[dialo]

That's Mosul

Great email posted on OSS: http://tinyurl.com/xwvk

"The author, Lucian Truscott, is the son of a relatively famous World War II General. He's a West Point Grad who rebelled after commissioning and a tour of Viet Nam, leaving the Army as a LT or CPT."

It's a super little email detailing conditions in Iraq.

Some great excerpts:

I had one of the most talented senior officers in the U.S. Army (who will go nameless here for obvious reasons) tell me last night that every order they receive is delivered with next November in mind, so there is little doubt at and near the top about what's really going on over here. The resentment in the ranks toward the civilian "leadership" down in Baghdad and back in Washington is palpable.
The senior officer described the ongoing fight between the two forces at work -- no matter how you describe them -- Bremer v. Sanchez, state v. defense, etc etc -- as "the Kabuki dance." He called one of the senior CPA civilians up here in Mosul "a Bremer plant," and I won't even go into what he had to say about Bechtel and Kellogg Brown and Root...but I recall the word chickenshit being used.

...

With respect to The Harper's Story, I've got more stuff than can fit in the magazine. This war isn't badly reported -- it's not reported at all. I sat down for 3 hours with the commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 101st last night -- he's a tall, bald, charismatic guy everyone says will be Chief of Staff by the time he's 50 -- and he uncorked before I even said a word.

From the first sentence out of his mouth, he was laying things bare. We walked outside his CP and were standing on a little road overlooking a nice stretch of the Tigris, and I told him I would quote him by name very judiciously, and he said something like, I know you know what you're doing,
and I trust you. What he told me would have him on a plane to Washington tomorrow. These guys are PISSED OFF, even though they're proud of what they've done.
But of course, what they're proud of is stuff they were never told to do, stuff they made up as they went along. This guy is the King of Mosul, and even the local hoo-haa sheiks and muchtars treat him that way, and he'll be going home in February, and he'll be replaced by a clueless guy who is
already involved in turf battles with another colonel and a brigadier general over who's got the biggest dick and who will occupy the biggest Saddam palace.

....

My ****ing Cipro bill alone would be enough to put me in the poorhouse if I didn't have WGA health insurance. They've got bugs and intestinal worms and the smoke of burning, stinking garbage heaps out the window and piles of
human ****, donkey ****, and goat and sheep **** in the street I have walked through every goddamned day that would quite literally make you puke, not to mention the nightly pop-pop-pop of AKs down the alley across
the street. I wouldn't wish this place on a CAA agent, and you can imagine what I think of them...

Gives a nice counter to the palace reporters.

[gadster]

Originally posted by dialo:
That's Mosul <snip> Gives a nice counter to the palace reporters.

Tumbleweeds . . . no one wants to know, it seems.