Links to emails and other reports filed, not by reporters, but by soldiers and other persons on the ground in Iraq:
It Ain't Necessarily So. [Army Spec Ops letter from Iraq - a must read!]
"A bunch of bad guys used a group of women and children as human shields.The GIs surrounded them and negotiated their surrender fifteen hours later and when they discovered a three year-old girl had been injured by the big tough guys throwing her down a flight of stairs, the GIs called in a MedVac helicopter to take her and her mother to the nearest field hospital. The Iraqis watched it all, and there hasn't been a problem inthat neighborhood since.
"How many such stories, and there are hundreds of them, never get reported in the fair and balanced press? You know, nada.
"The civilians who have figured it out faster than anyone are the local teenagers. They watch the GIs and try to talk to them and ask questions about America and Now wear wrap-around sunglasses, GAP T- shirts, Dockers (or even better Levis with the red tags) and Nikes (or Egyptian knock-offs, but with the "swoosh") and love to listen to AFN when the GIs play it on their radios."
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The Braden Files : SITREP from Iraq
"We are fighting former regime-backed paramilitary groups, Iranian-based opposition, organized criminals, and street thugs. We have stood up governing councils from neighborhood to district to city level...."
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Chief Wiggles -- Straight from Iraq
"Earlier on in the week we received word that our counter intelligence teams were being moved north. With two days notice they packed their stuff and said their goodbyes. I am really going to miss those eight guys whom I am lived and interacted with for the past three months. We have been like family, me being the dad of course. All of them are just young men under the age of thirty, whom I have a great respect for. They are some of the finest young men I have ever met, honored to call each and every one of them my son."
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t a c i t u s: From a Marine
"Then, suddenly, about 9 PM, it sounds like the early days of American troops pouring in here, i.e. real-live combat: gunfire everywhere, tracer rounds visible, even illumination (a.k.a. fireworks). The people of Baghdad weren't awaiting confirmation. It was nonstop celebratory fire. The war's critics warned constantly about the uprising of the "Arab street." Well, here it was: celebrating the end of 2/3 of the triumvirate."
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DoD News: Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Briefing on His Recent Trip to Iraq
"And as we were passing the line of butcher shops, the young Army captain, commander of that company, started telling me this quite remarkable story about how there had been a problem because the butchers were dumping -- doing slaughtering on the street and dumping carcasses out in front of the butcher shops. And in order to get the problem under control, they had done a number of things, and one of them had been to organize an association of the butchers, so that they would have an authoritative institution to interact with. Of course, in the old regime, you didn't let anybody organize an association, you simply took some -- anyone who was putting carcasses on the street out and shot them! We don't use those tactics. An I kiddingly said to him, "Well, did they teach you that at West Point?" And of course they didn't. He figured this out all by himself, and the fact that they're doing this on a daily basis."
Posted by Vanderleun at July 26, 2003 9:22 AM