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| Iraq |
| The Warden of Fallouja |
| 2007-03-05 |
| Posted as "Opinion" at the LA Times. I guess it contains too many facts that don't fit their perspective. My personal favorite is [8] Taking charge of a detention center in Iraq? Here's what you need to remember. By Mike Carlson Mike Carlson served as the officer in charge of the Camp Fallouja Regional Detention Facility from March 2006 to October. He is now a graduate student in creative writing at the University of Central ... Florida? Oklahoma? I didn't carelessly omit it; the LAT did. March 4, 2007 [ 1 ] They're not prisoners, they're "detainees." It sounds better, as if they're merely inconvenienced rather than shoehorned into cinderblock cells, thumbing their military-issued Korans and waiting to be interrogated. One-third are innocents caught up in sweeps; one-third are jihadists who will slit your throat, and one-third are opportunists who will rat out their neighbors. You will hold them for 14 days, no more, while the interrogators try to figure out who is what. Each gets a CF, for Camp Fallouja, and a four-digit number. No names will be used, mainly because numbers fit more easily onto spreadsheets. They will be forever known as entas. "Enta" means "you" in Arabic, and that's what you call them day after day, meal after meal, port-a-potty call after port-a-potty call. "Enta, ishra mai," you say, and the enta drinks his water, and if you say, "Enta, ishra mai kulak," he drinks all of his water, every drop, and holds the bottle upside down to prove it. |
| Posted by:Bobby |
| #4 Yup, dehydration can really make an impression on a guy, like the kidney stone I came down with the day after hiking in Chaco Canyon, NM, with not quite enough water. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2007-03-05 17:06 |
| #3 Moose- When I went to the Sandbox in the mid-90s, my dad - a former Marine - pounded that into me over and over again, and I did the same with my guys. In 6 months we didn't have a single heat-related casualty, while the other five teams had at least one a week between them. Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2007-03-05 12:24 |
| #2 As an aside, #7, about drinking until your urine is clear, is an eccentricity of the Marines. Some years ago, after a hard march on a hot day at a Marine training camp, there was an unusually high number of cases of heat exhaustion due to dehydration. This irritated the camp commander who issued instructions directing "over-hydration" before such exercises in the future. This amounted to all Marines lining up to fill their canteens, then as a group, to drink the entire contents of their canteens, then to refill them again before leaving. This caused the number of dehydration casualties to drop to zero. This caught the attention of the higher ups, and it became part of US Marine Corps culture ever since. While it does result in the need for rather odd looking, mass "pee" breaks in increasing intervals at the start of a march, the medical statistics prove this to be a very good idea. But having trained in hot desert myself, where water consumption can be as high as five gallons per man per day, and you *still* don't seem to ever need to urinate because of sweating, forcing yourself to drink until your urine is clear is a major, major deal. When it comes out deeply yellow to almost brownish in color, that is bad. And you drink so much water that you almost feeling like throwing up, again and again. It leaves a lasting impression. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-03-05 10:04 |
| #1 The 'CF' stands for Camp Fallouja? How convenient - when captured there you don't even have to change their initials, just what they stand for (and add a number.) |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2007-03-05 08:01 |