Bill Ardolino Interviews Marine Lance Corporal
Allah almost gave this one the “red meat graphic.”
Bill sets this one up nicely, by relating a conversation he had with a “pleasant Icelandic woman” who claimed that American military in Iraq are dumb or disadvantaged. When Bill gave examples of people who are not, she would reply that they are the exceptions to the rule. Bill says:
If my Icelandic acquaintance were to travel to Iraq, she might think, “My, there sure are a lot of ‘exceptions to the rule’ out here.”
And Bill goes straight into his interview of Lance Corporal Nathan (Chad) Yeager. A taste:
I could be rolling out there on a humvee, get shot at, and tuck and roll. But that’s not the way we do.
We stop, we put ourselves in danger, we get out of the humvee, we’ve got all our gear on, and we engage. The Marine Corps has trained us and trained us and trained us to be like that.
And I’ll tease you with this:
We’re on the baby steps right now. We’ve finally got ’em to where they’re halfway doing their job, going out there and doing their job, but if we pull out right now, they’re still halfway depending on us. If we pull out right now, let’s just say things will go straight back to where they were. There’s been a lot of progress here. Take the SMG (Special Missions Group – very roughly, an Iraqi SWAT team): the first night they went out, they got butterflies and chickened out. One of them said, “We don’t want to go out and do this, we just want to sit back and do QRF (Quick Reaction Force).”
And I said,
Well, you’ll have to go to Bill’s post to find out what he said.
I won’t give it away except possibly to people who know why “peace in our time” is the most inhuman thing ever said.
nk (4cd0c2) — 1/15/2007 @ 10:01 am[I’ve got to stop this premature comment posting.] God bless Lance Corporal Nathan (Chad) Yeager and all his comrades.
nk (4cd0c2) — 1/15/2007 @ 10:04 amI won’t give it away except possibly to people who know why “peace in our time” is the most inhuman thing ever said.
Speaking of which, I don’t think our pal Neville has tried to comment here recently.
I don’t miss him, particularly.
Patterico (a8fa4a) — 1/15/2007 @ 10:24 amAnd another very good reason not to visit Iceland.
TruthProbe (b0f421) — 1/15/2007 @ 11:13 amOf troop morale and marshmallow fluff…
Read the whole thing, and do follow all of the links. Thank you, Lord.
Bill's Bites (72c8fd) — 1/15/2007 @ 12:11 pm…
Of troop morale and marshmallow fluff…
War stories: Mosul to Fallujah, morale and marshmallow fluff By Mary Katharine Ham A Christmas tree decorated with bullets. A sergeant said that a soldier had used a grenade for a Christmas ball, but apparently that was a little over…
Old War Dogs (72c8fd) — 1/15/2007 @ 12:14 pm“a pleasant Icelandic woman” could not be the exception to the rule? Or are you counting John Kerrey as a majority of two?
Yes, they are smart. Educated? College usually follows active duty. The troops deserve our support. But I don’t think anyone wants to be the last to die in Iraq.
Semanticleo (e8f396) — 1/15/2007 @ 3:54 pmA lot of them get educated IN the service these days. And there’s a lot more to education than what you get in college. A lot more…
Some of the most ignorant people I know have degrees.
I’d already read the post when I came here, Patterico. A small irony for me is one of my best friends happens to be a woman of Icelandic roots, and she’s the polar opposite of the one Bill talked to. But then she’s lived in the US since she was very young and she will tell you they’re a nest of lib Euro-style appeasers over there if you ask.
A shame. But I guess it will be a while before the Muslims want to move there en masse. Probably about the time their hellholes freeze over.
Dan S (8771d0) — 1/15/2007 @ 4:38 pmI like the troops too and am glad that we still have Southern and Midwestern boys to recruit who feel that way. All that said, we’re not getting much done and we’re bailing the ocean with a teaspoon by trying to occupy nations and nation-build in the ME. Original Iran-Iraq war, current Somali war, first PG war, are better models for how we should use the force.
Does anyone seriously think that same report could not have been obtained 3 years ago? How long do we want to stay there? Let’s do a time-table withdrawal and let the Shia have the place.
TCO (b7caf1) — 1/16/2007 @ 1:20 amTwenty minutes before reading this post I heard on the radio that four of our soldiers were killed in their Humvee by an IED. How many would have been killed if we weren’t there?
Duke (2d4db0) — 1/16/2007 @ 1:48 pm