A Real Email about IEDs

October 9, 2010

Paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.
- Hugo Black

I perused the global edition of the New York Times on October 7 to see how the most widely read American newspaper would mark the ninth anniversary of the beginning of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Oddly, there was no mention of the ninth anniversary of the war in Afghanistan. The only thing I found about Afghanistan was at the top of the editorial page, a piece entitled "An e-mail from the Afghan war" written by Lt. Col. Ted Adams of the U.S. Marine Corps, commanding officer of the 9^th Engineer Support Battalion.

Adams editorial is about IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices), which he begins by saying "are the bane of my existence."

They drive us all crazy, but I take it personal. It is hard to imagine how much we could get done if we didn’t have to put the effort into protecting ourselves from these “improvised explosive devices” and avoiding them. We’ve been hit by more than 10 IEDs in the last couple of weeks. During my last convoy we hit one on the way, and one on the way back. I don’t like those averages.

This comment raises the fundamental question, what is it that Adams' battalion has been sent to Afghanistan to "get done"?  Why are American forces building roads in Afghanistan in the first place?  What is the goal of the infrastructure project in Afghanistan that requires the presence of thousands of American soldiers and billions of U.S. dollars?

In the puff piece about the 9-year-old war by Adams, IEDs do not cause serious injury.  In fact, the subject of injury appears only twice in the article:

During the recent convoy, one IED in particular was pretty powerful and ripped through the armor within the wheel-well and floorboards of the truck. This resulted in the most serious injury any of our Marines have suffered to date; an open fracture of the lower leg. We called in a helicopter MEDEVAC and continued with the mission.

That Marine will likely make a full recovery. He’ll have some extra hardware in his leg that may set off metal detectors, but he’ll be there to see his kids grow up. Most of us consider that a happy ending. Day in and day out our Marines climb back into their trucks without a complaint and quietly accomplish the mission.

Later, he says that most of the injuries from IEDs have not been at all serious:

We all have thoughts that our truck might be the next one to strike an IED, but we also try to maintain some confidence that we’ll be protected if it happens. The equipment does pretty well. So far, most personnel involved in IEDs have had minor injuries, bruised legs, ringing in the ears and/or headaches. I pray that’s as bad as it gets.

Illinois is among the red states which have more than 1,100 injured veterans from the war in Iraq.  This data from iCasualties does not reflect the hundreds of thousands of disabled vets from the Gulf War Era, which began in 1991.  The real human cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is much worse than most Americans realize.

I got an e-mail the other day from the brother of a young man who was hit by an IED in Iraq.  The story of this young man from my hometown of Schaumburg, Illinois, gives a much more realistic view of IEDs and the real human cost of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq:

Date: Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Hi Mr. Bollyn,

Thank you for the quick response. Hope I wasn't rambling in my e-mail, I tend to do a brain dump when I'm tired and intrigued at the same time. I guess I'll tell you a little about my brother John. We grew up with all the GI Joe stuff, you know guns and planes and the like. I think all of that sank in on John, and along with his very strong and (at that time) misguided patriotism it was probably inevitable that he would join the service. He joined the Marines because he wanted to be the best (and because he was pissed about 9/11), and he was.  He qualified as a top tier marksman, and became a Forward Observer (artillery spotter essentially). After SOI he was deployed to Iraq (oddly enough he was deployed on 9/11/06), to a small town in Al Anbar named Baghdadi.

The day of his injury goes something like this. The day began with their regular officer staying behind, and an NCO from another company (or platoon?) leading the patrol. Adding to that, their corpsman (Navy medic embedded with all Marine units) was not on the patrol that day. They were kicking down doors, the usual, when the sergeant saw some "insurgent" graffiti. Now normally John would be operating as an FO, but today he had the radio and he was the only one with a camera. So the sergeant called him up to take a picture and BAM!

They found out later that the device was a 155mm howitzer shell with an improvised cellular-activated fuse. Luckily only the fuse and primer went off, severing John's rifle in half and removing his left index and most of his middle finger (later removed at Bethesda) as well as taking a softball sized chunk out of his left knee and leaving scars and shrapnel all over his legs. Now with no corpsmen, a Samoan fella (I forget his name) in his unit ran under fire, applied a tourniquet, and carried him back to safety.

Once airlifted to Balad, John went through 7 units of blood and after a day or so was transferred to Landstuhl. Once at Landstuhl, he called home to tell us (I believe someone from his unit called before he did), and my Mom called me at work to tell me to come home, she wouldn't say why. About halfway home I realized what had happened and then everything is kind of hazy.

Obviously being raised in Schaumburg in the 90s didn't prepare me or my family for this event.  I was pissed at everyone but especially Muslims. I can remember some hate after 9/11, but nothing like this, now it was personal. I had the reason, the right (or so I thought), and the will to be against all things Muslim. (I have since dropped any and all hate, as I think that love and tolerance are the only ways to defeat evil. i.e. evil begets evil).

John was in Bethesda Naval Hospital for a month and at Northwest Community Hospital downtown for a month before coming home. While at Bethesda he developed a serious colon infection (on his 20th birthday no less) and the only reason he isn't crapping in a bag is because of my mom. She's a hospice nurse, and she was at John's side every single day he was in the hospital. When he developed the infection the doctors immediately wanted to take out his colon, but my mother raised hell and told them what to do and how to do it, and saved his colon and maybe his life. Also while in the Navy's care, the doctors put him on all kinds of anti-depressants (Celebrex, Cymbalta, and others) that they said had shown some promise of helping nerve pain. This is where our journey into the (for lack of a better word) New World Order began.

Since John had nothing but time because he collects disability, he started reading about all the major topics that one gets into when one is first learning about the REAL world. He stopped taking the anti-depressants (we later learned that hospitals are paid to put people on these fluoride-based medications by Big Pharma), and started listening to Alex Jones, Steve Quayle, David Icke (I don't necessarily believe in Reptilian overlords), G. Edward Griffin, etc.

I on the other hand would have none of it. I knew the way the world worked, and I was content. We were kicking the Arabs' asses, with the prospect of more to come, and I was satisfied that that was the answer. Life went like this for a few years, and then in September 2008, I went to New Zealand to live with friends of friends and see another part of the world. Obviously there was a lot going on at that time with the markets and the crash, and I was privy to many new viewpoints down there. I also saw what it's like when people have no rights, and the government maintains that rights come from them instead of the Creator (whatever that may be).

On my return to the states (a bit earlier than expected as it is hard to get a job down there) I told John that I was ready to listen. So I dove head first into the Fed / Trilateral Comission / CFR / Zionist / Rothschild / Bilderberg / NWO / Protocols of the Elders of Zion rabbit hole and couldn't believe all that I had never been told, or told incorrectly.  I called into Alex Jones, sent e-mails to the Federal Reserve Board informing them of my disdain for them and their ilk, and John even sent an e-mail to Lt. Gen Honore (another story for another day) which resulted in an immediately fried $3000 computer. Not to mention town halls, tea parties, We Are Change meet-ups, and the rest of it.

After 2 years or so of Alex Jones, I started to go deeper. After meeting Mr. Katz at the vitamin shop, and talking about Khazars and Zionists and Bill Cooper, I began to see another angle unfolding.  Now, my best friend growing up was Jewish, and I was very apprehensive at first to acknowledge any Israeli involvement. But as I kept reading I realized that Zionist and Jewish are not mutually exclusive. The more I read the more I realized that the history of the Jewish faith is complicated and hazy.

Books like The Invention of the Jewish People, The Thirteenth Tribe, and the rest blew my mind. The idea that Zionists helped the Nazis and denied visas and entry to lower-class Jews to sanctuary, and that the English arm of the Warburg (or maybe it was Rothschild) family funded the Bolshevik revolution and ensuing mass murder, made my soul cringe. The idea that the major events of the 19th and 20th (and probably the rest) Centuries were far different than I was taught, and that most, if not all, of the genocide in the world was avoidable, was too much. So instead of going the Alex Jones route and yelling at everyone, I decided to apply an objective and shrewd analysis to the world of shadow politics. I want to see results, not gain notoriety.

Then last night I was doing the random 9/11 video watch just to refresh my vigor and dedication, when I came across your [CNN] interview. I remember watching that interview when it aired, I don't remember what I thought at the time, but I remember it. Last night I thought wow, all right, there's someone who's expressing the kind of unbiased intellectual observation necessary to get to the bottom of 9/11 and all its repercussions (I especially liked the smile when she implied that you were anti-Semitic for criticizing non-Semitic Zionists, and her implication that only Jews are Semitic).

When I saw that you lived in Schaumburg, well I thought that was more than a coincidence…and I had to send you an e-mail. I guess the first thing I would like to know is what you think the best place to start is with regards to understanding the true history of Jews/Zionism/Middle East in general. I am well versed in the American aspects of the NWO, but the European and Middle Eastern facts tend to be difficult to find and quite thin on hard info.  I would really like to know more about the Khazars, and how to identify the true descendants of Shem (it is Shem, right?).

Thanks,
George

p.s.  John is fine now, with the exception of the missing fingers and foot drop from nerve damage. He lives over by Flyers' stadium and is totally independent and going to massage therapy school. The whole experience opened our eyes. Between the B.S. from the VA, the state of the country, the census GPS-ing his house (because he's a gun owner and veteran, so according to the ADL [Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith] and "Homeland Security" - he's a terrorist), and all the other things too numerous to mention, and getting off of fluoride, I believe those who work in the shadows have created someone with a big floodlight of truth.