Let­ter Re: A Secu­rity Contractor’s Con­voy Expe­ri­ence in Iraq.

Dear Jim,
A friend of mine who is a con­trac­tor sent this. It’s been posted else­where.
Foul lan­guage warn­ing. — Michael
Z. Williamson

Info from Iraq From Some­one Who is Doing the “Run and Gun”

Yes­ter­day a friend of mine who runs a small secu­rity com­pany here in Iraq emailed
me. He is stand­ing up a pro­tec­tion detail and wanted my opin­ion on tac­tics
and equip­ment run­ning the roads of Iraq; Tac­tics, SOPs, hard car or soft?
I have been giv­ing it some thought and here is where I am at.

I am will­ing to spec­u­late I’m as well trav­eled in Iraq as any­one I’ve
met. I’ve been just about every­where between Kuwait and Iran, all points
in between. And I’ve trav­eled every way pos­si­ble.
I’ve gone in mil­i­tary con­voy up armored hum­mers at 40 MPH. I’ve
run the Fal­lu­jah Bagh­dad gaunt­let in a 15 truck con­voy, thin skinned white
F350s. I’ve rolled all over in blacked out Pajeros in local dress. Diplo­matic
con­voys with armored sub­ur­bans and helo cover.
I’ve done the whole hide the guns and smile a lot all the way to show­ing
just about every­one the front sight post.
I’ve done 140 KPH up MSR Tampa
and weaved through Sadr city at a near stand­still.
I, like nearly every­one have made mis­takes and been lucky to be here writ­ing
this.
I think the most impor­tant and neglected aspect of sur­vival in the­atre is train­ing.
Every freak­ing day your crew should prac­tice “actions on” — At least
do it on a dry erase board. Actions upon any­thing and every­thing. What usu­ally
hap­pens is we start going through the “what ifs” and all the sud­den
every guy in the crew has a dif­fer­ent idea of what should hap­pen. After all
we come from many dif­fer­ent back­grounds. After about 30 min­utes of that we
all end up scratch­ing our head debat­ing which idea is best and say “let’s
get chow.” Decide on some fun­da­men­tal con­cepts. And stick to them, but
of course always remem­ber­ing that the plan is just some­thing to devi­ate from
any­way. As long as we all know the end goal and work towards it. i.e. If the
vehi­cle is stalled in the ambush, dri­ver flicks it in neu­tral so the rear car
can ram us out and we pre­pare to un-ass the vehi­cle on the oppo­site side of
the con­tact.
So rehearse and prac­tice — Which is easy to say because I am the first to admit
that a knock on my hooch at 7AM with, “Hey, man, let’s rehearse
this” makes me grum­ble.
I’m sure we can all agree that debat­ing your actions on is best done
at the hootch rather than on the side of a road in Tikrit while your car is
being remod­eled by a PKM.
PMCS your vehi­cles all the time. Being broke down in Iraq is like a scene on
a bad movie. Been there done that. Check tires, oil, fluid, etc… And don’t
over­drive your car. My friend VC man­aged to put a Pajero upside down and back­wards
on Tampa once because we pushed the cars past their con­trol­la­bil­ity.
Every IC you meet will tell you he is a great dri­ver. Just because you drive
fast and haven’t hit any­thing yet doesn’t mean you’re a good
tac­ti­cal dri­ver. Go to BSR or some other school. And if you haven’t let
the guy who has drive. Con­duct dri­ver train­ing. Get the best guy to teach every­one
else. OJT.
Prac­tice chang­ing tires. There are a cou­ple guys read­ing this email right now
who know exactly what I am talk­ing about. Real­iz­ing you’ve packed 300
pounds of gear on top the spare while on the side of a road in Ramadi is a
self loathing I’d like not repli­cate. Make sure you have a tow strap
in every vehi­cle. Loop it through the rear bumper so it’s already attached.
that way you swing in front of the busted car and they hook up. Gone in 60
sec­onds or vice versa… Get a good jack, it’s worth the money. Make sure every­one
knows where all the tow, change, repair gear is in every vehi­cle.
In the glove box keep your stay behinds. A frag, Smoke, CN. The rule is. Never
f*ck with the pin unless you have the grenade out­side of the win­dow. Hit
a bump and it drops on the road­side. Min­i­mal drama. Inside the car? Party foul.
Use
CN and Smoke. If you’re caught in traf­fic and you have a bad feel­ing about
a car behind you, toss the smoke. Most motorists will stop or at least give
you a lot of space. It works and it’s harm­less. Can use more spar­ingly
and never while in tight traf­fic. Watch­ing that cloud blow towards your car
faster than you can drive is not fun. The CN is rough stuff and I only would
use it on those rare sit­u­a­tions where it just has to be done. And the frag?
Well we all know when those need to be used.
Put a rub­ber band on your sling so it doesn’t get caught on stuff while
get­ting out of the car.
Always do a proper route plan. Com­mon sense here. And another note, we are
always try­ing to be sneakier and clev­erer than every­one else. Avoid­ing MSR’s
and roads fre­quented by con­voys you know the deal. Well before tak­ing a road
you see on a map that isn’t used by the Army. Go see the G2, ask them
why. It may be for good rea­son.
Think about fuel con­sump­tion. Plan your stops for fuel and food. Always carry
a gas can, just in case.
Always have spare bat­ter­ies for the GPS, Always have a map and com­pass just
like when we were E1’s. Do a map study; make sure every­one in the crew knows
the route plan.
Carry as big a gun as you can. Keep it clean. Keep it hot.
Carry lots of ammo. On April 4^th I went through 14 mags and never would have thought that a pos­si­bil­ity before then. Carry more ammo, stage
spare mags every­where.
Like the freakin Easter bunny.
I will never go with­out wear­ing a hel­met again. If there is a Kevlar hel­met,
it’s going on my head. A dude stand­ing right next to all of us on the
roof was dropped from a head shot. Spend the money get a good MICH or
the like. The more com­fort­able and low pro­file the more likely it is you’ll
wear it.
Wear a hel­met. Watch­ing Alcon get blasted in the nog­gin was
a SOP chang­ing expe­ri­ence for all of us here.
Wear your armor. Period.
If you sleep in a trailer or hootch, know where the near­est bunker is. Try­ing
to find it at 4 AM while scared sh*tless isn’t the answer. And yes every­one
runs for the bunker. The Delta dude who is always giv­ing the evil eye will
prob­a­bly be the first one there fol­lowed imme­di­ately after by a SEAL in flip-flops.
120mm mor­tars make us all very hum­ble.
Shoot a lot. Keep train­ing. If your com­pany won’t get more ammo, make
them dry fire. Prac­tice mag changes. Focus on cheek weld and front site. The
basics win every time.
The three guys shot on the roof here were all either chang­ing mags while stand­ing
or weren’t mov­ing to dif­fer­ent fir­ing posi­tions fre­quently — all were
reg­u­lar mil­i­tary and not con­trac­tors. They were doing stan­dard Army range sh*t.
And got dropped for it…
You remem­ber when Sam Elliot said “If I need one there will be plenty
lay­ing around” in the film We Were Sol­diers Once, in regards
to the rifles? He was right. If you’ve seen those pic­tures of us on the
net Chip was on a SAW and I had a M203. There were weapons strewn about the
roof by wounded
and those who elected to not play on the two way range. No sh*t. By the end
of week two here we all had our choice in weapons. No sh*t. We fired RPK, AK47,
PKM, MK19, M249, M203, M4, Dra­gunov, and M60 at bad guys between the eight
of us… That was unreal.
This brings me onto this — Train on all weapons. If you don’t have access
at least read the FM or TM on them. You never know when you’re out of
5.56 and some­one will hand you a PKM. Get famil­iar with them.
Prac­tice shoot­ing out to 800 meters. I know, nearly every fight is within 150
[meters] but we were try­ing to bang a mor­tar crew that was pound­ing us at 800
meters. And it
hap­pened more than once.
In terms of shoot­ing. Prac­tice as you did on active duty. Always scrounge ammo.
I will ALWAYS take a hard car over a soft. Its just com­mon sense at this point.
If I have a soft car I will sand­bag the floors and jam steel and spare plates
every­where I can. Bolt on armor is sh*t, but bet­ter than noth­ing. Remove the
Lexan win­dows from the gun trucks. Just like in the old days noth­ing breaks
con­tact quite like return­ing accu­rate, vio­lent fire.
The rear vehi­cle is always most likely to be hit. Put your best shoot­ers in
there, biggest guns.

The Golden CONEX
box. It ain’t com­ing dude. If I had a nickel for every time I have been told “Oh
yeah man, we ordered ten of those and they should be here in three days” Or
my favorite “don’t worry, it will
meet you in coun­try.” If you don’t have good guns, ammo, armor,
or comms, just say no like Nancy Rea­gan used to say. Some com­pa­nies are total
pieces of sh*t and will leave you in Iraq with a busted ass stolen AK and two
mags. Some will do you bet­ter than a tier one unit. Per­son­ally, I just want
the above men­tioned items and the rest to go to my bank account. If I want
a three hun­dred dol­lar back­pack Ill buy it.
Bot­tom line. Remem­ber what gear is crit­i­cal. Demand it be the best and take
proper care of it.
Med­ical equip­ment. It’s expen­sive. It has saved lives. The com­pany I
cur­rently work for spent a gazil­lion dol­lars out­fit­ting each crew with great
mad gear. I’m sure the bill was hard to swal­low. I sh*t you not it saved three
people’s lives, all had life threat­en­ing injuries. The med kits and our
18Ds saved them. The Army had a few ban­dages and an IV.
That was it. You know who you are, thank you for spend­ing the money…
Do reme­dial med[ical] train­ing. Can’t say any­more on that issue. Do it.
Wher­ever you go carry lots of booze. It’s the most valu­able item you
can have. If I wrote a list of things I have man­aged to swin­dle with a bot­tle
of Jack [Daniels whiskey] placed in an E8’s hands you would cr*p you’re
pants.
Don’t get drunk and stu­pid. Be drunk or stu­pid but never both at once.
Never let the client con­vince you “it’s safe, I do this all the
time.” If it’s stu­pid it’s stu­pid.
On the same note. Remem­ber if we ham­per our client’s abil­ity to do their
job too much. Our com­pany can get sh*tcanned. It’s a fine line. Yeah,
your client thinks it’s cute to drive to some Hadji’s house at mid­night
for tea, some­times you just have to do it.
Learn to deal with all the clients. Some truly think that all Iraqis are great
peo­ple and that the US Army is the enemy. Some will encour­age you to shoot
bicy­clists who hog the road. I’ve seen both sides. Keep their agenda
and egos in mind. Don’t make your own life mis­er­able.
Aim­points are great. The Eotech is okay. TA31 ACOG is
the best by far. The Aim­point bat­tery lasts six months. The Eotech is a lit­tle
too bright for my
taste. Remem­ber
that the dot is like 3 MOA in
size so they aren’t any good past 300 or
400. The ACOG is the heat.
Buy short M4s. They will save you’re ass. I carry a 18″ upper on
me with glass so when we reach our des­ti­na­tion I flick it on the lower receiver
and I now have a decent long gun. It’s like hav­ing two guns to choose
from.
If you’re doing Green Zone PSD a
mag or two may do you but if you’re
in the party zone? Twelve.
Speak­ing of which, weapon, twelve mags, pis­tol, three mags, Med kit, GPS, map
and com­pass, radio, spare bat­tery, $500 [in] US dol­lars, MRE , water bot­tle, NVG,
armor. It’s a lot. It’s hot but f**k it, if its too heavy get mem­ber­ship
at the gym. This job isn’t for every­body.
In your vehi­cle. Put a US flag on the visor so nobody can see it until you
approach a check­point, then flip it down. On the pas­sen­ger side do the same
with a VS17 panel. G.I. Joe will shoot your a** just as soon as a Hadji will.
Carry MREs
and water in your car.
NEVER throw food or candy to kids. there are many rea­sons why. But at the least
it encour­ages kids to jump in front of cars, smash­ing a kid would ruin your
trip here.
If you find your­self trust­ing the locals its time to take a vaca­tion.
Walk the fine line. Don’t be too con­ser­v­a­tive and don’t get blown
up.
Lis­ten to your intu­ition. It has saved a guy who is on this mail­ing list and
not lis­ten­ing to it killed a friend a month ago.
Once you make con­tact … Fin­ish it. If you shot a guy and he is limp­ing to
cover he can still get there and return fire. Just fin­ish every­thing you start.
A car door is not cover. In fact a car is not cover. Cement is.
While doing the work-up for my last deploy­ment we did live fire IADS and move­ment
from vehi­cles. It was the best train­ing I have done and the most use­ful. On
that note we did many Simu­ni­tion [prac­tice] runs with vehi­cle ambush sce­nar­ios.
We found that with­out a doubt the sin­gle most impor­tant fac­tor in sur­viv­ing
is
get­ting
out and away from the car. Get­ting behind it as though it was a con­crete bar­rier
and play­ing HEAT will get you killed.
Don’t work for a com­pany that doesn’t vet its ICs.
Check their creds, call the ref­er­ences, and put them through a ten day selec­tion
course.
Just because a guy was a SEAL in Viet­nam doesn’t mean he main­tained his
skills. On that note the best shooter in my train­ing class was Viet­nam SEAL.
Some of the best guys were 22 year old Rangers and the worst 38 year old SEALs.
My point it’s the indi­vid­ual that counts.
But we don’t have time or money to bring a reg­u­lar Army kid up to speed.
You have to have the fun­da­men­tal skill sets. We can’t intro­duce you to
live fire Aus­tralian peels. We should just review and coör­di­nate ver­bal com­mands
and sim­ple sh*t.
Just because some­body is a good dude isn’t good enough. If he can’t
shoot, think, and move — leave him home. Big boy rules.
If a guy doesn’t work out in your crew but has tal­ent and skill send
him else­where, don’t sh*tcan him. Per­son­al­i­ties clash. Espe­cially when
you’re liv­ing together 24/7 for six months. Eat­ing every meal together
all that. If I hear the same stu­pid story from a guy forty times? That’s
cool. It’s the 41^st that’s gonna be drama. You guys know what I’m
talk­ing about.
The con­trac­tor com­mu­nity is a sewing cir­cle for men. Remem­ber the Dyn­corp guy
who shot the prin­ci­pal in Bagh­dad last win­ter? The story in its most recent
telling over cheap Turk­ish beer involved a diplo­matic cover up, a mag­a­zine
change, and sev­eral deaths.
Throw­ing a flash-bang into the team leader’s hootch at 3AM while drunk
is not a good prac­ti­cal joke.
Remem­ber how much money you’re mak­ing. Nobody wants to clean the sh*tter
on a Wednes­day morn­ing but keep in mind you’re the high­est paid jan­i­tor in
the world that day.
Keep a sense of humor. Keep funny peo­ple around, they make sh*tty sit­u­a­tions
tol­er­a­ble and are like Prozac when you need it.
Have thick skin. Your friends will ask for naked pic­tures of your wife on deploy­ment
and yes they may take them to the bath­room with them. Take crit­i­cism. If you
suck at some­thing ask for train­ing.
Always remem­ber that you were once a young dumb*ss E1. You made $450
a month and weren’t allowed to fart with­out a per­mis­sion chit ran up
and down the chain of com­mand. Keep this in mind when you’re bitch­ing
because you’re only mak­ing $17,000 a month when guys at the other
com­pany are get­ting $17,500. And when the bosses back in the states email you
to have a clean shave? Do it. you never know when you’re going to be
on some stu­pid news­pa­per.
The sol­diers around us are deployed for a year some­times more. They make a
frac­tion of the pay. And are ordered to do stu­pid, dan­ger­ous sh*t every­day.
Keep that in mind when you are upset that instead of 60 days you’re extended
to 68.
And keep that in mind when deal­ing with sol­diers. Treat them well, nobody else
does.
Yes, we all work for our­selves at the end of the day. At the same end, never
f**k over your com­pany or team­mates who have to stay behind and clean up your
mess. Busi­ness OPSEC is
one thing but always share your info on intel and tac­tics. We are all Amer­i­cans
and most of us will work together one time or another.
Some of the “busi­ness secret” stuff is corny. If you hit an IED on ASR Jack­son
yes­ter­day, e-mail your col­leagues to stay away.
That’s it off the top of my head. Stay Safe, — Ben

[SurvivalBlog.com]

Just because they’re bad peo­ple doesn’t make them stu­pid or incom­pe­tent. These mer­ce­nar­ies could be dri­ving around the streets of your city treat­ing it like occu­pied ter­ri­tory some­day. If you live in New Orleans, they already have.

‘A Coup Has Occurred’ I think noth­ing has higher pri­or­ity than avert­ing an attack on Iran, which I think will be accom­pa­nied by a fur­ther change in our way of gov­ern­ing here that in effect will con­vert us into what I would call a police state.

If there’s another 9/11 under this régime … it means that they switch on full extent all the appa­ra­tus of a police state that has been patiently con­structed, largely secretly at first but even­tu­ally leaked out and known and accepted by the Demo­c­ra­tic peo­ple in Con­gress, by the Repub­li­cans and so forth.

[…]

This is an unusual gang, even for Repub­li­cans. [But] I think that the suc­ces­sors to this régime are not likely to roll back the assault on the Con­sti­tu­tion. They will take advan­tage of it, they will exploit it.

[…]

That brings me to the sec­ond point. This Exec­u­tive Branch, under specif­i­cally Bush and Cheney, despite oppo­si­tion from most of the rest of the branch, even of the cab­i­net, clearly intends a war against Iran which even by impe­ri­al­ist stan­dards, stan­dards in other words which were accepted not only by nearly every­one in the Exec­u­tive Branch but most of the lead­ers in Con­gress. The inter­ests of the empire, the need for hege­mony, our right to con­trol and our need to con­trol the oil of the Mid­dle East and many other places. That is con­sen­sual in our establishment. …

But even by those stan­dards, an attack on Iran is insane. And I say that qui­etly, I don’t mean it to be heard as rhetoric. Of course it’s not only aggres­sion and a vio­la­tion of inter­na­tional law, a supreme inter­na­tional crime, but it is by impe­r­ial stan­dards, insane in terms of the consequences.

Does that make it impos­si­ble? No, it obvi­ously doesn’t, it doesn’t even make it unlikely.

[…]

And the ques­tion is what then, what can we do about this? We are head­ing towards an insane oper­a­tion. It is not cer­tain. It is likely. … I want to try to be real­is­tic myself here, to encour­age us to do what we must do, what is needed to be done with the full recog­ni­tion of the real­ity. Noth­ing is impossible.

What I’m talk­ing about in the way of a police state, in the way of an attack on Iran is not cer­tain. Noth­ing is cer­tain, actu­ally. How­ever, I think it is prob­a­ble, more likely than not, that in the next 15, 16 months of this admin­is­tra­tion we will see an attack on Iran. Prob­a­bly. What­ever we do.

And … we will not suc­ceed in mov­ing Con­gress prob­a­bly, and Con­gress prob­a­bly will not stop the pres­i­dent from doing this. And that’s where we’re head­ing. That’s a very ugly, ugly prospect.

[…]

I’ve often said that Lt. Ehren Watada – who still faces trial for refus­ing to obey orders to deploy to Iraq which he cor­rectly per­ceives to be an uncon­sti­tu­tional and aggres­sive war – is the sin­gle offi­cer in the United States armed ser­vices who is tak­ing seri­ously in uphold­ing his oath.

The pres­i­dent is clearly vio­lat­ing that oath, of course. Every­body under him who under­stands what is going on and there are myr­iad, are vio­lat­ing their oaths. And that’s the stan­dard that I think we should be ask­ing of people.

[…]

I think we’ve got to some­how get home to them [in Con­gress] that this is the time for them to uphold the oath, to pre­serve the Con­sti­tu­tion, which is worth strug­gling for in part because it’s only with the power that the Con­sti­tu­tion gives Con­gress respond­ing to the pub­lic, only with that can we pro­tect the world from mad men in power in the White House who intend an attack on Iran. [Consortiumnews.com]

We’re the Only Ones Pro­mot­ing Virtue Enough.

Accord­ing to Dr. Al-Marshood, the two com­mis­sion mem­bers approached the girls in order to “politely” advise and guide them regard­ing their inap­pro­pri­ate clothing.

Con­se­quently, the two girls started ver­bally abus­ing the com­mis­sion mem­bers, which then lead to one of the girls pepper-spraying them in the face as the other girl filmed the inci­dent on her mobile phone, while con­tin­u­ing to hurl insults at them.

That’s actu­ally pretty darn funny.

[Via Peter G]
[More from “The Only Ones” Files]
[The War on Guns]

Com­pare the reac­tion of the unnamed Saudi girls to the meek acquies­ence of two US cit­i­zens fac­ing sim­i­lar demands in the US. Per­haps some­one should invite the Saudis to come over here and give lessons to young women on the proper employ­ment of ver­bal abuse and pep­per spray when deal­ing with the Amer­i­can ver­sion of the Taliban.

We’re the Only Ones Bor­der­ing on the Ridicu­lous Enough.

Three Mex­i­can minors detained in Cal­i­for­nia on sus­pi­cion of smug­gling drugs stole a U.S. Bor­der Patrol car while still wear­ing hand­cuffs and drove it back across the bor­der to Mexico.

Home­land Security-“Only Ones” style.

What is it with cruis­ers this week? [The War on Guns]

Can we grant those three Amer­i­can cit­i­zen­ship, if they want it? This coun­try des­per­atly needs more peo­ple like that.

We’re the Only Ones Sorry Enough.

“I’m not going to deal with a guy that has a loaded gun until I secure a weapon.”

You for­get your place, ser­vant. Who the hell do you think you are? And how about if we deal with you on those terms?

I wouldn’t accept an apol­ogy from the Chief. Unless it comes sin­cerely from the offender him­self, it is mean­ing­less, and this “Only One” is still jus­ti­fy­ing and mak­ing excuses for his elit­ism and his ignorance.

And how nice of the depart­ment to exon­er­ate Greene of exces­sive force lia­bil­ity. Where I come from, if some­one grabs my arm, restrains me, puts me up against a wall, forcibly searches me and threat­ens me, all with the under­stand­ing that deadly force will be used if I don’t obey, it’s called “assault and bat­tery” at a min­i­mum. I’d think if the guy wasn’t wear­ing a uni­form, one could prob­a­bly jus­tify using deadly force as an appro­pri­ate self-defense response.

How won­der­ful these guys will now get some train­ing into what the laws they are paid to enforce actu­ally say. But I can’t help won­der, if they catch one of us break­ing the law and we say it’s because we didn’t know, will they accept our apol­ogy and give us a pass?

If it were me, I’d be look­ing at fil­ing crim­i­nal and civil com­plaints. [The War on Guns]

I read a num­ber of gun-related weblogs, forums, and mail­ing lists. It’s a very com­mon occur­rence for some­one to post a ques­tion about what some­one who is legally car­ry­ing a pis­tol should do when con­fronted by a cop. Invari­ably such ques­tions attract mul­ti­ple cops and cop appol­o­gists who say exactly the same thing this one did.

More “Demo­graphic Doom” for our soci­ety..

More “Demo­graphic Doom” for our society.

Jim 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education

/2007–09-12-census-college-enrollment_N.htm 

USA TODAY

Women feed the jump in col­lege enroll­ment

By Greg Toppo and Anthony DeBar­ros, USA
TODAY

Col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties these days are
see­ing a surge in enroll­ment — and it’s increas­ingly dri­ven by young
women, accord­ing to U.S. Cen­sus data out today.

The num­bers con­firm years of enroll­ment
data show­ing that women have not only closed the col­lege enroll­ment gap
– they have far sur­passed men on cam­puses. For every four men enrolled
in grad­u­ate school in 2006, there were nearly six women.

[Chaos Manor Mus­ings]

It says a lot about con­ser­v­a­tives that the mere fact that more women are going to col­lege than men by a slight mar­gin is con­sid­ered “doom.”

Mis­souri: Police Threaten, Detain Motorist for Park­ing After Hours. A motorist who refused to dis­cuss his per­sonal busi­ness with a St. George, Mis­souri police offi­cer was threat­ened with arrest last Fri­day. Brett Dar­row, 20, no stranger to uncon­ven­tional encoun­ters with police, caught a St. George Police Sergeant James Kuehn­lein stat­ing that he had the power to invent charges that would put Dar­row behind bars. Update: Sergeant Kuehn­lein was placed on unpaid leave Mon­day pend­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion. [TheNewspaper.Com]

In the video the thug says, “I’ve been a cop almost as long as you’ve been alive.” It shows.