LETTERS FROM BAGHDAD

greetings fellow infantry infidels! its been over a year now since i served in iraq and i told myself i wouldnt forget about everything going on over there but i have, almost. most of the people i know are back from iraq now and getting on with their lives so its easy to forget the war and everything going on around it. i lost some freinds in iraq but our unit came back with everybody it left with (despite serving in combat early in the conflict and having rockets fall on us we all came back to the towns we came from). i lost a friend who returned to iraq with another unit (louisiana guard) and i cant help but to remember that sad day. many of us were safe at home when we learned of this. we were lucky when we deployed. we were treated well and had just about everything we needed. despite slow mail, we recieved a lot of support from home as well. morale was only bad when the war was declared over and we were told we were going stay. it was also a blow to morale to learn we would no longer be attached to special operations. we were part of a lot of "high-speed" operations and now we would be sent to the regular army to be treated like stupid grunts. that was not the case (whew!) and we were treated well until our departure. we did all the typical infantry stuff but had other duties (like escorting big-shots and iraqis alike) to break the routine. the chow was great wherever we went. KBR does that well and i remember looking at the food and wondering what our ancestors would think (i dont remember what chow was like on iwo jima). we still bitched a lot. thats just part of being american and infantry, you bitch. its never been discouraged in any unit ive served in (the only exception would be boot camp where the leadership does the bitching! LOL). anyway, now that im no longer in the military i will continue to bitch even though i really have little to bitch about. its most fun to bitch about politics. i have to be a democrat because im just not afraid of terrorists, communists and homosexuals. republicans bitch about communists and homosexuals and i just dont understand their rant. the things people should be afraid of are things like poverty, pollution, social injustice, war, natural disasters and the like. i just cant vote for a party that says i should be afraid of pansys and commies, this old soldier knows what we should fear...