Today's Required Reading

Sminklemeyer, an Army journalist, is about to rotate out of Iraq. I regret that I didn't know about his blog until it was too late. (Hat tip Blackfive for enlightening me.) His last post is a gutty summation of all he's done and seen. You want war from a soldier's eye view? Here it is:

This war started out as a means to find weapons of mass destruction. Then, it was let's give the Iraqi people freedom. Now, politicians say let's fight the terrorists there and not on American soil. To be honest, soldiers don't care about the cause. We're not fighting for any of the above; we are fighting for the guy on our left and right. You form a bond so tight with fellow soldiers that you never want to let them down. I've seen it displayed every day for a year.

Once, I was in Tal Afar for a large-scale, three day operation. We had birds, Strykers and artillery, but the fighting always comes down to the individual soldier and his weapon. In Avgoni, nearby Tal Afar, we were moving toward the objective through very dense terrain. Tall trees, thick brush and long vines were every where. It was so green because of human crap, which flowed to the bottom of the hills and fertilized what appeared to look more like a Vietnam jungle than an Iraqi village. But, the enemy knew the terrain and we didn't. They posted white T-shirts on the smaller trees, which looked like a person from a distance, setting a trap that we walked right into. At the other end of these decorated trees were about three or four men with AKs and RPGs. When the squad moved into the open zone, the enemy opened fire, nailing the squad leader in each leg and in a fat roll. As the squad leader fell to the ground, he didn't moan in pain; he fired back, killing an insurgent gunner just as he was about to fire an RPG into the squad. Because of this soldier, the man on his left and right are still alive, including me.

And here's one journalist who yearns for the full story to get through.

But probably the most painful of moments were when we lost people. I'll never forget the smiles on my friends' faces, T & Mitts. They were both strong characters who represented the army values. There are thousands just like them, and each soldier killed had a story. We tried to tell that story to the world. Rather than focusing on how they died, we described how the person lived, the difference they made to the world. Nobody ever saw these memorial stories but the families and the few small town newspapers who were interested. We learned our lesson of spamming a memorial story to the larger outlets like AP. The editors deleted the story and used the photo of a crying soldier hugging the memorial display of an M-16 bayoneted into a box with the soldier's helmet on the buttstock and dog tags on the hand grip. The photo cutline read: A soldier mourns the loss of a fellow comrade. Elsewhere in Iraq, 14 killed in a large explosion outside... you get the point. Just a single sentence. No name. No family. Just a sentence and then elsewhere in Iraq. That's hardly justice for a soldier who gave that reporter the freedom of press.

Every now and then someone like him makes me not-so-ashamed to be doing this media thing for a living.