Message From Iraq

I recieved this from a friend stationed in Iraq. Just thought I would pass it on.
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Hello All -

The News Tribune (Tacoma, WA) is sending a reporter and photographer to Iraq to spend a few weeks with 81st Brigade soldiers. In reading the current story about their upcoming stay, I found that the News Tribune has a web page where stories about my unit are collected. You may have to register for a free subscription to the on-line paper, but there should be some good insights into life here at LSA Anaconda and elsewhere in Iraq over the next few weeks if you want an objective perspective.

http://www.tribnet.com/news/iraq/81st/

Let me know if you read anything that you have questions about and I'll try to fill in the details. Sorry I haven't had the inspiration for a more personal update on life here the past few weeks. Many of you know I returned home for a couple of weeks in late May to be with Anne while she had a scheduled surgery. I arrived back here on June 13th to find that the temperatures had really climbed while I was back in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Most mornings it is over 100 degrees before 10:00 AM. The afternoon high temps are consistently 115-120, and it only "cools" off to about 85 over night. Funny that is about the high for Seattle on these nice summer days! It was surprisingly a little cooler yesterday and you could actually feel the difference. I never thought I'd say, "It's not quite as warm today as it was yesterday!" when it was 108 degrees.

The legal business here is steady providing advice and counsel to the commander and dealing with soldier misconduct. We've had a couple of guys who decided to have patches and devices sewn on their uniforms that they didn't earn. One was wearing a Ranger tab, which is a huge 'no-no' and any Ranger who earned his would willingly rip the tab and the arm to which it is attached right off the body of an unauthorized wearer. The other guy was wearing a combat patch for a division that last saw action in Korea and was de-activated in the early '60s before the guy was even born. If we could just charge the offense of "stupidity" we could get rid of most of the other articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. I don't remember if I reported about the theft of two 9mm pistols while we were at Ft. Irwin, but the thieving soldier's wife found them in a duffle bag at her house and called the sherrif. Apparently, the relationship between the soldier and his wife was already on the wane and his ticket home will likely involve about a two-year layover at Ft. Leavenworth. Shakespeare was right. "Hell hath no fury...."

The work hours are starting to fall into a bit more of a routine, too. I've been working out early three mornings a week and am in the office about 8:00 where the first priority is to make up a fresh pot of coffee! I've been waiting to go to dinner until about 7:00 because the sun starts to go down and you can almost tolerate the walk to the chow hall. We've given up walking in the middle of the day unless absolutely necessary. I'm back in the office for an hour or so after dinner, but usually just to check e-mail from the states and Anne and I have been using an Army-sponsored Instant Messenger to chat. The 11 hour time difference from Washington limits the hours that we are awake at the same time, but we've managed to connect up in the morning and evening whenever possible. The computer network seems to be more reliable than it was when we first arrived, but it occasionally just drops out...which I guess is no different than internet connections anywhere else in the world.

We are all waiting (is it eagerly or anxiously?) to see how the June 30 transfer of power to the interim Iraqi government will affect things here. There are several structural changes in the works with the re-constitution of the Iraqi armed forces, including re-naming the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (ICDC) the Iraqi National Guard. We have a battalion of ICDC here at Anaconda that my unit has been training and working with, so there will be some change there. Otherwise, we are watching the news along with the rest of the world with the strong hope that the Iraqi people who want self-governance and a free society will be more successful than those who want to dominate everyone else.

Not much else newsworthy from here, so I'll wrap this up.

Take care.