ELLIS W. WILLIAMSON

MAJOR GENERAL

U. S. Army (Ret)

From the war front.

Hi everyone,
I just received a message from Bryant, following the President's address on Iraq. I wanted to forward it to you all. He has settled into the job of medic over the last two months +, and though we don't hear from him near enough, he does let us know he's "good" whenever he can.

Here's the rest of his letter to us:

Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2007 00:17:06 -0800 (PST)
From: Bryant Shurley <batmanvshomer@yahoo.com>
Subject: My view of Iraq

Following the article I sent about Bush's national address and troop increase, I thought it was a good idea to let you all know what the perspective is over here. I'm tired of hearing the media's skewed version, the politicians squabbling over what they read in a report, and the average ill-informed American ranting about things he knows NOTHING about.
 
I've been over here a couple of months now, and I've learned more about this country than a year's worth of watching CNN. I've sat in mission briefs with Colonels, talked with village elders, had tea with Shieks, played with the kids. And I agree with the President. We need more troops and we need to take greater action.
 
There are 3 major factions here. The Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. The Shiites are in the majority, but Saddam was a Sunni, so he kept the Shiites in check. Everyone hates the Kurds, who are Christian and in the vast minority. The Kurds received the brunt of Saddam's murderous tyranny. Now that Saddam is gone, the Shiites have taken control of Baghdad. The largely peaceful Sunnis are now the victims of radical Shiite terrorism. So the young Sunni men, who can no longer go to work and support their families, do what all young men would do. They join the Sunni militia and battle the Shiites. And thus the country sits on the brink of civil war.
But this war is between them. They largely do not concern themselves with the U.S. troops. The insurgents who battle the Coalition Forces are from outside the country. And the biggest problem down here isn't the insurgents. Its the politicians. The local politicians. Even though the country is controlled by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, downtown Baghdad is controlled by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The Shiites follow al-Sadr and thus the Prime Minister does what al-Sadr says. Think of it as if a warlord controlled New York and blackmailed the President into diplomatic immunity.
 
When 1st Cav (mainly 2/5 Cav) came here in 2004, they took downtown Baghdad (known as Sadr City) by force. It cost many lives, but after a year, we held an iron grip on the largest insurgent breeding ground in Iraq. The insurgents were afraid of the Horse People, and rightfully so. But when 1st Cav left, al-Sadr influenced the Prime Minister to kick out the Coalition forces from that area of Baghdad. He said the Iraqi military forces could hold the city. But all that happened was al-Sadr regained control of his cty, and it is now a heavily guarded fortress. A place where insurgents and terrorists can train and stockpile arms. And we cannot go back in becuase the Prime Minister won't let us. Our hands are tied.
 
So where does al-Sadr get his backing? From Iran and Syria. Iran supplies him with money and Syria supplies the terrorists. The insurgents that battle the Coalition Forces are from Syria, Somalia and dozens of other places outside of Iraq. Iraq is literally a terrorist breeding ground. They have terrorist and sniper schools here. Why not? They train by teaching them to attack the military forces here. And they have an endless supply of these training tools. They have factories in Sadr City to build bombs. Both Iran and Syria have openly proclaimed their number one goal in life is to destroy the great Western Devil and the little Western Devil (America and Britain). Iran wants to control Iraq to further this purpose. Al-Sadr will get to "run" the country and live like a king, but in reality Iran will pull the puppet strings. Iran will have access to thousands of radical Shiites who will do whatever al-Sadr tells them to. And Iraq will be used as a breeding ground for terrorism, Terrorism that will be targeted directly at America and Britain. The Iraq Study Group advised we should let Iran and Syria help with rebuilding? Bravo to President Bush for striking that idea down and vowing to keep those two countries out of Iraq.
 
So how do the Iraqi people feel about everything? Of course they don't want the Americans here. But they would far rather have us here than the Iranians. My platoon visited an average Sunni village on a patrol a few days ago. Their only source of income was to farm, as they could not go to the city to work for fear of violence. Many of the young men had already run off to join the militia for no other reason than to feed their families. They had no school or hospital near them and the community was dying. The village elder's granddaughter was very sick and I was able to treat her. Afterwards he invited me and my Platoon Leader to sit in his house and have tea with him, and we talked about the situation.
 
The people want peace. The Shiites kill the Sunnis because al-Sadr tells them to do so. The Sunnis fight back because they have no choice. They are glad Saddam is dead (Sunni or not), but do not want to replace him with another dictator in a politician's clothes (which is what al-Sadr will become). And they especially don't want Iran in charge. Many innocent Iraqis will die if this happens. These are the words that came out of the elder's mouth:
 
"We do not want America here, and America does not want to be here. But you cannot leave because the militias controll the country. America must use the might of its giant army and sweep through, root out and destroy the militias. Then Iraq can be free and you can leave."
 
What appears to have happened within our diplomatic community, is that Prime Minister finally realizes that his days are numbered. If al-Sadr remains, he will be kicked to the curb. So hopefully he is about to allow us to reenter Sadr City, root out and destroy the enemy. A dramatic troop increase will allow us to do this. And the Horse People are back and ready to finish what they started over 2 years ago.
 
If we leave now, it will be a failure for democracy. Iran will contoll Iraq and the end result will be more terrorist attacks on America. The American people don't want soldiers dying over here, but its better than American civilians dying over there. Do NOT forget 9/11. They will do it again. The moment we loosen our grip on the noose, they will do it again. And the only way to root out the evil here is to stop beating around the bush, increase troops and destroy the insurgents once and for all. The Iraqi government cannot do this on their own. The Iraqi security forces are inadequate for this task. We are the only ones who can stop al-Sadr.
 
Feel free to share this with whomever wants a real soldier's opinion about the war.
 
 
SPC "Doc" Shurley
2/5 Cav, 1st CB

           USA        Today

January 8, 2007


'Smart' Airdrops May Save Lives Of U.S. Troops

GPS-guided deliveries mean fewer convoys in danger areas

By; Tom Vanden Brook
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FORT DIX, N.J. — The Air Force and Army have begun to use technology that guides so-called smart bombs to target parachute-dropped cargo to re-supply troops in remote, hazardous locations.

The smart chutes, still in the development stage, have been rushed into use in Afghanistan, where fighting between U.S. and allied forces and the Taliban insurgents has surged in the past several months.

U.S. forces are dropping more and more supplies to troops in Afghanistan, according to statistics kept by U.S. Central Command, which coordinates military activities there. In December, U.S. air units dropped 357,000 pounds of supplies, compared with 87,600 pounds in December 2005.

"We've revolutionized the way we supply the war fighter," says Air Force Maj. Gen. Scott Gray, commander of the Air Mobility Warfare Center at Fort Dix. "This is a hellaciously great capability."

The larger amounts of supplies reflect extensive fighting between coalition forces and the Taliban. This fall, NATO launched a 10-day offensive in Kandahar province, the largest ground operation the alliance has ever undertaken. Hundreds of Taliban fighters were killed and more than 100 taken prisoner in the campaign.

The precision airdrop system is seen as a way of minimizing danger to convoys, which are frequent targets of roadside bombs. It can also quickly re-supply troops on the far-flung battlefields.

"There's no way you're going to take huge convoys off roads," Air Force Maj. Dan DeVoe says.

"But for small pockets in the outer reaches it may be helpful. We may no longer need four or five armed vehicles supporting two or three trucks," DeVoe says.

The parachutes so far have dropped a fraction of the total amount of supplies needed, but they've been used in critical spots. In August, the Air Force re-supplied ammunition to troops engaged in combat with Taliban fighters. The U.S. troops were in a hard-to-reach spot in a mountainous region, and U.S. jets were pounding insurgents at the time of the airdrop, according to the Air Force.

John Pike, a military analyst at GlobalSecurity.org, a military think tank, says precision airdrop capability will be a boon to the military but has been slow in arriving.

"It's a great thing, but I'm puzzled as to why the precision revolution is moving as slowly in this arena as it is," Pike says.

The satellite-guided parachute is called the Joint Precision Airdrop System (JPADS). The Army and Air Force have been developing it since 1993. The parachute system allows cargo to be dropped from high altitudes beyond the range of enemy fire. Traditional drops require pilots to fly at 1,000 feet or lower to be accurate, within the range of small-arms fire. The precision system allows drops from as high as 25,000 feet.

Sensors, called dropsondes, are released from the cargo plane prior to the airdrop. These instruments measure wind speed and direction, which are used to calculate the point at which to drop the cargo so that it hits its target.

Once dropped from the aircraft, the JPADS cargo and its parachute rely on Global Positioning System receivers for guidance. A small motor reacts to GPS orders and reels in or extends lines attached to the parachute. That changes the shape of the parachute and steers it to troops on the ground. The guidance systems, which are reusable, cost between $25,000 and $50,000 for 2,000-pound loads and $60,000 to $90,000 each for 10,000-pound loads.

When fully developed, the parachute system will be able to handle 60,000-pound loads — enough to drop the Army's Stryker combat vehicle with precision, according to the Air Force. "As a pilot, I used to need to see a visual marker and hit that target or close to it," says Gray, who has more than 3,500 flying hours in cargo planes. "Now, with GPS, I don't have to see it. I can drop it through clouds, at night, in bad weather."

In a traditional airdrop, the lead bundle of equipment could be close to its target, but the trailing bundles could be stretched out over a mile.

"That's a lot of area to have to secure," says Richard Benney, an Army aerospace engineer and technical manager for the system.

Precision airdrops using JPADS in Afghanistan have been within 280 yards of their target, DeVoe says.

Re-supplying troops by air in remote locations also takes vehicles off dangerous roads, bypassing the threat of accidents and the homemade bombs known to the military as improvised explosive devices, the top threat to troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"If the Taliban is targeting specific routes because they know that every other day we're sending a convoy up that road, we can use an airdrop," Gray says.

"Saving American blood is a good thing, and this will definitely do it," Gray says.

    Ms. Hoffmann's English class.

                                    Amanda Stone...

Dear Mr. Geer,

My name is Amanda Stone, and I am in Ms. Hoffman's English class.  For a project on the Vietnam war, I need to interview a veteran and I was hoping you could answer the following questions for the assignment.  If anything
 is too personal or inconvenient in anyway please just let me know.

When were you born? Where?   What was your family like growing up?

I was born in Norwich Connecticut to a Large Family of eleven brothers and sisters; Two older brothers, two older sisters and then me. Three brothers and four sisters were younger than me. My father worked really hard to raise us in a small house that we rented near a lake. We had a tough life but each Saturday was family day and we all did something together for the day. Having many brothers and sisters meant we always had something to do.

When were you drafted? Or did you willingly join?

                           How old were you then?

My oldest brother Joe Geer was drafted in 1964 into the army. After one year of training he went to Vietnam. My next oldest Brother Bobby joined the army in 1966 and in 1967 he also went to Vietnam. Joe returned from Vietnam where he was an advisor in the 9th Infantry after one year. I joined the Army Airborne in 1967 and I was 17 years old. I volunteered to go to Vietnam in 1968. Bob came home from Vietnam shortly thereafter. Then when my one year tour was over I came home in 1969. All three of us managed to live through our tours of Duty. God ‘Blessed’ us!

                         What was it like?

It was kind of like being in another large family with new rules, classes and plenty of exercise, but no real fun. The Army got us into
 great physical shape and taught us how to relate or react to difficult
 situations that we would encounter in our next few years of service to our country.  It was a serious time and we all being seventeen to nineteen years old, grew up real fast.

                         How was your basic training experience?

Being in basic training I learned some things like respect,
 responsibility, and certainly how to stay in good physical condition. I
 went to many classes and learned how to do things like using weapons, read maps so as to not get lost, how to survive in difficult situations, and to use
 my equipment in the most reasonable way. I learned how to pack it all so I
 could carry it so that it was comfortable and easy to get to as needed. It
 all weighed around ninety pounds.

What was your view on the war?

            I didn`t think war was bad, but I was very young and I tended only to want  to serve my country like my Uncles had done and my two older brothers. At age seventeen I don`t think I was mature enough to know the history of warfare or the consequences of what war is really about. I depended on my training leaders to make me aware of what I needed to know.

                           What was your role?

            I was an Infantry Grunt and A weapons specialist, or the soldier that walks with others in the Jungle to confront the enemy in the places where he lived and fought.

                         Where were you stationed? How was it there?

            I was in the Bong Song area with the 173rd Airborne Brigade, Mainly in the center of South Vietnam that they called the Central Highlands. In
 1969 it was still a busy place where communism was being spread throughout the country by the North Vietnamese. It was a scary scene because most of the time we saw few enemy but ran into booby-traps that killed five of six
 people each when you least expected it.

                          What did you do to pass the time?

            If we had any time to pass it was usually done on a bunker in the rear
 for a few days pulling guard, listening to the radio station and reading
 mail or thinking about what we would be doing if we were home. Our unit
 stayed in the field for 90 days at a time doing the fighting so when we
 came "in the rear" for three to five days, we wanted to rest, take a shower and sleep if we could.
    If we were in the jungle for those ninty days, we didn`t have time to
 listen to the radio because we were always busy walking up mountains, through
 rivers or through the rice-patties or digging holes at dusk so we were
 protected for the night. We did this every day without showers and very
 quietly, hiding in the jungle all the time.

                           Are there any memories or stories that stand out?

One time I was running in an open field of rice to bring some ammunition to a gunner team that was pinned down by a sniper and as I was running I could see the bullets the sniper was shooting at me because they were splashing in the water in front of me. He was getting closer and closer
 when I slipped and fell in the mucky water. I could still see his bullets
 getting with-in one foot of me before I got myself back up and ran the rest of the way to safety.

          What did you do when the war was over or when you got out of service?

            When the war was over for me I again served with the 82nd Airborne for the next eight months until my time in the army was finished. Then when I got out I was confused and still only twenty years old. I was confused because when I got home everyone was spitting on soldiers and calling us baby-killers and throwing eggs at us. They would tell us we should`nt have been there fighting and killing kids. So I just never told anyone else that I was in the Vietnam war for the next thirty years. I stayed to myself and felt very bad that I had been talked into doing something bad by my country. I became angry inside and carried that anger in everything I did in the next thirty years.

                        What were you planning for the future, while at war?

I had hoped for and planned to finish my education and possibly be a
 public servant, like a police officer or fireman. I ended up working in
 twenty some different mill jobs in the next thirty years and my
 aspirations were not met, but I did finish my education.

                         What has stayed with you from the war?

            The fact that nobody cared about us when we came home will always stay with me. Nobody supported us while we were over there, (except our direct families) and most people were only interested in using us as scapegoats for their political rallies.

 
                        On the other hand I will always remember that those of us that went to war, and didn’t run away to Canada or burn our draft cards, were banded as brothers that stuck together if only for each other. We depended on each other to stay alive for our year, and each and every one of those brave warriors stuck together no matter what the other people thought or did. We became Our Own Society because we learned to trust and count on each other daily.
                                                     In the  years after when America finally started thanking Vietnam Veterans, (thirty years too late), many of the brothers still only felt
 comfortable trusting and talking to someone that had been in Vietnam
 rather than someone who may have been  a protestor. Unfortunately it is still that way today.

       What have you learned from the war?

              I personally learned that war is not a good way to fight over
 differences. People die in war. Good people and bad people. I learned that
 people should talk over disagreements and learn other ways to meet
 adversity.

 Anything else you would like to pass on to the class.

       I would like your class just to understand how someone would feel if he
 or she was asked to serve their country in a war and when they returned
 from that war they were forgotten about or even worse told that they shouldn’t
 have even done it. To be shamed and discarded for the next twenty years
 afterwards tends to make a person build a shell around their lives. They
 don’t want to trust anyone again. They tend to carry their anger inside
 and mostly want to self-medicate (Drink heavily or take drugs to forget,) so
 they can remain quietly by themselves. They tend not to raise families or
 work at jobs because they feel worthless about themselves.
      What I want all of you to take home from this story is that no matter
 what the social issues are in any war, If America sends troops to fight in
 it, those of you at home should show your support and respect to those
 that decide to fight in it! And please, to verbalize your thanks and appreciation to them for having the guts to go into a war that is either unaccepted or not.

    In my case it took thirty years to come to terms with what I’ve done in
 my war. I am proud to have done such a brave thing and lived. Many of my
 friends and comrades were not so lucky and died. I personally always tend to think of them as the lucky ones though, because they weren’t alive to know that America didn’t care about them and they did die as Heroes in their own eyes. Its a shame that their families knew the real truth and   had to suffer  with the knowledge like we did, because it was an unpopular war.

           I,d like to thank you Amanda for your questions and your interest in our part of the war, If you wanted some pictures to include in your presentation
 you can find many through-out our web-site at:
 http://ourbunkers.0catch.com/
 If you put your arrow over most of the pictures and click "left/right"
 quickly you can save the pictures to your computer and may be print them
 out. If you can pass our web-site on to other classmates that may be
 interested you are allowed to do so.

 Thank you,

 Richard (Ric r0c) Geer

                  -Apocalypse again ???    call up the

         Vietnam vets…

           LISTENING TO President Bush's speech on Iraq earlier this month, my first thought was: "Where the heck are we going to get 21,500 more soldiers to send to Iraq?" Our Reserves are depleted, our National Guard is worn out, our Army and Marine Corps are stretched to the limit.

Then it hit me: Re-up our Vietnam War veterans and send them.

They're trained. They're battle-hardened. Many already have post-traumatic stress disorder. Also, some have their own vehicles — Harleys mostly, which are cheap to run, make small targets and are highly mobile. I'll even bet that lots of these guys still have guns (you know, just in case).

                OK, some vets are a bit long in the tooth (or don't have teeth — because of Agent Orange?). Or their eyesight isn't what it was. Or their reflexes have slowed. But with today's modern weaponry, how well do you have to see?

Too out of shape, you say? Listen, if Rocky Balboa can step back into the ring at age 60, all these Vietnam War vets need is a little boot-camp magic and they'll be good to go. I mean, who doesn't want to drop a few pounds?

Don't want geezers fighting for us? Well, let's face it, our young people have greater value right here. Most of us want to retire and collect our hard-earned Social Security, and we need those youngsters here, working and paying taxes — lots of taxes.

Finally, these Vietnam War guys are hungry for revenge. After all, they fought in the only war the U.S. ever lost. And they didn't even get a parade. So this is their chance. We can throw them that big parade when they come marching home.

I don't know what to think anymore, Should we get offended or be proud that they know we could do the job, if left to operate freely?

Where else can Bush get 21,500 trained soldiers for his 'surge'?

By Paul Whitefield, superviser of the editorial pages' copy desk.

January 21, 2007

Incredibly poignant photos.  http://www.operationmom.org/ToOurParents.html

         Hard to realize that those youthful faces are my generation and now most of them are in their 60s or even older. Many more than the 58,000 listed on the wall are now gone. They deserved a better war, but that was the only war they had at the time. Warriors are never able to select in which war they will take part. While some people ran away to Canada or Scandinavia, our 2.6 million who served are our heroes.

 I pray for my brothers and sisters who served, that they attain their

own peace, now and forever.

                    68~Ronald Meister~ 69

Head-Quarters Company

Halfway around the world tonight
In a strange and foreign land
A soldier unpacks memories
That he saved from Vietnam.
Back home they didn't know too much
There was just no way to tell,
I guess you had to be there
For to know that war was hell.

         The greatest defeat that the United States has suffered in any war was the failure to overcome the attitude of coldness, and indifference, with which Americans shunned most of those returning veterans. Let us never forget the men and women who served our country so valiantly and at such cost-in the difficult, much-repudiated and unforgettable Vietnam War.

               ClicK Image~

~Remember`ng The HerD~

There is no nice way to fight a war.

The cost of war is life.

Let us always remember the price

that both sides will pay.