#1
sing hallelujah
Post rating: +

At the hotel the night before MEPS I already started to realize how stupid the Army was. One guy got arrested for getting drunk and smashing up the hotel bar. Another guy got beat up for trying to rape some girl. The next day was even better. TWO people failed the breathalyzer, that we were told a dozen times would happen first thing in the morning. Dozens of people got lost, despite the walls having giant colored lines showing exactly where everything was. A few people didn't listen to their recruiters and didn't wear underwear, so they were sent home during the physical. Some forgot essential paper-work, and some were caught flat out lying about criminal and health history.

The absolute best were those who failed the drug test. I went to MEPS in a group of six. Our recruiter had been telling us for weeks that MEPS would have a drug test. He said he didn't care if we smoked pot, snorted coke, or shot heroin in between our toes. Just be clean for MEPS which we will all go to on X day. We have nearly two months notice. Three people failed.

Nothing prepared me for how stupid the people in basic would be. Even 5 and a half years later I will still remember the name of our biggest idiot. Gross. His last name was Gross, and it fucking fit perfectly. He smelled like pig shit, looked like a Neanderthal and a Chimpanzee had a baby, and that baby had downs syndrome and when it was very young had the top of it's skull flattened. He would go a week without a shower until we drug him into it. Eventually people resorted to setting up a roster of people to make his bed because holy SHIT he couldn't do that. He couldn't do push-ups, sit-ups or run. He couldn't start an IV, mop a floor, or shoot. He couldn't even was his fucking clothes without flooding the entire laundry room. He was just...dumb.

Gross did a lot of dumb things. He flagged the Drill Sergeants on every range. He fell out of runs and got lost in the woods (WE NEVER RAN IN THE WOODS ONCE). But his crowning achievement, his finest moment of idiocy, his fucking Austerlitz or retardation was warrior forge.

For those of you who weren't army or don't remember warrior forge is pretty much the final test of basic. You do a 20k ruck march, (MY UNIT TOTALLY DID THIRTY FIVE THOUGH) react to ambushes and IEDs along the way, and then cap off the night with a night movement exercise. There's a sand pit that has barbed wire about two or so feet off the ground. There's a few obstacles, hills, tank traps etc, and a machine gun fires rounds over your heads. Way over your heads of course, you could stand on Shaq's shoulders and be fine. All you had to do, was crawl. From one end to the other. Just fucking crawl, a baby can do that. Gross couldn't.

Gross panicked because he was being shot at. He tried to stand up and became tangled in the barb wire. Instead of just sitting still like the drill sergeants said he had a better idea. He tried to take his uniform off. In doing so he mangled his fat paws on the wire, and sliced up his piggish physique. I remember watching him scream and flail, desperately trying to get naked because that's what made sense to him. Gross didn't pass basic because he couldn't do push-ups, sit-ups, or run. When he finally left Fort Sill it was nearly two years later, being chaptered out of the Army for being a fat waste of space.

I have quite a few stories I can share later about Gerry. I'll sum Gerry up like this: He was too stupid to drive a Humvee so he was fired from being platoon sergeant driver. He was too stupid to use a radio so he was fired from that. He was too stupid to stand guard in a tower, open a gate, or move ammunition. Gerry brought us chow when we were on long missions. And even better, after being kicked out for over-weight Gerry refused to use his GI Bill. Because it's socialism.
#2
sing hallelujah
Post rating: ~
During the FTX, there was a frog that hopped out of the stream in the middle of our tent site. I jokingly said 'hey Hilton, five bucks to eat that frog'. Motherfucker reached over, grabbed it and hamfisted it into his maw, chewed and swallowed. About ten people saw it happen and everyone had the most horrified look on their faces.
#3
sing hallelujah
Post rating: ~
My platoon was pulled up at this Iraqi drug smugglers tent. We had already searched his shit and were waiting on lift for the prisoners. While we were waiting, I pissed in a bottle and threw it out in the desert. One of the scouts was bulshitting with one of the drivers and somehow the driver got dared into drinking my bottle of piss. It got negotiated into 1 swig of piss that he swallows and one swig that he swishes and spits out for $1000. He uncaps, exclaims "mmm vodka" and starts drinking. I see some dribble down his face and turn around gagging. He was making like $150 a day or something.
#4
sing hallelujah
Post rating: +
Or the mechanic who wore contacts in Iraq, splashed battery acid, rinsed his eyes out for 10 seconds with water and wondered why his eyes hurt so much 30 minutes later. I guess having your contacts melt and fuse with your eyeballs would do that to you.

Or, finally, all the fucking people huffing air duster.
#5
sing hallelujah
Post rating: ~
I work with a highly motivated fellow Staff Sergeant - also an intel guy. He's known for being a complete idiot, yet he somehow has a ridiculous GT score and a 99 ASVAB. Anyways, we were holding a high level brief for a very senior audience and on the screen was a map of the Korean peninsula. At the conclusion of the brief, the briefer asked if anyone had any questions and Staff Sergeant Fucktard raised his hand and asked, dead serious, "What's that blue stuff?"

The blue stuff was the ocean.
#6
sing hallelujah
Post rating: ~
My liberty party somewhere (possibly Florida) gets tangled up with a group of our cooks, which allows me to observe this. We run into a gaggle of girls who are perhaps a little snaggletoothed but still plenty fuckable, and a dude fucking striking cook jumps ahead and starts chatting them up. They notice he's got a wedding ring on.

"Oh, my wife's dead." <feigns sad expression badly.>

"Oh, I'm sorry." one of the snaggles says. "What did she die of?"

<thinks on his feet like only a cook striker can> "Cancer. Uh... Prostate cancer."
#7
sing hallelujah
Post rating: ~
- Anyway, in Korea the CO decides that the field grades and himself will tent with the junior officers. One 1stLt has a little to much to drink, and after playing a game of gay-chicken with another officer, he stumbles back to the tent and proceeds to piss all over the CO's gear, and then falls pants down on to the sleeping Ops-O behind him. Keep in mind this is in pitch blackness. Rumor is that the guy who got pegged for this actually took the fall for the actual culprit, since he planned on getting out anyway.
#8
sing hallelujah
Post rating: ~
Had a dude who luckily had just transferred off of our boat get caught for statutory rape etc. Apparently he was inviting 15 year old boys over to his house and getting them drunk, then fellating them. When his house got searched they found 60+ firearms, about half of which were supposedly illegal in the state of CT. When the news ran the story they made a point of showing his truck in front of his house with the big Confederate flag filling the back window.

We had a delayed deployment for over a week (too broke to go to sea, too dumb to fake it) and the day we pulled out, the top half of the local paper front page was Mr Dixie Blowjob up there, who as I said had luckily transferred, so even though it said he was Navy it didn't list our command. However, the bottom half of the front page was one of our guys. Some dumb TM striker had taken advantage of the delay to go see his (very underage) girlfriend. Apparently her mom caught them in the bed so he panicked, punched the mom in the face (classy) and jumped out the window. Somehow in his confused escape he also rammed a cop car, giving the paper a great picture. His biggest mistake was that he thought if he could just get back to base, he'd be safe, because federal property and all. So he was sitting in his barracks for all of maybe 10 minutes before the MPs swung by to haul him off to the hoosegow.
#9
[account deactivated]
#10
Post rating: +++++
I can't believe I'm talking about this, but last deployment we had a secret contest to see who could save up the most jizz discreetly. That was the main rule, so joes took it to crazier and crazier levels as people tried to "discover" their stashes. The first ones were easy enough, stacks of jizz bottles under the bed, jizz bottles in lockers, etc. One of the joes just jizzed into his sheets and let it dry, he had half of his woobie crusty before his roommate "discovered" what he was doing. The most creative was one who strengthened his cum gland enough that could jizz onto the ceiling of his CHU and let it dry there. We only "discovered" that one when someone noticed and had him scrape off a few flakes to confirm. But the fucked up one, the truly fucked up one, were the two medic buddies. Apparently, they took Tramadol from the aidstation and made the black roommate take a slight overdose daily so he would be constipated. The mexican guy came in his mouth every night for 17 days and the black guy didn't shit. They used the 17 days to "discover" all the other stashes so they would finally win the game and the bet. When your stash gets "discovered" you were forced to eat your cum no matter what form it was in. Many were forced to down jizz jugs, some had to chew up sticky cum balls, some wrung sponges of old cum into their mouth and others had to scrape flakes of cum down their gullets. Of course, the winners got bragging rights and all the losers had to eat their stash. So on the 18th day of our deployment, the medics fed the black dude Cephulac and "forced" us to eat his cum. Yeah, I use quotes on the "forced" because, yes, we all entered this game willingly. But no one expected to be eating 17 days worth of cum and shit from a black dudes anus in a hot, stuffy, sweaty CHU in July. All of us puked several times until we couldn't puke anymore, but afterwards we felt more disciplined. Combat missions seemed almost easy in comparison, our refrain during tough operations was usually "better than cumstipation," which quickly became the unofficial Battalion motto for the Rolling Thunder Battalion in Tikrit, Iraq. RIDE HARD!
#11
sing hallelujah
Post rating: ~
one day some important business type dude parks his brand-fucking-new, still has plastic on the back seats Mercedes about 20 feet away from the gate. He gets out, ignores the gigantic fuckoff signs and walks over the border into Syria.

We ask around if anyone knows this dude. Nobody does. We don't have any method of towing him. So the guards takes the Abrams we're using as a gate and baha that mother flat. Then we use an ACE and push it into the nearby wadi.

Dude comes back two days later asking where his car went, the villagers explain what happened, and he comes to us to complain. The dude speaks perfect English. He says he thought the signs were to keep criminals away, and him being a respectable businessman did not have to worry.

We booted him out without a claims card.
#12
Post rating: ~
lol
#13
sing hallelujah
Post rating: ~
So we're out building a berm at a new site at like 0200 and something isn't right. The paper maps had us right were we were supposed to be. The FBCB2 had us about a mile on the wrong side of the border. My XO, believing himself to be the second coming of Patton himself, said that we were fine and to continue on mission. This was his project, after all.

About 0230 rolls around and my gunner says

'uh...SGT Vasudus, a BMP is the wheeled ruskie APC right?'
'...no, why?'
'so what's wheeled with a 50 on it?'
'...that's a BRDM...are you studying for the board or something?'
'see those lights way out to the west? like 50 of those BRDM things are coming right for us'

Welp.

I immediately hop up there and look down the nightvision scope to see what the christ he was talking about. Sure as shit, there was a huge fuckoff wheeled and light track force heading for us at high speed. At least two whole company+ sized elements.

I tell my XO that we're on the wrong side of the border and the Syrians aren't very happy about it. He says they're wrong and we'll be fine, and he's gonna call in some air support to scare them off. He relays his coordinates and my TOC informs him that the FBCB2 is correct.

XO comes screaming over the radio 'PACK YOUR SHIT! PACK YOUR SHIT! WE'RE ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE BORDER'
#14
Post rating: ~

kinch posted:

I can't believe I'm talking about this, but last deployment we had a secret contest to see who could save up the most jizz discreetly. That was the main rule, so joes took it to crazier and crazier levels as people tried to "discover" their stashes. The first ones were easy enough, stacks of jizz bottles under the bed, jizz bottles in lockers, etc. One of the joes just jizzed into his sheets and let it dry, he had half of his woobie crusty before his roommate "discovered" what he was doing. The most creative was one who strengthened his cum gland enough that could jizz onto the ceiling of his CHU and let it dry there. We only "discovered" that one when someone noticed and had him scrape off a few flakes to confirm. But the fucked up one, the truly fucked up one, were the two medic buddies. Apparently, they took Tramadol from the aidstation and made the black roommate take a slight overdose daily so he would be constipated. The mexican guy came in his mouth every night for 17 days and the black guy didn't shit. They used the 17 days to "discover" all the other stashes so they would finally win the game and the bet. When your stash gets "discovered" you were forced to eat your cum no matter what form it was in. Many were forced to down jizz jugs, some had to chew up sticky cum balls, some wrung sponges of old cum into their mouth and others had to scrape flakes of cum down their gullets. Of course, the winners got bragging rights and all the losers had to eat their stash. So on the 18th day of our deployment, the medics fed the black dude Cephulac and "forced" us to eat his cum. Yeah, I use quotes on the "forced" because, yes, we all entered this game willingly. But no one expected to be eating 17 days worth of cum and shit from a black dudes anus in a hot, stuffy, sweaty CHU in July. All of us puked several times until we couldn't puke anymore, but afterwards we felt more disciplined. Combat missions seemed almost easy in comparison, our refrain during tough operations was usually "better than cumstipation," which quickly became the unofficial Battalion motto for the Rolling Thunder Battalion in Tikrit, Iraq. RIDE HARD!



guys are really weird sometimes

#15
Zinovievist-Trotskyist gang
Post rating: +
THANK YOU BASED GOD
#16
sing hallelujah
Post rating: ~
We had an O-3 come to our section after being relieved of command for lying about some property book accountability bullshit and then apparently doing horrible in a staff job. The guy was one of the most annoying, incompetent motherfuckers I have ever met in my whole entire life. He never completed a single task he was assigned, he listened to tons of AM right-wing talk radio and constantly argued about gun rights and other right-wing talking points, and above all was a complete and utter moron who failed spectacularly at life. His highlights included:

- Playing an excel-based video game on the deputy's SIPR computer. Once the IA folks in G6 found out about it they confiscated the deputy's laptop during our most important exercise.
- Masturbating in his office in Iraq.
- Getting caught having visited porn sites in his office on a commercial line by yours truly and my supervisor and somehow getting away with it.
- Generally fucking everything up and getting assigned to be the OIC of a section that drove around VIPs and served them coffee.

Despite all of that I watched him get promoted to Major. Good job Army.
#17
sing hallelujah
Post rating: ~
Toadie had not masturbated before. Not once. He was rather proud of this, at his 19 years of age. Never having busted a nut before, he was ready to go and shoot non-Christians (his words) over in the desert somewhere (also his words). Unfortunately, military life was not for Toadie.
Half way through basic, someone obviously convinces he should just go beat his meat. So he does. Shoots his load into a wadded up piece of toilet paper... then shows his squad leader with a huge shit eating grin on his face, even when he freaks out and threatens to beat his ass. He just wanders off and shows a bunch of other people, for whatever reason.

Toadie gets upset with someone about all his angsty bullshit, and as it turns out, it's another borderline retard shut in. The retard battle is grade fuckin' A. Toadie thought it was gonna be an easy fight cause this other kid was much smaller, but he got Toadie and smashed him into a wall locker, and gave him a bunch of body shots. Toadie, not to be embarrassed in front of his fellows, decides to fight dirty and bites him. Bites him hard enough to draw a steady stream of blood. Guy gets upset, throws him off back into the wall locker. Toadie falls, his adversary grabs him by the head and knees him right in the forehead. Dazed and confused, people break up the fight. Toadie has this egg sized bruise in the middle of his forehead for the next 2 weeks, and when questioned, claims he ran into a door.

...

So we get onto driving tanks around a closed course. It ain't hard, and a couple of guys show some real talent driving these tanks fast as fuck on the road course. These people were not Toadie. He creeps around the course at 10 miles an hour, weaving back and forth all over the place like an crazy woman's shit, the TC screaming at him for being a god damn idiot the entire time. When it comes time to park it, he doesn't even want him to do that. Just to pull up near the other tanks, and he will take it from there. Stop Toadie. Stop Toadie. STOP TOADIE. HOLY FUCK STOP THE FUCKING TANK TOADIE. Alas, Toadie forget what the brake is (the brake pedal, just like a car) and smashes one tank into another. Front skirt meets front skirt, and a lot of damage is done. He's in trouble for this, but it's coming up to about 3 weeks out, so they really don't want to kick him out.
#18
[account deactivated]
#19
Post rating: ~
Excellent. I was thinking to myself earlier today: "What I could really go for is 3,000 words by goons about their mundane lives." Can't wait to dive in and read all these interesting posts. Good Find.
#20
sing hallelujah
Post rating: ~
The East gate shares a road with the AZ state bypass for 2 highways to link up, speed limit is a very reasonable 55 mph, it's a 5 lane road that had just been resurfaced on the far lanes only, nothing huge, just a noticeable difference in surfaces due to the somewhat loose gravel. As we're driving on the bypass to get in through the gate, we get behind some asshole in a red Jeep Cherokee doing about 35mph while we're still atleast 3/4ths of a mile out from the gate itself.

My buddy literally says "Fuck this asshole" and just slams on the gas and drives around this moron going 20 under the limit and pops back in front of him by about a single car length, throwing the looser gravel up behind us as an incidental.

This guy starts laying on his horn, waving out of his window, looks like he's trying to tailgate a bit, whatever, at least his sorry ass is up to the speed limit now. We finally get past he last light and on to the bit of road right in front of the guardhouse by the gate and the guy pulls in to the shoulder, passes us, stops in front of us at the gate and demands the MPs arrest my buddy for "Endangerment." Turns out the guy is a fucking general driving in to work.

The MPs try to tell him that they can't do shit to us for anything that happened outside of their jurisdiction (ie the post) but he's just screaming and getting super mad the whole time. Also demands they deny us entry. He marches, I mean like fucking goose-stepping marches up to my buddy and starts saying he's gonna fuck his career etc, before my friend tells him he's a civilian who doesn't even work for a contractor. He's hearing none of it, still very mad.

Then I look at this asshole's name tape and a smile breaks out across my face that must have looked like that smile the Grinch got before he robbed those hippy goddam Who's blind. His name is Custer. He is in fact, General Custer. I'm a civilian now, not a Marine, not IRR, not even beholden to a government contractor. So I look this guy square in the goddamed eye and say these words that still feel me with a certain warmth when I remember them.

"You'd think the Army would have learned their lesson about promoting dude's named Custer after the last guy"

He lets out a primal yowl as he proceeds to try and drill a hole through me with telekinesis or some shit as he lunges toward me like a DI. He is then physically restrained by this poor bastard E-4 MP as they try to get him in the office to calm him down.
#21
sing hallelujah
Post rating: +
So who else put salt in the hand sanitizer to make alcoholic apple cider for fireguard?
#22
sing hallelujah
Post rating: +
Had a gulf war vet in my platoon in like '08 who was a specialist with a big break in service. He was in the fucking army when they introduced humvees for the first time. He ended up getting injured or whatever and kind of got pushed out of the platoon after he drunk dialed the platoon sergeant and called him a nigger.
#23
sing hallelujah
Post rating: ~
When I was working at Electronic Arts in the QA department, I had a new tester assigned to me for training. He said he was ex-military, which I initially liked because I've found ex-military guys to be generally less prone to simply not doing whatever the fuck I told them to do than your average Joe. But this dude was special. He would casually make fart noises whenever he felt like it-- when other people were talking, while he was just sitting around testing, etc. He talked about "In the army" a lot, especially when someone fucked up in any way, about how 'in the Army' they'd get smoked for that fuck-up, etc. He was also a lardy piece of crap but was really quick to talk about all the various women he'd boned all over the world-- including casually talking about whores and how to get the best value-for-money out of them. He had a bunch of insignia shit all over his desk and pictures of fighter planes and tanks and shit and he wore camo pants and had about five "ARMY" t-shirts. He tended to respond to any criticism with vague threats of physical violence that he'd immediately back away from if anyone was the least bit confrontational.
#24
[account deactivated]
#25
Post rating: ~
These own. Yeah buddy.
#26
Post rating: ~
#27
Kurdt
Post rating: +
i tried reading this thread but the op has no avatar
#28
Post rating: ~

wasted posted:



whoa, that looks gnarly

#29
Post rating: ~
why is the race of the anus relevant?
#30
sing hallelujah
Post rating: ~
Such as the following! Next up to bat is my former RTO.

He tells me 2 stories, completely umprompted; why you would tell someone these things is completely beyond me, but here we are.

Story #1, as related to me, by him: guy is going down on a girl when she queefs in his face. He feels some splatter, and assumes it's nothing to be concerned about. He changes his mind when he tastes something "out of the ordinary". Girl admits to having fucked RTO's brother earlier in the day, who didn't a) wear a condom or b) pull out upon finishing. He got a smattering of cum that was deposited earlier by his brother, which had time to fester inside this sure-to-be-exceptional specimen of humanity before she blew it out on his face, when he then got a sample of.

Story #2: rather tame. RTO ends up in the ER with a bath rail (like the one in some showers) up his ass after "falling" on it, and "he grabbed as he slipped and was falling" while in the shower.

A different note: one of my squad leaders came in one morning and declared " hey my wife helped me wax my butthole, who wants to see ?!" at least 5 people follow him into the room where we had our little company store. Snacks, energy drinks, some dip on occasion everything an infantry joe needs to keep going. He walks in there and within seconds everyone that piled in is piling back out with a look on their faces saying " DUDE THAT SHIT AIN'T RIGHT did it hurt very much?"
#31
Post rating: ~
just as comrade trotsky new, the army is the only thing which can deliver the proles from the exploits of capitalism.

mongosteen posted:

one day some important business type dude parks his brand-fucking-new, still has plastic on the back seats Mercedes about 20 feet away from the gate. He gets out, ignores the gigantic fuckoff signs and walks over the border into Syria.

We ask around if anyone knows this dude. Nobody does. We don't have any method of towing him. So the guards takes the Abrams we're using as a gate and baha that mother flat. Then we use an ACE and push it into the nearby wadi.

Dude comes back two days later asking where his car went, the villagers explain what happened, and he comes to us to complain. The dude speaks perfect English. He says he thought the signs were to keep criminals away, and him being a respectable businessman did not have to worry.

We booted him out without a claims card.


#32
D.C.
Post rating: ~
Haha Here's the post that finally got GAS CURES KIKES, one of GIP's charmingest superstars, banned.

Gas Cures KIKES posted:

hahaha epople

not sure id call them people

srsly

hitler was off mark with the jews but on target with the strategy is all im saying

who here would really get angry if we started giving sweet numerical tats to trannys free of charge, and rounding them up into camps outside of town that we kinda assume are bad but don't really wanna know "ahhh im just a baker here in the town of auschwitz, i only bake breads!!!" sorta defense ya know..

we wouldnt care man

bc the trannys are the only thing lower on the genocidal give 'o fuck than less photogenic african children and anything that prays to allah. if the trannys were all jewish then this wouldnt happen bc nobody, i mean not evne me, wants to look unironically anti semetic around companys that went to collage

look you could just be this randomn nigger mkilling in the name allah and jumping from roof to roof like a fucking monkey with yo bad ass velcro fucking shoes on but then you know what BAM you get a 5.56 to the dome and you just another b roll for some fucking sally struthers commercial

what im saying is that you cant cure nigger or islam but you can dress it up to at least make it fucking presentable

goddamn come omn

(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)


#33
[account deactivated]
#34
D.C.
Post rating: ~
We should thank god so many vets are rendered insensible by crippling chemical dependences every time He graces us with as choice a quote as this:


been thinking about picking up rosseta stone and learning some korean, but the kid working the rosseta stone kiosk at the mall looks like a child soldier from rwanda and honestly skinnies just sorta skeeve me out after i watched black hawk down

fun fact about that movie did you know that the dude they played up to be this super pog who went on to get a silver star and shit is doing a dime and a half at one of our correctional facilities because the only thing he loved fucking up more than somalians was underaged step children and shit.

that shits crazy man
#35
Post rating: +++++

Squalid posted:

Haha Here's the post that finally got GAS CURES KIKES, one of GIP's charmingest superstars, banned.

Gas Cures KIKES posted:

hahaha epople

not sure id call them people

srsly

hitler was off mark with the jews but on target with the strategy is all im saying

who here would really get angry if we started giving sweet numerical tats to trannys free of charge, and rounding them up into camps outside of town that we kinda assume are bad but don't really wanna know "ahhh im just a baker here in the town of auschwitz, i only bake breads!!!" sorta defense ya know..

we wouldnt care man

bc the trannys are the only thing lower on the genocidal give 'o fuck than less photogenic african children and anything that prays to allah. if the trannys were all jewish then this wouldnt happen bc nobody, i mean not evne me, wants to look unironically anti semetic around companys that went to collage

look you could just be this randomn nigger mkilling in the name allah and jumping from roof to roof like a fucking monkey with yo bad ass velcro fucking shoes on but then you know what BAM you get a 5.56 to the dome and you just another b roll for some fucking sally struthers commercial

what im saying is that you cant cure nigger or islam but you can dress it up to at least make it fucking presentable

goddamn come omn

(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)



Use your shift key!!! User is banned

#36
sing hallelujah
Post rating: ~
And what about Newsweek? Just weeks later, the magazine's cover story was "Saddam's War," which told stories of Iraqi military parades full of fighters

garbed in the familiar tan camouflage of the United States Army. Saddam has ordered thousands of uniforms identical, down to the last detail, to those worn by U.S. and British troopers. The plan: to have Saddam's men, posing as Western invaders, slaughter Iraqi citizens while the cameras roll for Al-Jazeera and the credulous Arab press.