American Sniper - Boekje Pienter

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And, for the record, it doesn’t bother me that SEALs don’t have
big sendoffs or fancy homecomings. We are the silent professionals;
we’re covert operators and inviting the media to the airport is not in
the program.
Still, it’s nice to be thanked every so often for doing our job.
IRAQ
A lot had happened in Iraq since I left in the spring of 2003. The
country had been liberated from Saddam Hussein and his army with
the fall of Baghdad on April 9 of that year. But a variety of terrorist
forces either continued or began fighting after Saddam was deposed.
They fought both other Iraqis and the U.S. forces who were trying to
help the country regain stability. Some were former members of Saddam’s
army and members of the Ba’athist Party that Saddam had
headed. There were Fedayeen, members of a paramilitary resistance
group the dictator had organized before the war. There were small,
poorly organized groups of Iraqi guerrillas, who were also called
Fedayeen, though, technically, they weren’t connected with Saddam’s
organization. Though nearly all were Muslim, nationalism rather than
religion tended to be their primary motive and organizing principle.
Then there were the groups organized primarily around religious
beliefs. These identified themselves as mujahedeen, which basically
means “people on jihad”—or murderers in the name of God. They were
dedicated to killing Americans and Muslims who didn’t believe in the
brand of Islam that they believed in.
There was also al-Qaeda in Iraq, a mostly foreign group that saw
the war as an opportunity to kill Americans. They were radical Sunni