News and Personal dispatches from the front and the home front.
In their own words:
Dena Yllescas: Funeral Information - I just got word that Rob will be flown to Nebraska on Saturday. We will have a wake for the public on Sunday Dec 7th from 1-3pm in the Osceola Downtown City Auditorium. The funeral will be at 10am on Monday December 8th also at the Osceola Downtown City Auditorium. The address for this will be below. Also, I've got myself a PO Box while I'm at my parents for mail to be sent to me so you don't have to email me for the address. It is posted on the side of the blog. Again, thank you so much for all the support and prayers you've shown for Rob and our family. (READ MORE)
Jake's Life: G Co Reunion - The photo above was taken during one of my last weeks in Iraq. The Marines pictured in it were the original members of the fireteam I led over there, from l to r, they are Joe P., Matt A., myself, and Kevin C. After my deployment to Iraq, I left my old company, G Co. and joined the sniper platoon. Those three remained with Golf, and deployed together again this year without me to Afghanistan. This was one of the most difficult parts of leaving the line and going to snipers, redeploying without the men I had been with the year before. When we first arrived in Afghanistan, Golf Co began working right away. Knowing they were out there while I was still inside the wire was awful. About two weeks after they began working, my platoon hit a catastrophic IED. This was not the first time they had been in contact, but it was the first time they took KIA. (READ MORE)
Army of Dude: On Strykers - For every ten silly questions I get about the Army and being in Iraq ("Are there any hot chicks?" being the most practical), I get one good matured, serious question. One that keeps coming up is, "What is a Stryker?" I have a hard time answering that question if the person asking is not familar with military hardware. I usually describe it as a smaller tank (it isn't) or like an armored bus. More informed folks are satisfied with the answer of it being an APC (armored personnel carrier). But because it has only been in combat for five years, little is known about the Stryker outside of the military community. Hopefully I can shed just a little light on this. Forward thinking propelled the Stryker into 21st century warfare. Its necessity rises from the philosophy that big, conventional tank-on-tank wars were a Cold War relic and unconventional, smaller wars were going to be all the rage. Egghead thinking prevailed if Iraq and Afghanistan are any indication. (READ MORE)
Back In the Army Now (at 54): Pre-Deployment Processing Again - Next week from Tuesday to Friday I have yet another round of pre-deployment paperwork and medical processing. I thought this round would be something different but it is the same thing as the last round. The bad thing for me is that I hoped the next time I would see an Army doctor would be after we began pre-deployment training in February. That way my shoulder would be healed up ior at least far enough along that I could pass a PT test. That way when they asked about the shoulder I could offer to take and pass a PT test on the spot. I can't do that next week. Hopefully I will have until mid-January to get enough rehab to do 21 pushups (the minimum to pass at my age) and I could show up and pass a PT test. I now have official Stop-Loss orders and deployment orders. I don't want to get stuck here on a paperwork technicality at this point. (READ MORE)
Fobbits need ice cream too: Pogueville - Today we had a detail which was to take all of our crew-served ammo (linked .50 cal, 40mm MK19, linked 7.62 and linked 5.56) along with our pyro (grenades, smoke grenades, flares...etc) to turn in so that we can leave this shithole. The turn-in site is a base next to Kuwait City; Camp Arifjan which might as well be called Pogueville. It's as large as an active duty base back stateside and the headquarters of way too many officers. I passed more lieutenant-colonels, colonels and 1-star generals than I ever want to see again. At first I wondered why we got stationed at our shithole, but after spending the day there, I realized it's good that we are secluded at our own base. There are way too many females at Arifjan; civilians and military women in civilian clothes with apparently no regulation. I saw a girl in line in burger king with transparent fleece pants on; we (myself and the other 5 guys on the detail) had to pull ourselves away from staring at this girl's twat. (READ MORE)
Fearless 1st Marines’ blog: HOPE in sight - SAQLAWIYAH, Iraq (November 18, 2008) – The Saqlawiyah City Council, local Iraqi Police and Coalition forces facilitated a specialized Combined Medical Engagement (CME) at the Saqlawiyah Clinic, Nov. 18. The engagement was the first Iraqi and Coalition force effort to diagnose and treat eyesight issues among the populous, fitting local Iraqis with more than 400 pairs of prescription eyewear. Lt. Cmdr. Michael Tomlinson, the chaplain for Task Force 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, Regimental Combat Team 1, worked with a network of battalion family members to request the eyeglasses from Humanitarian Optical Prescription Endeavor (HOPE). (READ MORE)
Fearless 1st Marines’ blog: The ultimate sacrifice, an act of professionalism - RAMADI, Iraq (Dec. 2, 2008) –Capt. Ali Rezaij, an Iraqi Policeman (IP) at the Taamen Police station in Ramadi, Iraq, spent his last hours on Earth ensuring the safety and well-being of his fellow Iraqis. Rezaij had spent an exhausting night sitting at the bedside of a sickly woman he escorted to the hospital. He stayed with the women, whom he did not even know, into the early morning hours and then returned to work the next day not knowing it would be his last. That afternoon he responded to a report of a vehicle borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) Nov. 13. (READ MORE)
IraqPundit: Say It In Baghdad - Today's question is what Muslim city can turn itself into an appropriate backdrop for theater of Barack Obama? When John Kennedy spoke in Berlin, his speech became an historic soundbite. It appears BHO is looking for a similar clip for his own story. The NYT's Helene Cooper writes that Obama has a speech but no city to deliver it. According to his aides, Obama plans to give a major foreign policy speech within his first 100 days, and he wants to give said speech in a Muslim city. Cooper asks: "So where should he do it? The list of Islamic world capitals is long, and includes the obvious —Riyadh, Kuwait City, Islamabad — and the not-so-obvious — Male (the Maldives), Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), Tashkent (Uzbekistan). Some wise-guys have even suggested Dearborn, Mich., as a possibility." (READ MORE)
Bill Roggio: US moves to declare former Pakistani officers international terrorists - The US government is seeking to add several former Pakistani intelligence officers to the United Nations’ list of international terrorists, The News reported. A senior US intelligence official familiar with the effort to reign in Pakistan’s intelligence service confirmed to The Long War Journal the US wants to get the United Nations Security Council to designate several senior former officers of Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence agency as international terrorists. Included on the list of former Pakistani intelligence officers being submitted to the UNSC are Hamid Gul, Javid Nasir, and Zahirul Islam Abbasi, as well as Aslam Beg, a senior Army officer, the intelligence official said. (READ MORE)
SFC Burke: My Point of View: Things Sometimes Make You Go Hmmm.... - Have you ever second guessed yourself before? I mean you’ve made a major decision that impacts your life greatly….and sometime later on….you’re thinking, what if? What if I’d done this or that and then that would’ve happened instead of this? Hmmm….brings to mind Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken”. Read the poem. Stand at the fork in the road and lean this way and that, taking a really long look down each path. One’s worn and the other, not. Which do you take? Why? Which of those paths stemming from that road are you on right now? The path that was worn or the one that needed wear? Since that decision, whenever it was, are you stopping and wondering…what would’ve happened if I’d gone the other way? What’s made you stop to think? Ugh…what if? (READ MORE)
Big Tobacco: The Big Tobacco Food Pyramid - I wrote this while smoking a La Gloria Cubana. You know the bad part about going down on a Chinese girl? I’m always hungry two hours later. “Are you still 160 lbs?” I am sitting in the ID card center on the FOB. The room is like a Catholic Purgatory. Soldiers sit motionless in shaped-like-nobody’s-ass plastic chairs for hours watching Timecop and Catwoman on DVD. There is one ID card machine for three brigades worth of soldiers. Many of the soldiers have been there for hours, waiting as the ID machine breaks, crashes and once every thirty minutes spits out an ID card. “Uh,” I say. “I think so.” The specialist operating the ID machine looks at me incredulously. “You’re 160 lbs, sergeant?” “Well, last time they weighed me,” I protest. “When was that?” “Err, April.” “I’m gonna’ put down 175.” “Hey, I run like thirty miles a week!” A captain who has waited far too long for his place at the ID card machine suddenly speaks up. (READ MORE)
Jon Blogs: The Bridge - Here is a good example of what you see in the media, and then what the real truth is. First I will post the story from http://www.thefrontierpost.com/News.aspx?ncat=an&nid=1035&ad=03-12-2008 . And now, here is the posting from Jon, who was there as part of this bridge mission. During my career in the military I have seen some pretty ‘effed’ up things, but none so much as letting the Taliban escort bridge equipment to the bridge’s building site. I saw this occur when I was working out of Ghormache with the ETT”s (its about 10-15 kilometers from Bala Murghab). One day in late October, we were hearing word of the escorts coming through our Area of Operations on the main road. When the convey got to the road to Ghormache we learned that the village elders were the ones escorting it. We know that these are known Taliban elders, and could not believe that their own militia were the bridge’s security. These might have been some of the same guys we fought against a few days ago. (READ MORE)
News from the Front:
Iraq:
Back to Azerbaijan, 'land of valiant sons' - The Azerbaijanis are going home. When other nations hemmed and hawed about joining the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, the Republic of Azerbaijan did not hesitate. For more than five years, Azerbaijani soldiers have provided security for the Haditha Dam in Anbar province: (READ MORE)
Dedication and opening of Col. Adnan Depot Distribution Center - TAJI, Iraq – Senior Iraqi and Coalition officials gathered here Dec. 4 to mark the opening of the Col. Adnan Depot Distribution Center. The facility provides a central point for receiving and shipping materiel and equipment entering and leaving the Taji National Supply Depot. This control point helps with inventory control and tracking supply shipments. (READ MORE)
Coalition forces kill one terrorist, apprehend 23 - BAGHDAD – One terrorist was killed, five wanted men were captured and 18 additional suspects were detained during operations throughout the country Thursday and Friday. Coalition forces continued to target al-Qaeda in Iraq leadership in central Iraq Thursday. During two coordinated operations in Tikrit, about 160 km north of Baghdad, forces captured one wanted man and detained three additional suspects. (READ MORE)
Sons of Iraq: a vote of confidence for reconciliation - BAGHDAD – In early November, as U.S. Soldiers looked on, Baghdad-based members of the Sons of Iraq got their monthly paychecks from a new boss: the Iraqi government. “It was a critical step in the turnover of the mostly Sunni volunteers from Coalition to Iraqi control. And the Baghdad transfer has become a model for similar moves in four other key provinces,” said Lt. Col. Jeffrey Kulmayer, the chief of Reconciliation and Engagement for Multi-National Corps - Iraq. (READ MORE)
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