And a Good Day

Riding the Chai High right now . . . it is 11PM or so here and I can't sleep. I am very sensitive to caffeine and in Iraq, Chai (tea) is drunk like water. Every time I sit down with the general the Chai comes out. Today was a two cupper, but it was one heckuva day.

The day started off kind of slow, nice little 40 minuter on the treadmill. After that we started rolling on the road. We did some coordination at one of the FOBs, had some lunch and went on back to our COP. Right when we were getting ready to go do another visit I got a call from the general and he wanted to see me. After a quick frago we hit the brigade headquarters and saw what a good day looked like for the National Police.

As we pulled up the soldiers were unloading LITERALLY A TON, OVER TWO THOUSAND POUNDS of C-4 and about 500 more pounds of powdered C-4. I just sat there and stared for a while. To be honest, I had never seen that much explosive in one area. The NP were literally bouncing with joy for two reasons. First, if you remember from my last blog, their comrade was killed by an IED that was made with either C-4 or some sort of home made explosive. Second, most of the IEDs that are made in Bagdhad nowadays are made from either C-4 or a home made explosive. This discovery took over a ton of IED materiel off of the streets of Bagdhad and away from Iraqi citzens and coallition forces. Pretty sweet day.

The sweetest part of the day was that local Sons of Iraq found the cache of explosives. The Sons of Iraq are local military aged men that prior to this month the US Military had hired as local watchmen. This month, control of the Sons of Iraq transferred to the Iraqi military. There has been a lot of concern about this and whether or not they would be effective. In this area, they are on it. Pretty cool to watch.

How did all of this go down? Basically, the Sons of Iraq had found a smaller cache of explosives two days ago in the vicinity of this cache and decided to keep looking around. They came across an area where someone had done some digging and started poking through the dirt and JACKPOT. The neighborhood watch, the guys that were shooting at coalition forces two years ago were instrumental in finding over a ton of IED making explosives. They called the NP and local coallition forces and the rest is history.

The general that I work with has his own press corps, two cameramen (I call them the soldiers that walk backwards) that follow him around and shoot footage of the operations that are conducted and the NP in action. They also do a lot of filming of him in action, which is pretty cool, but also unnerving because I am standing right next to him (Just ask mom, I hate having my picture taken). Today, they shot video of the cache spread out on the ground, lined up as neatly as you can line up a ton of plastic explosives, and sent it off to Bagdhad. Within two hours, the discovery was on the Iraqi equivalent of CNN. The general is all over this counter-insurgency stuff. He has a great relation with the sheiks who head up the Sons of Iraq, as well as the local govenors and mayors.

A very good day.