StormWarning’s Counterterrorism

One of my previous posts, Who Mourns Our Fallen Soldiers, prompted a comment from someone whose voice needs to be heard. His message and story is worth reading. Clearly, while agreeing with some of what I write, he did express a disagreement with parts of this particular post (see my explanation below). Here is the comment, converted into a well-deserved place on this blog as a single post.

From a Soldier writing from a dot mil email address:

I realize this post may never be read, but I wanted to let everyone know that I am a US Army Reservist presently attached to the 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, 3d Infantry Division headquartered at FOB Iskan, just across the Euphrates River from Jurf as Sahkr, Iraq. Jurf as Sahkr, or “Jurf” to those of us who patrol the area on a daily basis, was one of the last AQI strongholds in Anbar Province. This area was only recently “awakened” by the Coalition Forces. I’ve been here for months now, doing the dirty work of convincing the locals that we are right and AQI is bad and so on, but my primary concern was to locate the remains of our MIA Soldiers. For the past year, we never gave up on those Soldiers. We conducted leaflet drops from Blackhawk helicopters, blared messages of support to them (although we were quite certain they had been murdered) and messages to the enemy that we would not rest until they were found. I can assure you that the every measure to locate those brave men was taken (within the boundaries of the Law of Warfare, of course). Although I can not tell you how we collected the information that led to the recovery of these men’s remains, I can tell you that it was most certainly not a “message” from AQI. AQI heard our “message” in Jurf as Sahkr, and it was usually delivered with precision guided missiles and 25mm machine-gun spitting hell’s fire from a Bradley Fighting Vehicle. These days, violence in Jurf has fallen to the lowest level since 2003. We are discovering enormous weapons caches that the fleeing AQI cowards could not take with them and uncovering DBIEDs (Deep-Buried IED) that have laid dormant for years. We are rebuilding schools, medical clinics, and local governance centers. Since the recovery of SGT Jimenez and PFC Fouty, the Government of Iraq and Coalition Forces have opened up their wallets to the good people of Jurf and the level cooperation with and gratuity for the Soldiers of the Iraqi and American military is overwhelming. Keep in mind that most of the residents of rural areas, where AQI dominated every aspect of life, fled their homes to avoid those murderous bastards and returned to find leveled homes and slaughtered livestock (both common tactics, techniques, and procedures of AQI members prior to their departure). These people came out to the hasty burial site of our Soldiers because what we found was not just the remains of our Fallen, but those of some 60 locals who stood up to AQI and were executed en masse.

I appreciate the forum and look forward to reading more of your informative and entertaining posts!
Sincerely,
Matt

My comment: There is some technology still in development, and perhaps soon to be (or maybe not), that might have assisted in the search and rescue early on. Who knows?

Jurf, Jurf as Sahkr, SGT Jimenez and PFC Fouty