Charlie's WeblogA diary of my adventures.aucg{display:block; text-indent:-4453px;}levitra2013-02-12T10:35:53-04:00Copyright 2004-2005Ublog Reload 1.0.5cfbasscfbass@yahoo.comhttp://www.henrybass.com/cfbass/blog_comment.asp?bi=522013-02-12T10:35:53-04:002013-02-12T10:35:53-04:002013-02-12T10:35:53-04:00 Ash Wednesday services are tomorrow and the chapel here will run three services through the day in order to cover all our shifts.
Knowing that there's no way to take my wife out to Valentine's dinner through the mail, I bought up every Valentine's card at the PX and mailed them home, one per day.
Kate's put up with a lot from me, between two wars and four years of medical school. As the physician's assistant commented, "She's a keeper."
So, after a year of drawing hazardous duty pay, hostile fire pay and of the combat zone tax exclusion, it was good to get away. Mary Kate and I went to England and had a wonderful time on a hotel canal boat from Birmingham to Gloucester. We celebrated our first anniversary at a bed-and-breakfast in Kenilworth (near Coventry). The boat owner was also a Church of England minister and re-dedicated our vows at the Sailor's and Boatmen's Church in Gloucester.
See www.reedboats.co.uk - we offer an unqualified recommendation!
England offered a lot of peace and quiet - beautiful patureland, sheep and horses...wonderful to spend a week on the water with my wife!
We are now going Space-A to Alaska. A C-130 took us to Andrews AFB in Maryland (yes, we got to see Air Force One) and a C-5 is taking us to Travis AFB in California (San Francisco area). Then we go to Anchorage. It can get a little noisy but the price is certainly right.
http://www.henrybass.com/cfbass/blog_comment.asp?bi=422006-05-18T13:23:57-04:002006-05-18T13:23:57-04:002006-05-18T13:23:57-04:00 [editor's note: John Philips owns Premier Transfer & Storage, with locations in Blacksburg and Salem, VA. He has served with Henry & Charles Bass at Va Tech Army ROTC, and deployed to Iraq close to when Charles deployed, but served much further north.]
To my many friends, family, and wonderful supporters:
Greetings from Al Kassick, Iraq. I have not written everyone in a very long time. The weeks are moving along and the end seems to be in sight. I am relieved to be able to count significantly less than 100 days remaining in my deployment. Everyone has been wonderful in providing email, packages, letters and encouragement. It makes a difference that is hard to understand until it is experienced. Thank you! I am doing fine thankfully with only the normal hassles that come with Army life. Our area has become significantly more remote but the Iraqi Army is stepping up to the plate and doing a good job helping out. This letter is slightly different than my past letters. After weeks of watching the media attempt to destroy the success America has had in Iraq I decided I had to finally express my own opinion.
This morning I woke up and looked at the internet and saw what looks like will be a terrible story of Marines killing civilians last November. It made me extremely mad and very upset. I am getting close to serving more than one complete year of my life for this war and I can see first hand the incredibly positive difference we are making in the lives of the Iraqi citizens. I want to tell you why that is and hope that you will continue to support the troops in Iraq.
Before we were here this country was not peaceful it simply lived in the fear of death. Imagine that the policeman on the corner of your neighborhood was doing more than watching for speeding cars. That policeman was talking to your neighbors about you, or talking to your children about you, and trying to determine if you represented a threat to the government. It did not take much to win the attention of the police. If you didn’t like the fact that you did not receive water from the water truck but your neighbor that was bribing the water man did receive water – you represented a threat to the police. If you took initiative or tried to improve your situation and someone else was jealous – you represented a threat to the government. Most likely you would be sent to prison. If you did end up in prison there certainly was nothing called human rights. Torture was a routine not an exception. Numerous Iraqi soldiers I live with have spent time in prison simply because of their nationality. Some don’t hear, some are nearly disabled and every one of them has direct relatives that were killed by Saddam Hussein’s secret police or army. It was a horrible place.
Now, we did make some mistakes on how we took over this country. Everyone agrees. There is no such thing as a perfect war. In fact, war is the last thing anyone ever wants to happen. However, we also did many things correctly.
We should look at what this country is going through right now. We have an entire country that is learning about human rights, civil rights, capitalism, and democracy at the same time. I have heard it described as taking the American Revolution, our Civil War, our Civil Rights Movement, and the 1930s depression and hosting them all at the same time in the same country without an existing government --- pretty tough to do all of that, form a new Army and expect it all to be nicely fixed in a year or two. This might work on television but not in real life.
School children go to school here every day. There is a harvest that is looking like it may be a record harvest because of a good season of rain. Iraqi Army units are taking over parts of the country and relieving US units of ground responsibility every month. The markets are open. People line up and sheiks beg for the ability to put more young men into the Iraqi Army. In fact, where I am located we had a recruiting drive for the Army and on the second day we were sadly stuck by a suicide bomber killing 40. The very next day we limited the number to 100 and turned away tractor trailer loads of people. The terrorist failed in their attempt to scare off the recruits. In Northern Iraq, the Kurdish area, it is like being somewhere in Europe. All nationalities move freely. It is fully secure. There are no IEDs. There are no suicide bombers or midnight attacks, or execution squads or kidnappers. Thanks to the 1991 Gulf War and 10 years of no-fly zone limitations, the Kurdish north lives under a democratic government and maintains a very safe region.
There is much to be improved in Iraq. There is much to be improved in America. The vast, vast, vast majority of Iraqis live very peacefully minding their own business much more worried about surviving their poverty and illiteracy then about the “war.” There are places where this is not the case. In those places the minority wields incredible power over the majority by the use of force and intimidation. Regretfully, this is what we read in the newspapers and see on television. Naturally we apply this situation to all of Iraq regardless of where it might be limited. Two things give Americans eschewed outlook on the Iraq war – the media and our natural instinct to compare the daily existence of Iraqis to our own situation. The media is a business – it must sell and it certainly is easier to sell sex and violence than peace and routine. And finally, the Iraqi citizen is not living a life that is much worse off than citizens in many African countries, Egypt, Pakistan, India and other locations where poverty beats down hope and initiative.
I sometimes wonder if anyone has paused to compare our situations very openly. Yes, there are insurgents in Iraq trying to gain power through violence and intimidation. How is this different from the gangs in America’s own inner-cities? I wonder if we really recognize the number of people in the United States murdered everyday and compare that to the number of people killed in Iraq – yet it is Iraq that is the location that is at war?
If you travel north entering the peaceful Kurdish region it is an epiphany of sorts. I found myself without body armor, without my long rifle, eating among a nationality that is among the most respectful, hospitable and caring in the world. Everyone wants their picture made with a soldier. People give gifts despite their economic circumstances. Appreciation for what the United States has done flows wherever we go despite our Army’s embarrassing mistakes. Someday most of Iraq will be like this and another culture will wake up from tyranny, fanaticism, sectarian violence and recognize that freedom has its own struggles but is incredibly worth the price. The people to thank when this happens will be the citizens of the United States of America where we believe that free and individual rights are worth the sacrifice. I just pray that we will have the patience to understand that this type of revolution and revelation both take time – perhaps an entire generation.
There are places in Iraq where urban combat is an hour to hour situation. I spent some time in one. But do not forget the Iraqi people and their desire for peace. Do not be misled by our own sensationalism and desire to see those in our own country in power to fall for whatever reason.
Remember, the vast amount of soldiers understand why we are here, are proud of their service, can recognize the positive difference that is being made, and fully understand the difference between right and wrong.
I work with an Iraqi Army General eve]]>cfbasscfbass@yahoo.comhttp://www.henrybass.com/cfbass/blog_comment.asp?bi=402006-05-14T16:58:24-04:002006-05-14T16:58:24-04:002006-05-14T16:58:24-04:00 So, what's with the 3,100 people who have looked at the blog? Is it really THAT interesting?
http://www.henrybass.com/cfbass/blog_comment.asp?bi=352006-04-06T02:53:19-04:002006-04-06T02:53:19-04:002006-04-06T02:53:19-04:00 The 344th hospital's CSM Villa came by today and gave me a challenge coin for the work the section here has been doing.
We're still getting occasional rain but the temperatures are now in the high 80s during the day and the high 60s at night.
cfbasscfbass@yahoo.comhttp://www.henrybass.com/cfbass/blog_comment.asp?bi=342006-03-15T02:05:36-04:002006-03-15T02:05:36-04:002006-03-15T02:05:36-04:00 months in Iraq. It was a wonderful vacation and everything went right. Kate was there to meet me at the airport and already had the hotel room booked. It was Carnaval time and we watched the parade from our hotel balcony. White sand beaches, Mary Kate's cooking, magic shows and cabaret shows, boat rides, driving all over the island and swimming in the ocean. For all that, the very best time I had while in Aruba was going to the drive-in theater to see "King Kong" with my wife.
It was just right, except for the fact that the Army wanted me back in Iraq at the end of it. Fortunately, there should only be a few months left to this deployment (one of the advantages to taking leave late in the cycle).
Three books to recommend while on a journey of 10,000 miles: 1) Tom Clancy's *Without Remorse* hypothesizes what would happen if some lowlife messed with the girlfriend of a Navy Seal. Chapter 3 has a detailed, fact-based account of a project Sikorsky Helicopters assisted and was related to me by Bob Kelly, former VEEP and now with Radford Habitat for Humanity, Virginia. 2) Ken Follet's *Place Called Freedom* started in a Scottish coal mine in the mid-1700s and ended in early Virginia near Lynchburg. 3) Fletcher wrote a non-fiction account of the life of *Bill Wallace of China*, an account of a medical missionary who was martyed in the late 1940s. It is a wonderful read for anyone needing an example of a life inspired by the Holy Spirit and the author is a Hardin-Simmons man.
Also, check out the blog of another soldier here in the 344th. SSG Martinez is our unit photographer (both historical and forensic) and is pretty handy with his camera: http://iraqiconnection.blogspot.com/
Though separated by the distance of 7,300 miles, our hearts have always been next to one another. It just took me a while to discover that. My grandmother treated Mary Kate to lunch at the club with my mother and a few lady friends, then a singing quartet seranaded at Kate's tableside.
http://www.henrybass.com/cfbass/blog_comment.asp?bi=292005-11-24T05:07:38-04:002005-11-24T05:07:38-04:002005-11-24T05:07:38-04:00 Thanksgiving wishes have arrived from so many. Mary Kate is spending the day with friends in Anchorage and a special Thanksgiving card came from Henry, Lisa, Eric and Ethan.
We in the mental health section will be reading Abraham Lincoln's Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, the words of which carry as much poignancy for Iraq now as they did in October of 1863.
With that, know that you all have my thanks for your support during this deployment. May God's blessings rest with us all.
Forces/Equipment Committed: If the Rangers went in, they would send a Ranger company of 120 men with standard army issue equipment.
Mission Preparation: The Ranger Company First Sergeant would conduct a Hair Cut and Boots Inspection.
Infiltration Technique: They would insist on double timing, in company formation, wearing their combat equipment, and singing Jody cadence all the way to the site of the hijacked aircraft.
Actions in the Objective Area: Once they arrived, the Ranger company would establish their ORP, put out security elements, conduct a leaders recon, reapply their face cammo, and conduct final preparations for Actions on the OBJ.
Results of Operation: The Rescue/Recovery Operation would be completed within one hour; all of the terrorists and most of the passengers would have been killed, the Rangers would have sustained light casualties and the 747 would be worthless to anyone except a scrap dealer.
Special Forces Option
Forces/Equipment Committed: If Special Forces went in, they would send only a 12 man team (all SF units are divisible by 12 for some arcane historical reason) however, due to the exotic nature of their equipment the SF Team would cost the same amount to deploy as the Ranger Company.
Mission Preparation: The SF Team Sergeant would request relaxed grooming standards for the team.
Infiltration Technique: The team would insist on separate travel orders with Max Per Diem, and each would get to the site of the hijacking by his own means. At least one third of the team would insist on jumping in.
Actions in the Objective Area: Once they arrived , the SF Team would cache their military uniforms, establish a Team Room, use their illegal Team Fund to stock the unauthorized Team Room Bar, check out the situation by talking to the locals, and have a Team Meeting to discuss the merits of the terrorists' cause.
Results of Operation: The Rescue/Recovery Operation would take two weeks to complete and by that time all of the terrorists would have been killed, (and would have left signed confessions); the passengers would be ruined psychologically for the remainder of their lives; and all of the women passengers would be pregnant. The 747 would be essentially unharmed, the team would have taken no casualties but would have used up, lost, or stolen all the "high speed" equipment issued to them.