The Secret Letter From Iraq
A Marine's letter home, with its frank description of life in "Dante's inferno," has been circulating through generals' in-boxes. We publish it here with the author's approval

Posted Friday, Oct. 06, 2006
Written last month, this straightforward account of life in Iraq by a Marine officer was initially sent just to a small group of family and friends. His honest but wry narration and unusually frank dissection of the mission contrasts sharply with the story presented by both sides of the Iraq war debate, the Pentagon spin masters and fierce critics. Perhaps inevitably, the "Letter from Iraq" moved quickly beyond the small group of acquantainaces and hit the inboxes of retired generals, officers in the Pentagon, and staffers on Capitol Hill. TIME's Sally B. Donnelly first received a copy three weeks ago but only this week was able to track down the author and verify the document's authenticity. The author wishes to remain anonymous but has allowed us to publish it here — with a few judicious omissions.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1543658-1,00.html

This is a very good read.

I couldn't get the link to work.

Not sure why, it's working OK now. For me, anyway.

Anyone else having trouble?

It finally started working. Apparently somewhere along the line there were problems, as I was having trouble accessing some other sites as well ... cnn.com was one of them, I guess a server had a brain fart or some such.

Wow .. well worth reading.

Great post sedan.

My favorite bit was:

Most Profound Man in Iraq — an unidentified farmer in a fairly remote area who, after being asked by Reconnaissance Marines if he had seen any foreign fighters in the area replied "Yes, you."

~sniff, sniff~ yup it is a great read...:(

His honest but wry narration and unusually frank dissection of the mission contrasts sharply with the story presented by both sides of the Iraq war debate, the Pentagon spin masters and fierce critics.
I've found that this is true about most of the stories I hear from people who have been there. To most people, Iraq is just a point of discussion in political debates, and so the stories they repeat are merely the ones that support their argument. However, for the people who have been there and fought there, it's something they've personally experienced and something that comprises an entire chapter of their lives. Their stories therefore have more to do with little things that happened in their day-to-day lives, rather than the things that the politically-motivated like to echo.

Well worth the read - very provoking letter