Marine general upbeat upon return from Iraq

[NVMojo]

March 29, 2005



SCOTT LINNETT / Union-Tribune
Marine Major Brent Christie greeted his daughters, Lexi, 4 (at top), and Olivia, 22 months, on his return to Camp Pendleton yesterday after seven months in Fallujah, Iraq.

CAMP PENDLETON – Fresh off the plane from Iraq yesterday, Lt. Gen. John Sattler said troops from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force "had lifted the blanket of oppression" that stifled Iraqis for more than three decades.

Sattler's upbeat assessment came as nearly 300 Marines from Operation Iraqi Freedom returned in one of the last homecomings for a Camp Pendleton unit.

In the past year, more than 36,000 Marines and sailors have served in Iraq under the 1st MEF, which is based here.

On Sunday, Sattler handed over responsibility for Anbar province to the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force, based at Camp Lejeune, N.C. The 2nd MEF will have the job for about a year.

more...

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/military/20050329-9999-1m29marines.html

[hadrons]

1. "had lifted the blanket of oppression" that stifled Iraqis ...."

not that the U.S. helped in much of that oppression Lt. Shill, err Lt. Gen. John Sattler

[atreides1]

2. You Know What

I'd be upbeat too, if I were 5,000 miles away from people who were trying to kill me!!!!

[bobthedrummer]

3. Corpses being consumed by dogs in the street, Abu Ghraib, Fallujah

over 1,500 US dead and thousands of US troops maimed and mentally ill, diplomacy and alliances shattered, Iraq insurgency growing- maybe that "blanket of oppression" the General lifted was used to cover another corpse that isn't counted in Iraq.

[leftchick]

4. if you all want some Fallujah reality reading...

pick up this weeks rollingstone With Bob Marley on the cover. There is a very disturbing article on the soldiers who fought in the November offensive. It made me sick.

[LiberallyInclined]

6. or you can read it online for free...

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/7047692?pageid=rs.Politics&pageregion=single4

[leftchick]

13. Thanks for the link... This is so Fucking sick....

I did not have time to find the link this morning. Worth the read but sickening in the reality....


~snip~

On a drizzly Thursday morning, I meet Bandy in Alvey's room, where he's hanging out with a few other soldiers, debating whether to go running. "Fuck running," Bandy says, looking at Alvey. "You gonna run?" A tall kid in camouflage fatigues, Alvey looks at Bandy like he's nuts. A vet of the Afghan war, Alvey is a squad leader and, like Bandy, is twenty-three. He led fifteen soldiers through the battle of Fallujah, which right now he's reliving in a way: sitting on his bed and clicking through 500 or so Fallujah photographs that he's stored on his laptop. "Look at this guy," Alvey says, showing me a gruesome close-up of a corpse, mouth open in a ghoulish grin. "We called this guy Smiley, or fuckin' Cat Lips. His entire mouth had been eaten by cats." Alvey makes a lot of jokes about the things he saw in Fallujah. He looks at Cat Lips again. "You have that shit in your head, though," he adds. "I mean, this isn't the kind of thing you see every day."

Bandy snatches a peek. "I can stand seeing a dead haj," he says casually, using the GIs' all-purpose term for Iraqis. Seeing dead Iraqis is something he's gotten used to, he adds. "The first time I ever saw a dead guy was in April, and I was like, 'Oh, goddamn.' The dude's laying there, his arm's gone, there's a little bone stub sticking out...." It was sad, he says, because he didn't know if the dead man was an enemy. U.S. troops are often shot at from within a crowd, and when they fire back, it's often blindly. "So this guy could have been whoever," he says. But in Fallujah, "We heard that everyone was a bad guy. So when you saw these bodies...it was almost comforting. Like, thank God somebody whacked this motherfucker before he got us."

Bandy talks frequently about the fear that infuses their daily lives in Iraq. "Your life swings on a hinge," he says. As a result, "innocent people get killed." The previous week, for example, Bandy's platoon was guarding the highway near their base when an improvised explosive device nearly blew up a U.S. military convoy. Panicked, a soldier in the convoy opened up on a civilian truck that happened to be passing. "Splatters some dude's fucking head all over that truck," Bandy says. "The dude's brother is covered head to toe with brain matter, sinus goo, skull fragments -- whatever fucking flew out of that dude's fucking head. The locals come up and they're like, 'Why did you shoot my brother? Why do you kill Iraqis?' " Like a lot of soldiers, Bandy came to Iraq as an idealist. "I thought we were going to make things better here," he says. "But, I mean, what do you tell these fucking people? I've got a guy's fucking brains on me. He was just a civilian dirt farmer fucking casualty."

[okieinpain]

19. why are you disgusted, they are your soldiers. :~)

[bpilgrim]

14. thanks for the link

this guy sounds like a graduate from the limbaugh 'institute'.

But college didn't even last a year. He couldn't stand it. As he tells it, the decisive moment came one day during a literature class. Assigned to write a paper on a political topic, Bandy, who'd been upset by some news footage he'd seen of U.S. soldiers dying in Tora Bora, chose to focus on the fact that U.S. courts were considering granting Geneva Convention rights to detainees at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. "I'm angry, I'm fucking convicted to bring this to people's attention, because most of the people were like, 'War's bad,' " he says, in falsetto, "or 'War's good -- kill 'em all.' "

Then one of his classmates walked up to him and asked him if he wanted to sign a petition against animal cruelty. "This dude's got fucking PETA buttons all over his shirt," he says, "and I'm like, 'Do you even know what's going on in the fucking world?' It pissed me off. I didn't want to be one of those college kids with all these opinions but no fucking base in them."

actually a LOT of the media were singing that song back then...

http://images.globalfreepress.com

peace

[phusion]

15. Damn...

That's quite a read. Very eye-opening shit right there.

These guys are all just scared 23 year old kids...Probably how I would act in that situation.

And they cling to each other like a gang. The single ones, like the article said, have nothing to return to so they re-enlist to be there with their buds.

Sad stuff...

[0007]

16. Thanks for the link

Wish junior would have time to comment on this....



[Athame]

20. Thanks. Link sent far and wide.

What a nightmare those guys are in. It will be worse when they come home.

[Rockerdem]

5. More happy news fodder

If you think that this is sickening, wait until the first of the month and all the "US casualties have dropped dramatically in Iraq" stories. Needless to say, it will be on April Fools Day.

[Robbien]

7. Notice how it is always the officers who are upbeat

in these happy news items, never the grunts on the ground.

[Rockerdem]

8. Rove has gotten to the media

The drumbeat now is that Iraq is getting better. There will be a big PR push from now until the next Iraqi elections. The Sunnis are going to have to do change course and do something dramatic to change the PR blitz.

[ElectroPrincess]

18. Yes, also it's the Field Grade (Maj, LTC) and General Officers who are

always the ones tagged to give a positive spin on DA Occupation. They won't let the press close to the Captains and Lieutenants who must go out on patrol almost every damn day.

A friend of ours in the Marine Corps is back in Iraq for the THIRD tour. Since he's due to PCS, we're hoping they don't keep him longer than 4-6 months. But really folks, his THIRD deployment to Iraq. Unreal and asking too much of our troops. :(

[Frederik]

9. Maybe it's the chemicals

"Dr. ash-Shaykhli was assigned by the ministry to assess the health conditions in Fallujah following the November assault there. He said that researches, prepared by his medical team, prove that U.S. occupation forces used internationally prohibited substances, including mustard gas, nerve gas, and other burning chemicals in their attacks in the war-torn city."
(http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=5430 )

"They also tell of whole quadrants of the city in which nothing was left alive, not even dogs or goats -- quadrants that were sealed off by the victorious Americans for mysterious scouring operations after the battle. Others told of widespread use of cluster bombs in civilian areas -- a flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions, but a standard practice throughout the war."
(http://www.galileolibrary.com/mikes/2005/03/000758.html )

"Dr. Hafidh al-Dulaimi, the head of “the Commission for the Compensation of Fallujah citizens” has reported the following destruction that has been inflicted on Fallujah as a result of the American attack on it:
(...)
- The death of 100,000 domestic and wild animals due to chemical and/or gaseous munitions."
(http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... )

[PhuLoi]

10. Its easy to be upbeat when you're in the rear with the gear.

[Dharma_Bum]

11. Cheers to that!

'Upbeat'? ...
F**ker spent all his time planning attacks on Iraqi cities from behind a desk in an office not much different from his office in the states.

Why do they never ask the lower enlisted what they think?!?!?
I somewhat doubt you'll get 'upbeat' as a feeling ...
General Officers are just dirty(Rep.)'s in uniform.

[warrens]

12. Delusional. Just delusional.

Or a liar. One of the two.

[geniph]

17. Lifted the "blanket of oppression"

and lowered the Sleeping Bag of Violent Death.

Wonderful. I'd be upbeat if I suddenly transitioned to REMF, myself.