Joe:

Having just returned from Iraq, I can tell there is a General Order, which is repeatedly broadcast on AFN's Freedom Radion 107.7, that no alcohol is to be consumed by active servicemen in the Iraqi theater. Now the DFAC's do provide beer, of the no alcohol type. But if they catch a serviceman imbibing, it's his ass.

That said, I saw more than a few servicemembers drinking. OF course, the USG civilians and the contractors, particularly the security contractors, drink like fishes.

Bart

Yep. After watching my old squadron deploy twice, and watching the 'wives' turn into instant sluts within hours of their leaving for Japan... I stayed single throughout my Marine tour.

There was no way on God's green earth I would be married and in the military at the same time.

No. Fucking. Way.

Well, mark down the no-alcohol-rule for the enlisted in Iraq as another source of friction between the military and the private contractors.

Brave members of our military are forced to watch private contractors, essentially doing the same duty in the same hostile environment, get paid 10 times more money, shorter rotations, better benefits, plusher accommodations, better equipment and even alcohol to ease the pressure and mental strain while working in Iraq beside U.S. soldiers who end up getting the shaft.

And the rule forbidding soldiers from having a cold one indicates just how unimportant a real democracy in Iraq is to the Bush administration's stated end-game goals.

For example, Saudi Arabia forbids alcohol...and they are major financiers of right-wing religious terrorists around the world. Iran forbids alcohol and they support Hezbollah and their brand of right-wing religious terrorism. The Taliban, while controlling most of Afghanistan, outlawed alcohol...and ended up giving refuge to the Al Qaeda.

So, of course, the Bush administration through U.S. Central Command, in their effort to promote democracy in Iraq, has forbidden U.S. soldiers from drinking alcohol.

Strange. When Saddam Hussein was running Iraq, liquor stores were allowed and an Iraqi who was a non-shariah religious fanatic could have a beer, or a shot of whiskey or a glass of wine (with a meal, for example) without fear of being killed by some right-wing, Al Qaeda-loving religious fanatic.

My, oh my, the New, Liberated Iraq is looking more and more like the very last thing any country we liberate should look like in our war against religious terrorism...a budding religious terrorist haven.

After Bush invaded Iraq, liquor store owners (many of them Iraqi Christians with no prohibition against alcohol) started being assassinated and/or their stores firebombed. Then the alcohol sellers set up shop in street markets or became roving street vendors. They were targeted as well. Religious terrorist gunmen started gunning them down indiscriminately.

Of course, as I heard of these first instances of the rise of religious terrorism in the liberated Iraq, I wondered why the Bush administration and our military commanders weren't turning this to our advantage. In other words, they could have set up sting operations.

Undercover agents posing as alcohol street vendors would have been the flypaper and if any religious terrorists showed up to either kill them or molest them, then U.S. forces could have either arrested the religious terrorists or blown them away.

Instead, as I just read in the post above by mssr. Throckmorton, the Bush admin and U.S. military, through their anti-alcohol policy, have actually sided with the religious terrorists in their alcohol prohibition campaign for Iraq.

Incredible. And to think that all this time I actually believed the Bush claim that they liberated Iraq so that it would be a free and democratic country.

HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa....rrriiiggghhhtt.

geez. My uncle who was in WWII said the only thing he learned from the Army was how to drink.

I wonder if they suggest they read their bible instead? That would be telling.

I started out pre-war as pro-military/pro troops with the fundamental belief that you don't send US troops to war unless you have some God damn good reason because the ineviatable result is boys and girls coming home in boxes. And I am still for the troops but the Army brass have totally shaken my inflexive pro-military beliefs. Before the war I thought they got it, that the US Army was not like the British and French Armies of WWI where you fed the privates and first lieutenants into the meat grinder while you sat back in the chateau drinking wine. I thought that the tradition of Black Jack Pershing and Patton was still alive and well in the US Army: a soldier's job was to fight and win and not just to die in vain, and it was the General's job to ensure the first and prevent the second. But from everything I see the Army more resembles the French General Staff in WWI & II than Ike's SHAEF.

But no beer? That is insane. When I was in the Navy you could drink beer at the EM club even if you were underage for the state your base was in, it was understood that even though a lot of military had drinking problems, it was still important for overall morale that you had some way to blow off steam that didn't involve rolling a grenade into your Division Officer's stateroom.

It was clear more than a year ago that they were going to break the Army, the repeat deployments, the constant changes in the rules of the game about terms of service, the blatant disconnect between the facts on the ground and the breezy reporting of the brass, all were certain to destroy the Army in the long run. That the Generals thought they could pull this out while being all chicken shit about beer for the troops simply amazes and disgusts me. I'll bet you dollars for nickels that there is plenty of liqour in the cabinets of the Green Zone. I sincerely doubt that staff colonels are sitting morosely by while their contractor co-workers are slamming back Scotch.

You should link up this to the Huff Post, jo.

More people need to know how thin a psychological margin of support they recieve from the institution.

Saddam was secular, the Bush boogeyman.

Honestly, truck some beer there and let the people drink. Without some kind of cultural value exchange we would never win hearts and minds. Instead we've reinforced polar alignment.

If they don't trust our own troop discipline in such matters it is simply one more vote of confidence in where they really stand supporting troops.

Once again from an old Vietnam fart... too much deja vu. Time to get out the Kipling and re-read "Tommy" for the umpteenth time. Booze, dope, failed marriages, faithless tramps cleaning out a young guy deluded into thinking he's defending his nation. And when he rotates back to the CONUS to find his life is in tatters, what happens? Reprimands, Article 15's, less than honorable discharge, liens on anything he may ever own. The VA will ignore him - underfunded you see, plus he didn't fill out the right paperwork - and he'll end up some sad lush in a city or a phobic survivalist in the hills. No doubt we'll also end up with the equivalent of Agent Orange induced birth defects or cancers or Gulf War Syndrome that will likewise be studied to death with millions of taxpayer dollars to the conclusion that there is no connection with the military.

Yeah - good war, very much the right thing and I sure do feel much safer from them raghead terrorists.

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