"The stuff you don't hear about on CNN?"

Is right here: "Letter from Army engineer details rebuilding efforts in Iraq."

A positive, on-the-ground look at what the U.S. forces are doing to rebuild Iraq from Eric Rydbom, an engineer stationed in Iraq with the Army's 4th Infantry Division - and a member of a local (to me, anyway - in Washington) Lutheran church.

The most amazing thing to me is that they don't realize that if they stopped shooting at us, we would focus on fixing things more quickly and then leave back to the land of the Big PX. The more they shoot at us, the longer we will have to stay.

Lastly, all of you please realize that 90 percent of the damage you see on TV was caused by Iraqis, not by us and not by the war. Sure, we took out a few bridges from military necessity, we took out a few power and phone lines to disrupt communications, sure we drilled a few palaces and government headquarters buildings with 2000 lb. laser guided bombs (I work 100 yards from where two hit the Tikrit Palace), [but] he had plenty to spare.

Go Lutherans!


Written by Andrew Ittner in misc on Mon 04 August 2003. Tags: commentary, news