Iraq Illustrated

Via the esteemed Theo Spark, a picture of an Iraqi soldier or policeman holding an M16 (or possibly an M4?).

Three points to note:

1) The weapon is on SAFE

2) Index finger is safely outside of the trigger guard.

3) He voted! In spite of IEDs, mortar attacks and every thing else the jihadis can come up with to disrupt the elections, he and millions of his fellow Iraqis voted yesterday.

Of Interest to Every Marine

A letter to Marines from a Marine on the USMC in Iraq.

Click to enlarge.

H/T, Theo Spark

Brothers at War

Update: Welcome to my fellow Theo Spark readers!

Twitter amazes me. I have found some surprising stuff Twitter. One of the things I've discovered is a movie called Brothers at War. Two brothers are soldiers deployed to Iraq and their filmmaker brother travels to Iraq to find out "why". I hope this movie makes it into theaters soon:

A longer trailer from Youtube:

12 Days of Christmas - USMC Style

Via Mudville Gazette comes this best ever rendition of the familiar 12 Days of Christmas from Falujah, Iraq. This was put together and posted to YouTube by a Marine named Nick Hesselgrave. Here are his notes from YouTube. Check out the rest of his stuff.

1st Battallion 4th Marines, Bravo Company 3rd Platoon. Out of ECP1 in Fallujah, Iraq. We would like to thank everyone who has supported us through the first half of our deployment. This project was a challenge for me but in the end quite worth it. Merry Christmas everyone! -Nick Hesselgrave

1- full resupply of TP
2- megafones
3- crappy humvees
4- portajohns
5- hours of sleep
6- rusty dumbells
7- months deployment
8- IPs(iraqi police) dancing
9- sentries standing
10- hours posting
11- bags of trash
12- freakin' flies!

Another GWOT win

This is what true victories in the Global War on Terror look like. Nothing spectacular, not a strike mission by a B-2 or other head line grabbing event.

Just some female suicide bombers. Who turn themselves in after a Muslim cleric convinces them that conducting a bombing is un-Islamic. 18 of them.

I'm a little surprised that they surrendered to Americans rather than Iraqis. Perhaps they thought they would be treated better. But my take away on this is that this was an Iraqi win as much as anything. The cleric/imam/preacher and the families of the prospective bombers prevented hundreds of deaths.

And for that I am thankful this turkey-day.

VI Day

Zombietime started this ball rolling.