[SunHELP] Re: Terrorism

[Michael Vang]

I don't think anything will deter these terrorists... They are different
than us from the ground up... They are indoctrinated in these beliefs
from an early age...

During Desert Storm, we carpet bombed Iraq for some time before the
ground assault...... By the time we invaded, the remaining people pretty
much gave up without a fight... These people did not want to be there
and their heart was not in it... I know because I was there... Some of
the people we captured had rifles that were so rusted the bolt could not
be operated... A lot of them were just teenage kids... I remember
driving along the main road into Basra and seeing 100s of burned out
vehicles that had been blown up by our helicopter gunships... These
people didn't have anyplace to run, but we still wiped them out...
Seeing something like that really changes you... A lot the Iraqis were
buried alive in their bunkers when our tanks just ran them over... Do
these people hate us? If you were in their shoes, with their limited
education, wouldn't you? I won't even go into how we abandoned the Kurds
after the war...

I remember a lone Somali peppering us with mortar fire every day when I
was in Somalia... We had billions of dollars worth of high tech
equipment and we couldn't track him down... When they finally got him we
found out why... He was using a rusted old mortar with no aiming
mechanism... Our computers assumed that they could triangulate him but
since his shots were random we couldn't figure out where they were
coming from... Every day I was there (6 months) was a nightmare... The
people in Somalia really hated us... I don't know why and I suspect they
didn't know either... But I do know that these people didn't care about
human life... I worked on a little 3 year old girl (I was a medic) that
had been ran over with an APC... Someone had her run out in front of one
of the convoys so that the convoy would stop so they could ambush it...
I was there when we had that big firefight and over 700 Somali people
were killed because the terrorists hid behind the villagers... I worked
on many Somali people who had been shot and hurt, and they seemed like
they appreciated our help... One thing I always thought was interesting
were the demonstrations... If the media was not around people acted
normal... Probably because it was just too damn hot to do anything...
But, when the media pulled up the people would start to chant and cause
trouble... The media encouraged this...

I remember sitting waiting to jump into Haiti with the 82d... I thank
God that Mr. Carter was able to solve that problem diplomatically... My
friends who were with me were all excited about going in and shooting
the place up, but I knew that we would take some serious casualties...

A lot of the people who are in charge never spent even one day in
uniform... This worries me... The whole cluster-fsck in Somalia is proof
of what happens when you commit to something half-assed...

It is easy to sit on the couch and say we need to do this or that... I
hope we take our time and do the right thing... If we do the wrong thing
we will just make these people even more dedicated to their cause...

Sorry for rambling... I'm just really worried... I still have a lot of
friends who are still on active duty and I don't want them to get
hurt...