An update from Ed

It's now been just over a month since we left Ft Dix (and almost 4 since we were mobilized...that's like1/3 of the way through. :-) ) In that time we spent about 4 days in Kuwait with enough to keep us busy for maybe 8 hours total, so we all got very good at foosball. Then we flew up to COB ( Contingency Operating Base, the new term for Base) Speicher which is outside Tikrit and north of Baghdad.

This is Saddam's home town but it's like 90% Sunni so it's mostly quiet. Also we have a gigantic balloon up in the sky with all kinds of nifty cameras that can see everything for miles, day or night. Most of the bad guys know this (acts of violence noticeably increase when the balloon is taken down for maintenance, and decreases immediately when it's put back in the air) so they generally don't do anything dumb. I say most tho because every once in a while some poor schmuck will try his luck. Some knucklehead the other day parked his truck by the side of the road, took out a shovel and started digging inside a culvert under a main road. As one of the bad guy techniques du jour is to place large amounts (several hundred pounds) of explosive inside culverts under the road and wait for a vehicle to drive over it, this immediately got the attention of a lot of people. They watched him for awhile, realized he was up to no good when he started to pull stuff out of his truck and putting it in the culvert, and sent a rather large rocket his way. The rocket won. No more poor schmuck bad guy. Unfortunately, most of the dumb ones have already weeded themselves out (natural selection during a war usually operates very quickly) so mostly we're left with the insanely devious ones at this point. Can't really talk about how devious, because we don't want them to know that we know, but wow, if they put half the effort they put into killing us into making their country better this place would be awesome.

In happier news, you may have heard on the news about efforts at Sunni and Shia reconciliation. Our area is one of the places where we are focusing on that type of effort, with some success. Hopefully it's sustainable for the long run. Also, I've gotten to travel a bit since getting here. I went down to Baghdad for a few days and met with some State Department people. Got to help out with a regional governors conference attended by all the important people from our area as well as Gov't of Iraq (GoI) reps such as the Deputy Prime Minister. I don't speak Arabic and I don't have enough clout to rate one of the translator headsets so I'm not sure what specifically was agreed to but all the people I talked to said it was the best, most productive meeting they'd ever had.

Also went up to Mosul and just got back yesterday. Met with some State Department types up there and found out they have many projects/missions ongoing helping the Iraqis get an economy up and running and helping them take charge of their local government. We're going to help them out with some video and picture acquisition and maybe do up a few stories for them. This is only our exit strategy (getting the Iraqis to take over running their affairs), not like it's important or anything, and their public affairs section up in Mosul consists of one of the Foreign Service Officers with his personal point and shoot digital camera. (Don't get me wrong, State has a vast and well trained Public Affairs/Public Relations team, but that's in DC. In Mosul they have an overworked guy and his tiny camera. wow.) Of course, when it's all said and done,"Iraqis" are very regionally and tribally oriented. It remains to be seen if any of this reconciliation or improvement in local governance will translate into any progress in creating an national identity.

Gotta go for now. Take care. Ed