Old Blog - Iraq

Photo 01/27/07 by my cousin Patrick McGreal, Major in the National Guard after he delivered school supplies to children in the village of Alramo, in Rabiah, Iraq. He wrote: "Today was one of the good days, because of your generosity. Hopefully, it makes a difference in the long term."

Monday, April 02, 2007

Cousin Trick in Iraq The oldest cousin on my Dad's side (there are about 24 of them) is Patrick, 42, a Major in the National Guard in Ohio. On Father's Day 2006, with 3 daughters at home, he was sent off to Iraq near the Syrian border for a year. Trick came home for X-mas for a couple weeks and my Dad got to see him. Trick's job in Iraq is to mediate with the local sheiks and give training to the local police and Iraqi military. He says it's a frustrating job because the U.S. government has no contract with the local soldiers, so they can (and often do) drop out or decide not to show up, either out of fear of reprisal or lack of motivation. The area of Tal Afar, near where Trick is based , had been considered a model province where the U.S. experiment was working somewhat, with little sectarian violence. That all ended last week when Trick emailed us an article from a journalist who had been embeded with them. A week ago a truck, loaded full of relief supplies from a humanitaran operation, drove into the center of a Shia neighborhood, naturally attracting desperate locals. Unfortunately the truck was driven by a suicide bomber who had 10, 000 pounds of TNT concealed within the supplies. Trick was a few miles away at the base when he he felt the enormous blasts which sent a massive mushroom cloud into the sky. About 85 Shiites were killed and 200 injured. It doesn't stop there. The next day a group of vengeful Shiite gunmen went door to door in Tal Afar, including local policemen, and rounded up 70 innnocent Sunnis and shot them dead. Finally the Iraqi military intervened and stopped the rampage. Trick has a little less than 3 months left over there, unless they extend his tour, which has not been unusual. Unbelievable that my cousin witnessing this all started with what I witnessed myself in downtown Manhattan 6 years ago, and then was used as flimsy opportunity by our god-awful administration. A few weeks ago Trick emailed me to ask how St. Patrick's Day went down in NYC. Happily I was able to provide colorful commentary about seeing the Pogues at Roseland with my friend Michele, who was more drunk than me.