Marines phone home
04.10.2003Sgt. Stryker posted an email he received from the the brother of Corporal Brian Taylor (Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 23rd Marines). Cpl. Taylor's unit had captured the former UN headquarters, found the phones still working, and called relatives (I hope Kofi Annan doesn't mind). Here's an excerpt:
Brian captured an Iraqi general himself at a checkpoint. A man trying to get through a checkpoint that they had set up to allow civilians to leave didn't look right to Brian. Brian searched his stuff and found a very ornately engraved plated pistol. The man insisted that he was just a farmer. Brian wasn't having it, so he called over his battalion intelligence officer who actually is a farmer (remember that the 2/23 is all reservists). The farmer/intel officer said, "Show me your hands." Upon seeing the general's silky smooth hands, he said, showing his own hands, "Those aren't farmers hands; THESE are farmer's hands!" They handcuffed the general who proceeded to bawl like a little girl as they carried him away. Brian later learned that the pistol engravings indicated that it was a gift from Saddam.
On a somewhat unrelated note, here's an excerpt from O'Keefe on human shields:
Human Shields were present at all major power and water plants in Baghdad. Human Shields remained so throughout the invasion and bombing of Iraq. Subsequently the power and water serving millions of Iraqi civilians in Baghdad was never "knocked out" by U.S./U. K. bombing.
I won't comment on the obvious egoism involved in such a statement. Human shields were only successful in preventing damange to those buildings if all these conditions hold: 1) the military knew where the human shields were at all time, 2) they deliberately avoided targets where human shields were present, 3) all of those sites were originally on the target list. I'm not sure any of these assumptions hold (especially not 1 and 2).
If we're going to use post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning (a logical fallacy, btw), then I'll claim credit for the war. After all, I came out publicly in favor of the war in November. I'm sure Bush, Powell, and co. took my advice very seriously. I expect a brief note of appreciation in Bush's victory speech: "I wanna briefly thank Miguel Centellas for his support for this military action in his weblog." You're welcome, Dubya. Now, about that Patriot Act ...
Finally, Michael Totten gives a good description of what the US would be like if Dubya really was like Saddam (as some ANSWER-types claimed).
Posted by Miguel at 07:29 PM
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