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24 April 2017, Erbil, Iraq The demand for emergency referral services in west Mosul continues daily. More than 1900 trauma cases from west Mosul have received medical care in hospitals in Ninewa and neighbouring governorates. As military operations reach the densely populated parts of Mosul city, health partners anticipate a significant increase in the number of war-related casualties. Ensuring timely referrals and transport from the frontlines to trauma stabilization points and field hospitals is critical to sparing civilian lives. Ambulances provide a 24/7 response to medical and trauma-related emergencies, while lessening the tedious travel hours spent by patients on the roads.

In an effort to support the Federal Ministry of Health and Ninewa Directorate of Health with the anticipated surge of trauma needs, the World Health Organization (WHO), with logistics support from the World Food Programme, has airlifted an additional 15 fully-equipped ambulances into Iraq.

These ambulances will be deployed to trauma stabilization points in west Mosul as well as to field hospitals. This new airlift completes the delivery of 30 ambulances in total to Ninewa Directorate of Health. The first shipment of ambulances that were delivered two weeks ago are now serving Athba Field Hospital, Hamam al' Alil camp and Al-Shefaa hospitals. The procurement and management of these 30 ambulances has been made possible with generous funding from the European Commissions Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO), USAID/Office of Foreign Disaster (OFDA), the Governments of Kuwait and Japan.

For more than five months, health actors have expressed concerns over shortages of ambulances. Efforts by WHO, the Federal Ministry of Health, Ninewa Governorate and UNFPA have prepositioned more than 71 ambulances at the frontlines. With more ambulances now in circulation, it is envisaged that Ninewa Directorate of Health, WHO and health partners will establish a call centre at Maamoon in west Mosul. This will ensure timely coordination and transportation of trauma patients, but also serve medical emergencies for internally-displaced people in camps.

In the Humanitarian Response Plan for 2017, WHO and partners are appealing for US$ 110 million. These critical funds are needed to support health care interventions for 6.2 million people across Iraq. The current funding gap of 85% leaves millions of people with reduced access to lifesaving health care.

More about WHO work in Iraq http://www.who.int/hac/crises/irq/en/

For more information, please contact:

Ms Pauline Ajello Communication Officer Email: ajellopa@who.int Mobile: +9647510101460

Ms Ajal Sultany Communication Officer Email: sultanya@who.int Mobile: +9647510101469

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WHO deploys additional ambulances as trauma needs in west Mosul escalate - Reliefweb

Iraqs Foreign Minister this week asked the United States to develop a financial plan for the reconstruction of the country after ISIS, similar to a program developed for Western Europe after the Second World War. In discussions with Special Presidential Envoy to the Coalition Brett McGurk, Ibrahim al-Jaafari stressed the need for collective support from the international community to contribute to the reconstruction of infrastructure after the defeat of terrorism. Jaafari suggested the adoption of a project similar to the Marshall Plan which contributed to rebuilding Germany after the Second World War."

Iraq will need billions of dollars to rebuild after ISIS. Large portions of major cities were destroyed in the war, infrastructure was neglected under ISIS, villages are riddled with mines and booby-traps. The deputy governor of Anbar estimated that his province would need $22 billion alone for reconstruction.

Um, never mind invoking the Marshall Plan. What needs to be cited here is that the United States already spent billions to reconstruct Iraq, from 2003-2011. I know. I was there. It was my job to help spend some of those billions. We accomplished less than nothing. In fact, our failure to reconstruct Iraq then lead in a direct line to the Iraq of now. I cannot believe I am writing this. Again.

See, in fact, I wrote a whole book about it: We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, in 2011. I just sent a copy to Special Presidential Envoy to the Coalition Brett McGurk, and asked him to pass it on to the Iraqi Foreign Minister after he's done reading it.

But in case Brett or the Minister don't get around to reading a whole book, here's a shorter version.

I spent a year in Iraq as a U.S. Foreign Service officer, leading two of the then-vaunted Provincial Reconstruction Teams. We were charged with nothing less than winning the war for America by rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure, creating a functioning democracy and stable economy that would preclude terrorists like ISIS (well, it was al Qaeda then) from gaining a foothold, and thus ensuring Iraq would be an ally of the United States in the war on terror. This is the same mission statement that the Iraqi Foreign Minister would want tagged to his proposed reconstruction plan.

When my book came out in September 2011, most people I met with threw out skeptical comments: "Well, maybe it will work out like in Germany and Japan," they said. When I met with staffers from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2012, they said, "We'd like to believe you, but everything that State tells us contradicts your thesis that the money spent was just a big waste."

But now it's official. The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction concluded "$60 billion in American taxpayer funds later, Iraq is still so unstable and broken that even its leaders question whether U.S. efforts to rebuild the war-torn nation were worth the cost."

Then Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said "that $55 billion could have brought great change in Iraq," but the positive effects of those funds were too often "lost."

Then Iraqi parliament speaker Osama al-Nujaifi, the country's top Sunni official, told auditors that the rebuilding efforts did not "achieve the purpose for which it was launched. Rather, it had unfavorable outcomes in general." Like ISIS.

There "was usually a Plan A but never a Plan B," said Kurdish official Qubad Talabani, son of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

Shiite, Sunni, Kurd. Trust me, about the only thing everybody agrees on is the United States spent a bundle of money between 2003-2011 and got nothing for it but ISIS.

According to the Associated Press, the United States has spent more than $60 billion in reconstruction grants on Iraq. That works out to about $15 million a day. Overall, including all military and diplomatic costs and other aid, the United States has spent at least $767 billion since the U.S.-led invasion began.

And guess who was one of the people in charge of the last Iraq reconstruction? Special Presidential Envoy to the Coalition Brett McGurk. Maybe this time around he's smart enough to not get fooled again. In fact, I've recommended a book for him to read to help out.

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Nooooooooooooooo! Iraq Asks U.S. for Marshall Plan Reconstruction Funds - Huffington Post

Joe Biden / Getty Images

BY: Bill Gertz April 24, 2017 5:00 am

The story on the front page of USA Today in 2007 made a sensational claim: Military leaders in wartime had failed to provide troops in Iraq being killed by roadside bombs with mine-resistant jeeps.

"Pentagon balked at pleas for safer vehicles," read the headline. The story went on to assert that the Marine Corps, in particular, was negligent for waiting 19 months before responding to an urgent request for mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles, or MRAPs.

Democrats in the Senate pounced on the story to attack then-President George W. Bush over Iraq. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, flanked by other Democratic leaders, went before news reporters the day the story came out waving the newspaper in front of cameras as proof the president was failing to take care of American troops in a war.

Much of the information for the story came from a Marine Corps scientist, Franz Gayl, who had been put in touch with the article's authors by Erin Logan, a staff member for then-senator Joe Biden (D., Del.).

Ten years later, documents and emails obtained by a former director of operations for the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab in Quantico present a contradictory picture. The documents and emails show the Democrat-driven public accounts accusing the Marines of failing to protect their troops by delaying requests for armored vehicles between February 2005 until September 2006 were false and misleading.

The facts presented by Steve Chill, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel who served in Iraq, reveal the Corps was already engaged in rapid development of needed armored vehicles for troops in Iraq.

But instead of buying off-the-shelf armored vehicles, the Marines instead chose an MRAP made from blast-hardened M1114 vehicles, known as up-armored Humvees.

The armored Humvee development program was already the highest priority for then-Marine Corps commandant Gen. James T. Conway, nearly a year before Gayl went public with his charges to Biden and the press.

Armored Humvee prototypes were being blown up in tests at the Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and the protective vehicle program was well advanced before the sensational press reports were published.

The controversy triggered a $45 billion program critics have dubbed the "MRAP boondoggle" of producing 27,000 armored vehicles. A Pentagon-based study by Chris Rohlfs and Ryan Sullivan in 2012 found that heavily armored MRAPs costing $600,000 each were "no more effective at reducing casualties than the medium armored vehicles" such as the M1114.

Many of these facts about the MRAP debate were buried under an avalanche of Democratic Party criticism orchestrated, according to the report, by Biden.

The pressure from Democrats and led by Biden, who would go on to be vice president under President Barack Obama, included bullying Corps' leaders into keeping quiet and not challenging inaccurate accounts presented by Gayl and repeated by Biden and numerous press outlets at the time.

"A falsehood was fostered by the press, politicians, and interest groups that the Marine Corps was negligent in supporting fellow Marines in Iraq with armored vehicles during Operation Iraqi Freedom," said Steve Chill, the former Warfighting Lab director who produced the 355-page study.

"My study definitively proves that the Marine Corps did not sit on MRAP requests," he said.

"This study sets the record straight and gives reassurance to Marines and the families of the dead and wounded Marines in Iraq that their Corps did not let them down," he told the Washington Free Beacon.

The report, "Blowing the Whistle on a Whistleblower: The Real MRAP Story," reveals that Gayl, the civilian scientist, first disclosed an urgent MRAP request from 2005 to the blog "Danger Room" in the spring of 2007. The report inaccurately reported Marines had "dragged feet" in meeting the request.

The blog report prompted a phone call the next day to Gayl from Logan, the Biden staffer, who arranged for Gayl to provide information to a USA Today reporter.

"Senator Biden used Gayl and the press to smear the Marine Corps," the report says. "Specifically, Biden saw a misleading blog (Danger Room) then organized Gayl, Danger Room and USA Today to take the misleading blog national. While organizing the press, Biden asked the Marine Corps to respond to the original blog. The Marine Corps responses disputing the blog were correct (albeit not detailed), and ignored."

At the same time Marine headquarters was working to answer Biden's inquiries about the MRAP, Biden was working behind the scenes to discredit the Marine Corps and then extend the criticism to the Bush administration by pushing to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, the report says.

The USA Today stories on the MRAP "were used by Democratic senators as a cornerstone of their arguments to withdraw from Iraq," the report states.

The primary USA Today story came out a day before an all-night Senate session on a vote to pull all U.S. troops from Iraq. The amendment was blocked but the article was mentioned repeatedly during debate, falsely claiming neglect for Marines in Iraq.

U.S. troops were pulled out of Iraq in 2011, a move critics say paved the way for the rise of the Islamic State terror group that took over major portions of the country in 2014.

Biden during the Senate debate referenced Gayl's accusations in criticizing Bush for not supporting U.S. troops. "I have absolutely no faith, none whatsoever, in this president to voluntarily do what should be done," he said. "The only way it is going to happen is when our Republican friends stop voting with the president and start voting to end this war by supporting our troops."

Asked about the report, Kate Bedingfield, a spokeswoman for Biden, said: "I don't have any comment for you on this."

Chill said internal Marine Corps emails he obtained were never disclosed to earlier investigators, including the Pentagon inspector general.

The MRAP controversy was the result of Gayl misunderstanding the complex process used to acquire equipment and respond to requests from forces in the field, Chill said.

The false MRAP claims were compounded by the fact that the Marines were fighting the insurgency in Iraq at the same time the service was working to provide them with armored vehicles.

Additionally, the roadside bomb threat increased during the same time as insurgents targeted the troops as they conducted patrols, killing hundreds and injuring several thousand.

Chill's new information sheds light on the Marine Corps' handling of the MRAP procurement issue. The documents show the Corps also mishandled media and congressional reaction to Gayl's inaccurate charges of negligence.

Gayl would emerge from the MRAP affair as a media hero and still works for the Corps after claiming legal whistleblower status in 2007.

He defended his actions surrounding the MRAP controversy and said the criticism reflects the bitterness of some Marines towards him.

"Lt. Col Chill's remarks today are very similar to those made by senior Marine leaders ten years ago when I spoke with the Congress and press," he said. "I was loathed by those USMC leaders, and remain so by many who are still active throughout DoD and government todayone in particular being the SecDef himself," he said, referring to Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis.

"But, for all my faults, on balance I believe that I did more good than bad through my disclosures at that time, and given similar emergency circumstances and despite imperfect knowledge of all things, I would do the same today," he said. "I'm a sinner like everybody else, but I did try to do the right thing back then, however wrong I may have gotten it in some details."

The story began in February 2005 with an urgent request from a Marine commander in Iraq for armored vehicles.

Chill criticizes Gayl for misunderstanding the process for responding to the urgent request for armored vehicles made on Feb. 17, 2005 by Brig. Gen. Dennis J. Hejlik, deputy commander of the I Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF) in Iraq. The I MEF is one of the Corps' main warfighting forces with 50,000 Marines.

That urgent request became a cause celebre for Democrats and the press in criticizing the Bush administration for its handling of the war in Iraq.

However, the request had been addressed and downgraded by the Marines in favor of using up-armored Humvee as the needed MRAP. The decision, however, appeared to have been lost on critics bent on promoting the narrative the Marines were negligent.

One example is the June 21, 2005, congressional testimony of Assistant Marine Corps Commandant Gen. William Nyland who said "we have determined that the M1114/M1116 up-armored Humvee is the best available, most survivable asset that meets our evolving vehicle underbody protection requirements."

Additionally, documents show that Marine warfighting units repeatedly stated they had no need for MRAPs between 2005 and 2006. Two Marine reports listing urgent needs from April and May 2006 stated that the 2005 MRAP urgent request was no longer in effect.

In May 2006, Marines in Iraq asked for 185 MRAPs and the vehicles were sent, followed two months later by another request for 1,000 MRAPs.

"In September 2006 I MEF submitted the same requests, totaling 1,185 vehicles, as an [urgent universal needs statement] through the service chain. This UUNS immediately became the Marine Corps' number one priority," the report said.

The two documents from Marine Forces Pacific, parent command of I MEF, showed that the urgent request had been downgraded to a regular, two- to five-year procurement. This contradicts a Pentagon inspector general study that criticized the Marines and said there was no proof the urgent request was downgraded.

The IG "was especially at fault in that there were Marines who told them the correct resolution [of the urgent request], yet they ignored the input," the report says.

A Pentagon inspector general report from 2009 said it was not known who downgraded the urgent MRAP request, adding that "many Marines lost their lives unnecessarily as a result of mismanagement" by the Quantico-based Combat Development Command.

The Chill report also discloses numerous flaws contained in a report on MRAPs done by Gayl in January 2008 that was the basis for the flawed inspector general report. The Gayl report said combat developers failed to fulfill the I MEF urgent request for MRAPs because Marines "perceived the MRAP as a threat" to funding for competing combat vehicle programs.

Key Marine Corps leaders who were involved in the MRAP controversy have moved on to positions in the Trump administration and the military.

Mattis was commanding general of the Combat Development Command during the period of the debate over MRAP and the report says he was unfairly criticized.

"Gen. Mattis has been repeatedly and unjustly smeared," the report says, noting the fate of the MRAP request was not within his authority to decide.

USA Today followed up its MRAP story last November prior to Mattis' Senate nomination hearing again criticizing him for overseeing the command that the newspaper said had failed "to field urgently needed combat vehicles to Iraq to protect Marines from roadside bombs."

The report was written by reporter Tom Vanden Brook, one of several reporters who wrote the original 2007 USA Today article. Asked about Chill's study, Vanden Brook said his stories and the inspector general report "speak for themselves on this topic."

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, also a retired Marine general, also was involved as the key congressional liaison for the service.

Kelly recommended countering both hostile Democrats and the media in a bid to put the controversy to rest.

"Media, and in my lane more importantly the Senate, has a sense we are either lying, incompetent, or both," Kelly wrote in a May 24, 2007, email.

"I've insulated the boss from most of this, but if we can't turn the corner on the Hill (particularly in Sen. Biden's office) we will have to plead the 6th (stupidity) and beg forgiveness."

Kelly said he told the Marine Corps commandant at the time, Conway, the Corps needs to make responses that resonate with the media and Capitol Hill, not to the Marine Corps itself.

"An explanation that convinces us, might not make sense to the Hill who wants to believe, and certainly make no sense at all to the media that seemingly works hard to never believe," he said.

Kelly noted that an AP reporter who was briefed on the issue "went right to Mr. Biden's office and countered our explanation and characterized it as BS."

In May 2007, current Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert B. Neller was one of three generals in the plans, policies, and operations office, known as PP&O, charged with overseeing responses to urgent field requests.

Gayl worked in the office and falsely claimed the Corps had failed to understand the need for MRAPs.

"Gayls activities continued to contribute nothing internal to the Marine Corps," the report says.

"Industry continued to produce and test MRAP prototypes. The [commandant of the Marine Corps] and service secretary as well as DOD leadership supported the larger Marine MRAP buy. Congress had been briefed for the better part of a year. MRAP had been the Marine Corps top procurement priority for almost a year by the time Gayl started to blow his whistle. Gayls MRAP whistleblowing was irrelevant to the Marine Corps internal efforts to get MRAP."

Chill said he did not coordinate his report with the Marines and that his findings and conclusions are his own. "The Marine Corps screws up, people screw up, but this was not one of those times," he said.

Read more from the original source:
Biden Used False Data to Smear Marine Corps Over Armored Vehicle Request from Iraq - Washington Free Beacon

Former Spc. Chris Roessner enlisted in the Army on July 11, 2001, hoping to earn some money for college.

Two years later, he was passing time during charge-of-quarters duty at the presidential palace in Tikrit, Iraq, watching a classic Vietnam War movie, when he decided that one day, he'd like to tell his own war story on screen.

"I put in Oliver Stones movie 'Platoon,' " Roessner, 33, told Army Times in a Thursday phone interview. "I was so deeply touched by that movie because it was so personal, and it wasnt a war movie in the sense of, 'Take that hill, or kill that bad guy.' It was about young men, who look young. And to watch young men go through a year of the Vietnam War in a way that was specific and was also beautiful -- I really connected with that."

Roessner, a civil affairs specialist, spent three months in Kuwait waiting for the war to get started, he said, and then a year in Iraq that saw a sea change in the War on Terror.

"We moved into the presidential palace, and we had about three months of what I called the honeymoon period where it felt like my job was basically to shake hands and kiss babies. It felt like I was more in a parade than a convoy," he said. "That lasted for, like I said, a couple months. Then, seemingly overnight, everything changed. There was a lot of insurgent activity. Im sure people were pouring over the borders from Syria and Iran. And it became pretty violent pretty quick."

Still sorting through his experiences a decade later, Roessner wrote and then signed on to executive produce "Sand Castle," which premieres Friday on Netflix.

The film follows a civil affairs squad, through the eyes of Pvt. Matt Ocre, tasked with rebuilding a destroyed water pumping station in Iraq, and the challenges of winning the locals' trust while butting heads with the pessimistic Special Forces captain trying to root out insurgents among the villagers.

The University of Southern California film school graduate talked to Army Times about his perspective from the Army's nation-building force and trying to tell more authentic stories in Hollywood.

"I'm looking desperately forwhat I call my 'Coming Home' narrative," he said. "I would really like to tell a story about a bunch of men and women re-assimiliating to life after the war."

Some answers have been edited for brevity. What is your version of Iraq? Thats actually a really great question, and it allows me to preface it with this: Everybodys Iraq experience is different, and everybodys military experience is different. And if I had a different job, the movie I wrote would be different. And if I deployed to Iraq in 07, as opposed to 03, the movie would be different.

So my experience was, I got to see Iraq in a time when we were very welcomed. At least it felt that way. And then it seemed like I spent the next year of my war trying to get back to that first three.

Is the movie autobiographical?

I would say that my allegiance is to the feeling of war. It is a fictional film, but as has been stated many times by many authors that are smarter than I, fiction can be truer than true. What I tried to do, and what I hoped I succeeded in is, is imparting on the audience the feeling of war even if I have to magnify things and change things. To me, the feeling of war is falling in love with something and having it killed in front of you, over and over again. For me, and for all the rest of the filmmakers, one of the things I said to them is, I dont think were going to make people feel like they're at war by shaking the camera and shooting it like a documentary. If you want to know what war is like, watch "Restrepo."

What fiction can do is, in a two-hour time period, leave the audience with a complex feeling that doesnt quite have a name. And thats what war is. War is the realization that people have been hurt and people have been killed and at best, youve maybe moved the giant ship a half of a degree. But thats kind of the job.

Theres a line in the trailer that starts, I'd love to say I'm here to fight for freedom Did you write that, or was that a re-write down the road?

I didnt write that line, and personally, I hate it. I do. This is the tricky part: Because Im a veteran, because I wrote a movie, people at large can make the assumption that I had control or I signed off on everything that happened.

I want to be clear that Im proud of the film in its entirety, but Id be lying if I said that everything is something that I signed off on, or agreed with or didnt fight adamantly that it come out.

So that line, I dont care for at all. But the core of the question is, did I question why I was there? And I think I certainly did and I feel like most of the people around me did. Again, not because, 'Are we doing good or are we doing bad?'

It was because, wait a minute. I thought we were going to be out of here in six months thats what we were told. Then it was nine months. Then it was a year. Then, all of the sudden Im in college and I realize, holy shit, the kids who are in Iraq now were like nine years old when I was there. Thats a pretty far leap from, You guys told us it was going to be six months.

I never thought that I was doing a bad thing. The reality of my experience is, everything that we set out to do was wholly good.

So for example, there was collateral damage at one point. This Iraqi bakery got destroyed. It wasnt our fault or anything like that, but we still took it upon ourselves to fix this bakery because we knew this local business was very important to the population and the proprietor of this bakery was well respected in this village.

So we worked really hard to fix it, and felt a feeling of success when we got it done. But then, I think a few weeks later, it was bombed again because the insurgents were sending a message that, 'If you accept the help of the Americans, well make you pay.'

Thats the complexity of the feeling. We did the right thing, we earned their trust, we fixed something that was busted. But you still pay a price for that.

Thats what I mean. Its not like I felt ever at any point that, "What Im doing here is morally wrong." I dont have any of those nightmares about what I did there. But I do know that, just by the nature of being there, no matter what your intentions are, youre going to alter the course of other peoples lives.

There are some controversial plot points, like an Iraqi leader telling the soldiers they're unwelcome, and Ocre slamming his hand in a door to avoid deployment. Are those based on true events?

The first part: the Iraqi leader. It is true to form that you will speak to Iraqi leaders who are very happy to have you there, but they know that it is a very dangerous thing for them to do.

But then you also find Iraqi leaders who dont want to help you at all. People who see this as an opportunity to milk the U.S. government for some cash, and they dont want to help their people as much as you would hope. Atypical, but a true experience.

The smashing the hand in the door, thats a scene that sort of happened on set. I never wrote that scene. But I think where it came from was this idea to kind of amplify how that character felt at the beginning of the movie.

That way, by the end of the film, people have an understanding of how far hes coming since the starting point. Did it gut-check you at all that two Englishmen were cast as the leads?

It didnt, but I will say, there are a few characters in the film that I was adamant must be American. Theres a character named Chutsky, who could only be played by American. Because there is a certain American swagger and loudness, that comes with charge. And you cant invent that if youre not American. I dont give a shit if youre Laurence Olivier you cant play that kind of American if youre not American.

It didnt give me pause at all to have Henry Cavill and Nicholas Hoult, because they were super serious about the movie. And Henry Cavill, by the way his brother is in the British special forces, and when we had a conversation, he was like, "I take this stuff very seriously." And I was like, "Me too, and thats what I need."

There are only so many actors in the world, there are only so many who will get your movie green-lit, and there are only so many whose schedules will line up at the exact right time. I personally am very pleased by how those two guys, in particular, performed.

Why did you settle on the water pumping station as the core conflict?

The water pumping station evolves from the same place of trying to fix that bakery, right? Trying to do something that is important to the local community. If you make them feel safe, if they trust you, then they will help. And you feel a lot of success in that. The pumping station is invented, but its a cinematic way to take that same feeling and turn it up again. What I usually say is that, my experience in the Iraq War felt a bit Sisyphean in that, I would push a boulder up the hill alongside the other men and women that I served with, and then it would roll back down again. And then we would push it up, and it would roll back down again.

You dont get to see that a lot in war movies. Its funny the current sergeant major of the Army, who is an infantryman, was tasked with fixing a water treatment facility in Iraq when he was deployed, just because that was the most useful thing for them to be doing at the time.

Im really glad that you brought that up, because this wasnt intentional if my goal was, how can I translate my experience? You start to hit on some universal themes.

The reason why Im very proud that this movie got made, and the reason its a miracle that it got made, is that it takes a look at a war experience in a way that isnt super Hollywood-ized.

The experience of this war is very different than the Vietnam War or World War II. Its the realization that you are doing a lot of nation building and youre entrusting 20-year-old kids to help a town elect a mayor. Youre doing a lot of organizing of people and youre trying to get this different culture to understand how to organize institutions that account for their basic needs.

Im speaking from the civil affairs perspective, so Im sure people could challenge me and say otherwise. But the challenge for my time in Iraq, and the challenge for the Army as a whole remaining true to our values and remaining deeply empathetic even when youre given reason not to be, thats the real struggle for Matt.

How long will you want to help when people start dying? What I think Matt and the guys realize is, you cant throw up your hands, you cant abandon your humanity, because it is the only tool that will allow you to be successful.

The reason why Im proud overall of the movie is because it shows, number one, that the goal of the soldiers in the film is not to take the hill or shoot the bad guy. The reason those films are always made is because theyre the most entertaining and the most digestible for an audience.

To me, thats always done a disservice to what I felt war was for me. I believe that this film will sit pretty nicely in that gap between action and excitement and night raids, but also is very much concerned with the complex problem of rebuilding a village, of earning trust with a culture you dont know anything about. I think that matters.

Id rather see a 21-year-old kid rescue his buddy who just lost his arm, because thats real. That happened. Id rather see that portrayed than Captain America.

You mentioned you want to write a television show or miniseries about returning from war. Do you identify at all with the pop culture, 'dysfunctional veteran' narrative?

Yeah, I hate it. This is the best conversation Ive had about this movie in the 50-some interviews Ive done. Im not bullshitting you. This is fantastic. Im so tired of that narrative, the same way I was tired of the narrative of the American soldier in popular culture. From what Ive experienced, for myself and the guys I talk to -- I do a lot of work with veterans groups. Im a member of the Pat Tillman Foundation. I do a lot of work with guys who have PTSD and they say some pretty fascinating things.

Something akin to, "When I came back from Iraq, it wasn't the bombs and the bullets and the blood the caused me the most problems. It was this feeling of trying to re-find my purpose."

If this movie doesnt speak to your war experience as a veteran, thats okay. But I hope that you write your movie or you writeyour book or you go on a speaking tour, because every veteran has a story to tell and it deserves to be heard.

I hope that if people dont see themselves in this movie, that they take a swing at it. Because I want to see their films, I want to read their books.

Were kind of at a time now where, the people who served at the start of the war are in their 30s and 40s, and thats old enough to start talking about what happened. And I think its time to start making art that relays what weve experienced.

Originally posted here:
Iraq vet talks about his Netflix movie, pulling CQ in Saddam's palace, debunking 'dysfunctional veteran' stereotype - ArmyTimes.com

SOUTHWEST ASIA, April 21, 2017 U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria yesterday, conducting 32 strikes consisting of 80 engagements, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Officials reported details of yesterdays strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

In Syria, coalition military forces conducted 21 strikes consisting of 28 engagements against ISIS targets:

-- Near Abu Kamal, five strikes destroyed seven ISIS wellheads, five oil tankers and five oil processing equipment items.

-- Near Dayr Az Zawr, three strikes destroyed two bunkers, an ISIS wellhead and a front-end loader.

-- Near Raqqa, five strikes engaged five ISIS tactical units and destroyed six fighting positions.

-- Near Tabqah, eight strikes engaged six ISIS tactical units and destroyed two fighting positions, a command-and-control node and an ISIS staging area.

Strikes in Iraq

In Iraq, coalition military forces conducted 11 strikes consisting of 52 engagements against ISIS targets:

-- Near Huwayjah, a strike destroyed an ISIS-held building and a mortar system.

-- Near Qaim, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed a weapons cache, a tactical vehicle and an anti-aircraft artillery system.

-- Near Fallujah, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit.

-- Near Mosul, six strikes engaged seven ISIS tactical units, destroyed 11 rocket-propelled grenade systems, seven fighting positions, six vehicle bombs, five mortar systems, three vehicle bomb-making facilities, a weapons cache, a medium machine gun and an ISIS staging area; damaged 11 ISIS supply routes, four fighting positions; and suppressed two mortar teams and ISIS tactical unit.

-- Near Rawah, a strike destroyed four weapons caches, a vehicle bomb and a bunker.

-- Near Tal Afar, a strike destroyed a front-end loader.

Part of Operation Inherent Resolve

These strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to destroy ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The destruction of ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria also further limits the group's ability to project terror and conduct external operations throughout the region and the rest of the world, task force officials said.

The list above contains all strikes conducted by fighter, attack, bomber, rotary-wing or remotely piloted aircraft; rocket-propelled artillery; and some ground-based tactical artillery when fired on planned targets, officials noted.

Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike, they added. A strike, as defined by the coalition, refers to one or more kinetic engagements that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single or cumulative effect. For example, task force officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIS vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against a group of ISIS-held buildings and weapon systems in a compound, having the cumulative effect of making that facility harder or impossible to use. Strike assessments are based on initial reports and may be refined, officials said.

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Counter-ISIS Strikes Target Terrorists in Syria, Iraq - Department of Defense