Fallujah: The untold story

Not watching all that shite cause I'm at work. But I fought in that battle so if you have any real questions I'll answer them without political bias.

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From a person who was there, fighting for freedom.
This is a story we didn't here over here.

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I think you should talk to GT23. As the years go on our chance to talk to people who were directly involved in Fallujah is only going to get smaller.

I am always skeptical of documentaries, especially of ones that I find interesting. I was not involved in the 2nd battle of Fallujah, but there are some things I take issue with concerning claims of a de facto draft and birth defects. One of those statements is an outright lie (the de facto draft) and I haven't really bought off on the birth defects argument.

Either way, good post with potential to get much better.

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Not watching all that shite cause I'm at work. But I fought in that battle so if you have any real questions I'll answer them without political bias.

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I have a question. How accurate is Wikipedia?

LINK

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I'm in the dark on this battle. What happened during the battle?

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The link above is for the first battle of Fallujah.

I was in the second Battle of Fallujah. Also called Operation Phantom Fury or Peration Al Fajr.

LINK

The first battle was in the immediate aftermath of the Blackwater killings. The Marine commanders were actually opposed to assaulting the city. They recommended a series of pinpoint raids to bring the killers to justice. The WH disagreed and the Marines went in. After a few days and heavy casualties the Marines were told to cease their assault. What was called the "Fallujah Brigade" was formed to police the city and quell the violence. This didn't exactly work out and Fallujah became basically home base for the insurgency in Iraq with zero American presence in the city.

In November of 2004 the decision was made to retake the city once and for all. It was basically a few thousand Marines on line pushing through the city from the North. It was very bloody for both sides. Basically the exact opposite of what you normally envision when you think about the Iraq war. There actually was a front line. The problem was that it was highly publicized and eventually became a rallying cry for the insurgents in Iraq. It really was on of the turning points of the war and probably eventually produced more insurgents than we actually killed, and we killed a frickton of them.

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What were your thoughts on black water contractors? Did you respect them? Fighting for the same intentions?

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Didn't run into many of them over there. I think most of the guys just want ed to make a decent paycheck for their families. Some of them truly wanted to do their part for their country, and some of them were trigger happy psychos. I think what's important to consider is that for all intents and purposes these guys were a military force in Iraq. Maybe not in our eyes but certainly in the eyes of every Iraqi. There's really no disputing it. They were part of the war effort and they were armed. Their uniform was cargo pants and cool shades as opposed to desert camouflage.

Here's a video that will give a pretty good feel for the battle.

Warning: GRAPHIC

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Not watching all that shite cause I'm at work. But I fought in that battle so if you have any real questions I'll answer them without political bias

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How did him killing a "frickton" of "insurgence" serve you?

And I'm not debating that they didn't kill some generally nasty individuals, but how did that help you?

I'm a veteran myself, and this kind of blanket praise needs to stop. It's become religious worship. Did we lose all of our cognitive faculties? You don't just take stated purposes at their word ("protect our freedoms"), but you look at what is actually done. If the military was truly involved in the protecting our freedom, it would be surrounding Washington DC. They're the biggest threat to our freedom, not jihadist or foreign dictators.

The whole attitude that people have towards the troops is hypocritical. We value our freedoms outlined in the Constitution, so we support occupying other people's homelands, disarming them and searching their homes without warrants? How does that work? And what does one have to do with the other?

If you really support the troops, you would support stopping all of this imperialist, interventionist BS that's just a pit for money and lives. We've got veterans killing themselves every day because they're experiencing more combat days than any war since WWI, and seeing crap that no person is meant to see, like dead, blown up children.

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I'm a veteran myself

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Thanks for your service. I appreciate what you did for this country.

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Thanks for your service. I appreciate what you did for this country.

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I didn't do anything for this country, and I was well compensated. Any notions I had that I was "serving this country" were gone after my first deployment.