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Most Americans fail to realize the high quality of U.S. troops these days. The American military, especially the army, has been raising personnel standards for over two decades. Troops are encouraged to use initiative and imagination to solve the military and non-military problems they encounter.
The entire chain of command, from top generals to new recruits is now of the same high capabilities. Hundreds of little innovations in dealing with occupied or hostile Iraqis were developed. For example, every American army unit has done some rebuilding for the local Iraqis, while collecting information on those people to find out who's naughty and who's nice.
There was some culture shock to US troops, but not as much as you might think. American troops have been training in Kuwait, and dealing with Kuwaitis for over a decade. When the Iraqi preference for outrageous rumors (that American troops wore air conditioned flak jackets and sunglasses that gave them X-ray vision, Etc.) got in the way of collecting information, many troops just agreed with the Iraqis and implied that there were even more fantastic devices being used, so resistance was useless.
To those Iraqis who admit that the crazy stories were just typical Iraqi mind games, the U.S. troops acknowledged that they would play the game to get the information needed to keep themselves alive.
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Posted by Ted at January 24, 2004 3:32 PM