Is the grass greener

Well, this weeks entry comes to you from the raining New England State of New Hampshire.

Although I have left Iraq, I still remain in contact with friends out there, it is them that I miss. I saw on the news that one of the minor Shia groups have pulled out of the government and are going to set up an opposition party.

I am not surprised at this, despite all the spin and rhetoric that the politicians in the West Spout, there will no be unity in the Government. Whether we like it or not the country is divided between Shia, Sunni and Kurds, now matter how much money we pour down the drain nothing is going to change over 1000 years of bigotry and narrow mindedness.

Whilst at my last base, we often found that the Soldiers/Officers would complain for no other reason than the other person was from a different group to them. The difficulty you are never going to change the mentality that holds the current generation responsible for actions that their great , great, great, great ancestors did.

The Iraq base commander was a Shia and would deliberately make things difficult when dealing with the Sunni Basic Trainees.

Although the previous Prime Minister has stood down, you still a government who want vengeance for something the current generation had nothing to do with. It was not every Sunni who were responsible for the atrocities that were committed by his regime, but the backward elements of the Shia community blame all Sunni’s for this, when you are having to deal with this type of bigotry you are not going to have a quick fix.

Under the constitution that was voted for by the Iraqi Public that the political parties had no control over the right was given to different municipalities to for together into semi autonomous areas under a Federal Iraqi Republic. Now the problem is that under Saddam and small group of Sunni had all the power, now under this constitution this would change as the main oil reserves are in areas dominated by Shia in the South of the Country and the Kurds in the North, with very little resources in the central Sunni controlled area. They are now loosing the wealth and the power which is why they have obstructed the process so much and no matter how much the powers that be try and placate them it is not going to be resolved.

I have seen first hand the quality of the Army and there is a completely lack of any effort by the vast majority of the “soldiers”, they do not despite intensive training any comprehension of what it means to be in an effective Military unit. You have rampant corruption within the officer corp, bullying and a complete and utter lack of any common sense. The cases of negligent discharge are high due to their complete lack of discipline, it is very common for Iraq Soldiers to literally shoot themselves in the foot because they have not had proper control of their weapon.

They take no pride in their uniform or appearance, they may wear combat trousers, a dirty looking t-shirt and flip flops and think this is acceptable. You would never get in any Western Military Mess hall any member of their military being able to do this.

You would often find in any competent military force anywhere in the world that after training has finished of the soldiers have gone back to barracks, that they would often be polishing boots, kit weapons, but not so in the Iraqi Military, they go around setting fires, stealing, shitting everywhere including in empty buildings on base of screwing each others brains out for a bit of “fiki fiki” even with “soldiers” who are of school age. They can not act like soldiers on base, so how can they act like soldiers in the field when it comes to fighting the Insurgency.

After the major US operations to clean Fulluja of Insurgents control of the Security in the City was handed over to the Iraqi Military as part of a transition, due to their competency the city is almost as bad as it was before the US went in.

Well down in Basra, the esteemed local government have decided to start cooperating with the British Forces, wonder how long it is going to be before the next raid on the Militia’s were the Governors cronies are arrested like the last time.

Now back in the UK, I haven’t bothered letting the gimps know on ps.com that I have left, after all some of the twats actually believed that I made the whole thing up about working in Iraq, do they think I am as screwed up in the head as they are????. For those readers who have checked out the site, I must apologise on behalf of all the conscientious, competent, dedicated and with a sound mental state police officers both regular and Special Constable in the UK, they are not all like some of the people on the forum.

Now if any of you are sad enough to want to do it there are some threads on there that the moderators call “bash the moderators” threads, now all this is a member of the forum raising a concern about the actions of a moderator of policy, now no matter how justified the person is in their complaint it will always be condoned by the other moderators and their host. There is one moderator on there who quite happily posts sarcastic and unprofessional comments but as far as the host goes he can do no wrong.

Now there was one incident on there, a member was put on restricted posts ( which means their posts have to be vetted by a moderator) because he dared to have an opinion that was different from the Ultra Liberal Host, now this member would make posts, it would be approved by one moderator when the Obnoxious one (Whopper MacBig), would then remove the posts without any notification, when this was challenged the host said that each moderator had their own style of moderation. Does this not reflect on their policing. As a police officer you do not have a choice as to which laws you enforce, you enforce them all, you can not have a situation were one officer enforces a law and the other ignores it. Now in one such “bash the moderator” thread several members put their justified complaints on the open forum with the opportunity at the end for the host to answer the comments. Can anyone guess the response from the host?.............

Yep you guessed it, complete and utter white wash, every single complaint was swept under the carpet and all his moderators were complete exonerated.

Now another tactic that is employed by the moderators is manipulative posting, now by this I mean that for certain members they will post in such a way to elicit a response that makes the poster appear in a negative light, or they will deliberately edit someone’s post to say something completely different or they will resort to spinning your comment out of context, all this so they can help compile dossiers on member in their private members area, which they forward to professional standards departments which they have done to at least three people I know of.

Now there was an incident quite recently were my comments were deliberately taken out of context, my reply on the public thread was:

This is the last time I will say this, DO NOT twist my words to mean something I didn’t say, I find it quite underhand and inappropriate for a police site, especially from a moderator. On that not I am not going to continue with this thread.

It is because of this type of behaviour that I save copies of the page.

Now I wasn’t surprised when I got a reply from the host, Lord Vader (delusions of grandeur? or narcissistic personality disorder?):

Your MO (modus operandi) is basically to state your opinion, then put your head down and continually re-state it, ignoring all reasoned debate. When the going gets a bit tough for you, you start bleating about censorshop and complain that people are twisting your words. You're officially a forum bore!

Here I see that yet again you are making accusations against my moderators, and some sort of veiled threat relating to saving copies of pages.

I suggest that if you don't like the way the PoliceSpecials forum is run, you vote with your feet (well, keyboard actually) and visit other forums. Offduty, UKPoliceonline and Police999 all have busy forums where I am sure you will find a willing audience. Or you could always set up your own forum and moderate to your heart's content - try www.Invisionboard.com, it's very good software.

OR (and this is just a crazy off the wall idea) you could try listening to other people's points of view and be a bit more grown up about the fact that not everyone agrees with you.

Sadly though, I imagine you will see this PM as yet more evidence of some great conspiracy against you and will be saving it away for some future use. Ah well.

Best regards,

It is for this reason that I am quite ashamed that these people are walking the streets of the United Kingdom as police officers.