What happen if one day I was send to Iraq.

Made our mark in South Dakota...

Our Intelligence officer shared with us our role and responsibility during the Joint Thunder 2007 exercise. As a CH47D unit, our role is to provide logistic support for resupply mission and to perform troop lift if I could state simply. As far as I could comprehend from his sharing section was that every military operation consist of many units and a HQ. This small units are the extended arm of execution for the HQ plan of operation. The term full spectrum warrior is what describe us right now which mean we are able to perform our roles not only in War times but also during mission carried out "Other Than War" or "MOOTW" (Military Operation Other Than War). Example of "MOOTW" are humanitarian mission like Operation Flying Eagle, the relief mission carried out by RSAF for our neighbouring country during the last tsunami disaster. Another example will be peace keeping mission of our UH-1H at East Timor many years ago. In the US right now, Operation Enduring Freedom is also term as a "MOOTW" because its not a war between 2 countries but a mission to support the fledging government and maintain peace in the country against the insurgents.

Than a question was popped "What will happen if suddenly we are told to head to Iraq to support Operation Enduring Freedom? Which is actually peace keeping operation at its core although you still have IEDs exploding and killing soldiers everywhere. First of all, I am very confident that we guys will be able to deploy and operate in Iraq. We have went to places like US, Australia, Thailand and Indonesia with our Chinook, Iraq will just be another of those deployment site slightly further away. As for support from Home base back in singapore, as long as there is Fedex, the Internet, Long distance phone and a fax machine, we will more than enough link back home to get the support we need. We will also need local Iraqi logistic support for necessity like food, water and everyday supplies which thankfully the US is probably very established right now when we really deployed there so we got our self the US Army to do all the liasing. The last thing will be the fact that we will be operating as a logistic unit (both the chopper and the technician) thus operating many distance behind the front line, the last thing that will happen is for a suicide bomber to blow us up.

The real question here will be a personal one. Am I personally prepared at all? Do I really want to go to the Desert? For one, I love going to new places and work in new enviroment. For the second, I am a soldier and I take orders and excute it. When the button is pressed, and the order is pass down, I just carried it out. But for a third, I am pretty against what ever the US is doing in Iraq right now... interfering with another country matter. Maybe I don't see the big picture right now and not aware of the many goods the operation is doing for the world with. Think about it, if I really go there...my opinion might change. The saying goes "A side bench observer will never understand the game better than the players." Maybe I will have a change of heart if I ever deployed there, for the better of my support or the worst of my critics.