My friend Jason is currently in Iraq serving with the USMC. This is the message he would like everyone to read:Life has been pretty good this month. A little boring but good. I wanted to email you so you can forward this out to people.
I don't want this to sound negative but it is something that I have to say. If you could, please have people stop sending me care packages. They are too much. I appreciate the care, time and money that goes into making them, but they are more of a pain than help. For instance, I think I now have 9 tooth brushes, 40 razors, 15 bars of soap, tampons, make-up and make-up remover, etc. etc... I don't need all that stuff. People have to understand that one, our base has everything that we need. I don't mind spending a couple of bucks to buy some shampoo. Also, we do not have the space to keep it, so we will probably throw a lot of it away. I understand the makeup products were probably not meant for me, but we are in a combat zone, women don't wear makeup out here. Not only is it unnecessary for them to do so and they are not allowed to, the makeup messes up their skin really bad because of the dirty environment. I work in a hut. And yes it is an actual hut called a "SWA hut." I don't know what SWA means, but that is what they are called. It is pretty much like a storage thing you would see in someone's backyard but a little bigger. It has plywood walls, a plywood floor, and an aluminum roof. We do not have the room to keep stuff we most likely do not need. Back in my can where I live, I only have one shelf that is about 1 foot by 1 foot to keep stuff, so I have no room there either. I do appreciate people going out of their way to give me stuff, but I just can't use it. I know one might think that I can give it away. Well, I could, but everyone here gets care packages, so no one wants to take the stuff. Others might think I could take it with me when I go outside the wire to give it to local Iraqis. They definitely could use the stuff, but we are trying to limit how much the Iraqi people rely on us. Usually now when we go outside the wire, if we have stuff to give out, we will give it to the Iraqi Police or Iraqi Army first so they can hand it out, just so the Iraqi people get used to receiving goods from their own people.
Plus the trash becomes an issue as well. We burn everything we throw away. Everything. So if we don't use it we burn it. Now I haven't burned any items from care packages yet, but I have burned a lot of boxes. I think a few days ago I must have burned somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 boxes and it takes a while to burn boxes in an oil drum. The packaging is half the pain of receiving care packages. Some people like to cover the boxes with more tape then there is cardboard. Which is completely unnecessary. It just makes it really hard to open. When we receive the mail here it is almost in perfect condition. Just because we are in a "combat zone" it doesn't mean that the USPS that ships it over here likes to jump on the boxes and smash whatever it is inside. Other people have used packing peanuts which drives me crazy for a few reasons. One, I work in a plywood shack. So when I open the box the peanuts go everywhere. So then I have to clean it all up. Then I have to burn the packing peanuts which stinks. Two, most items, if not all, are not breakable and do not need package peanuts to protect them. And third, because I technically am in a combat zone (minus the combat part though) I don't need items that can break. So if someone wants to send me something that is breakable think twice about it because it probably won't last out here.
Enough about my ranting on care packages. In a nut shell, I don't need them. Sending me a box of stuff isn't the only way that I know people are thinking about me. There are other ways people can show they care. Email is good. I throw away all the letters I receive so emails are better. I don't have room to keep letters. Just a simple email asking how it is going is good enough. Another great thing people can do is pay attention to what is going on here. I was watching the Daily Show last night and Jon Stewart was talking to a journalist that just got back from Iraq . Stewart was amazed how well it seemed like things were going according to the journalist. He asked the writer how come most people don't realize what is going on here. The journalist said that last week, Iraq only made up 4% of the news. That means for every 100 stories that people hear about on the tv or radio, only 4 of them are about Iraq . I am sure that those 4 were probably about some bombing that happened in Baghdad. The problem is that the bombings that are still happening are a very small percentage of what is really going here. So if people want to actually care about the soldiers and Marines that are here, then they can go out of their way to find out. The news is doing a horrible job of telling the real story here and I understand that. So many good things have happened here in the last 6 months, but most people probably still think that bullets are firing down range and people are getting slaughtered like they were in the beginning of the war. That is just not true. Our base for instance, which is only 8 miles from Fallujah and 35 miles from Baghdad has not seen any hostile activity (meaning we have been attacked) in a year. Yes a year. Last April was the last time we took incoming. Things are safe. In fact I feel more comfortable out on the streets in Iraq than I do in San Diego. The Iraqis are making a better country for themselves and we are helping them. Now, the government can be just as shady as the news when it comes to what is actually going on. However, if people really care about us here, then they can go to
www.usmc.mil,
http://www.mcnews.info/mcnewsinfo/marines/gouge/, and
http://www.dvidshub.net/. These are Marine Corps news sites. Plus AFN and Pentagon Channel has some good news coverage as well. Now many people might think that they don't want to trust the military propaganda machine, which I understand because I am probably more liberal than a lot of my friends back home, but I work hand in hand with the public affairs guys (the guys that are journalists for the military). So if you are read a story from the area that I work in, most likely I was right next to then taking photographs or video.
People need to understand the situation right now in Iraq. Yes it is messed up. But not in a way where people are running around with AKs and suicide vests blowing up every American they see. It's messed up because these people do not have the resources right now for a stable and effective government. An example. The journalist that was on the Daily Show told of a story that he had done, which probably no one read. It was about a way the Army wanted to help out with the trash problem in Baghdad. They went around and put out bright yellow dumpsters everywhere for people to use. It worked. People threw their trash into them. However, the next day, the goat herders came around, dumped out all the trash onto the streets so the goats could eat it. Then they left it there. The trash went into the sewer system, which was not capable to hold, so the pipes broke and dumped raw sewage into the streets. Whose fault was this? Was it the Army's for trying to have a way for the Iraqis to clean up their trash? Hardly. Was it the people's for actually using the dumpsters? Of course not. What about the goat herders, where their only income comes from the goats who were hungry and needed food? No, not them. Then what about the civil engineers? Was is their fault for not building a strong enough sewer system that could also hold trash as well as sewage? Not theirs either. So whose fault was it? It was nobody's fault. But now it is a problem that needs to be fixed. These are the kinds of issues that are happening over here and that the military is trying to address.
I am sorry about my long ranting email. But it frustrates me every time I get an email from someone or talk to someone and they act like I had just participated in the Battle of Fallujah or the landing at Iwo Jima. The best thing someone could do to help with my morale here is pay attention. Don't go out of your way and send me a care package so I can add another toothbrush to the 15 that I have. Check out the sites in this email. The DVIDs Hub is really good as well as the Pentagon Channel. There are 1000's of stories there for people to read and to find out exactly what is happening. Also, if you don't want to trust the military as a news source, guess what. Where do you think the news gets their news from? The DVIDs Hub is a military news feed. Pretty much what the military journalist do is send back via satellite every story that they write or videotape about. It is sent back to CNN in Atlanta . Yes CNN. Fox doesn't support the military nearly as much as CNN does, because they are the ones that we work directly with. Then from Atlanta , everyone gets their news. Now sometimes when you are watching a news release about Iraq, it looks as if that news company shot it. Well, maybe they did. Most likely they didn't. The military doesn't send back stories that are completely edited. What they do is send back all the b-roll, along with the complete interviews they shot, and maybe a little about what actually happened. Then when a news agency picks it up at Atlanta they edit their own story together and make it look as if they shot it.
Okay I think I am done with my long rant now. Pretty much all I am asking for is to pay attention with what is going on. And yes, that means you will have to get your news sources from some where else then one of the 24 hours "news" networks.
Cpl. Jason W. Fudge
1st MLG Combat Camera
[In between missions, Jason maintains a blog called Grassroots Activism in a Global Economy, which you should definitely check out. You should also check out his Flickr site, because he's an amazing photographer.]
