Roughnecks

"Mosul, Iraq
There is a hidden passion for Chuck Norris among some of the troops. His name seems to appear in every corner of Iraq—especially in outhouses. Sometimes lurid, mostly unprintable, always funny.

The Latest:

Chuck Norris’ tears cure cancer.

Too bad he never cries.

Chuck Norris, the workingman of action movies, remains an improbable icon. Maybe it’s those unquestionable martial arts skills, and the respect for them which he demonstrates by not padding his films with slick special effects and sarcastic slogans, but with hard kicks and punches.

Recently, while observing missions in and around Baghdad, I got to talk with Colonel Steve Townsend, the commander of 3-2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team, one of the nails pulled from Mosul and pounded into action elsewhere. His Strykers had been involved in the search for four American soldiers who had been kidnapped. When that ended sadly, his Strykers were deployed to the unfolding battle in Najaf.

In a sharp fight that most likely will never be properly told (too much war, too few writers), Colonel Townsend recalled walking on the battlefield and seeing body after enemy body—in the end there would be more than 250 of corpses—and those dead bodies were wearing full combat gear. Few people seemed to notice that battle, and so the daily twosies and threesies of dead terrorists in Mosul go largely uncounted. At least, in our media.

An Iraqi TV-man told me that terrorists in Mosul have been threatening journalists for underreporting American and Iraqi Police and Army deaths. The terrorists seem to be convinced they are killing us by the hundreds, something the rest of the world would realize if only the media would “correctly” report it. Yet it’s the ISF and Coalition who are killing terrorists and criminals by the hundreds, with largely the same complaint about inaccurate media coverage. If the terrorists weren’t so barbaric, and increasingly lethal, all this thin skin about bad press might be comical. Chuck Norris knows there is no honor among insurgents quibbling over the body count when their most frequent targets are civilians just going about their lives."
Michael Yon