re: Iraq-Afganistan War veterans, what were your experiences?

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Everyone was scared of gas at the time, but ready to roll, so the mood around me was 'nervous euphoria.' The saying is cliche, but the feeling of 'belonging to something larger than yourself' was completely intoxicating.

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Didn't you guys wear those camo hazmat suits or whatever the first little bit?

I remember a bunch of fear about gas because of what Saddam had did to the Kurds.

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I was stationed on an old Republican Guard training post west of the Baghdad Airport. Log Base Seitz.You could see the town of Abu Ghraib from our towers.

We got shelled nearly daily. By the grace of God we brought everyone back but the other units there with us weren't as lucky. Lost a couple of guys.

I was there from May '03-March '04.

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Does it feel super weird going from a combat zone back to everyday life?

I was listening to an episode of Joe Rogan when he last had Freeway Rick Ross (not the fat rapper, the real rick ross),

Freeway Ricky mentioned that one of the first stories to ever go viral was Gary Webb's article that proved the US government sponsored cocaine sales in the US.

There is a movie about this called Kill the Messenger.
Kill the Messenger Wikipedia

This pretty much lead to the crack epidemic. A lot more cocaine coming into the US and dealers looking for away to maximize profits, but there is little information about who first started adding baking soda to cocaine and then cooking it.

I would think someone with a chemistry background had to put that together because I doubt dealers were sitting at home mixing the cocaine they bought to sell, with different shite.. Flour, sugar, then someone suggested "Hey you got a jar and baking soda? I bet if we add some cocaine then add a little baking soda, put a little bit of water in it to liquify it then circle it around a burner on the stove, that shite will crystalize into something more powerful which means we can use less cocaine to get them a better high that doesn't last as long so we will use less product to create a higher demand.

If it does work, we can then go out and give it to people. If they try and like it they will know where to come buy it from. Yall down?"

Anyway, my point in all of this is that during Vietnam drugs started becoming a bigger problem in the states. If you watched the movie American Gangster you know how part of it worked, but what I wasn't that aware of was that during the Iraq-Afghanistan war there was US troops assigned to protect opium farms on Afghanistan.

This is a 10 min video from Vice, which usually reports with an agenda behind it, but they say Afghanistan is responsible for 90% of the worlds heroin.



My question is to anyone who served. Do you think part of the reason we stayed as long as we did was to have some type of control over the heroin trade? There are pharmaceuticals that make a lot of money from those poppy plants. Im playing conspiracy theorist here, but if I owned stock in pharmaceuticals that depended on those plants and I had the power to do so, it would be tempting make sure the company I invested in can meet its demand with room to create more demand... I have no idea if that happened. I doubt it, but I am curious about shite like that.

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what I wasn't that aware of was that during the Iraq-Afghanistan war there was US troops assigned to protect opium farms on Afghanistan.

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Iraq and Afghanistan may have technically both fallen broadly under the GWOT, but are generally considered completely separate conflicts by those that served IME.

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I transitioned fine. Others weren't so lucky. I have a few friends from our time over there who suffer from PTSD. I also have some of those same people who went over a 2nd/3rd time

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Before I started looking into this, I didn't realize how many people served multiple tours, it's crazy.

Lmno

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Watch Generation Kill. You won’t be disappointed.

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Second this. I wasn't a Marine but its depiction of OIF1 was very accurate for a TV show.

Lmno

Work, workout, eat, sleep repeat. I was ATC and what the grunts would call a FOBBIT and we ensured safe, orderly, and expeditious movements of aircraft in support of ground and coalition forces. I mean you got the occasional mortars ,but towards the end you were like if I die I die. The worst that happened when I was there was a firefighter picked up a unexploded ordnance, it went off and a guy I served with who is still serving today was first on scene to render aid ,but pretty much nothing he could do. I spent 15 long months there. I have seen some pretty cool shite though and when missions are popping of you better know what you are doing and deconflict airspace very quickly and paying attention to your radios. Cool thing about deployment is that it is the only time you can berate someone that outranks you. Kirkuk Center and Mosul Approach (my company) we were always giving Kingpin the buisness ,because they could not understand that we ran single runway opposite direction departures and arrivals and when you had a bunch of C17s, C-130s, AN24s, and bunch of other aircraft they always gave clearance for a UAV at 2,500 ft within 5 miles of the Approach/Departure end of the runway. So at the last minute you see a fricking uav pop up out of nowhere no radio comms and you handed off a C-17 to tower going right at it. Nothing makes your a-hole pucker up more as a controller, but that was part of it.