Late last friday night The History Channel debuted a new special about the rise of Iraq MilBloggers - The Band of Bloggers - who have for the past 3-4 years been providing unfiltered and completely uncensored emotional and gripping footage, photos and reports from the front lines of the War.
This program, in a way that mainstream news and it's part-time embedded reporters has utterly, totally failed to do, managed to get truly behind the scenes and into the hearts and minds of our brave military men and women who've been putting their lives on the line - and often losing that bet - for the last few years while we sit behind our computer desks and argue over it all.
This is the truth, unchecked and unvarnished and it's high time we started to seriously pay attention.
A Milblog was what intially inspired me to get my own blogspot several years ago, then post on Dailykos, Democratic Underground and then Oped news. That blog was
My War: Killing Time in Itaq by SPC Colby Buzzel who is featured prominently on the History Chanenl program as is Paul Reickoff of
Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans for America.
Colby has now published a book based on his blog, and Reikoff is frequently seen on Countdown as well as posting on HuffingtonPost, but they're just the tip of the spear.
The points made aren't particularly political, they aren't neccesarily pro or against the war itself. The Video is VERY Graphic, and certainly not something you're going to see being presented by Katie Couric at 6pm. It simply shows how soldiers live, day to day, how they survive the tedium an boredom by sometimes abusing each other, making their own "Oddball" videos, tossing Giant Camel Spiders at each other and occasionally a glimpse of the pain they endure when they lose a comrade or find themselves literally knee deep in the blood of some unknown Iraqi whose just been hit by a car bomb.
From the Silly to the Sublime, it's all there.
They interview SPC Kate Hoit (GI Kate) of
My American Iraq Life talking about night after night in
Mortaritaville, who discusses her decision that although the idea of riding around Iraq in a completely un-uparmed Humvee scares her to death, that it would be a good thing if something happened to her because it would help focus attention on the fact that our troops are
still not properly protected.
I received an email from "H", he voiced his opinion of the war, gave me his opinion on how vets should deal with PTSD, told me about "Lisa Legs" (just incase I lose my legs next time I’m led blinding into war), and how it brings him to tears to see "you women coming back dead or all fucked up (unable to love, addicted to war, etc)". what the fuck did that mean? when I first read it...I thought, what is this guy talking about? I’m pretty sure he doesn't have a set of tits and a vagina...or understand what its like to be a female in the army.
Then I read it again and again and again. Maybe he had a point. I remember a conversation I had with my "battle buddy" and two other females a couple drills back. My friend asked, "So do you guys think we're like all the other females out there?" We thought for a couple seconds...and all replied with a stern "no". One female said, "Yeah, I’m not as girly as my other friends." My friend said, "Man, fuck that. We have to deal with bullshit all the time-now we just give them hell back." I agreed. We were use to telling guys to fuck off, we were use to being hit on all the time, we were use to talking about “whores” and who had sex over the weekend. Being surrounded by sweaty males, who fart in formation, say fuck every other word, talk about sex and girls...like we weren't in their presence, and who hit on anything that was capable of giving a blowjob, left us with a sour taste in our mouths. We weren't like our friends and we never will be.
My friend and I spent a year in Iraq. While I was overseas, I saw nothing but sex. Sex between single soldiers, sex between soldiers who were married but on TYD (temporary year divorce), and females having sex with multiple people (before I have some stand-up male in the army jump down my throat, not all the males are appalling sex crazed scumbags...and the females aren't all barracks whores). Maybe we were "unable to love" because love was made a mockery of. Love in the traditional sense did not exist...sex was the new love. There were no emotional strings attached...the wives and husbands back in the states were forgotten about...new love triangles began to form. Now there was war and sex. War should have no emotions. Sex created nothing but emotions. The two should never be mixed.
You can see the not too tell-tales signs of Delayed Stress in the eyes of one Military Photographers who says that he can't get his head around the fact that he's become more afriad of Iraq since he got home than he had been when he was actually there.
You get to hear the words of Sgt Chris Missick and his blog -
A Line in the Sand.
Today, a family in Sacramento needs our prayers. Joe Nurre, a young man who I went to college with at California State University Sacramento, died serving somewhere near Tikrit. Joe was a good friend to many people in the Sacramento community. He is a hero who served this country and gave his life for you, just like all the other men and women who have died in service of our nation. When you pray today, pray for Joe's family, pray for our military in harms way, and be sure to tell God to pass a thank you on to Joe, we are forever indebted to men like him.
It aint pretty. It aint neat. It's not exactly the "Happy Stories" that Fox News keeps insisting that we aren't hearing.
What it is - is the truth. One soldier at a time. One moment at a time. All the courage, all the frustration and all the fucked-up shit - all rolled into one.
We owe it to ourselves, we owe it to them - to make sure we at least try to understand some of their stories, we at least try to listen, especially when we here on places like Kos and DU or even RedState go around
pontificating on the War and either how tragic or glorious it all is.
We. Have. No. Idea.
But we could at least get a clue...
Vyan
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