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dritalin -> RE: What I do... (5/2/2008 8:12:07 PM)
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As for the procedure in awarding contracts I'm not sure, at least not to a degree that I could give a difinitive answer. I seems like the contracts usually go out to the sheikhs who the brass are meeting with. As far as due dilligence I couldn't say if there's a nation wide sop, or how much is left to local commanders in deciding who gets the contractors. I assume to at least some degree they use some of the same ethics rules (which are pretty stringent) that apply for contracts in the states as well.
Since I've been in I've learned that to describe the average GI youd have to break it down by three classes, officers, non-commisioned officers, and privates.
Privates are generally idiots, to be honest. The grunts are made up largely of soldiers that joined for nothing better to do, lack of opportunity, or because they wanted to storm normandy and punch a german in the face. The real difference is in the privates that have been deployed and the privates who haven't. Racial slurs are less common when they've been deployed, and their less trigger anxious.
Generally the enlisted ranks (non commisioned officers included) just want to go in guns blazing, kill all the bad guys and go home. Fortunatly the non commissioned officers are professional people who generally can better see the way things really are. I even knew one staff seargen who changed his weapon orientation to his left side so that he could shake hands with local people with his right. Also, in conversations I've had, even though it may not come out at first, the non coms (who have usually served several terms in Iraq) care about the Iraqi people.
Officers are profession thinkers who, in my experiences with them are commited to learning a better way of doing things. You might say they've taken a step back, admited defeat and are ready to work through the problems their facing. There are some who still want to hold on the Patton tank your way through anything strategy, but the large majority is adapting.
In terms of mistakes happing yes. They do happen. Raiding houses is such an intense experience that things can go wrong very quickly and on a dime. To give an example a private in a seargents squad I know heard a gunshot and fired at the civilian the seargen was searching, luckily he missed, but it could have gone terribly wrong. Also with criminals like Sadrs people choosing intentionally to work as close to innocent civilians as possible, it can be hard to opperate. The accountability is pretty strong however. Basicly whenever you leave base and fire your weapon your actions are to some degree investigated. Also in recent years they've started to really use restraint in what situations they'll send us in with breaching charges, busting down doors and flooding in with all the guns we can. The more common approach, though less popular with enlisted men, is to simply nock and the door and explain what we're doing and ask if we can come in and search. In other words to go in like cowboys we have to have pretty solid intel that there's a bad guy in there.
Yes we're given some cultural training. There's even a base in Louisiana that uses Iraqi immigrants to create an entire simulated Iraqi village. Of course this is all part of the new counterinsurgency strategy and so is taking some time to grow. With woman we are trained on searching females. A lot of effort is put into providing female soldiers in every unit who can take care of the searches. If no females are available then a minimum of two males must be present during the search, in most AORs a non commissioned officer needs to be present.
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