“I am in Irbil (sometimes spelled Erbil.) It is Capitol city of Kurds (you know, in Iraq, they have Arabs and Kurds) – you should look for it on a map. Kurds have culture closer to Turkey. Also, Irbil is a lot closer to Turkey than to Baghdad. The camp is run by the Korean Army. Only about a dozen Americans here.
I flew down on a Japanese Self Defense Force C-130 painted pastel blue. My Japanese buddy, Major Natori, hooked me up. Today I got a tour of a vocational school and a hospital that the Koreans built here. I met lots of really friendly Iraqis who are getting an education. A lot of them speak English really well and even make jokes.
This place is so nice. Lots of hills and green grass. The air is very clean and clear. Maybe like North Dakota from pictures I’ve seen, or Mongolia.
It is fun being with the Koreans. I ate lunch and dinner at the Korean cafe. For lunch I had bulgoggi and the red hot spicy soup that Kaito likes. It has meat and tofu and big green onions. For dinner, it was mackerel Korean style, two types of KIMCHI, and beef with Toppogi mochi. And rice is sticky rice. It is delicious after all American in Camp Victory for 4 months!
After reading the 07 FEB 07 Letters section of the Stars and Stripes, I felt it my patriotic duty to hop on the First Amendment Rights bandwagon as SFC Elesky (ret) chose to do. How dare he push his criteria for serving in the Armed Forces as the norm? The “Special Breed” he describes is a wildly romantic notion at best.
Indeed, there are an abundance of philosophies among our ranks; this diversity is what makes our country and military strong, and keeps me in. But getting more practical, if we get very general and categorize, as many do, liberals as non-Republicans (Mr. Elesky did not provide an adequate definition himself,) why do so many decorated war Veteran Congressmen and Senators belong to the Democratic Party? And why are they the ones with the most children in theater serving with me here in Iraq?
If you want to talk of insult then this viewpoint is the ultimate insult to the many brave men and women who fought valiantly on the foreign soil of battlefields from WWI to Vietnam as draftees.
Older borther Lt. Bob is an naval engineer who – due to his Japanese language ability – ended up translating for some joint military exercise which involved a trip to a Aircraft Carrier named for the esteemed Republican President Lincoln (yes the same one on which BushII unfurled the Mission Accomplished banner). Besides his tripp to my old stomping grounds of Guam, he also recently embarked on trips to Italy, Hawaii and the Japanese Alps for summits and soaks.