Please shut up

By Steve Gilliard

Anita Blount, wife of soon to be forcibly retired 3ID commander Buford Blount, begged the families of the soldiers in her husband's command to stop whining about the fact that they won't be home any time soon.

"I realize many of you are upset. I am too," Anita Blount, wife of Maj. Gen. Buford Blount, wrote in an anguished E-mail to the wives of soldiers under her husband's command.

"I will also admit that when I heard the recent news about another delay in redeployment, I was angry," she said in trying to console the spouses. "I want my husband home just as you do."

Her remarkable E-mail, however, urged the families not to go public with their anger for fear of encouraging the enemy. The Iraqis, she wrote, "believe that their continued attacks on American soldiers are having the desired affect and are diminishing the resolve of the American people to complete the task in Iraq."

I wonder why she would say such a thing?

"It feels like we died and this is our hell," fumed Pvt. Matthew Davis, 20, of Omaha.

"I'm tired of waking up wondering if this is the day I'm going to die," said Spec. David Myers, 23, of Tampa. "We've been here since the beginning. It's time to go."

It didn't help to have stories with crying 10 year olds asking for their daddy on the news either. Not that the Iraqis need to read the papers to know Americans want to get the hell out of there.

Look, her husband is going to pay for having his men express sentiments like the SecDef should resign. The soldiers obviously don't care about the Iraqis, who obviously don't like them much either. This is like closing the barn door after the horse has fled. Remaining silent isn't going to make them happy or hide the truth.

They can suppress the bad news for a week or so, but just like in Vietnam, unhappy troops make their feelings known, either in letters, calls, combat refusals or fraggings. Soldiers willing to use their name to attack their superiors are not happy soldiers, their families are not happy. Another bloody incident will only increase the complaining, regardless of the general's wife desperate attempt to salvage her husband's already ruined career.

It wasn't as if the Bushies were happy with Blount from the start of the war, and his now infamous quote "we wargamed against a different enemy". But the comments flowing from the troops have probably sealed his fate. But they still want to go home and still hate the Iraqis.

Of course, the WH is now turning on the ABC reporter, actually one of many in the media, who reported the troops bitter feelings. Jeffery Koffman, as it turns out, is both gay and Canadian. This is somehow supposed to be a damaging revelation as in "that queer Canuck is against our troops". The irony is that the WH leaked it to Drudge, the single man who now lives on South Beach and is an admitted habitue of the local club scene. And of course, the WH knew he was gay because Koffman did an interview with the Advocate. I am confused as to how this affected his reporting, since the troops freely admitted their feelings on camera as did their spouses to another reporter .

What's next? Singing Blame Canada? The whole war seems to be turning into the live action version of South Park:Bigger, Longer and Uncut. Except Saddam isn't dead yet and no one can prove he sodimizes Satan on a regular basis. If people weren't dying, this would be a rich black comedy.

It doesn't help that yet another 3ID soldier was just killed in combat today.

Posted July 18, 2003 11:03 AM