I spoke to one of our R & R soldiers yesterday

My second chat with him.

He returns to Iraq tomorrow, after a 15 day leave. He doesn't want to go, he sounded fed up....as we spoke, a military friend/boss of his walked by and said something to him, that he'd made a phone call and something else I couldn't understand. The soldier then told me his supervisor had called to check if a unit had been found to replace their own (they've been in Iraq for ten months), but so far, the three units that have been called up are not "prepared" to replace anyone.

The soldier told me that his base, in the Sunni Triangle, has taken a lot of mortar hits, but he says he works in the middle of the large air base and has 3 foot thick walls surrounding him, and he never has to leave the base (wife was with him, and she worries). He said the mortars had taken out one of the helicopters sitting on base, that it had over 90 holes in it. He is pessimistic about coming home earlier, as he doesn't think Saddam's capture will make much difference. His wife said that the German news reports are quite different and much more informative than the American news, which she says gives very little information.

The soldier said, "Everybody over there hates Americans."

Think we could get a name change- to "Operation Sitting Duck?"

Did he know that the military is sometimes about war?

He comes from a poor family in the south, his parents were illiterate, and he saw it as a way to get educated himself on the cheap.

...even less thought we would invade another country illegally based on a pack of lies.

Why would you even post this kind of remark?

A friend of mine is going to Iraq shortly. He joined the military so he could pay for college. He also got a perfect score on his ACT. It was his intention to attend school in the spring.

Comments like "Well, wasn't he aware that the army fights?" only serve to make the speaker like a dick.

-C

kick

and I am sure the news is very different in Germany, even in Canada we get more coverage than the main US media is showing.

:-(