There’s no better feeling for American military personnel in faraway lands than the one they get when they receive letters from loved ones. But this is close competition. It’s an “insider” letter to you, me and all Americans from a senior officer in our armed forces on the front lines in Mosul — his third tour in Iraq. God bless you, Capt. Bowers, and all who serve this Christmas season! — Your friend, Chuck Norris
December
2008 Dear Families, friends and all Americans, During this Christmas
season, I would like to take the time to express my deepest thanks for
your wishes, praises and concerns for our troopers here in Mosul, Iraq.
During this past week, Chuck Norris’ syndicated column (“The most
overlooked news story of 2008”) spoke of the success in Iraq, what the
reality of it is and how it is portrayed in the media.
Some
media outlets only portray the violence of Iraq, and that is fine, but
I want to tell you that there are far more non-violent acts than there
are violent ones. There are daily meetings with local sheiks, civic
leaders and politicians, as well as humanitarian-aid and civil-affairs
missions that have helped shape Mosul into a better place today for the
civilians. Our troop has conducted more civil-affairs and
humanitarian-aid missions during my current tour in Iraq than I can
ever recall having done here in my two previous tours.
Let me
be the first to tell you, as a cavalry troop commander on the ground,
that we have been very successful here in Mosul. Success can be
measured in many ways. I measure the success of my ground cavalry troop
by the day-to-day dealings and patrols that we conduct with the Iraqi
army, police and, most of all, local civilians.
Since we
arrived here in November 2007, we have seen a drastic difference in
Mosul. When we first arrived in Mosul, there were very few Iraqi army
and police units conducting operations, civilians did not move about
the city freely and, most of all, the total number of daily incidents
of insurgent attacks was outrageous. This is not true today.
When
people traverse the city of Mosul now, they notice the number of
civilians that are moving freely about the city. This is because they
now feel safe and have had security provided to them by their own Iraqi
security forces. Attacks are way down compared with this time last
year, and now a large majority of ISF operations are being conducted
jointly between the Iraqi army and police. When our unit arrived in
Iraq, our mission was to provide security to the civilians while at the
same time ridding the city of insurgents. Although
