Mosul, Northern Iraq
The media is an industry; but their business is not to report news. The industry needs a captive audience to beat the bottom line. The product is advertisement. This is not a right or wrong. It’s just a business concept for moving merchandise, and every profession or industry has one. Doctors, soldiers, preachers, lawyers, journalists: everyone needs to earn a living. Only a reclusive holy man might argue otherwise, but most holy men also expect alms.

The Players
There is the perception that fanatical insurgents bubble like oil from the Iraqi sands. Yet, having traveled in Iraq for nearly half a year, I have seen little real desert, and true fanatics are rare. In an effort to be culturally sensitive and almost compulsively polite, we’ve mangled the meanings of words like “martyr” and “suicide” to such a degree that we’re using them to label mass murderers.

Mosul
I have never seen a people in any land who show off their kids more than the Iraqis. Every time I go downtown, someone asks that I photograph a baby. Often I pretend to snap a photo, and the people smile and walk away.

Folks at home have been asking if they can send care packages to Mosul. Army officers have said that care packages can be mailed to the Chaplain, who will ensure that any goods are distributed properly. I appreciate your not contacting me in regard to care packages, lest I spend hours each week answering emails about them. Personally, I do not need packages, but I greatly appreciate the thought. For packages to soldiers, please send to:
c/o Chaplain
HHC
1-24 Infantry
APO AE 09345

Soldiers in Mosul are rounding up insurgents by the dozens every week. The next posting will describe some of the fascinating methods they are using to track down insurgent cells.

(Media please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )

Mosul

Major Mark Bieger found this little girl after the car bomb that attacked our guys while kids were crowding around. The soldiers here have been angry and sad for two days. They are angry because the terrorists could just as easily have waited a block or two and attacked the patrol away from the kids. Instead, the suicide bomber drove his car and hit the Stryker when about twenty children were jumping up and down and waving at the soldiers. Major Bieger, I had seen him help rescue some of our guys a week earlier during another big attack, took some of our soldiers and rushed this little girl to our hospital. He wanted her to have American surgeons and not to go to the Iraqi hospital. She didn’t make it. I snapped this picture when Major Bieger ran to take her away. He kept stopping to talk with her and hug her.

Mosul, Northern Iraq
As the new map of Iraq unfolds, a picture of progress emerges. The Iraqis who want freedom and democracy are gaining ground. From what I hear about the news back home, this might sound unreal. Nightly tallies of roadside IEDs and suicide car bombers driving headlong into crowds, like the Vietnam body counts on the Huntley-Brinkley Report, are the main summary of events, while most of this country is peaceful.

FOB Marez
First Sergeant Michael J. Bordelon was conducting combat operations in Mosul, Iraq, on 23 April 2005 when a suicide car-bomber rammed into his Stryker vehicle. Though mortally wounded, Michael Bordelon lived for another two weeks before the injuries claimed his life. With every passing day, here on FOB Marez, men who had known Michael Bordelon for years, men who had fought with him in the streets of Mosul, would ask about his condition. The veterans here have seen much since they arrived in Mosul, and they understood well that the odds were against their First Sergeant surviving, yet they would ask the commander hopefully, “How is First Sergeant Bordelon?”

It was noisier than usual last night on Marez; our soldiers were firing 120mm mortars. When large cannons or mortars are fired around you daily, like they were in Baquba, it’s easy to start sleeping through the racket. But since outgoing fire is not common on this FOB, the booms kept some people awake. Then, shortly after sunrise, two rockets flew into base and exploded nearby, causing more sudden noise and injuring a few civilians.