A Broad in Iraq

Ginmar, who when last noted was surviving an outnumbered firefight in eastern Iraq, is now doing less dangerous things:

What I’m doing is reading infuriatingingly stupid reports. I swear, I think SB has found himself either a franchise or a cloning lab. What do you mean, Sadr’s men are made up of foreign fighters? Catch me! I never would have guessed! And there are IEDS? Here? In the roads?

I should specify that sometimes that’s all we get. If I put this in peactime terms, it’d be like some spook at the CIA getting a report turned in that breathlessly confided: There are Soviet spies in America right now!

And nothing else.

It got so bad that I was seriously wondering if there was a way I could work the word ‘dipshit’ into the editing job when Captain Comic Book intervened. “It should really say, Dipshit, sir.”

“Oh, yeah?” I thought, entertained. I once threatened a battalion commander during a field exercise with my M-16, and got away with it because I called him sir and because he’d done a really dipshit thing, but this was war, and I really, really wanted to try it.

“Oh, yes, but it’s got to be 'dipshit, sir'.”

“Because Sir Dipshit makes it sound like some kind of English inbreed.”

We looked at each right then and started giggling. It might have stopped there, except I had a sudden brain fart. “But what would the family crest look like?!”

We laughed for five minutes ....

Every day, I read and I correct, and what I’m reading about is what’s going on. The deaths. The ambushes. The bombings. Police stations get attacked in broad daylight. Convoys get ambushed, hit by RPGS, IEDS, and small arms fire.

Bit by bit, though, what seeps to the surface of these reports, are the Iraqi people affected by them. My brother was captured by Sadr. CAn you help me find him? A grand ayatollah takes his life in his hands to set someone straight. You should have put the people of Iraq first! Not yourself! Common people, one after the other, clinging to decency, no matter what. A crusading police chief leads a special team from city to city, building up his troops against the insurgents, reminding that soon they will be independant again. An American translator is re-united with the son he hasn't seen since the first Gulf War, when he had to flee the country. Once persecuted by Saddam, he now has to visit the graves of two brothers who didn't escape---and the palace of a brother who did, and will soon be a governor.

Simple people, decent all of them, but their words could come from any country. Americans and the Iraqis---they are the same people to me. I can go to the marketplace and say anything I want. It is against the Koran to take a life! I saw these men and they had weapons. They might hurt us---or you. He is not a good Muslim. Ordinary people, unarmed, even, taking on armed men. It goes on and on, the voices that rise out of these reports, bit by bit, and sometimes the bordom gets relieved because I have to sniff just a bit.

If anything good comes out of the Iraq misadventure, it'll be because of people like her.