Tag: Iraq

Here is a really cool story to read about this Veteran’s Day:

“After getting my masters I worked for the U.S Army at the department of state. I worked with an amazing diverse crowd from the United Nations,” said Kadhem. “Joining the Army always interested me. I wanted to serve the United States and wanted to belong to an organization that would make a difference, and for me that was the U.S. Army.”

While working at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, Kadhem received her visa and moved to Washington, D.C.

In April of 2015, with the support of her Family and her father’s encouragement to join the Army, Kadhem enlisted in the U.S. Army as a unit supply specialist.

“My whole life I have never felt equal to men and in the Army I was able to liberate my body and mind by the equality they demonstrated,” she said. “I was 28 when I went through basic and advanced training. It was very physically challenging for me but I wanted it, so I pushed myself and it has changed my life in so many great ways.”  [Army.mil]

You can read the rest at the link.

I share the below story about Saddam Hussein because it makes me wonder how much we really know about Kim Jong-un?  Every week it seems there is some new sensational report about Kim Jong-un sourced to some anonymous defector account much like with Saddam Hussein.  How accurate are these accounts?  I have speculated before that I don’t think Kim Jong-un is as all powerful as believed.  I believe he instead rules with the consensus of a regime inner circle which it appears that Saddam had largely handed off power to in his country before the war 2003:

Saddam Hussein was an inept dictator during his final years in charge, thought 9/11 would bring Iraq and America closer together and took partial blame for his eventual fall from power after the 2003 US-led invasion, according to a new book by one of the men who interrogated the ex-Iraqi president.

The revelations are contained in the upcoming John Nixon book “Debriefing the President: The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein.” Nixon was a CIA analyst in Iraq who had been assigned the task of finding Saddam and then getting information out of him. But he quickly found that “Saddam seemed clueless.”

“He was inattentive to what his government was doing, had no real plan for the defense of Iraq and could not comprehend the immensity of the approaching storm,” Nixon wrote in the book excerpt published by The Daily Mail.

Saddam, who was hanged in 2006 for crimes against humanity, was frequently defiant while being interviewed and even mocked the US rationale for the war: that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

“You found a traitor who led you to Saddam Hussein. Isn’t there one traitor who can tell you where the WMDs are?” Hussein said shortly after he was found hiding, dirty and grizzled, inside an underground “spider hole” on Dec. 13, 2003.

The sadistic despot said Iraq had never thought about using WMDs and questioned why “anyone with full faculties” would deploy chemical weapons unprovoked.  [New York Post]

You can read more at the link.

The South Korean government plans to support President Obama’s ISIS strategy with humanitarian assistance aid:

South Korea expressed support Thursday for U.S. President Barack Obama’s plan for airstrikes in Syria and expanded strikes in Iraq to defeat the Islamic State militant group.

Obama said Wednesday he won’t hesitate to take action against the Islamic State in Syria, as he pledged to “degrade, and ultimately destroy” the extremists responsible for beheading two American journalists.

“South Korea voices its support to the efforts by the international community to defeat the Islamic State militant group,” Noh Kwang-il, spokesman for Seoul’s foreign ministry, told a regular press briefing. “As part of such support, Seoul has already announced its plan to provide a combined US$1.2 million in aid (to displaced Iraqi people).”

South Korea said in June and August that it plans to offer $200,000 in humanitarian assistance and an additional $1 million to help Iraqi refugees amid escalating violence in the country.  [Yonhap]

Isn’t amazing that just a year ago the US wanted to bomb the Syrian government and now the US is planning to become the Syrian government’s Air Force.  You can read more about the new ISIS strategy at this Yahoo News link, but here is another example of how so many things have flipped in such a short period of time:

Before the speech, senior administration officials cited the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force as the legal basis for taking the fight to Syria. Strikingly, a little over a year ago, in a major counterterrorism address at the National Defense University in Washington, Obama said he wanted to “refine and ultimately repeal” the AUMF, which President George W. Bush had relied on for his Global War on Terror.

Well he didn’t actually say that, but that is pretty much what he meant:

“South Korea will be a good model for us,” Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo during a dinner. “Iraq should learn from South Korea’s experience.”

Al-Maliki is scheduled to hold a summit with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun on Thursday.

Their meeting is expected to center on expanding cooperation in various sectors, including natural resources, electricity and construction, Roh’s office said.

Notice not one word about Zaytun.  Like I have said before, 2,300 Korean businessmen can do more for Iraq, than what 2,300 ROK Army soldiers are doing right now and Maliki knows it.  Another thing Maliki can learn from Korea in regards to governing the country is less Rhee Syng-man and more Park Chung-hee.

Rarely do I agree with anything from the Korea Times, but this editorial about the need to return Korean troops from Iraq is actually quite accurate and supports what I have been saying since the troops deployed:

First of all, there is not much for the Korean soldiers to do in Irbil, the Kurdish autonomous state. Contrary to some media stories, the local police, not Korean soldiers, are maintaining public security. The engineering corps of the Korean unit, called Zaytun, is bent on either maintaining Korean compounds or supervising construction works done by local firms. Its medical team has only dealt with the minor complaints of residents, according to soldiers and civilians familiar with the local situation.

We are not belittling the struggle of the Korean troops who are trying to contribute to a bilateral friendship and improve the nation’s image there. In sum, however, the Korean troops seem mostly to be killing time. The government’s keyword is safety, meaning Seoul wants to maximize the Korean troops’ stay and have minimum casualty. And their latest excuses for cementing Korea-U.S. ties are the ongoing negotiations to take over the wartime operational control and bargaining for the free trade agreement.

The Korea Times though just couldn’t help themselves and made sure in the last paragraph they took a cheap shot at the US:

After all, this has been an unjustifiable war from the start, as most U.S. analysts now point out. The time has long past for Korea to pull out from the war triggered by the U.S. invasion based on its own strategic interests. The only thing left is to make the process as smooth as possible.

Most people back in the 50’s thought the Korean War was not a justifiable war too ending Truman’s presidency and Eisenhauer being elected president because he promised to end the war, which he did with the ceasefire in 1953.  Plus who are “most US analysts”?  The ones leaking to the New York Times?

This Iraqi man featured in the Stars and Stripes is truly an amazing story of the perseverance and courage many Iraqis are displaying to aid the US forces in Iraq:

Standing on the dusty outskirts of Qaim, Hasoon watched with mounting fear as a wall of American tanks and armored vehicles bore down on him. “I was so scared I could not translate for 10 minutes,” Hasoon said.

The interpreter watched nervously as a wiry officer with a shaved head stepped from one of the vehicles and strode toward him. The officer, Lt. Col. William T. Dolan, then commander of the 1st or “Tiger” Squadron of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, grabbed the interpreter’s hand and pumped it heartily.

“It was not a normal handshake,” Hasoon recalled. “It was a GREAT handshake. It made me feel good.”

From that moment on, Hasoon — or “Alf” as the Americans call him — became an unlikely figure in Tiger Squadron’s colorful history, and a loyal friend to the unit. Over the next three years, he would become the only translator to work for the squadron before and after an eight-month stint at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, and quite possibly the only detainee there to be given a going-away party by its guards.

Mr. Hasoon was wrongly imprisoned in Abu Graib and released, but despite his experiences he eagerly decided to work for the US Army again. His comments below reflect the opinion of many Iraqis I spoke with on my tour in Iraq:

Some soldiers were surprised that Hasoon would come back to work with them after all that he’d been through, but Hasoon said he never gave it a second thought.

“When I come out, I say I want to be with the Tigers,” Hasoon said.

“Everything else, I have forgotten. I have no Iraqi friends. Who put me in detention? It was Iraqis who said things about me. It wasn’t the Americans.”

While Hasoon said he worries about what will happen to him when Tiger Squadron returns to the U.S. in several months, Radliff and Reilly said they were trying to figure out a way to get Hasoon to the States, at least for a visit.

For his part, Hasoon is thrilled by the idea of visiting America. His dream, he says, is to meet with President Bush.

“I want to tell him this: Don’t leave us in the middle of the road like your father did in ’91. If you leave Iraq now, the rivers will be red. They will be red from blood,” he said. “This is the price for freedom. The Iraqis and the Americans are paying for it now, but one day we will be like brothers.”

The important thing to remember is that there are many Iraqis just like Mr. Hasoon out there working and fighting against the Islamo-facists for a better future for Iraq despite what the media or the Democratic Party wants you to believe. In Iraq I used to run convoy security missions for fuel trucks coming out of Turkey and this allowed me the opportunity to travel to many places in Iraq and meet a variety of people. Many people I met wanted us to stay and thanked us for coming. Our convoy of fuel trucks used to stop at restaurants along the routes to eat and we never had to buy a meal because either someone in the restaurant or the owner himself would provide the food for our platoon for free.

One man I met told me that he hoped that the US would annex Iraq and make Iraq a US territory like Puerto Rico because Iraq’s neighboring countries would never let them live in peace if they pursued democracy. This man was wrong about the US making a Iraq a territory, but he was right about Iraq’s neighbors not letting them live in peace. However, this time I don’t see the US leaving Iraq in the middle of the road.