Today was our first "real day" in Iraq. The 40 day string of no incidents was broken this morning in a bad way. One of the National Police vehicles was hit by an IED and an Iraqi National Police soldier was killed, two were wounded. The IED was on one of the routes that a lot of coalition re-supply missions go on, but we think the insurgents were targeting the Iraqi National Police - - the size of the charge was very small for an IED (about 20lbs) and it was put in a place where the National Police normally park their truck when they go patrol through a vehicle.
Up to this point, the National Police had done a great job keeping that route clear, now I suspect that area is going to get a lot of attention, whether they wanted it or not.
We went to the site with the General (my counterpart), and he got right to work with the local sheiks and Sons of Iraq leaders. We followed up two leads, but no other clues were found, but we will keep working with the NP to find out who did it. In a situation like this the standard Iraqi answer up front is "I didn't see anything or anyone . . . " until the heat starts to get cranked up. Then folks start to talk. I suspect there will be some good leads and solid evidence in the next few days.
Iraq is going to have a few more bad years, but there are a lot of folks that are plain tired of all of this and want to get their lives going again. Those are the folks that are imporant. Anyway, just wanted to blog it up, normally I keep the blog light but today was a different sort of day.
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