War!
 

The bombing of Bagdad has started. Here we go into the unknown.

:(

The President will address the nation at 10:15 Eastern time.

oy... just missed the address...

why does it have to come to this?

:( :( :( :(

Did the U.N. vote already?

The saddest thing to me watching the news and seeing coverage of troops, is just how young many of the soldiers are. Some of them are teenagers straight out of highschool. It's incredible. I just hope they and their older colleagues stay safe.

all i can think of right now is my armyguy and the sounds of the dogs barking as the bombs started falling. i hope this can end soon.

Apparently we went after the senior, SENIOR officials......I'd think Saddam would be in a bunker somewhere, not sleeping in his palace.....but......I dunno, I'm scurred.:(

I'm sorry sweetie. Armyguy will be fine, try not to worry too much (it's an impossible feat, I know)

Hey there hon! Armyguy will be OK :) He and the rest of the troops are in my prayers

:( :( even if it is the right choice, it is sad.

I just got this email. I hope y'all find it as touching as I:

I cannot help myself from feeling pride and being proud for all our service personnel each time I read this. Just heard Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld say today, "Our troops are ready to go. We just need the word from the President," or words to that effect. The days ahead will bring a lot of hardship and death to many people on all sides. Only God can help them now, as it appears a war is written in the sand.

The average age of the Infantryman is 19 years.

He is a short haired, tight-muscled kid who, under normal circumstances is considered by society as half man, half boy. Not yet dry behind the ears, not old enough to buy a beer, but old enough to die for his country.

He never really cared much for work and he would rather wax his own car than wash his father's; but he has never collected unemployment either.

He's a recent High School graduate; he was probably an average student, pursued some form of sport activities, drives a ten year old jalopy, and has a steady girlfriend that either broke up with him when he left, or swears to be waiting when he returns from half a world away.

He listens to rock and roll or hip-hop or rap or jazz or swing and 155mm Howitzers.

He is 10 or 15 pounds lighter now than when he was at home because he is working or fighting from before dawn to well after dusk.

He has trouble spelling, thus letter writing is a pain for him, but he can field strip a rifle in 30 seconds and reassemble it in less time in the dark.

He can recite to you the nomenclature of a machine gun or grenade launcher and use either one effectively if he must.

He digs foxholes and latrines and can apply first aid like a professional.

He can march until he is told to stop or stop until he is told to march.

He obeys orders instantly and without hesitation, but he is not without spirit or individual dignity.

He is self-sufficient. He has two sets of fatigues: he washes one and wears the other. He keeps his canteens full and his feet dry.

He sometimes forgets to brush his teeth, but never to clean his rifle.

He can cook his own meals, mend his own clothes, and fix his own hurts. If you're thirsty, he'll share his water with you; if you are hungry, his food. He'll even split his ammunition with you in the midst of battle when you run low.

He has learned to use his hands like weapons and weapons like they were his hands. He can save your life - or take it, because that is his job.

He will often do twice the work of a civilian, draw half the pay and still find ironic humor in it all. He has seen more suffering and death then he should have in his short lifetime.

He has stood atop mountains of dead bodies, and helped to create them.

He has wept in public and in private, for friends who have fallen in combat and is unashamed.

He feels every note of the National Anthem vibrate through his body while at rigid attention, while tempering the burning desire to 'square-away' those around him who haven't bothered to stand, remove their hat, or even stop talking. In an odd twist, day in and day out, far from home, he defends their right to be disrespectful.

Just as did his Father, Grandfather, and Great-grandfather, he is paying the price for our freedom.

Beardless or not, he is not a boy.

He is the American Fighting Man that has kept this country free for over 200 years.

He has asked nothing in return, except our friendship and understanding.

Remember him, always, for he has earned our respect and admiration with his blood.

Prayer Wheel For Our Military

"Lord, hold our troops in your loving hands. Protect them as they protect us. Bless them and their families for the selfless acts they perform for us in our time of need. Amen."

Prayer Wheel: When you receive this, please stop for a moment and say a prayer for our ground troops in Afghanistan, sailors on ships, and airmen in the air, and for those preparing for a possible war with Iraq. There is nothing attached.... This can be very powerful.... Just send this to all the people in your address book. Do not stop the wheel, please.... Of all the gifts you could give a US Soldier, Sailor or Airman, prayer is the very best one.

[back to me] In his speech, President Bush said something that the people in our Army, Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard are fighting in Iraq so that our firemen, policemen, doctors, and paramedics don't have to do so here. I found that moving.

However each of y'all feel about this war, please remember the individuals who are directly involved with it.

honeychile

honeychile, that was beautiful. Thank you SO much for sharing it.

Honeychile,
I am speechless...that was so vividly true! I really am having so many feelings going on right now, I don't know what to say. I am mad, scared, uncertain, anxious, and just basically confused! I don't know...I don't like this one bit!

*sigh*:(

Thank you, everyone who was also touched by that email. 1savvydiva, I feel the same as you - I think we all do, whichever "side" you're on. That's the beauty of America - many different sides but all standing together.

The somewhat surreal part to this is, it's finally hit home that we have really lost Mr. Rogers. Sometimes, in listening to him explain to children that it's okay to be scared, but to realize that they will be safe, I could take that into my own heart.

God bless America!
honeychile

What's the approximate number of our people over there?

Last I read/ heard there were about 250,000 Americans serving in the military over there.

Just thought that this was a little crazy... There are 8,000 soldiers training at Fort McCoy here in Wisconsin. Can you imagine Wisconsin minus 8,000 people if even for a short time. That is like the size of my whole town. Hopefully the war will be ended before these troops will be deployed, because I know that I do not want my friend to have to go overseas.

A Marine chopper is down by the Iraq-Kuwait border :(

Pray for our men and women who protect everything we stand for.

God, please keep David safe. Bring him home safe to his girls.

Yep 12 Americans and 4 British dead. Hope all the pro war people think all this is worth it. Bet their families aren't right now.

I heard it was 4 Americans & 12 British? I could be wrong. Not that it matters, they are all human beings fighting for us :(

I just read that it was 8 British and 4 US Marines that were killed in the crash.

My thoughts are with their families and everyone else there.

please pray...
 

for the men who died in the helicopter crash yesterday, and for the marine who died in combat this morning, as well as their families and friends.

Oh my God. They were not lying when they said shock and awe.

aside note, they are saying that most iraqi can live for another week with their food supplies. after that, it's anybody guess. And the world food programme have announce that it will cost $1 billion in refugee cost, and so far they only collected $44 million. I can't believe that nobody was prepared for this. Latest inteligence said that Turkish military might be commin into n. iraq, that will be bad news because the kurds hate the turks as much as they hate hussein. I wonder what the Iranian are doing, no doubt they have agents in there already. This is going to be very very interesting.

Was it 1.4million or billion of Iraqi assets that were seized in the US?

it's billion, but it will be earmarked for the slush fund for the un for the reconstruction of the UN. the $1 billion cost is a different cost. i'm going to find out how much money they've raise so far over the weekend. i doubt its very much.

Since our own media is somewhat remiss in broadcasting this information, I thought I would post someone's experience on the other side of this war. It's an opinion article, so don't take what you read as fact, but it's an interesting emotional reaction to the war so far from the Iraqi citizens' point of view.

Baghdad’s Night of Terror
Robert Fisk, The Independent



Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s main presidential palace, a great rampart of a building 20 stories high, simply exploded in front of me — a cauldron of fire, a 100ft sheet of flame and a sound that had my ears singing for an hour after. The entire, massively buttressed edifice shuddered under the impact. Then four more Cruise missiles came in.

It is the heaviest bombing Baghdad has suffered in more than 20 years of war. All across the city last night, massive explosions shook the ground. To my right, the Ministry of Armaments Procurement — a long colonnaded building looking much like the facade of the Pentagon — coughed fire as five missiles crashed into the concrete.

In an operation officially intended to create “shock and awe,” shock was hardly the word for it. The few Iraqis in the streets around me — no friends of Saddam I would suspect — cursed under their breath.

From high-rise buildings, shops and homes came the thunder of crashing glass as the shock waves swept across the Tigris River in both directions. Minute after minute the missiles came in. Many Iraqis had watched — as I had — television film of those ominous B-52 bombers taking off from Britain only six hours earlier. Like me, they had noted the time, added three hours for Iraqi time in front of London and guessed that, at around 9 p.m., the terror would begin. The B-52s, almost certainly firing from outside Iraqi airspace, were dead on time.

Police cars drove at speed through the streets, their loudspeakers ordering pedestrians to take shelter or hide under cover of tall buildings. Much good did it do. Crouching next to a block of shops on the opposite side of the river, I narrowly missed the shower of glass that came cascading down from the upper windows as the shock waves slammed into them.

Along the streets a few Iraqis could be seen staring from balconies, shards of broken glass around them. Each time one of the great golden bubbles of fire burst across the city, they ducked inside before the blast wave reached them. At one point, as I stood beneath the trees on the corniche, a wave of Cruise missiles passed low overhead, the shriek of their passage almost as devastating as the explosions that were to follow.

How, I ask myself, does one describe this outside the language of a military report, the definition of the color, the decibels of the explosions? When the Cruise missiles came in, it sounded as if someone was ripping to pieces huge curtains of silk in the sky and the blast waves became a kind of frightening counterpoint to the flames.

There is something anarchic about all human beings, about their reaction to violence. The Iraqis around me stood and watched, as I did, at huge tongues of flame bursting from the upper stories of Saddam’s palace, reaching high into the sky. Strangely, the electricity grid continued to operate and around us the traffic lights continued to move between red and green. Billboards moved in the breeze of the shock waves and floodlights continued to blaze on public buildings. Above us we could see the massive curtains of smoke beginning to move over Baghdad, white from the explosions, black from the burning targets.

How could one resist it? How could the Iraqis ever believe with their broken technology, their debilitating 12 years of sanctions, that they could defeat the computers of these missiles and of these aircraft? It was the same old story: Irresistible, unquestionable power.

Well yes, one could say, could one attack a more appropriate regime? But that is not quite the point. For the message of last night’s raid was the same as that of Thursday’s raid, that of all the raids in the hours to come: That the United States must be obeyed. That the EU, UN, NATO — nothing — must stand in its way.

No doubt this morning the Iraqi minister of information will address us all again and insist that Iraq will prevail. We shall see. But many Iraqis are now asking an obvious question: How many days? Not because they want the Americans or the British in Baghdad, though they may profoundly wish it. But because they want this violence to end: Which, when you think of it, is exactly why these raids took place.

Reports were coming in last night of civilians killed in the raids — which, given the intensity of the Cruise missile attacks — is not surprising. Another target turned out to be the vast Rashid military barracks, perhaps the largest in Iraq.

But the symbolic center of this raid was clearly intended to be Saddam’s main palace, with its villas, fountains, porticos and gardens. And, sure enough, the flames licking across the facade of the palace last night looked very much like a funeral pyre.

Arab News Features 22 March 2003

Um...why is Iraq claiming victory? Sorry, I haven't been following along as I should.

:confused: They are? How weird!

I have been following this -- with the exception of this last weekend.. my boyfriend's apartment doesn't have TV yet

Quick recap on the war so far for T*P:

US forces find suspected chem agent factory in An Najaf, so well camouflaged it could not be seen from the air or space. By sheer luck a GI noticed something out of the ordinary with this factory and they found it.

British Army 'Black Watch' soldiers find cache of Iraqi cruise missiles, supplied by Russia. According to some of the date codes on the missiles, they're recent, which means the Russkies or some other greedy arms dealer got 'em -- in clear violation of the Iraqi arms embargo.

101st Airborne division soldier 'frags' command tent, killing one and injuring 12 others. Almost at the same time a British Royal Air Force Tornado attack aircraft is blown out of the sky by a Patriot missile. Crew of two dead, probable cause is an IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) transponder malfunction.

At least five members of an Army transportation company are captured by the Iraqis, another six or seven appear to have been killed, possibly executed. Arab TV network Al-Jazeera transmits graphic footage of dead soldiers and POWs paraded around by Iraqi TV, the latter a clear violation of Article 13 of the Geneva Convention on the treatment of POWs. President and other high government officials extremely p*ssed.

Baghdad locals go apesh*t over reports that a Coalition aircraft was shot down and the pilots seen to be bailing out in downtown Baghdad. Whipped up by the local militia and Saddam's Fedayeen, they shoot up the Tigris river and burn down reeds in the shoreline in an attempt to flush out the pilots. Turns out it was a false alarm.

Troops are about 100 miles south of Baghdad, and they're expected to reach the outskirts of the city by late Monday or Tuesday.

AlphaSig, thank you! I genuniely appreciate it.

No problem, glad to help. :)

Winning Big - op ed piece
 

From the New York Post op-ed column: http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/op...ists/71625.htm

Really outstanding piece. Although, given the authors' background and pro-military mindset, I can't find much to disagree with.

In terms of the media covering the war, he's pretty well right on, with only a few exceptions.

Thanks for posting it.

Thanks! We've been getting too much spin lately from the media over the conduct of the war, and so much conflicting information that when someone on another board pointed this article out to me it was literally a breath of fresh air.

BTW news reports say the locals in Basrah are rising up against the Saddamites (what's left of the local militia and Fedayeen Saddam (Saddam's Martyrs). This time British and American troops are fully supporting them, unlike the Mongolian clusterf*ck that occurred shortly after Gulf War I when we left the Shias holding the bag.