How I GOT HERE PT III

I know what you are asking, "Tommie, we are three posts in and you still haven't told us how you got back into Iraq."

The easy anwser is that you can't stop my hustle! I can sell bacon to a pig. The real anwser is that one of the units I trained deployed to Iraq and they felt that the support that they were getting in Iraq was not up to the quality that they had gotten back home. As a result a high level officer requested my presence. That changed the entire thought process of the deployment managment this particular officer was not the type of person that would take no for an anwser. With his personality I suspect that he hand not heard the word no applied to him in many years. He is the type of person that would go to McDonalds and ask for some fries if the cashier said we are out of fries his response would be

"Well when you get those fries to me I want them hand delivered by that jackass in the yellow, red, and white clown suit. I want the big shoes, the god damned red afro, and I want it in 6 minutes.

Ronald would be there in probably 4.5 minutes.

So I went from parriah to everyone's best friend. The problem with it was that I wasn't too entirely pressed to go to Iraq. Not from the fear factor so much. I've been in and out of Iraq and largely dealt with my mortality issues. But my experience with the civilian managment was so caustic and so poisonous that I was (am) tired. The idea of mustering that much will to go into an already stressful enviroment wasn't worth it to me. On top of that my current stateside deployment schedule has pretty much robbed me of any type of personal life. The idea of entering the Iraqi monestary once again didn't have much appeal.


So while I played with the idea of going back, I ended up not taking the assignment due to the fact that I had to get hernia surgery that I had put off for over a year and my surgery would make me not deployable in the time frame that they requested.

When I recovered from surgery, I was then sent to support another unit. Different scneario, same result. I impressed the command and they wanted me to support them when they came to Iraq. But, this time there was something different, one I was healthy, two the unit by and large that understood what it meant to fight within the assemtric model of counter insurgency. Most my training predated the latest techniques of counterinsurgencey while I trained in that model US forgien policy would not allow what was going on in Iraq to be called an insurgency. So it was an open secret of what was being requested and what was being trained but, until the beltway decided to have their mouths match what everyone's eyes were seening as far as militray policy was concered insurgency didn't exist.

This unit motivated me and I know that they are going to the next level and I wanted to be a part of that. So when I got back to the office I let my boss know under what conditions I was willing to go to Iraq. Even at that I drove a hard bargin but, they came back to me and said yes. The gave me an offer that was too good to refuse or so I thought...


NOTE TO SELF: Never take the refuse option off the table.
NOTE TO SELF's SELF: FUCK! Why didn't you tell me that before I took the option off the table!