Summary
Axe discusses a nagging problem of US National Guardsmen and reservists in a country where friend and foe are nearly indistinguishable. The nature of the Iraq occupation--in which insurgent fighters and a sometimes hostile but nonviolent population are indistinguishable--makes for fearful soldiers. These soldiers, who are newly deployed Guardsmen and reservists replacing active-duty soldiers in Iraq, often commit more mistakes in the rules of engagement.
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Extract
Sending in the Reserves
BAQUBAH. IRAQ
It's not hard to imagine what the soldiers of the 2 72nd Chemical Company, a unit of the New York National Guard's 42nd Infantry Division, were thinking when they spotted a vehicle barreling toward them through the falling darkness.Strewn out on the highway near this Sunni city on January 2 9, their own vehicles idling as they effected quick repairs to a malfunctioning truck, the company's soldiers were probably imagining the horror stories they'd heard in recent weeks while training in Kuwait for their year-long deployment to the Sunni triangle-stories about drug-addled jihadists in automobiles packed with explosives.Just two days earlier, a foreign bomber i...See the full content of this document
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