My platoon has a new ashtray: the remnants of an IED that someone tried to kill us with. The truck made it through a lot better than the IED did. It's the bottom half of a large shell, about six inches in diameter and maybe twelve or so high, with a jagged edge on top. The EOD (Explosives Ordinance Disposal - Army bomb squad) techs tell us that a lot of shells end up like this. Some of the shell will shatter into deadly shrapnel, and the rest will fly through the air as one large piece. It's no less deadly if it happens to hit you, but the odds of being hit by one large chunk instead of a thousand little ones are definitely favorable. The one that we have was picked up minutes after an IED attack. It was still smoking when we threw it in the truck. We figured it would be appropriate to keep the hunk of once-deadly junk smoking for a while longer.
Better luck next time, you murderous bastards.
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An ashtray?! Do you realize smoking can kill you?
ReplyDeleteBtw, post a picture, please. I'm curious to see how a IED ashtray looks like.
Glad to know you made it back inside the wire safely.
ReplyDeleteI wish them no luck at all, wretched buttheads.
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas Teflon Don. May the good Lord keepyou and yours safe and warm.
ReplyDeleteTo all coalition troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan:
ReplyDeleteMERRY CHRISTMAS
Watch your six.
First, a sidenote:
ReplyDeleteOne of my biggest pet peeves is the attitude that says "Support the troops: Bring them home!". Last time I checked, the troops are all volunteers. Of course, that might change if Rep. Rangel gets his way and reinstates the draft, but for now, we've all chosen this life. If you claim to support the troops, listen to me: we do not want to be used as a political weapon. If we pull military forces out of Iraq before the Iraqis are fully capable of managing their own affairs, if we go home and leave Iraq in a downward spiral, if we fail in this task of nation building that we find ourselves at, then we doom the American military to a long period of even greater risks. It's your choice not to support the war; just don't pretend to support the troops while using them as a political tool.
Far, far too simplistic. Much of the information you have has been managead to get you to form the opinions and views you hold. I won't bore you with my views, but I ask you to withold judgement, for a time, to let the facts emerge into history.
Whether we agree on politics, i do agree that you should live. You should survive this experience, return home, and put this experience in perspective. It is your life.
The strategy, methods, tactics and tools used in pursuing this war are the flaws, not the soldiers. We needed twenty thousand more green berets to fight counterinsurgency, NOT twenty thousand fng's. We needed (past tense, the opportunity has long passed) to make life for the Iraquis OK by providing them with food, water, electricity and sewage disposal. We did not need to go behind bunkered walls with air conditioning and American satyle meals while the Iraquis did without food, light water and sanitation. And none of that was the grunts fault.
We should never have disbanded the Iraqui army. We should never have left all that ordinance at the dumps we passed going in. We should never have lied to the Iraqui army about surrendering. Talk about pissing people off, handing then guns, and saying good luck. Rummy did all that, just for you.
So, yeah, as long as we're there, you should have the best equipment we can provide. WE want you to survive. I (we, if you lump me with progressives or liberals) want you to come back and say, "WOW war is really fucked, man! I don't ever want this to happen again."
I (we) want you to make sure your generation doesn't get sucked into some impossible situation in some other shithole country that just happens to have oil under it.
May The L RD G D place HIS angles around you and each of your fellow warriors and keep you safe. What many in the MSM and western political leaders do not understand is that you guys are the first line of defence against a culture that has set out to destroy western civilization as we know it.
ReplyDeleteTo each of you Merry Christmas and blessing to each of you and your families.
Thanks for being there for us.
To each of you Merry Christmas and blessing to each of you and your families.
ReplyDeleteThanks for being there for us.
Amen to that.
Stay safe and I hope you have a calm & quiet Christmas.
ReplyDelete"Better luck next time you murderous bastards"
ReplyDeleteArchilochus (http://www.stoa.org/diotima/anthology/archiloch_intro.shtml) lives.