Birdie in the sky
Hey! Wait! That's not a birdie
Good thing they missed me
A haiku about mortars
We got hit with mortars 2 days ago and I almost lost a few buddies. The mortars hit on the walking path from the chow hall to my house and my friends were on their way when one asked the others to wait up for him he ran back into the house to get something then they started walking again. Well, when the mortars hit they would have been in the kill zone if they hadn't waited, instead they just felt the blast of air and the thunderous boom from the impact of 3 or 4 mortars...
34 comments:
Just don't post anymore pics of where you are staying!
How frightening, Zach.
Take care --
Wow. Something like that makes one think, similar to when I was missed by a car speeding thru an intersection, by only about 25 feet once. He was going at least 100 mph and would have taken me right in the driver's side door. I can understand the feeling. It just wasn't my time yet. It wasn't your buddies time yet either. Glad all are safe and keep your heads down.
-roamer in mich
You are an brave and admirable persons. Be careful there out.
An spaniard friend.
Hope you don't mind that I linked your page to mine. Acts more like a personal bookmark and isn't intended to be a publicity lure. Anyway, after reading your collective experiences of Iraq, I get the sense that it's more of a chronicle of how you live with newfound, deeply absorbed horror and discomfort. Having your own family must be so complicated but this constant voice of pride that you still have for America is inspiring and even a little surprising. Your haikus are fantastically emotive with the word imagery you use. I'll be watching.
You knew what you was getting into when you joined up so stop whinging about it!
If you want to avoid being hit by mortars then leave the Army, or go and campaign to your general to stop invading countries.
Think of all those dead Iraqi civilians that have been hit by YOUR mortars and missiles, and they did not even join any Army and recieve an income for their activities.
Isn't war just grand. How can this happen? I am an American but this is so sad. I certainly didn't vote for Bush. Its all part of the illuminati.
jamal,
pretty sure there was no war going on when zach signed up for the army.
Found your Blog through Flickr.
This is powerful stuff.
Keep talking. Not all of us over here are keeping our heads in the sand.
God bless you and may all of our people get back sooner rather than later.
oh wow, good thing that none of your buddies did get hurt. so scary.
You read Riverbend, too! I got out of the Army back in November. I have a feeling I'll be seeing Iraq before my IRR obligation is over. Take care.
hey
your blog is really interesting,,,thanks for your honesty. I can't imagine what it would be like to be where you are now.
Nice comments from Trevor and Anonymous.
Ok, so maybe Zach never signed up before the Iraq war and never knew Bush was a liar and a cheat.
The fact remains that he knows now.
No WMD have been found, Bush said the War was over, peace is meant to come to Iraq.
We all know the reality of this, which is that if you choose to fight and die in Iraq, while you kill and support the killing of Iraqis, then that is your choice. You made your bed, now you lie in it. Be a man and fight your so called "cause", but dont whinge about it and seek sympathy from others.
Im sick of these whinging soldier blogs. Either belt up or move out. The choice is yours. Ive made a thread about your type on my blog http://opinionated.blogsome.com/
to be clear, I am not against soldiers and war.. But in this case the cause is not justified, and we all know it. If any soldier such as yourself wants to fool themself and continue to fight, then so be it. But stop trying to convince everyone you are right, or that you have a just cause or value. You are just a man fighting someone elses war for an income, for a cause which you dont even fully know or understand yourself, for a country with a corrupt and underhanded government that has an evident history of telling lies and participating in conspiricy.
yo trevor,
you ex military? gonna sign up this week?
Hurria,
"it is perfectly clear who is the greatest mass murderer of Iraqis, and it is not Saddam, as horrible as he was."
Tell that to These People
Hurria said...
"your forces buried alive in 1991"
I seriously doubt this!
"tens of thousands they sent to mass graves since March, 2003,"
According to hurria's claims, there should be no one left by the end of the year.
Its amusing to me to see how you liberals defend Clintons Blow Job and then make argument after argument against a persons smoking habit.
regarding the war, you are all so quick to point out that we have have lost 1,8xx soldiers, and will expend such great time and energy trying to discredit the administration.
Yet on the second hand smoke issue you will run commercials claiming that we lose 53,000 people a year to it, but do not put nearly as much time and energy into it as a cause.
HEY ZACH I DISCOVERED YOUR BLOG TODAY AND I COULDN´T STOP READING. I FIND IT REALLY INTERESTING AND FULL OF INFORMATION OF WHAT IS REALLY HAPPENING THERE.
I WILL LOOK FOR YOUR ENTRIES REGULARLY, I´M FROM SPAIN, AND FROM HERE I GIVE YOU ALL MY SUPPORT. CONTINUE LIKE THIS AND TAKE CARE, YOU MUST COME BACK HOME
A FRIEND
"These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it Now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict the more glorious the triumph."
- Thomas Paine, The Crisis - December, 1776
Zach,
I am saddened that you find such shame and bitterness in your chosen service to this country. I served 6 years - 4 enlisted, 2 commissioned officer. If I were as conflicted as you appear to be, I'd find my life to be nigh unbearable. That's not to say you're not entitled to your negative opinion - but I find it so sad nonetheless.
Like you I am a Metallica fan - very much so. There is truth in this: "To secure peace is to prepare for war." You appear to be a thinking man, so how do you not recognize that like darkness and light, there cannot be one without the other? Yin & Yang. You would not know what happiness was unless you had already experienced sorrow. You would not appreciate peace unless you'd undergone turmoil.
I love my country. I love Americans. I'd do anything in my power to protect both. That doesn't make me stupid, or blind, or brain-washed. It's a choice I've made, with eyes wide open. And I do not agree with my government 100% of the time. I'd slap most politicians silly right now over immigration issues, but I still believe in America.
Please understand, I intend no disrepect in what I am saying to you. You may find your mission to be immoral or worthless, but I truly respect and appreciate your service - begrudged though it may be. I have no idea of your background beyond what I've skimmed here, so I do not know how you found yourself to be wearing the uniform of a country you are ashamed of, and serving a government you believe to be so evil.
Twice in my lifetime the long arm of destiny has reached across the oceans and involved the entire life and manhood of the United States in a deadly struggle. There was no use in saying "We don't want it; we won’t have it; our forebears left Europe to avoid these quarrels; we have founded a new world which has no contact with the old. "There was no use in that. The long arm reaches out remorselessly, and every one's existence, environment, and outlook undergo a swift and irresistible change. What is the explanation, Mr. President, of these strange facts, and what are the deep laws to which they respond? I will offer you one explanation - there are others, but one will suffice. The price of greatness is responsibility. If the people of the United States had continued in a mediocre station, struggling with the wilderness, absorbed in their own affairs, and a factor of no consequence in the movement of the world, they might have remained forgotten and undisturbed beyond their protecting oceans: but one cannot rise to be in many ways the leading community in the civilised world without being involved in its problems, without being convulsed by its agonies and inspired by its causes.
-Sir Winston Churchill, from an address "at Harvard to receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree", September 6, 1943
Our own Declaration of Independence states, "If something is wrong, those that have the ability to take action, have a responsibility to take action..."
Here's an excerpt from a open letter written to Mrs. Sheehan, who like you, publicly decries our country as reprehensible, degenerate, and evil.
Now, 25 million Iraqis cry out to enjoy the life you take for granted. Most of them will never use their freedom to denigrate the sacrifice of those who paid for it. But once liberty is enshrined in law, they will be free to do so. And when the Iraqis finally escape their incarceration, hope will spread throughout that enslaved region of the world, eventually making us all safer and more free.
The key is in the lock of the prison door. Bold men risk everything to turn it.
One last word to ponder, Zach...
"Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionist and rebel men and women, who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion." -President Dwight Eisenhower
"My government is often corrupt and underhanded. The important question is compared to what?
You will not find a half million murdered Americans buried in mass graves in the last 30 years."
Lol @ Clever Trevor!
Why do you need to compare. If USA are trying to set the standard of what is the "right" regime", while taking on the role as Police to planet Earth.
Neverless, if you want to compare death stats, compare those 500,000 Americans killed in 30 year, to the amount of Afghans and Iraqis killed by the USA in the last 15 years!
Zach,
Go on with your blog,
and jamal
Im sick of these whinging soldier blogs
Don't read it anymore
Take care Zack, i am reading it, even many people in Holland are reading it..
hello mr/ms redheadinfidel,
TRULY courageous, your poetry. isa the AC okay these summer days?
i'm wondering, have you called the re-up army enlistment specialist this week? might help assuage yer pains..........
ameriKans have a fundamental problem. they think, like a 12 year old on vacation across the waters, that because of their vitality and the newness of their cultural experience (gimme a break, 209 years started by a bunch of renegades), they have all the answers for the woes of the Universe. sorry, dude, it ain't so. move yousef away from Fux and Cnn............
do you maintain a vegetable garden? do you grow sprouts on your kitchen countertop?
how you gunna git to work, 3 years from now when the petrol's costin you 3.50 us$. time to wake up. and it just ain't butchCo.
an don blame it on poor ole zach and his like. it be REAL hot these days in raQ
I think he's just trying to pass on info.
But I would really like to know exactly where & when the US buried ALIVE enemy soldiers as Hurria claims.
hi hurria,
i would say, ma'am, that if you can cite references, you have the FINAL say, for now at least, on what happened that day.
i still wonder if this site is not a cia sieve.......just like maybe all dem bad guys from iraq and the quedas " sievin' " fer islam....
health and safety to you and yours............
Hurria Said...
"some of them alive and firing their weapons from World War I-style trenches, were buried by plows mounted on Abrams battle tanks."
This is war hurria. And those soldiers had an option to surrender, like the many thousands that did and are alive today.
"Nor has anyone managed to find those alleged half a million Iraqis supposedly buried in mass graves by Saddam. So far they have not managed to find more than 5,000 or so. Compared to the number your forces buried alive in 1991"
For these people, surrender was not an option:
Dr. Rafid Al Husaini,
Head of the Mass Graves Action Committee - Hilla:
We need the help of the new government, and the world.
-------------------
Dr. Muhemed Ihsan,
Ministar of Human Rights, KRG-Erbil:
"When a Dictator Regime commits crimes of any magnitude, they will usually try to hide it. Just as will the criminal mind. Sadly this is not so with the Iraqi Regime. It did this with pride, & gave itself the right to kill the innocent. This way of thinking is more frightening than the killing itself".
On March 15 1988, in Halabja, one Chemical Bombing alone Kills 5,000 Civilians for Saddam's Anfal.
As of the Fall of 2004, 275 Mass Graves were discovered containing a total of 300,000 bodies. Men, Women, Children, Whole Families, & Generations of families. They were taken bound and thrown on a caravan of trucks. Not even allowed to say "GoodBye".
These are only a handful of the Mass Grave sites: Samawah, Basra, Fehrsar, Rasasa, Karbala, Diwahnia, Shanhafia, Ihrwadhania, Najaf
-------------------
Ebdul-Fetah Reuf Al Idrisi,
Assistant Director of the Free prisoners' ASSN, BaghDad:
"In some cases, a particular family, over 5 generations, would be imprisoned, Tortured, Killed".
"90 Percent of the Iraqi people have suffered under Saddam".
-------------------
Kerim Atia Hasan,
Eyewitness, Haydaria:
I saw soldiers come with a truck and digging equipment, they told us to leave, and started digging. We left and watched from a distance. When they were done, they put something in the hole and covered it up, and left. We came back later and dug in the ground. We found 14 Bodies, in 1 square meter, all in Kurdish clothing. They had been burying them here, for over 60 square meters. If you multiply 60 square meters by 14 it equals 3000 corpses, or at least the 1400 that we found so far. We think they are Anfal victims, based on what we found on the bodies.
-------------------
Sandra L. Hodgkinson,
Senior Advisor on Human Rights - CPA:
"of all the peoples that lived & existed in Iraq during Saddam's regime, Kurds, Shia, Sunni, Turkomann, every ethnic group for whatever reasons at some time in Iraq were persecuted and killed".
-------------------
Husain Yusif Sadiq,
Al Najaf, Mass grave Survivor:
They brought us in large trucks and dumped us out. They formed squads and shot us 4 at a time. They made us sit at the edge of a hole with our hands tied behind us. We were not allowed to look as they shot us, we would just wait for the bullets, and the bullets would keep coming till you died. There were 600 in my group, they brought us out daily, at 20 to 30 per truckload. When they shot me the bullet hit my shoulder and I fell in the hole. They would quickly look to see if we were still alive, and they would shoot some of us again. When they drove away a good distance, I opened my eyes and saw 4 others who had not died. Among them was a Saudi, he was amongst the gulf people from Kuwait & Bahrain. I Stood up and looked around. I saw my uncle, brothers and cousins who were all dead. The 5 of us were wounded, I was bleeding badly, but we started walking. We saw bodies all around us, and had to walk over some of them to get out. We walked about two miles to some houses. The people there helped us. They brought us medicine and food. We stayed only a couple of days with them. We would leave during the day, because the family was afraid they would be discovered. If we were discovered the whole family would be in peril. We left as soon as we could.
-------------------
Dr. Muhemed Ihsan,
Ministar of Human Rights, KRG-Erbil:
1.3 Million Iraqis are currently missing.
-------------------
Can you ingnore The children of Dubis?
Oh,... and Zach can delete the previous post of mine, but The Truth will still be there!
Hurria,
1) I have not denied it. I DOUBTED it, Big Difference!
2) I quoted 300,000 but why not just ASK these people:
Dr. Rafid Al Husaini,
Head of the Mass Graves Action Committee - Hilla:
-------------------
Dr. Muhemed Ihsan,
Ministar of Human Rights, KRG-Erbil:
-------------------
Ebdul-Fetah Reuf Al Idrisi,
Assistant Director of the Free prisoners' ASSN, BaghDad:
-------------------
Kerim Atia Hasan,
Eyewitness, Haydaria:
-------------------
Husain Yusif Sadiq,
Al Najaf, Mass grave Survivor:
-------------------
Sandra L. Hodgkinson,
Senior Advisor on Human Rights - CPA:
-------------------
You may doubt these 2 Doctors, 1 Assistant Director, 2 Eyewitnesses, & 1 CPA Human Rights Advisor, if you wish, but they are there in country with you, and they know ALOT about the subject.
These are only a handful, many more people have studied this issue
firsthand.
You may doubt them all, if you wish.
Hurria,
"if it is quite an okay and acceptable thing to bury people alive in a war, then why did you doubt that your military would do such a thing?"
This is not a "Politically Correct" and moral thing for an army to do. However, in war situations arise, and "things" happen. Although You, I, and many do not condone this, it may have been their only option to complete their mission. As for the unfortunate enemy soldiers, they must have contemplated their own deaths at some point. Yet they chose to continue fighting. We may never know why they chose to fight to their deaths.
Again I doubted that they Would do such a thing, Not that they Could.
You may Call my points on the matter of Mass Graves "Lame", Since I did not provide links to the quotes. However, the authors of the quotes are there in your country now. You could probably go and visit them today, if you are indeed in Iraq as you claim.
The fact that you claim to have had some of your missing friends discovered in Mass Graves might lead one to believe that you would harbor more interested in the subject. But perhaps you were not all that friendly with them.
As one person who is investigating Mass Graves put it, "They were taken from their homes, put on trucks and never seen again. In many cases when the family members protested they were beaten and told their family member was being taken away for questioning, and would be returned later. Well 20+ years later they are still waiting for their family members to return. Some have suggested that they have left the country, but think about it, would you leave your Wife, Husband, Sons, Daughters, everything you have known, for 20+ years or more, and Never try to contact them again? Even in these changing times?" One would think it is safe to assume they are in a Mass Grave somewhere that hasn't been discovered yet.
Or perhaps, as the Nazis did, Saddam had found a more efficient way of disposing of the bodies. Perhaps he was more efficient at it than the Nazis. Maybe he hid the WMD's in the same manner.
Instead your constant criticism of the subject is reminiscent of the German claims that there was no Holocaust.
"if it is quite an okay and acceptable thing to bury people alive in a war, then why did you doubt that your military would do such a thing?"
If you can Acknowledge that Saddam had Mass Graves, Why do you doubt there may be more?
Hurria,
How then are we to believe, without evidence, your claims of super massive destruction on the part of the US?
Without proof, aren't your claims speculation at best, and quite possibly are pure fabrications intended to deceive?
Please enlighten me...
Hurria,
With news outlets like the Boston Globe Artificially inflating the accounts of US & British forces as being the cause of civilian deaths, the mainstream media in the US is not very reliable. So why don't you furnish me with some irrefutable evidence since it is, in your opinion, so abundant.
Hurria said...
"I invite you to read some of the reports coming from the U.N. from the various humanitarian organizations."
These same organizations that have made the reports on Mass Graves?
You doubt them on the Mass Graves issue on one hand, and yet expect me to believe your claims of Massive civilian deaths from them on the other?
Hurria,
A number of organizations such as Human Rights Watch, have investigated the Mass Graves. It was Jano Rosebiani, who made his report and documentary available to the UN at the human rights hearings held in Iran and Iraq.
Hurria,
Where have all those people gone then? You know, the ones who are Missing?
jamal- shut the hell up, and that goes for everyone else that disrespects our men and women in uniform. keep those comments to yourself, we need to support our troops not bring them down.
zach- stay strong, i'm prayin for ya man.
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