American Soldiers Driving Style In Iraq

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  Since the day I first saw a stryker on the street I was amazed at what it was capable of doing in battle, but after a few months I became to hate that thing more than any abrahams or bradly, because unlike them the stryker can easily move around the city, but it is nevertheless not suitable for driving in the busy streets of Baghdad. The way the soldiers drive it is not a help at all, imagine this situation:

  You are driving at Baghdad Al-Jedida (New Baghdad) highway, at almost a speed of 140 km/h (roughly 80 mi/h), you spot an American convoy coming on the other side of the road, so you say to yourself, they are coming, and I'm going, there is no trouble at all. But suddenly the lead stryker takes a sharp turn over the central island, and comes over your side of the road, the soldier on the top of the styker starts shooting warning shots, signaling you to stop or be shot. Now you are coming at high speed and you want to get the car at a full stop in almost 50 meters, maybe you can hit the brakes hard enough to make it, but what about the cars behind you, it is the highway after all, so you'll probably get your car punched through from behind. So maybe next time you will take choice number two, take your time in stopping so that the car behind you doesn't hit you, but the soldiers ahead see that you have failed to get your car to a stop, so they stop if for you, the hard way. You will get a full round of bullet all over you car, your engine is a complete wreckage now. You might even be SHOVED aside by the next stryker in line. Look at the bright side, you are still alive....

  Real Story: My cousin in mosul, a year younger than myself. Was driving in Mosul, at a street called Al-Jamia (College) street, the street is three lanes wide, two of these lines were already taken by the benzene queue, leaving only one lane for traffic to be moving in it, so that creates a traffic jam, my cousin is stuck in it, he can't move his car in any direction. Then, an American convoy comes from behind, at high speed, the car behind him is able to slip between two cars from the benzene queue, while my cousin is stuck, unable to move his car, only by a slight turn to the right, but doesn't create enough room for such a big car, the stryker never slowed down, it hit my cousin's car so hard it crushed his trunk, and sent his car inside the car in front of him, then went over the central island, in the WRONG SIDE direction, again my cousin hears cars screeching from a far, and bullets fired in the air. Now is that kind of driving suitable for a city. My cousin went out of this safe and sound, thankfully. But the car is going to need a lot of work to be done until it is drivable again.

  In order not to make this post, a whine'n'blame kind of post, I have a few suggestions. It has been decided a long time ago that no military convoy is supposed to be patrolling inside the city, in any case there is nothing in the city that the National Guards won't be able to handle like the US strykers. Such fire power is only needed when fighting large groups of insurgents, or making assaults on their hiding, like the assault made on Tal Aafar, and even there, most of the NGs did most of the fighting, but simply patrolling the streets looking for terrorists is not the job of the US stykers to be doing. It is a war machine after all, not a peace keeping one.

Hassan Kharrufa

An Average Iraqi