Montalvan’s unit WAY better than mine
In September 2003, I was put in charge of 80 soldiers who entered Iraq without any weapons or ammunition. We were mortared for three days in Balad, north of Baghdad, before arriving in Al Anbar province to link up with our unit. We were unable to return fire.
Dude, I thought I had some pretty good troops. But not a one of them could shoot a mortar out of the sky as it came at us. Also, none of them could reach out and touch someone at 3,490 m especially when they aren’t line of sight.
Raoul found this thing by IVAW’s Montalvan that is hilarious. Seriously, go ahead and read it, but turn down your BS detector before doing so or it might drive you nuts. Montalvan has always been one of my favoritest crazies.
On another occasion, my higher headquarters ordered me (unlawfully) not to offer humanitarian assistance to refugees caught between the Syrian and Iraqi borders. Dozens would have died had we not disobeyed those orders.
Even assuming the facts are accurate, what gives you the right to go outside Iraqi borders to do anything? Why is such an order unlawful? And why the F didn’t you resign your commission after being ordered into a country without a weapon and being ordered illegally to let people die?
A friend of mine said it best: “if you saw all that, why wasn’t THAT your Winter Soldier testimony, instead of that boring shit you forced us to listen to?”
Exit question: Do I even bother contacting a PAO to debunk the ridiculous “we had no weapons” story, or just a waste of my time?
Category: Iraq Veterans Against the War, Phony soldiers, Politics
A complete waste of your time TSO. I have never read such a far fetched account. I know I have never heard of anyone entering the AOR unarmed unless they were being escorted by Armed forces. I click over and saw the site it was on. Those nutroots wouldn’t believe you anyway so don’t waste your time.
Those who have served or have lick of common sense know the truth.
Sounds like he would be better served writing movie scripts for Hollywood…
TSO: Jungle Mom, you still down in Venezuela? Saw it on your blog. Used to spend my vacations there when I was a kid. Now I just go to Belize which seems safer.
Way O/T:
What TSO does as 3am:
http://www.midnightbluesays.com/2008/07/tso-3-am.html
🙂
TSO: I got moves baby. I’ve invented stuff not seen on dance floors for the sheer danger level.
Can I attend one of the IVAW meetings and sell bridges I don’t own? Seems to be an abundance of suckers there.
Hussein O verified some of the IVAW claims, no soldier who has served in Iraq accomplished anything. You were just putting in your time while the Iraqi’s kicked the AQ ass and won the war. It’s so peaceful in Iraq Hussein never heard a shot.
The Best Killer Unit With Super Weapons Not Allowed to Return Fire…
Over at This Ain’t Hell (bookmark it), TSO writes about Super Stud IVAW’s Montalvan and his unit of Rambos. It’s pretty freakin’ hilarious….
I was trying to find out where his post was on the border, and had a difficult time, until, unlike him, I spelled it correctly as “Rabiyah”, not “Rabiya” as he did. I still can’t find it on a map, but I did find some articles referring to it. It seems the ‘refugees’ he was bemoaning the conditions of may well have been smugglers who got put out of business by our securing the border. See This WaPo article. Feb06: “The dramatic downturn in the fortunes of villages along the border is one sign that a surge of American and Iraqi troops into the region in recent months has sharply curtailed illegal traffic over the frontier, U.S. and Iraqi officials and local residents say.” Thought that was specifically referring to another town. There was this passage about Rabiyah, though: “Controls have been tightened at official border-crossing points. At the town of Rabiyah, a 10-wheel cargo truck rumbled past a newly constructed Iraqi customs station toward a Syrian checkpoint marked by a huge portrait of Syria’s late president Hafez Assad. A few months ago, the Iraqi entry point here was in disarray, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. Inbound and outbound traffic were mixed together. Iraqi guards had only five rifles, lacked ammunition and “had no idea what passport was fake and what was real,” said Col. Fadel Shaaban Abas, commander of Iraqi customs police at Rabiyah. “It was complete chaos. You had no idea who was coming and going,” said Reilly, commander of 1st Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which finishes a year-long tour in Iraq this month. A suicide car bombing in late May closed the entry point for two weeks. Today, up to 5,000 people, mostly on foot, and about 300 vehicles cross the border daily through divided lanes. Customs revenue has almost tripled. The 120 Iraqi customs police are armed with AK-47 assault rifles or pistols and are backed up by a new, 260-man police battalion, which arrived in December, Abas said. A U.S. customs team recently trained the police officers to spot false passports, and now they… Read more »
Oops, “Thought that was specifically referring to another town.” should have been “Though</b that was specifically referring to another town.”
What really gets me abou his article is that it completely ignores the progress made since he left in 2005. This is the problem with many on the left, as well as the majority of the IVAW folks; they will not acknowledge that we have made significant progress in the last 2 years. They can’t. If they did, it would completely destroy their entire argument… What a bunch of idiots.
Jim C
When mortared and weaponless, I would welcome any and all Iraqi wedding parties into my A.O.! Once the wedding really get’s going they will cap-off so many AK rounds, that sooner or later, they’ll hit those mortar lobbing punks.
TSO, I am stateside for another two weeks then we head to Paraguay. Chavez expelled us from the jungle and then we could not renew our visas or our children’s Venezuelan passports as they were born there. We wee told they would not be allowed to leave on their American passports..so we..ummm …left.
Thanks TSO, for keeping up with the IVAW. They are like the “Energizer Bunny” and just keep on being HUA. If they flew into Iraq from Stateside, I could believe it possible they had no ammo. In May 2005, twenty of us flew from Cherry Point on a C17 to Al Asad without ammo, but we were stragglers. At the Al Asad flight line they gave us what ammo they had, but no one had more than a magazine full of 9mm or 5.56mm. We went by helo to our camps and I got my full load of 9mm(staff weenie w/ M9)at Camp Fallujah. As far as not being able to return fire while on Balad, I doubt they were in a position to return fire. We got mortared or rocketed at Camp Fallujah every month, but even if you were in a guard post on the wall, the insurgents weren’t close enough to hit. Of course the artillery battery and the mortar crews on the camp made life miserable for the insurgents. Someone needs to let IVAW know that war stories begin with “This is no shiite!” and not “Once upon a time”