Pork Sausages and Clouds

[aldopacific at gn.apc.org]

yes, today I'm looking after the kids of an army officer friend
(see Sweet Smell of Death in mideast.gulf). He was just round
talking - we were talking - about our respective war efforts.
He says the army people all felt very cheated not to have been
allowed to finish off Saddam's army which, they believe, would
have stopped the Kurdish situation from happening. He says they
all wanted to do reconstruction work in Iraq, but weren't allowed.
He says pork was fed to the POWs, but that this was quite OK because
you have to accept the ways of the country you're captured by, and
Allah's not going to strike you down for eating what's available 
when you're hungry. He fought in 9 battles; there was no resistance
in only 2: in some it was a bayonets and grenades job, but their 
training and weaponry was so good they lost only one man. He accepts
that the war was about oil, but considers that oil is worth fighting
for. He feels very frustrated by the politicians, and points out
that much of the war equipment that might be used for relief is 
already out of the Gulf. He says that most of the planes couldn't
be used for dropping relief supplies because they're equipped to
release bombs; not to drop pallets of food out the back. Britain,
for instance, has only 17 Chinook helicopters and they're the sort
of stuff needed for relief. He says that dropping stuff in bad 
weather is more difficult that I think it might be - they actually
had to stop bombing because of bad weather some days, but he 
conceded that radio beacons could probably be set up to target
drops. But he points out that the scale of the humanitarian problem
is just so great that air drops aren't the answer anyway, and the
roads are too poor to do it by land. He says that anyone who knows
the Turks knows they won't do much to help the Kurds. He says the
.... that's enough - you get the idea. Another poor soldier on
the edge of being fucked up by this fucking war.

Alastair McIntosh.