Men in Black: from the Iraq frontlines

CBFTW, a soldier in the Stryker Brigade in Iraq who hails from San Francisco, has a blog called MY WAR - Fear and Loathing in Iraq.

It is, simply put, the most amazing war read I've ever come across. I'm going to quote extensively from it here, to give you a sense of the real news from the front lines. Warning: coarse language ahead.

From his latest post, yesterday:

I never even knew what a Blog was until I read about them in an article in Time Magazine, about two months ago. I read the article and it mentioned how a lot of the soldiers down in Baghdad were writing about their experiences here in Iraq. After reading the article, I went down to the Internet cafe, and checked them out, and a majority of them were just pure garbage. In fact nauseating. Its like they were written by armed forces recruiters, "Oh I love the Army, I'm soo glad to be here, oh, the Iraqi's love us, I feel like were doing the right thing" That kinda crap. Nobody was telling it like it is. So I said fuck it, I'm going to do one. I was at the point in my deployment where the letters from friends and family were getting fewer and far between, and I needed something to combat the extra time and loneliness that being on deployment hits you with when you've been here for awhile. ...

I've received e-mails from people in the Pentagon (saying: Everybody here reads it and loves it here!) a White House aide, a Wall Street Journal Journalist, several well known and lesser known journalists, a lady in Chicago asked if it was OK to do a play based on this blog, College Professors, One Professor who wants to bring up my blog in his class curriculum, Vietnam Vets, Gulf War Vets, WWII Vets, Police Officers, Authors, Literary agents, musicians, A girl in LA that wants to write a screenplay about this blog, a lawyer in DC who thinks my writing is a diamond in the ruff and offered for him and several other lawyers to help me pay for some of my College tuition when I get out, relatives from soldiers, soldiers in all the branches, soldiers in Iraq, lonely women, truck drivers, soccer moms, the list goes on and on. It was insane the e-mails and responses I got over time. I was also amazed by how many good people were out there. Totally heart warming. And every e-mail I received was telling me how they loved my shit and how what I was saying was soo much better then the shit the media showing. I was making the war much more real to people by sharing my experiences with them. ...

CBFTW goes on to say that the colonel in his outfit asked him to run his blog posts by his platoon sergeant before he posts them, and CBFTW agreed "110%," but wasn't sure whether the blog will continue or not.

CBFTW's dispatch from last Thursday was the most chilling and painfully real I've read from a soldier on the front lines of war. Read the whole thing, but here are some excerpts:

This is what CNN wrote on their website about what happened yesterday here in Mosul:

Mosul clashes leave 12 dead

Clashes between police and insurgents in the northern city of Mosul left 12 Iraqis dead and 26 wounded, hospital and police sources said Wednesday.

Rifle and rocket-propelled grenade fire as well as explosions were heard in the streets of the city.

The provincial governor imposed a curfew that began at 3 p.m. local time (7 a.m. EDT), and two hours later, provincial forces, police and Iraqi National Guard took control, according to Hazem Gelawi, head of the governor's press office in the Nineveh province.

Gelawi said the city is stable and expects the curfew to be lifted Thursday.

Now here's what really happened:

I was in my room reading a book (Thin Red Line) when the mortars started coming down. Usually when we get mortared it'll only one, maybe two mortars. But this mortar attack went on for almost 20 minutes. Each one impacting the FOB every couple minutes. Something was up. My roommate ripped open the door and yelled "Get your guys, Go to the motor pool! The whole BATTALION is rolling out!" Holy shit, the whole Battalion? This must be big. So I ran over and woke my guys up, yelled, "Get your fuckin shit on and head down to the motor pool! Time: Now!" I grabbed my shit and started running to the motor pool, hearing small arms fire off in the back ground. By now everybody was running to motor pool. Putting their cloths on while they were running. At the motor pool, everybody was strapping on there shit and getting ready. One by one a Stryker was rolling out of the motor pool ready to hunt down whoever was fucking with us. People were hooting and hollering, yelling their war cries and doing the Indian yell thing as they drove off and locked and loaded their weapons. These guys that are attacking us just fucked with the bee's nest, and now they're getting the swarm. As I got the vehicle ready to go I overheard on our radio that shit was hitting the fan all over Mosul, large amounts of people attacking us with small arms, RPG attacks, burned vehicles, and there was a bunch of people in all black armed with AK's over by the bridge in front of the Mosul Hotel. Fuck. I overheard one of our iraqi interpreter say in broken English, "Give me gun, I want to kill these motherfuckers!" As we rolled out the main gate, our FOB was getting attacked, we had soldiers laying down in the prone up on the outer perimeter of the FOB firing there weapons out. We rolled down the main exit out and drove down a busy two way street. ...

all of the sudden all hell came down all around on us, all these guys wearing all black (Black pants, and a black t-shirts tucked in), a couple dozen on each side of the street, on rooftops, alleys, edge of buildings, out of windows, everywhere just came out of fucking nowhere and started firing RPG's and AK47's at us. I freaked the fuck out and ducked down in the hatch. I yelled "WE GOT FUCKIN HAJI'S ALL OVER THE FUCKIN PLACE!!! THERE ALL OVER GOD DAMNIT!!!" Bullets were pinging off our armor all over our vehicle, and you could hear multiple RPG's being fired and flying through the air and impacting all around us. All sorts of crazy insane Hollywood explosions bullshit going on all around us. I've never felt fear like this. I was like, this is it, I'm going to die. I cannot put into words how scared I was. The vehicle in front of us got hit 3 times by RPG's. I kind of lost it and I was yelling and screaming all sorts of things. (mostly cuss words) I fired the .50 cal over the place, shooting everything. My driver was helping me out and pointing out targets to me over the radio. He helped me a lot that day. They were all over shooting at us. My PLT was stuck right smack dab in the middle of the ambush and we were in the kill zone. We shot our way out of it and drove right through the ambush. The street we were driving down to escape, had 3 to 4 story high buildings all along each side, as we were driving away all you could see were 100's and 100's of bullets impacting all over these buildings. Finally we went over to the bridge that was next to the Mosul hotel. We parked there, and dismounted the guys. The Pepsi bottling building across the street was all up in flames. Then we were told to load up and go back to where we got ambushed.

Amazing. To me, this is more real, more telling, more vivid than anything we're getting from television, newspapers, or magazines about the war in Iraq -- and shows once again the power of one individual, acting as a media outlet, to help inform thousands and potentially millions of people. It also puts the petty problems that most of us face every day into perspective.

Soldier, I don't want you to be there, you don't want to be there, let's get you home. But in the meantime: Thank you for your service to your country.

Read the hundreds of comments attached to each post, which are just as poignant.

Thanks to Taran for the pointer.