"Fire and Smoke Everywhere", Letter Home From Iraq

[mojowork_n]

This is a link to an e-mail that was published today in my hometown paper. It's from Rachel Bosveld, a 19 year old servicewoman from a little town not too far from here, who was killed earlier this week in an ambush.

The e-mail home that she wrote describes an earlier attack, last month. I'm kind of wondering if her e-mail would ever have seen print, or the light of day, if not for Rachel Bosveld's ultimate sacrifice. The particularly revealing detail in the story, I think, is that the armored troop carrier that saved her life, in the first attack, had been available for service a total of "two weeks and two days", during the whole time of the "war"....

And that's exactly the kind of news from the front that your "on the ground, frontline", officially-blessed, embedded-and-heavily-censored reporters, (or the assorted FAUX-News-minions-and-talking-heads), don't want you to know.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/gen/oct03/180895.asp

I've seen and heard other reports, but I suspect not nearly enough of them. That troops on patrol in the some of the worst areas over there don't have effective flak jackets. Which were reportedly paid for, but never delivered. That too many of the vehicles don't work.... Also that Halliburton is selling imported gasoline--TO IRAQ--the country with the 2nd largest reserves in the world, at domestic American pump prices... When gasoline over there is normally sold for pennies, or small handfuls of change, a gallon....

Anybody else got links? I've seen a few on Col. David Hackworth's website, but haven't been there lately. I'd like to know if there are others.

...I'm NOT trying to say that all of our troops should come home *tomorrow*, that Saddam was really much better, or that (praise be unto his hairy butt and pustulating pie hole), Osama told us we had it coming....

I'm just getting really pissed off that the same Republican, neo-con, Imperial Centurions that got us into this mess (on the basis of false promises and fictitious intelligence reports) are continuing to hide their incompetance and lunatic Hubris, while ordinary Americans are paying the Ultimate Price, covering for them.

We see the names in the newspaper and watch the casualty reports multiply, but you almost want to shrug them all off, until it hits close to home.

What's really going on over there?

[Divernan]

1. Maybe Laura Bush will share letters home from her two daughters.

Where were the Bush twins partying while this younger woman was going through hell?

[Loonman]

2. Meanwhile, Jenna n Barb down another shooter

While someone gets almost blown up.