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Anchorage Daily News
Stryker Brigade Staff Sgt. Joshua Lothspeich 1/23/2006
The Daily News has invited Alaska troops serving in the Middle East to write us. Stryker Brigade Staff Sgt. Joshua Lothspeich, a squad leader with Fort Richardson's 4-23 Infantry Regiment, is serving in Mosul and says things are different there than he expected. We're publishing these dispatches every Monday.
... I have always heard and been told that all Muslims and Iraqi people were bad. Right before I left Alaska, I took a class that had to do with religion, and history, which started to change that thought. Now after being here for the short time I realize it is not the religion or the people that are bad. Ninety-five percent of the people here are good and a good majority of those people just want to live their lives. A lot of the people that I talk to are very friendly and like us. None of the people here seem to think of us as infidels because we are not Muslim; that is all just stupid propaganda.
I have seen a lot of improvement to the city in my sector of Mosul, which I did not expect. Most of the U.S. forces here do not see it because they don't want to. [...]