[taranaki]

Glad your cousin made it home safe.

Your story repeatedly uses the term Iraqi to describe the people your cousin was fighting.Has the practice of labelling all those who resist the occupation as 'insurgents' or 'terrorists' ceased?

The way that you tell it, he was fighting against the very people he was sent to liberate.Your story indicates that there were probably 20 or more people in the building.Your cousin, his group of 13, the major, and sundry other soldiers.If they were outgunned by Iraqis, the resistance movement is more organised than the authorities would like us to believe. This is not the work of 'an isolated pocket of insurgents' ,this is beginning to look like a platoon.
If the war had been everything that it was claimed to be,the WMD would have been captured, the insurgents routed,Bin Laden and Hussein would have been captured and tried, and the new Iraqi government would be running its own affairs from the safety of the popular support of its liberated citizens.

I have nothing but the highest praise for those still working in appalling conditions in Iraq.They are doing their duty as best they can. However, it is clear from your story that the reality of soldiering in Iraq is vastly different to the bullshit put out by the suits that sent them there.