No matter how a person feels about the war in Iraq, or the rationale for having started it, or how it was managed, or whether or not we should be there still, it is increasingly clear that somehow, some way, despite the inertia of history and the fickle meddling of politics, progress is being made in the most unlikely of places. But epic progress is costly.

[This is an important but small story that got lost in the noise of Iraq. The dispatch was written by a mainstream journalist upon my request. The journalist required anonymity; major news outlets tend to censor their workers. This story is the unauthorized product of a mainstream journalist.

In the few months since leaving the war, I’ve crisscrossed the United States several times, talking with infantrymen in their twenties and veterans in their eighties, helicopter pilots, special forces soldiers, families and friends of wounded and killed warriors, all for a book about the Deuce Four’s Battle for Mosul. But it’s time to take a break from writing to let the facts and details steep. I’ve headed back to war.

Words of Wisdom for Professional Soldiers Entering this War.
This excellent paper comes recommended by one of America’s top military experts, Lieutenant General David Petraeus.  The author, LTC David Kilcullen Ph.D., is an experienced and highly educated Australian Army officer.  READ HERE (PDF Format)

 

Please give the gift of independent reporting. Your gift goes far and is used for transport, lodging, living expenses, satellite communications and for repairing and replacing gear that fails due to the rigors of the battlefields.  Millions of people, in more than a hundred countries, see these photos and words.  Your generosity goes very far, and is greatly appreciated.

 

 I met up with an old friend in Dubai. Steve Shaulis and I served together in the Army, and we attended the Defense Language Institute together. After we both left the Army, we headed in very different directions. Steve began doing business in places like Romania, Uzbekistan, Thailand, and Singapore, and I started a business in Poland. Still, over the past twenty years we’ve managed to stay in contact,

When we landed in Kabul, Steve put the driver in the back and drove us through the crowded streets. There was a thirty minute ride ahead of us, alternating between racing and jamming in traffic. As we drove away from the airport, there were fewer Coalition soldiers about, and on the hills surrounding the town a dense warren of mud and stone houses that could have been erected thousands of years ago,

More than a year ago, I wrote from the “Sunni Triangle” that Iraq was in the midst of a civil war, words that received little attention then. I had published that dispatch about three weeks after the unexpected but overwhelming success of the first Iraqi elections. People were understandably distracted by the post-vote euphoria, while the media was largely busy explaining how they so misjudged the mood of the Iraqi people.

It is not the Coalition that gives me great hope for Iraq, but that I know there are many good, intelligent and courageous Iraqi men and women. Real sacrifice, real courage, and great hope emanate from this Iraqi man: Please read on…

The sound lashed across the desert, chased by the sounds of men yelling. There, a hundred yards away, were two men, swinging whips at two other men.

As our bags were loaded into the Land Cruiser for the journey toward Dasht-e-Margo, the Desert of Death, a man wearing a bomb closes in. Before striking off, we again visit the PRT in Lashkar Gah, where Steve huddles with some Afghan employees. An entire British Army unit has defected..