caught in the crossfire.

After more than an hour, a figure moved toward Dresel on the sidewalk. He fired a warning shot, and through his scope he made out what looked like an old man.

"I fired off another warning shot. I yelled 'halt,' 'stop,' 'kif,' everything I could think of. Even the tank gave a warning shot," he said. "Finally, I was like, well, I've got to take this guy out."

Dresel said he fired 15 shots. When daylight broke, he was ordered to examine the body.

"All I'm thinking is, I hope this guy has a grenade, or some kind of kit wrapped to him, so I'm not just an old-man killer," he said.

When he got there, he found none of that.

"There wasn't nothing on him," Dresel said, lowering his voice. "I just killed an old guy, who was probably drunk or something."

Fellow soldiers assured Dresel there was nothing else he could have done. He isn't convinced.

"Even now I feel bad," he said. "I did do my job. But you always wonder: If I could go back ..."

Read it all here.

OH GIVE ME A BLEEDIN' BREAK. What does it say about a country that governmental property has to be marked with 'DO NOT SELL"?

She said no one should be surprised that invasion forces aren't helping people.

"All the educated people of Iraq know that the war wasn't for helping the people, but for taking the oil," Hassan said.

"Before we said, 'O Saddam'; now we must say 'O Bush' and 'O Tony Blair.' They have destroyed everything.

"You may have read or seen how people are thanking the U.S. forces, but that is not all of the people, believe me," Hassan said.

Years of sanctions and three wars have left most Iraqis with little or no access to health care. Aid workers say hospitals lack drugs, medical equipment and other supplies needed to care for patients. Most of the shortages are a result of the former U.N. sanctions, but since the end of the war, many hospitals also have been looted.

Drugs and medical equipment, stamped "Ministry of Health -- Do not sell" can be found in markets from Baghdad to Basra.

Read it all here.

THE DEADLY GAMES OF CHECKPOINT CHALLENGE continue. Read it all here.

Assailants fired rocket-propelled grenades at a checkpoint in Baghdad's southwestern suburbs, killing one U.S. paratrooper and wounding another, a military statement said Wednesday.

It said the soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade were manning a weapons collection on Tuesday afternoon when a van pulled up about 250 yards from the checkpoint and a number of men exited. They fired two RPG rounds at the squad and then fled down the alleyway, the statement released by the U.S. Central Command said.

THOSE ARE THE MISSILES THAT HELP keep you cool in summer, right?

Forty Seersucker anti-ship missiles were discovered and confiscated by 1st Armored Division (AD) forces in a Baghdad suburb. Coalition personnel will destroy the missiles.

An extract of the Central Command daily update...the rest can be found here.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11th. The 31st day of CPT Patti's deployment. Last contact with her was on Sunday.

THIS AWFUL STORY is a bit off our topic, except it plays to the "Axis of Evil" theme. People are pressed to this, all because an insane megalomaniacal dictator must have his big Army and his nukes.

Cannibalism is increasing in North Korea following another poor harvest and a big cut in international food aid, according to refugees who have fled the stricken country.

Aid agencies are alarmed by refugees' reports that children have been killed and corpses cut up by people desperate for food. Requests by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) to be allowed access to "farmers' markets", where human meat is said to be traded, have been turned down by Pyongyang, citing "security reasons".

Anyone caught selling human meat faces execution, but in a report compiled by the North Korean Refugees Assistance Fund (NKRAF), one refugee said: "Pieces of 'special' meat are displayed on straw mats for sale. People know where they came from, but they don't talk about it."

The whole disgusting article is here.

JUST IN CASE YOU WONDER, NO, the US Army does NOT train for this.

The soldier from the U.S. Army's First Armored Division climbs on a chair clutching a machine gun and shouts at the dozens of people waiting by the barbed wire barring access to the headquarters of the Iraqi Central Bank.

``Get out of here, the bank is closed,'' he yells.

The people in the crowd were seeking to exchange their 10,000 dinar ($7.70) notes for bills in smaller denominations. Since the war ended April 10, traders and shopowners are charging a 25 percent fee on 10,000 dinar bills, the largest notes in circulation, after word spread that some may be counterfeit.

It was another of the many challenges U.S. occupation authorities and Iraqi central-bank officials face in restoring and managing Iraq's monetary system. With most banks closed, the banking system is crippled. There is no official exchange rate. The value of the dinar sometimes fluctuates as much as 50 percent in a week on unofficial exchange markets.

The story is here.

EXCUSE ME SENATOR, I appreciate your trying to make a point for the folks in Idaho...but not on the backs of servicemen who have just answered their nation's call. Sheesh...I wouldn't expect even Daschle to stoop this low...and you are a republican?

Baghdad's anti-aircraft batteries have proven less of a hazard to Air Force pilots than a fit of pique nurtured by one politician from Idaho.

U.S. Sen. Larry E. Craig has abused the Senate's rules to block the promotions and appointments of 850 Air Force officers for more than a month now. The senior Republican, supposedly a loyal supporter of the military, is peeved because the Idaho Air National Guard only received four C-130 cargo planes from the Air Force instead of the eight it was supposedly promised seven years ago.

The problem is much more than just a few officers not drawing their higher rates of pay. Senate approval is needed for specific appointments to the service's top spots. Among those officers who have not been able to take up their new posts due to Craig's blockade are Maj. Gen. John Rosa, who was supposed to be cleaning up a scandal-ridden Air Force Academy by now, and Gen. Robert H. Foglesong, who has been warming a chair in the Pentagon when he was supposed to have taken over as head of all air operations in Europe.

It is interesting to note that the only reason we, the people, are aware of this scandal is that some anonymous Air Force officers have leaked the facts to the press, specifically The New York Times. The story was quickly confirmed by Craig's own spokesman, who had the gall to go right on and say that the situation could be easily resolved if the Air Force would just reassign the four cargo planes.

But pleasing selfish senators is no way for the Pentagon to make strategic decisions about the deployment of its limited resources. Craig's obvious desire to make Boise's Gowen Field more important, and thus more likely to survive the next round of base closings, is pork barrel politics at its worst.

Amen to that...and the rest is here.

HERE IS A STORY OUT OF CONNECTICUT that confirms the efforts to reestablish schools in Iraq.

In the regular course of his life, Grasso is a fifth-year teacher of special education for eighth grade students at the Region 17 school, and an assistant football coach for Haddam-Killingworth High School's team...

But, today, and every day since January, he has been Army Sgt. Tom Grasso, serving with an Army Reserve civil affairs unit in Iraq...

...(H)e maintains regular contact with his family, and with his students through letters that are read aloud by Furey-Wagner at school assemblies.

The principal task of Grasso's unit is the reopening of Baghdad schools that have been damaged, in some cases, by bombing, but all of them devastated by looters. The rapacious looting that Baghdad has experienced has stripped its schools of "desks, fixtures, everything on the walls," Furey-Wagner says. "Imagine the worst building you can. This doesn't compare."

The looting extended even to the most basic of school supplies, creating a great need that Denna Stachelek, Grasso's wife, mentioned one day to his Haddam-Killingworth colleagues.

This prompted the school's staff and students to organize a campaign to fill that need - much as they had done for schools in Afghanistan, Furey-Wagner recalled. The schools are in dire need of pencils, paper, scissors, tape, markers, crayons, rulers, glue, composition books - all the simple tools that enable student learning.

The rest is here.

BUSH AND BLAIR FIND SUPPORT in the strangest place...Iran.

An Iranian government official with ties to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says Tehran sides with the Americans on one big issue — Saddam Hussein's weapons.

"Yes, we agree with the Americans. Our intelligence indicated that Iraq did possess weapons of mass destruction and was hiding them from the U.N.," the official said.

Read it here.

THERE IS PLENTY IN THE WAY OF BAD NEWS out there today...but that seems to be what draws the reporting. I'm trying to balance that with some of the better stuff that is harder to find.

Still, I found this story about circulating rumors to be interesting. Sort of goes along with our theme of these folks being fed lie after lie after lie. Rumors will happen in the best of times...and in these times it seems rumors are a form of lying to one's self...especially if you can blame someone else in the process.

Doctors treating a dangerous spike in cholera and other intestinal diseases say they are told by patients that they are victims of an American virus, unleashed so people will be grateful when the Americans heal them...

..."The Israelis told the Americans to get rid of our government and then take our oil," said a man parked in an impromptu gas line. "I heard that on the radio."

Said another motorist in a battered Toyota Corolla, "It's the fault of Kuwait. They sent the American soldiers in here to steal and to loot, and then the Americans are repaying them with our gasoline."

Wait a minute...the American soldiers steal and loot??? Sheesh.

"TRAVELERS ON A CIRCUIT OF PAIN". An axis of evil, indeed.

Their goal: to give their relatives religious burials in graves that will mark unjustly shortened lives.

``We are looking everywhere. It is as if we are drowning and searching for a straw to hold on to,'' said Hala Taleb, clad in a black chador and looking for her brother, for whom her ``heart is still burning.''

``Saddam has given us a nightmare. He is living free somewhere, but we're still living the nightmare,'' she said Monday, her eyes watering.

The five first met Saturday at the suspected mass grave south of Baghdad. On Monday, they returned together in the minibus from Baghdad, still grieving, still determined.

Human rights groups say that in Iraq, a country of 24 million people, nearly 300,000 are missing. Some disappeared in the 1980s, when Saddam is believed to have ordered the detention of thousands of communists, rival members of his Baath Party and Shiite Muslim activists. Many were never heard from again.

Read the whole thing here.

A FORMER POW TELLS his tale. Much of it is frightening...but I enjoyed this excerpt:

Were there any lighter moments?

In the third prison, a guard came to the door and blindfolded and cuffed me and took me down the hallway. They sat me down and ripped off the blindfold, and there was a guy standing there with rubber gloves and a tray of utensils.

The guy was like “Please. I am dentist and I want to look at your teeth.” I’m like, what the hell? With bombs and firefights, you want to worry about my teeth? After he examines me, he goes, “Please please, I am a dentist and you must brush your teeth.”

I’m thinking, dude, I haven’t showered in 20 days and you want me to brush my teeth?

Read it all here.

MORE ON THE DIFFERENCE between Fallujah and Baghdad.

"The people here, they don't like us — even the kids. They waved at us in Baghdad, but here they're scared when we roll up."

Read it all here.

THIS STORY RAN YESTERDAY in the dead-tree version of the Stars & Stripes newspaper. The highlighted soldier is based right here where we live and work. (Note of disclaimer, the article says Clemens is the commander of Company B, 1-36 Infantry. No he isn't...as his rank in the first paragraph indicates, he is the company first sergeant. Seems a newspaper written exclusively for military communities might have editors who would catch these little things.)

1st Sgt. Eric Clemens said he watched in disbelief as a stray cat dragged a human hand from a pile of garbage dumped in the street outside of a Baghdad hospital.

With no incinerator or proper place to dispose of medical and biological waste — and even bodies — the staff at the hospital and university in downtown Baghdad have resorted to dumping it in the Tigris River or in any nook or cranny just outside the hospital compound walls, said Clemens, commander of Company B, 1st Battalion, 36th Infantry Regiment of the Army’s 1st Armored Division.

Clemens’ reaction when he sees the dumping of waste might be drastic, but necessary, he said.

“I pull out my pistol and tell them to take it back,” the Friedburg, Germany–based soldier said while showing two of the dump sites, which contained blood-saturated bandages, IV bags, syringes and needles, mounds of other garbage and hundreds of swarming flies.

The rest is here.

SAW AN INTERESTING story on CNN this morning about the unrest in Fallujah. One detail of that story caught my attention. An Iraqi man was concerned about the safety of his family in Fallujah...so he packed them up and sent them to Baghdad. So, in at least one local's opinion Baghdad is one of the safer places to be.

Makes me feel better.

HERE IS A SUMMARY from Central Command (CENTCOM) rolling up the activities of the division over the last day.

In raids and patrolling activity during the last 24 hours, the 1st Armored Division in Baghdad seized 130 AK-47 rifles, 13 pistols, 6 grenades, a sword, 3 rocket-propelled grenade launchers with 7 rounds of ammunition and numerous mortar, rifle and machine gun rounds. They also detained 87 people for crimes including murder, looting, weapons and curfew violations, car theft, larceny and drug dealing.

Read about what the other divisions are doing here.

TUESDAY JUNE 10th, the 30th day of CPT Patti's deployment. Have not heard from her since that first very short email received this past Sunday morning.

WANT TO SEE SOMETHING that will put a small lump in your throat? A little while ago I shared with my inner circle of friends and family a letter written by CPT Patti's Brigade Commander. This letter, which he sent back here to the spouses and familes left behind by the deployed soldiers, asked for donations of school supplies. The Colonel's sector of Baghdad has 74 schools in it, all of whom are flat broke and have no school supplies.

I had also shared the need for personal items for CPT Patti and her troops.

Today I received an email, forwarded to me by a dear friend. It is written by a woman in rural Iowa...a woman I have never met, CPT Patti has never met, and certainly a classroom full of Iraqi children have never met. It is part of a back and forth exchange between my friends mother and this other lady. Here is an extract.

"When Ann called me I said I knew you would do it [...an interview on local radio about the needed supplies]. Let me know when and time so I can listen.

I sent off 3 boxes on Thursday. First I had it all in one big box and then it was so darn big and heavy I thought it would stay in a terminal too long, So I made it into 3 packages and marked boxes 1-2-3. I did put some toys in it, I never heard back from you if that would be acceptible, but I did send some things to play with for kids from the Dollar General Store. My gosh, $34 to send all 3... I had $150 in stuff in my packages.

But this is something I wanted to do. I just lost my Uncle who I was conservator over, and he was a veteran. I had about $100 left from his account and I KNEW this is exactly where he would want me to spend it. He looked forward to my mom's packages when he was in the Korean War.

So I feel really good about it. I hope you can campaign the whole thing up on the radio and get people to send even shoebox full of items."

Thank you Alden, Iowa.

Anybody gotta kleenex?

ANOTHER TRUCKLOAD OF GOLD seized by US Forces in Iraq. We asked earlier where do they get this stuff...and this story has one possible answer.

"What was found in those trucks has to be the gold Saddam asked Iraqis to donate to fight the Iran war," al-Khayoun said. "That gold helped keep him in power."

During the bleakest years of the conflict between Iran and Iraq, Saddam and his ministers appeared on Iraqi television, exhorting citizens to contribute their jewelry to the war effort. Some of that jewelry ended up being hammered into a solid gold carriage for Saddam, which broke under its own weight during a 1996 parade.

STUMBLED UPON ANOTHER BLOG being kept by a Warrant Officer (Intelligence type) in Kuwait. It is good, firsthand reading. In his June 6th entry he quotes from an email sent by an Iraqi doctor to a US Army Colonel. Here is part of it.

Colonel, I wan to express how I feel in my heat and if you can, I ask that you pass my words to your leaders and commanders and the marines and soldiers who suffered and are suffering for my country. I want all of you to know that the great majority of Iraqis applaud your coming, your success in battle and your efforts to be kind, decent people now.

We suffered for many years and no one would help us, not even our Arab brothers. Only America had the strength, not only in military power, but also in vision, in character, in moral authority, in love for its fellowman to come to our aid. I know it is hard for the soldiers now, they have no air-conditioning in their vehicles, they must live on our streets to protect us, and they are away from their families. I want them to know that we know the sacrifices they make for us. I pray to Allah that they will sacrifice no more: too many already have sacrificed so much.

I also want to apologize for some of our young people who are not mature enough o understand what you have done and what you have given us. We have not known freedom for a long time, so it will take time to truly appreciate what a glorious gift you have given us.

Many of us blame the sanctions for all our problems. It was not the sanctions that created what we see today, it was the regime that existed everywhere, to include this very building that I work in, the Ministry of Health. It was the regime that cheated the people out of what was rightfully theirs by God's laws.

There is more to this letter, and more first hand reports from the desert here.

MORE ON THE LYING. This author believes the truth is secondary to the self esteem of the Iraqis. What a decidedly liberal position. Unfortunately this author is spreading around the same load of BS that Baghdad Bob did on behalf of Saddam...and the more these clearly delusional people read it, the harder it gets for the good guys.

The Americans dropped a "tactical nuclear bomb" on Iraqi forces. Saddam Hussein made a final radio broadcast hours after Baghdad fell, pausing three times to stop himself from breaking down on the air. And casualties among U.S.-led coalition forces? Twenty thousand dead.

Iraq's first homegrown book about the war that changed it forever is a 124-page hodgepodge of anti-American tirades and wartime rumors.

"Under the Ashes of the Stormy War," by Islamic author Alaa el-din al-Mudaris, also feeds the web of myths on the whereabouts and actions of Saddam during the crucial days before and after Baghdad's fall at U.S. hands on April 9.

"It's like a literary epic," al-Mudaris said in an interview in his office on the storied al-Motanabi street in Baghdad's old quarter.

"Some things in the book may not be true and the chronological order of events may not be 100 percent correct," he said, "but the book's aim is to restore confidence to Iraqis - to tell them, `You've fought courageously.'"

Read all the silliness here.

WELL WRITTEN ARTICLE in the Kansas City Star about the balance between occupation and reconstruction.

Increasingly, Iraq's American occupiers are fighting a more subtle war: one against rising expectations. And the people of this nation, savaged by decades of dictatorship, war and international sanctions, are growing impatient.

"I'm disappointed by the United States," said Adnan Messin, an unemployed truckdriver and occasional electrician. "The political situation is better. But everything else is worse."

"We just wanted Saddam kicked out," said Messin. "But now it's an occupation."

That is exactly what Iraq's U.S.-led administrators do not want to hear.

IT IS IRONIC THAT FOR THE TIME BEING we will continue to pay folks to do nothing. However, I am glad to see they took my suggestion on the garbage situation. Read about it here.

It was payday on Saturday at Iraq's state-owned irrigation company. But there was not a hint of work in sight.

"Nobody has asked us to do anything in weeks," said Mahmoud Hameed, a geologist who had come only to pick up his pay. "We are all just waiting to see when the real work begins."

Two months after U.S. forces seized control of Iraq, U.S. officials now find themselves approving salaries for hundreds of thousands of no-show and no-work jobs.

I'VE PROBABLY DEVOTED too much space to this story...I can't get over that folks in the media, the ones we are supposed to trust to know what is happening in this world, got this story so very, very wrong, over and over.

The world was appalled. One archaeologist described the looting of Iraq's National Museum of Antiquities as "a rape of civilization." Iraqi scholars standing in the sacked galleries of the exhibit halls in April wept on camera as they stood on shards of cuneiform tablets dating back thousands of years.

Apparently, it was not that bad...

...Actually, about 33 priceless vases, statues and jewels were missing.

"I said there were 170,000 pieces in the entire museum collection," said Donny George as he stood with beads of sweat glistening on his forehead in his barren office at the museum. "Not 170,000 pieces stolen."

On Saturday, a team of U.S. investigators from the Customs Service and State Department released a summary of a preliminary report that concluded that 3,000 pieces were missing. And more importantly, of the 8,000 or so exhibit-quality, world-class pieces of jewelry, statues and cuneiform clay tablets, only 47 were unaccounted for.

Today, Iraqi officials at the museum confirmed the U.S. numbers, with a slight adjustment.

"There are only 33 pieces from the main collections that are unaccounted for," George said. "Not 47. Some more pieces have been returned." Museum staff members had taken some of the more valuable items home and are now returning them.

George conceded that during the 48 hours when his museum was being looted, he was extremely upset with the Americans.

"I was very angry at the time, so much anger," George said. "But we should stop blaming each other. We're working together now."

Amen, brother...that would be a good plan. Read the rest here.

BASTARDS.

Unidentified gunmen shot and killed a U.S. soldier at a checkpoint in western Iraq, a military statement said Monday. U.S. troops returned fire, killing one person and capturing a second.

An undetermined number of attackers pulled up late Sunday to the roadblock near the Syrian border and requested medical help for a person in the car. They then pulled pistols and shot the soldier, said a statement released by the U.S. Central Command.

SO NOW WE'VE MOVED from "shock and awe" to "carrot and stick", according to this article.

In the modest police station, U.S. soldiers took measurements for Iraqi officers' new uniforms. At the hospital, a military doctor asked staffers what they needed. A commander told the mayor that, when the shooting stops, his troops will leave and normal life will return.

But if another U.S. soldier gets killed, Lt. Col. Philip DeCamp, commander of the 4th Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment warned, "I'm going to sweep through, and it's not going to be fun."

In the conservative heartland of Iraq, where the U.S. Army has more than tripled the number of troops in three communities along a key supply route, that tension shows the contradictions U.S. soldiers face.

They must maintain a balance between trying to help Iraqis rebuild their shattered country, but fight the insurgents whose resentment boils over into violence.

FROM "BAGHDAD BOB" to local religious leaders. Ever wonder if these folks get tired of being lied to?

Lt. Col. James Danna, whose unit from the 1st Armored Division patrols western Baghdad, calls it "the information war."

Danna and other military officers struggle to restore electrical supplies, clean water and increase security as proof of American good will. At the same time, he said, hard-line clerics work to undermine them.

"I've got to fight the Shiite cleric who is saying, 'Don't trust the Americans, they are putting in the generator to poison your children,' " said Danna, a 39-year-old native of New Brunswick, N.J.

Read it all here.

THIS IS A GOOD STORY about how soldiers get by with a can-do attitude.

When the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division found its radio range limited, troops from the 16th Engineer Battalion set to work building a taller tower.

But first they had to find one to build.

Troops from Company C’s assault and obstacle platoon, normally trained to breach enemy obstacles, began to scrounge around their camp, a rundown resort along the Tigris River in Baghdad’s North End. In a parking lot among debris, they found their prize — a 90-foot radio tower.

The soldier’s dismantled the tower and trucked it to 1st Brigade headquarters at the Martyr’s Monument, said 1st Lt. Andrew Bichoff, 24, of Port Jervis, N.Y. Despite their training for combat missions, the platoon tackled the construction mission with relative ease, he said.

“The Army is the only organization where you can take any platoon, give them a mission, and they execute to standard, regardless of the level of training in that area,” Bischoff said.

By sunset Tuesday, the engineers had reassembled the behemoth tower with the help from mechanics who knew how to weld. Brigade communication specialists wired four FM antennas to the top, said Sgt. Deandre Favors, 24, of Detroit.

Read the rest here.

MONDAY JUNE 9th, the 29th day of CPT Patti's deployment.

I'M NOT TRYING TO BE negative here, but I think this bill is largely ceremonial. The Army already authorizes free phone calls, called "morale calls" from the Defense Switching Network (DSN) phones down range. The problem isn't that troops don't call because they can't afford to...but rather that there are too few phones...way too few phones. Still, its a nice gesture. Read about it here.

Servicemembers in Iraq and Afghanistan may get free monthly phone calls home if House members decide to support their Senate colleagues, who have twice given the idea a thumbs-up.

The free phone call proposal has already obtained full support in the Senate this spring in both a free-standing bill sponsored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and again in the 2004 defense budget authorization.

McCain’s “Troops Phone Home Free Act of 2003,” which passed the full Senate on April 1, provides a monthly allotment of free telephone calling minutes to any servicemembers “stationed outside the United States who are directly supporting military operations in Iraq or Afghanistan.”

Under the act, deployed members would be issued prepaid phone cards “or an equivalent telecommunications benefit which includes access to telephone service,” with a value not to exceed $40 a month per person.

SORRY FOR THE LIGHT POSTING today...I'm not finding much in the way of meaningful news out there.

NO CHRONICLE OF THE soldiers efforts in the rebuilding of Iraq can ignore stories like these, even though these are the ones that you probably hear on the headlines at home. So I will post them.

A U.S. soldier was killed and four companions wounded yesterday in an attack near Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, north of the capital, a military statement said.

It was at least the seventh U.S. soldier killed in attacks in Iraq during the past two weeks as unrest plagues the country.

As tension increased about the role of religious leaders in postwar Iraq, U.S. forces yesterday raided a Baghdad office of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), an armed Muslim Shi'ite group with ties to Iran.

The entire story is here.

ONE WOULD THINK a key element of this story would be how the artifacts wound up inside this secret vault in the Central Bank...but it isn't addressed. The whole story is here.

The world-famous treasures of Nimrud, unaccounted for since Baghdad fell two months ago, have been found in good condition in the country's Central Bank -- in a secret vault-inside-a-vault submerged in sewage water, U.S. occupation authorities said Saturday.

They also said that fewer than 50 items from the collection of the Iraqi National Museum's main exhibition are still missing after the looting and destruction that followed the U.S. capture of Baghdad.

I THINK THE PRESS is trying to create a story where there isn't one. This article refers to President Bush flying over Baghdad, but not stopping by to visit the troops.

But if Great Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair can come, and U.S. Army Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of Central Command, can come, so should Bush, said Sgt. Jermaine Ellington, 25.

“It would have been nice for him to show us his support by being here,” Ellington said.

Safe or not, Ryals was disappointed by one thing: knowing Bush flew over Baghdad.

“He could have at least dropped some hamburgers or something.”

WHOO HOO!!! CPT PATTI HAS email finally. I got a note from her written very early this morning. An excerpt is below. I only cut out a line about an NCO that got sick, and, of course, the mushy stuff. Sounds as if the email is on some sort of "shared" computer, with folks waiting in line to use it. I wrote her back with a million questions, and I'll post the answers here, of course.

Man...I feel good.

Good morning, baby!

We finally have email!! Phone lines are absolutely useless.

I just want to send a quick one since we got people who need to email too. I got all your packages and your card. Also, I got a package from Cousin Cheryl. Thank you, thank you. We are all doing very well....We are really doing good. I'll write more later.

SUNDAY JUNE 8th. The 28th day of CPT Patti's deployment. She is in east-central Baghdad.

IF MY INFORMATION is correct, this is the stadium where CPT Patti has set up her supply base. Most Americans don't truly understand how maniacal soccer fans are in most parts of the world.

Ammo Baba, the greatest Iraqi footballer of all time, has called on occupying US forces to remove their tanks from the country’s main stadium in Baghdad.

The Al-Shaab People’s National Stadium has been used as an army base since US-led forces entered the Iraqi capital in April. It has been a mecca for Iraqi football lovers ever since it opened in 1966 with a match between a Baghdad team and a Benfica side led by Portuguese legend, Eusebio.

The whole story is here.

TODAY'S WINNER OF THE good point of the day goes the anonymous Marine.

Of all the roles many US soldiers are playing in Iraq, acting as custodians of Mesopotamia's cultural heritage has been the most gratifying and controversial - for themselves and for many Iraqis. Americans haven't been aggressive guardians, Iraqis said, and are squandering an opportunity to earn their trust by inadequately protecting ancient sites like Babylon.

Murphy, a muralist back home, revels in sharing tales from ancient Babylon that he gleaned from Mr. Sutton's history class at Braintree High School, and more recently from ''The Complete Idiot's Guide to Iraq,'' a gift from his wife. Other soldiers, however, resent their duties at some of Iraq's 10,000 archeological and museum sites, saying they were trained to fight a war, not hunt for artifacts or stand under the hot sun monitoring treasures that hold little meaning for them.

''I know how to kill people - that's my job,'' said one Marine stationed at a historical site in southern Iraq, who spoke on condition of anonymity. ''Now we're being asked to be these people's best friends. And guard their antiquities, even as Iraqis themselves steal them.''

Read the whole thing here.

AND THEN THERE IS this story. The predictions are the once-powerful minority Sunni Muslims will be the source of the greatest problems.

Backed by their patron, Saddam Hussein, Sunni Muslims were Iraq's power brokers for a generation. But in the new pecking order of U.S.-occupied Iraq, they have lost much of their influence. Though there is no indication of organized resistance yet, they're angry.

“The future is jihad,” said Sheik Mohammed Ali Abbas, a cleric in Ramadi, 65 miles west of Baghdad. “Do you know of anyone who can accept this humiliation? Do you just let them occupy your land while you sit and do nothing?”

The story goes on to say this as well..."They consider U.S. servicewomen a deliberate insult."

Sheesh.

EVIDENCE THAT IT INDEED continues to get worse. Praise Jesus that His was a message of love.

The imam at one of Baghdad's largest mosques urged more than a thousand listeners on Friday to wage a jihad, or religious war, against U.S. occupying forces in Iraq.

Speaking at Friday prayer services, Imam Mouaid Ubaidi denounced the Americans as "invaders" and "aggressors" and implicitly praised recent guerrilla attacks against U.S. soldiers as self-defense by people who are being "strangled."

"There are only two powers now in the world," the Sunni Muslim cleric said in an unusually bellicose sermon.

"One is America, which is tyrannical and oppressive. The other is a warrior who has not yet been awakened from his slumber, and that warrior is Islam."

Read the whole depressing story here.

THE UNPRECEDENTED JOINTNESS of the Iraqi war is responsible for the speed of the victory argues this article. And while I believe this to be true, I also think the fact Iraq had a terrible army also contributed to the speed of the victory. There is an old saying in the Army..."Never forget that the enemy gets a vote." And in many cases the regular forces voted with their feet, their ineptitude or both.

Planners at Central Command wanted to cut by half through air attacks the combat effectiveness of the Medina Division, which was deployed near Baghdad, before American ground forces reached it.

Air power was to be supplemented and eventually supplanted by artillery, rocket and helicopter strikes before tanks and infantry engaged Iraqi forces on the ground.
Franks' original time-line, according to pre-war briefings, had ground forces in Baghdad on Day 10.

Things did not work out quite that way - fortuitously, as it turned out. Iraqi resistance damaged army attack helicopters, and the 3rd Division slowed its advance to wait for its follow-on unit, the 101st Airborne Division, as well as for supplies. The weather also played a role.

But through air power, the time was put to good use, not only by redirecting strike sorties but also through the use of all-weather weapons.

THIS IS KINDA neat. Some American high schools here in Europe will web-cast their commencement exercises so some of the deployed parents will be able to watch. The entire story is here.

Many deployed parents of Department of Defense Dependents Schools seniors in Europe have the opportunity to see commencement ceremonies, if not be there, thanks to new initiatives and partnerships.

DODDS-Europe, along with commanders, communications personnel, General Dynamics, and the American Forces Network have teamed to help bring families together during graduation.

Various schools throughout Europe, hit hard by the deployment of parents, have come up with ideas to allow parents to be there — even if not in person — for the graduation ceremonies being held between Thursday and Sunday.

Ideas include videotaping and video teleconferencing ceremonies and even offering a few parents a day trip back home to let them see the culmination of their child’s secondary school career.

1AD UNCOVERS A LARGE cache of weapons. And it looks ominous.

Inside a warehouse facility, soldiers of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, assigned in part to Task Force 2-37 of the 1st Armored Division with its headquarters in Wiesbaden, Germany, confiscated five AK-47 rifles, two pistols, 10 rocket-propelled grenade launchers, an assortment of mortar rounds, a heavy machine gun, a commercially made detonator, 20 gas masks, and 12 million dinar in cash, or roughly $12,000, said Capt. Reid Norris, the Apache Troop’s commander.

Arms dealing isn’t uncommon in the eastern parts of Baghdad — but Wednesday’s seizure is one Norris finds troublesome, he said.

“The guys selling on the street, they’re just trying to make a buck,” he said during a patrol Thursday of a 900,000-resident section called New Baghdad. “The guys we found last night, and the amount of weapons and type of weapons we found all in one place, tells me someone is trying to organize some kind of resistance.”

Read the rest here.

SATURDAY, JUNE 7th. The 27th day of CPT Patti's deployment. Still no word from our girl.

HALLELUJAH - BILL CLINTON'S one-man assault on the 22d amendment turns out to be, well, just about a one-man assault. Meanwhile this poll shows that Dubya would do something else his father didn't do...whip Slick Willie at the polls.

Only 20 percent of the public supports changing the 22nd Amendment, while the more widely held opinion (75 percent) is that the Constitution should not be modified to allow for a third presidential term. Partisanship is not an issue here, as Democrats and Republicans equally oppose allowing a third term. Men are slightly more opposed to making the change than women (78 percent and 73 percent respectively). Some of Clinton’s fellow baby boomers (age 51-59) are the strongest opponents at 82 percent.

In the hypothetical Bush-Clinton matchup, Republicans solidly support Bush (88 percent) compared to 62 percent of Democrats who say they would vote for Clinton. Almost a quarter (24 percent) of Democrats say they would vote for Bush while only seven percent of GOPers would vote for Clinton.

Read the whole thing here.

AND THE GOOD POINT of the day award goes to Secretary Rumsfeld comparing the search for WMDs in Iraq to the search for Saddam.

Rumsfeld notes that the U.S. military hasn't found Saddam either. But...no one questions whether Saddam existed.

FOUND THIS AT the Instapundit site. A reader of his site sent this email:

"I am in Irbil in Kurdistan northern Iraq. Someone explained the history of this place to me today. The mountains here are bare and devoid of trees. They used be forested. Covered with trees. There used to be so many trees in Irbil that you couldn't see around corners. Now it looks like Kansas or really more like parts of Montana.

The reason is that Saddam cut down all of the trees in Kurdistan in 1988. He bulldozed 4000 of the 5000 villages in Kurdistan and the Kurds ran to the mountains for safety, so he cut down all of the trees on these mountains and killed all of the game, so that the Kurds would have no wood for fires and no food to eat. He was incredibly effective. The Kurds are now replanting the trees. You can see hundreds of tiny trees if you look closely at the mountains. I didn't notice them until they were pointed out to me. In Kirkuk they found a mass grave of Kurdish children. One of the U.N. guys offered to take us out and show it to us. I haven't taken him up on it. I have no reason to go there and I feel like it would be disrespectful to go and gawk. I guess some of the children were buried with their toys and dolls.

It makes me sick everytime I surf the net and see all these people in Europe and back home saying that the war was not justified because we haven't found 50 tons of sarin gas yet. I wish those people would come to this country and look at ruined villages between here and Kirkuk and the bare mountains. Anyone who protested against this war and defended Saddam ought to be ashamed of themselves. Its just unimaginable the things that went on here."

I've said it before...Saddam himself was a weapon of mass destruction.

OH OH - THIS WON'T sit well with the Iraqi men. But GIs will be GIs.

Affections were particularly warm outside the Baghdad Convention Center, where the cosmopolitan staff of the Iraqi Media Network, a television station, moved into new offices guarded by US soldiers, said Josh O'Connor, a freelance producer from North Carolina who now works for the Iraqi station.

''There were a couple [marriage] proposals here and there,'' said O'Connor, 29, who found himself acting as a conduit between his colleagues and soldiers. ''Usually it was the women proposing to the men. Not all of them were accepted.''

Read more about it here.

A WELL WRITTEN local story about one Marine returning home from Iraq can be found here.

"I wrote him every day," said Hauke, "but I had no way of knowing whether he was getting any of my letters...I became addicted to the news; I always had CNN on, and I was constantly searching all the news Web sites on my computer."

Yeah...I know how that feels.

UN NUCLEAR EXPERTS headed to Iraq to try to account for nuclear materials from a power plant. Fear is that the looted materials will sell on the black market as the basis for "dirty bombs".

Dr. Hamed Al-Bahili, an Iraqi nuclear scientist who helped design and open Tuwaitha in 1968, was one of the first on the scene after fleeing Iraqi troops abandoned the site.

Raising his hand 2 inches above the linoleum floor in his living room, Al-Bahili said: "The uranium was all over the floor - all over the ground outside. Piles of it. We poured cement over it inside the rooms because there was no other way to handle it."

Al-Bahili said he pleaded with impoverished villagers in the area not to touch the blue barrels the IAEA had used to store the uranium, "but there were thousands of people - they just kept coming," he said in an interview Thursday at his Baghdad home.

Read the rest here.

UNCERTAINTY OVER the fate of Chemical Ali, and ordinary Iraqi's believe Saddam escaped and is hiding. Given how afraid they are of these guys, you have to wonder what the full impact of this uncertainty is over the re-normalizing of life in Iraq. Consider what it must be like to think he might actually come back.

U.S. MILITARY officials told NBC News that they had changed the status of Ali Hassan al-Majid, the infamous “Chemical Ali,” suspected of ordering the 1988 gas attacks that killed thousands of Kurds in the northern Iraqi village of Halabja, from “believed dead but unconfirmed” to “unknown.” The officials said they made the move based on debriefing of Iraqi officials and relatives of al-Majid, No. 5 on the most-wanted list and the king of spades...

... Iraqis nearby doubted whether the soldiers would find the remains of Saddam, who they suspect was hiding at another house, just yards away.

“No, no - Saddam ran away. He’s hiding,” said Munther Meki, a grocer whose shop — its front window gone and shelves empty — is next to the destroyed house.

The whole thing is here.

A SUPERB PIECE in the Washington Post. This article is must reading. And then, again, ask yourself just which 2 divisions Secretary Rumsfeld thinks we can do without?

Asked if he had ever seen the Army so stretched, the official said: "Not in my 31 years" of military service.

The assessment by the official, who insisted on anonymity during a briefing of reporters from several major newspapers, provided a glimpse of one of the major sources of pressure on the Bush administration to hasten efforts to improve security in Iraq and recruit troops from other countries who can substitute for U.S. forces...

...The Army now has 128,000 troops in Iraq, along with 15,000 British troops and a U.S. Marine contingent that is drawing down to about 7,000. An additional 45,000 Army troops are in Kuwait providing support. The Army contribution adds up to the equivalent of just over five divisions out of a total active-duty strength of 10 divisions.

"This is a problem," the senior Pentagon official said, then quickly amended the comment, adding: "It is only a problem depending upon how quickly or how long it takes to get the coalition to come in to relieve this pressure."...

..."It's not just about fixing the equipment," he said. "It's about getting the soldiers back, getting them back to their schools, getting them back with their families and getting them refitted also."

While eager to reduce the U.S. troop level, Army officials expect that a substantial number of ground troops will be required in Iraq for some time.

They plan to manage this by rotating units in and out, as was done before the war, when much smaller numbers of Army troops were kept in Kuwait. But instead of limiting the rotations to six months, as was the case before, the rotation period is likely to be lengthened to nine months, the official said, starting with the troops currently there.
"It'll get us to a steady state over a three- or four-year period a lot quicker," the official said.

To relieve some of the pressure on the Army's active-duty force of 486,000, reservists have taken over responsibility for staffing operations in the Balkans, the Sinai Peninsula and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But Army Guard and Reserve units have also been badly strained by call-ups related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as homeland defense.

By the way...I calculated it...the 128,000 troops in Iraq and 45,000 in Kuwait is the equivalent of 36% of the entire Active Duty Army. Oh, and if the 9 month rotation holds up, CPT Patti will be home in January of 2004.

Sigh.

THIS APPEARS TO BE good news for these guys, based out of Fort Benning, Georgia.

Most 3rd Brigade soldiers have spent 12 of the past 15 months in Kuwait and Iraq. They are scheduled for a one-month rotation at the National Training Center in Southern California's Mojave Desert in November.

The division ordered Ward and his advance party to Camp New York on May 12 to prepare for the brigade's return home. The Pentagon put a halt to that movement following reports of continuing violence around Iraq.

The 3rd Brigade advance team said it received an ovation from activated National Guard troops as it entered the camp. The team's soldiers have spent part of the past three weeks collecting the brigade's vehicles that broke down en route to war.

Read the rest here.

IF YOU'VE EVER WONDERED what life is like from inside an M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank, check this out.

Life as a tanker is anything but easy, but soldiers who sign up for the gig wouldn’t have it any other way, some said.

It’s especially hard on the knees — three of four tank commanders of Platoon Blue Falcon have had knee surgery (the fourth being a mere 23 years old).

“Give me time,” Wilhite joked, who has not put his knees under the knife.

“You gotta be hungry for what you do,” Allsup said. “And we’re hungry.”

Riding, especially shotgun in the turret, beats being infantry, they joked.

“We don’t like to walk,” Wilhite, who hails from Milwaukee, said with a chuckle.

It’s hard on the mind, especially for the gunner who sits for hours in tank temperatures that often peak above 120 degrees, said Sgt. Lindell Montgomery, the gunner in Wilhite’s tank.

“Aw, shucks, you get used to it,” Montgomery said of the sweltering, cramped gun pit.

AND IT CONTINUES to get worse. I'm guessing these are 101st troops. But read the whole story here to learn about the assault on US Soldiers in Baghdad.

Unidentified assailants fired rocket-propelled grenades and small arms at a U.S. patrol near an air base west of Baghdad on Friday, military sources said.

The attackers fired on an M1A1 Abrams tank and a military police Humvee. The tank wasn't damaged, but the Humvee had numerous bullet holes in it, according to field reports. Soldiers returned fire, but there were no reports of casualties on either side.

The firefight in the town of Khaldiya, 45 miles west of Baghdad, is the latest in a series of hit-and-run attacks by gunmen on U.S. forces in central Iraq. Several dozen soldiers have been killed or injured.

FRIDAY, JUNE 6th, the 26th day of CPT Patti's deployment. She is in east-central Baghdad. I have not talked to her nor heard from her for nearly two weeks now. I'm beginning to pout...

I HEARD TODAY from a friend who spends much time on Capitol Hill...we'll just call her Congressional Girl. She sent me the following rather-unvarnished peek into Congress' view on the Iraq occupation. Its a bit lengthy but read the entire thing...because the better news is sort of buried toward the end.

CQ TODAY
May 27, 2003 – 6:14 p.m.
House Members Predict Long Stay — for Lots of Troops — in Iraq
By Pat Towell, CQ Staff
Two weeks before Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K.Shinseki retires, his Feb. 25 prediction that it would take "several hundred thousand" U.S. troops to occupy Iraq was endorsed Tuesday by the House Armed Services Committee's senior Republican manpower specialist, just back from a visit to Baghdad.

And those troops are likely to be in Iraq for a long time, several members of the delegation said.

Shinseki's prediction, made during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, was repudiated immediately by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who insisted that the requirement would be much less than 200,000.

But after hearing a day of briefings on Monday by top U.S. civilian and military officials in Iraq, Armed Services Total Force Subcommittee Chairman John M. McHugh, R-N.Y., said the departing Army chief was vindicated: 'If anything, Gen. Shinseki was conservative," McHugh said to reporters at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington.

According to Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii, the senior Democrat on McHugh's subcommittee, there are more than 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. "I can't see . . . that we can reduce that number very much," he said. Because troops in the country would have to be replaced periodically, the total number of U.S. troops involved would be very large, he said.

"The occupation is going to be very difficult, very costly and very long," Abercrombie said.

The eight-member House delegation spent about 14 hours on Monday in Baghdad and Kirkuk, visiting U.S. troops and interviewing top U.S. leaders.

"The impression we got is that this is going to be a long-term commitment," McHugh said. "What concerns me is that, for some artificial, emotional deadline, we leave before the job is done. . . . It's not going to happen in a handful of months. It may happen in a year or five years," he said.

Making Headway Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who led the bipartisan delegation, insisted members had seen real progress in restoring public services, with about 50 percent of the country's electrical grid back in service and about 40 percent of its drinking water supply restored. Hunter cited the group's drive through downtown Baghdad as further evidence that life in the city was becoming more normal: "It was rush hour; there were traffic jams. . . . There were people in the streets. There were food vendors out. Markets were open."

Hunter also insisted U.S. officials were making headway toward creation of representative political institutions that Iraq did not see during more than three decades of Baath Party rule. In 17 of Iraq's 26 cities with a population of more than 100,000, he said, interim governments had been set up under appointed representatives of different ethnic,
religious and political groups. "People who are talking to each other, not shooting each other," Hunter said.

Hunter and Ed Royce, R-Calif., emphasized that Iraq's oil exports would cover some of the costs of reconstruction. But Hunter, too, said the United States had to be ready to see through the postwar reconstruction of Iraq. "As rapid as this military victory was," he said, "the watchword for reconstruction is patience."

YOU DON'T HAVE TO go out of your way to find suggestions that the administration (and Prime Minister Tony Blair) trumped up the charges of WMD to justify a war with Iraq.

Jonah Goldberg at National Review Online deftly lays out the illogic of such a suggestion.

But it is far from demonstrated that Bush, in fact, lied to the American people.

To believe that Bush lied, you have to not only believe that the intelligence communities of the United States and Great Britain were wrong, but the intelligence communities of Germany, France, Israel and Russia were wrong too. That's doable.

But, on top of that, you must also believe that Bush knew these intelligence communities were wrong and lied about it. And, you must also believe that Saddam Hussein secretly destroyed his WMD but refused to admit it despite the credible threat of war and the continuation of sanctions.

I BELIEVE THIS proposal has not received much press. Needless to say, I agree 100% with the Army wives quoted in this story.

A group of Army wives took some serious jabs Monday at the Bush administration’s notions for restructuring U.S. military bases in Europe.
These weren’t just any wives. Those speaking out included Holly Petraeus, wife of the 101st Airborne Division’s commander Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, and the wives of several field-grade officers.

They testified at Fort Campbell, Ky., at a field hearing of the Senate Committee on Children and Families to talk about problems military families face during deployments.

A proposed shift of bases from locations in Germany, where families accompany service members, to new sites in Eastern Europe where families wouldn’t come along, popped up in the hearing when the women spoke about the family stress sparked by the ever-increasing pace of deployments.

Petraeus said the top concern in the minds of many at Fort Campbell is that a downsized military is being called on for too many deployments.

Moving to unaccompanied unit rotations in Germany instead of accompanied tours “will be perceived as just one more deployment added to the load that they already bear,” she said.

Echoing that sentiment was Joyce Dolinish, a retired Army major married to a 101st Airborne Division officer, who said the rotational unit plan being discussed in Washington, D.C., is “ a friendly euphemism for another deployment.”

WE CALL IT Civil Military Operations...but what is it? You can read about it here (when you get to the link, scroll down until you see the June 4th entry) It is an extensive list...you might be surprised.

Removed 22 truckloads (about 440 tons) of trash from around local soccer fields and schools.
-- Provided dental care to 39 civilians.
-- Assessed and provided support to local medical facilities.
-- Verified the clearance of unexploded ordnance at several sites, located three sites for further excavation and removal.
-- Provided security and helped local police stop a bank robbery nearby.

MORE ON MY SUSPICIONS that it gets worse can be found here.

Riad, a lawyer who declined to provide his last name, said that the killings of residents have prompted relatives to plan revenge attacks against American soldiers. "This is our culture. Clans are strong here and it is the duty to avenge a wrongful death," he said. "People do not forget."

A group of teenagers shuffling their feet in the hot sun near a kebab restaurant added a touch of bravado to Riad's explanation. "Of all of Iraq, only Fallujah is resisting the Americans. The Americans have these big tanks. We show everybody that they are just toys," one said, declining to provide his name.

Riad added, "I'm afraid taking shots at Americans will become a sport for these types."

AMONG THE NUMEROUS duties the GIs probably never expected...walking Iraqi girls to school.

“We heard girls were getting kidnapped, so we come down to protect them,” said Sgt. 1st Class Michael Crosby.

The 3rd Infantry Division, which fought its way to Baghdad, now patrols the streets of the Iraqi capital like police. The soldiers’ presence at the school is more of a friendly courtesy rather than a response to actual kidnappings, said Capt. Mark Madden.

“They often exaggerate the truth to get us to respond,” Madden said. “We don’t know if it’s true. We don’t have any confirmed cases.”

The whole story is here.

THIS IS A GREAT story about one Iraqi who has lived in Iraq and the US. Guess which he prefers...

In early April, when Anas Al-Dulaimi waded through crowds outside the Palestine Hotel, he bumped into Spc. Charles Gilbreath standing guard.

The 28-year-old Al-Dulaimi, who spent his childhood in Knoxville, Tenn., was glad to see U.S. soldiers, whom he calls “fellow Americans.”

“I knew if I got into the right hands, they would do me no harm,” Al-Dulaimi said. “My heart beats American.”

See the rest here.

THIS IS A BIT hard to believe...but I've included it because if true, it appears to be colossal blunder.

More than a decade of suspicions about Iraq’s missile industry and its capabilities for delivering weapons of mass destruction could be investigated quickly now that American forces control the country.

But no U.S. weapons hunters or intelligence officials have visited the heart of Iraq’s missile programs – the state-owned al-Fatah company in Baghdad, which designed all the rockets Saddam Hussein’s troops fired in 1991 and again this year. Not only that, it’s not even on their agenda.

“We have the most sensitive documents here,” said Marouf al-Chalabi, director-general of al-Fatah. “We were sure the Americans would target us but they haven’t even dropped by.”

The rest is here.

THERE IS MUCH TO agree with in this stinging opinion piece found here. Consider if you will:

The Army is still in Bosnia. The Army is still in Afghanistan. By all appearances we will be in Iraq a good long while.

Currently in Iraq are most or all of the 1st Armored Division, the 3d Infantry Division, the 4th Infantry Division and the 101st Airborne Division. Four of the ten divisions in our Army. And Rumsfeld wants to cut two divisions? Seems ludicrous to me.

If the Army isn't broken, then why is Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld so hell-bent on fixing it?

From his first day in office Rumsfeld has fixed his sights on the Army - questioning its leadership, strategy and tactics, and its weaponry. He and his principal lieutenants, Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Deputy Secretary Douglas Feith, seemingly found nothing right about America's senior service...

...Oh yes. For the last two years the Pentagon civilians have been trying to whack two full divisions and a corps out of an already painfully thin 10-division Army stretched to the max doing America's business and keeping the peace in nasty places around the globe...

...Even as this is written a third Army division, the 1st Armored, is pouring into Iraq to join the 3rd and 4th Divisions to try to restore law and order. Among those three divisions, which two will Rumsfeld choose to kill and will he wait until they have finished the job in Iraq?

MY SUSPICION IS that the longer we are there, the more common this will become. One killed, five wounded in the 101st Airborne Division. The rest is here.

FALLUJAH, Iraq - An American soldier was killed and five were wounded early Thursday when they were hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, the U.S. military said.

The attack came a day after more than 1,500 soldiers from the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division moved into Fallujah and surrounding areas to quell increasing attacks on American occupying forces in that region.

The Army soldiers who came under attack were assigned to the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, the military said in a statement. That regiment has been based in the area for weeks.

TREAT YOURSELF by taking a moment to read the three stories found here. You will be glad you did.

Medics throughout the city are spending a lot of time treating soldiers who bake all day in the 100-degree-plus weather.

One 1st AD soldier said his friend stuck a small thermometer between his bulletproof vest and his skin. He let it cook for a minute.

“It was 130 degrees under the plates,” Staff Sgt. Donte Hubbard said.

THURSDAY JUNE 5th, the 25th day of CPT Patti's deployment. She is in east-central Baghdad.

The wife of the company operations NCO spoke with her husband yesterday. He says the company is expecting to have e-mail capability either today or tomorrow. Let's hope it is true!

I TEND TO AGREE with the thrust of this article, although probably for different reasons than the author. If women maintain rights and freedoms in Iraq then we have ensured Iraq doesn't become another Islamic theocracy a la Afghanistan.

Women in Iraq have no voice.

And the American government, to its shame, is not ensuring that they have a voice, and making them and their concerns visible.

It is absolutely critical that Iraqi women be part of shaping the future of Iraq. Toward that end, the American government should ensure that women are part of those meeting to mold the future and the present of Iraq.

Women should have, at the very least, the rights that they had under Saddam Hussein. Dictator though he was, he allowed women to vote and be active in professions such as medicine and law. Now, there is a justified fear among Iraqi women that they will have fewer rights, not more, under a new regime.

BUT SOMETIMES TIMING is everything...my guess is these guys from the 3d ID were too far along in the redeployment process to be halted. They say its better to be lucky than good.

More than 400 soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division came marching home Tuesday night, over a parade ground sodden with rain and heavy with anticipation and into the yearning arms of family and friends.

The battle-toughened men and women returned to this Army base in the piney wilderness after a year in the Middle East, fighting Iraqi soldiers, boredom and the uncertainty of when, finally, they could come home...

...One family's joy, though, was tempered by the frustration and longing endured by the families of the roughly 16,000 3rd Infantry soldiers who remain in Iraq. The mechanized 3rd was initially expected home in late May or early June.

But military leaders decided the war-experienced 3rd was needed to maintain order in the newly liberated nation.

Those families must wait another two months, at least, until their loved ones return home.

Susan Conroy, whose husband, Jason, commands a company of soldiers

WE'VE BEEN FOLLOWING the plight of the 3d ID for some weeks now. So this comes as no surprise...

As the uproar over the 3rd Infantry Division's continued mission in Iraq continues, senior officers spent Thursday explaining the latest developments and addressing concerns about soldiers' welfare.

Maj. Gen. Buford Blount, the division commander, held a video teleconference with local media while Col. Jack Sterling, the chief of staff who just returned from Iraq, met with family members at Fort Stewart.

Mostly, family members feel betrayed because plans were in the works to bring troops home. Meetings had been held and parties planned. Then, the Department of Defense decided Iraq was too unstable and the division needed to stay.

Now, one brigade is driving toward a hot spot north of Baghdad while two other brigades continue security patrols in the city.

PERHAPS THIS IS un-Christian of me...but I hope they find him.

A team of U.S. military engineers began an intensive effort on Tuesday to excavate the site of a bombing on April 7 that military officials still believe may have killed Saddam Hussein.

The operation, involving a backhoe, two bulldozers, two cranes and 17 dump trucks, appeared to be by far the largest American effort to prove that Saddam may have been killed. Seven weeks after U.S. forces gained control of Baghdad, Saddam and his closest relatives remain missing.

Read it here..

NOTHING AT ALL to do with our usual subjects, but the connection is this is our current home town, thanks to the US Army. I think it is amusing that the police might cite this guy for failure to wear a helmet.

GIESSEN, Germany -- A naked motorcyclist wearing just a scarf, sunglasses and a pair of sandals crashed his bike after he was stung on the inner thigh by a bee.

The 36-year-old, who had been driving to the swimming area at a German nudist colony, lost control of the bike as he swatted the insect away.

He fell on to the road, but escaped with just a shoulder injury and minor cuts and bruises.

Police said they are considering pressing charges after the incident at Giessen in Hessen -- as the man was not wearing a crash helmet.

WEDNESDAY JUNE 4th, the 24th day of CPT Patti's deployment. She is in east-central Baghdad.

PROGRESS AFTER a fashion I suppose. A newly refurbished prison opened in Iraq.

Though the prison is more livable than Saddam's squalid dungeons and torture chambers, inmates will sleep on plywood mattresses cushioned only by a blanket and eat food that is nutritious but far from scrumptious.

There won't be air conditioning, though there will be the fans denied prewar inmates, along with proper toilets instead of buckets or holes in the ground.

"They're going to be fed and looked after, but it's not going to be too nice," said Maj. Simon Wilson, a military police commander. "They're not going to want to come back."

Read about it here./FONT>

SOME DETAILS about what it is like for the soldiers manning the checkpoints in Baghdad can be found here. Seems that every cotton-pickin' Iraqi has a gun. I don't see that as a good thing.

"We can't check every car, so we try to do three at a time," said 1st Sgt. Anthony Petrone of Harrisburg, Pa. On the first day of the bridge checkpoint, the soldiers got three AK 47s and 18 handguns.

Scores of people crossed the bridge on foot instead because driving in Baghdad, which has a car culture much like Los Angeles, has become a major hassle. /FONT>

A BACKGROUND article here on the commander of the 1st Armored Division who is about to receive his 3d star and take over as commander of V Corps. It may not actually be true that in America anyone can grow up to be president...but it is true that anyone has the opportunity to make much of himself in the Army.

"We lived on welfare, in a single-parent home" in Rio Grande City, he recalled in a recent interview in his temporary office here in an old airport warehouse. Sanchez, 52, did not come from a military family, but said he decided in eighth grade that he would become a soldier. "I saw that as a means of escaping poverty."

AND THEN THERE is this article which reminds us it would be a good thing to take the weapons from the Iraqis to avoid another Mogadishu.

Baghdad also has other dangers. Every building in the city is the color of sand, including water towers that can become dangerous obstacles, especially at night.

Haphazard power lines criss-cross neighborhoods, making landing zones tough to find. Night flying presents its own hazards, including an increased risk of ground fire.

Miller said crews already have seen tracers from ground fire during night patrols.

“I cannot tell you how difficult it is to fly in this environment,” Lawrence said.

YOU READ IT here earlier that the US told the Iraqis to turn in their weapons. But this article explains why that step toward making everyone safer is fraught with its own danger to our soldiers.

The next two weeks could prove perilous for U.S. troops as the military collects high-caliber weapons and munitions from Iraqis.

The danger is not in the actual collection, but having troops discern between those turning in weapons and those who might try to take advantage of the program by carrying arms in the open with the intent to harm U.S. servicemembers, said Army Sgt. Nathan Chism.

AMERICAN GIs are nothing if not creative. Read this article about how they use cardboard boxes to create privacy and luxury in their adopted quarters in Iraq.

In northeast Baghdad, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment troops living in an Iraqi cigarette factory are using cardboard packing boxes to build some privacy.

Spc. Peter Muller, for example, has a 7-foot high cardboard wall around his cot, and he’s added a walk-in closet. A “Vietnam style” tunnel leads to his space.

“If I ever go homeless, I’ll know how to do it in style,” said Muller, 23, of Hudson City, N.J.