Iraq - The Ultimate Suckfest
Alright well the last patrol that I just got off of was a very, very, very long and crappy time. It seemed as if the time would never pass and we would never make it back into base. But eventually time did pass and we finally made it back home. Just seemed like an eternity out there this time.
To start out, we ended up doing the usual market babysitting that apparently, the 82nd Airborne, a prestigious unit full of strong battle heritage, has been tasked with a job that the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police should be doing. But anyways. We dismounted through one of the markets to look around and make sure everything was all well. We got a couple new guys in not too long ago, and I had one of them on my team. This meant an extra eye on that guy to make sure he was doing what he was supposed to. Not to mention that he’s not used to how everything is and what to do, so I also would have to give him pointers and tell him what to do. Its a learning process and I understand that. Nothing really exciting in the market, although there was a guy trying to get me to buy some “freaky sex tapes”. This is nothing new. Theres always a good assortment of guys selling copied porn DVDs.
Once we loaded up, we headed over to another market. As we were leaving there, we heard a loud explosion, and then the call came up over the radio that some mortars had been fired at the market. We rolled back over there to check it out. I guess only 1 or 2 had actually exploded and there were a couple unexploded ones. Almost immediately after pulling up to this IA checkpoint, one of the snipers from that one bad area started shooting. They constantly shoot at the IA, as well as the civilians just trying to shop in the markets. Its not very often that they do this when we are there, but this guy was ballsy enough to take a couple shots with us there. None of them were directed at us, but they were definatly shooting in our direction. We couldn’t see anything, or where he was, so we could do anything.
This really got me thinking about the whole “Market Security” job that we have been tasked with. It seems that we are there to help secure the markets, but I dont really think we are securing much. In fact we are pretty much in a reactive posture. Something happens, we try to take care of it or help out. Not very proactive, which I think is what needs to happen. There needs to be more of an effort to go after those responsible, not just trying to stop them in the act, or reacting to an attack. In the few months that we’ve been doing this, there have been, by my count, at least 5 car bombs, 2 of which were quite devistating. There have been several mortar attacks and IED attacks on the markets, not to mention the almost daily sniper attacks at a couple of the markets. So I have to ask myself, what are we really doing? I know some people would say that there are fewer attacks because of our presence. Maybe so, but if so, I dont really think its much of a difference. I just really hope people who need to know this see this or recognize this and we start going after those responsible, BEFORE they do something.
Continue reading (Eighty Deuce on the Loose)
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