I will weigh in with my observations based on experience:

March 1998 PAC Site B/Ali Al Slem AB, KU: While constructing and guarding a Patriot Missile Site during DESERT THUNDER I, I take two of my squads over to Ali Al Salem AB to get a hot meal (we haven't had one in about 35 days, other than T-rats). Come up to the first chow hall we find, when we beigin to enter, I am informed that the facility is only for USAF personnel and that we need to go the Army Chow Hall. Find the Army Chow Hall (just set up) and receive MRE's.

June 2002 PAFB/FT Carson, CO: My Company was providing the FORSCOM Fly-Away Heavy Immediate Ready Company (Tanks/Bradleys/men via C-17/C-5). My vehicles and pallets are in a hanger on the flightline. I have my men providing guards. On a Sunday morning at 1030 AM I receive a call from my BDE executive office wanting to know why the USAF security police at PAFB have called him to reprt that civillians are crawling around my equipment. I put on my uniform drive to PAFB and ask my guards what the hell was going on. One of my guards gave a tour of the equipment to two off-duty USAF SP's and their kids. The off-duty SP's were the civilians that SP office called my higher about. So instead going over and asking what was goign on, the USAF P's assumed the worst and called my BDE HQ (they had my home number as well, but why solve problems at the lowest level possible).

MAY 2, 2003 Ouja, IZ: 4ID is in the Tikrit area. There is very little in the way of air going on. Things arebusy, but not busy enough to involve the Air Force. The BN S-3 asks the CCT, who are attached to the battalion, if they would like to help out in the TOC, namely many radios and such since they aren't doing much at the time. The AF NCO's think it would be cool because they are bored out of their minds. The AF Captain (A-10 driver, '97 USAFA grad) tells the BNCDR and S-3 in front of the rest of us that he and his men were to highly trained to do that sort of thing, and that they would not help man the TOC. It didn't go well, and the AF NCO's ended up feeling really bad for their ALO putting them in a bad spot.

Since Saddam was on the lose in the area, there was a level of violence out of the locals that did not receive much news until late in 2003. The paintbrush that 4ID gets painted with, tends to be held by journalists who did spend much time in the units AO. Nobody did things perfectly in 2003, but there appears to be a lot of criticism by writers who never spent a lot of time up there.

September 2005, Taji, IZ: USAF provides MiTT personnel to serve as advisors to Iraqi Army Base Defense Units (BDU). The team is led by an AF Captain (USAFA grad again). The BDU has responsibility for the perimeter and the ECP's and a certain distance out from the perimeter (1-2 K's). AF Captain says that his team will not take part in any activities that involve going outside the wire, and he determines that the ECP is outside the wire. The reult is that the other MiTT personnel on the camp are having to spend their not out on ops with theri own IA soldiers babysitting the BDU Iraqis at an ECP because this AF Captain says it is not his lane. In a nu7t sheel, Army/USMC/Navy MiTTs who are responsible for other Iraqi untis on the camp (meaning training/ops) are having to spend their time helping the BDU Iraqis that are on the gate, while the USAF advisor team does little else.

There are plenty of good people in the USAF, the problem tends to be that the USAF is kind of like the kid with nicest toys in the sandbox, he wants to play with everybody else as an equal, but he has some issues with sharing.

For the record both of great uncles were B-17 drivers in the ETO. Scheinfurt-regensburg/Cologne?Berlin, etc. Multiple DFC's.