OK, The Internet is back . . .

A brief moment in history:

Al Gore came by this morning and installed the internet here again, good guy. He gave us a quick rundown on global warming, beings how this is Iraq and it is over 100 degrees by 8 am we really didn't need that sort of briefing, but we listened patiently.

Ok, not really true, but we did fire the first guy that was setting up the civilian internet service here on COP Cashe South and the new guys seems to be more customer oriented.

The last few weeks have been mostly un-eventful (mostly harmless for you Douglas Adams fans . . .), there have been no IEDs, EFPs or rocket attacks. Just the normal patrolling, searching, meetings, talking to's and leader engagements.

BG E has been keeping busy with checking up on his operations and meeting sheiks. I am getting schooled on what a sheik really is . . . Apparently, there are fake sheiks running around. We had a meeting with one of the two big sheiks in our area, the sheik of the Al Dafey tribe. This is a Shia tribe, pretty big, lots of people, and the sheik of the tribe is pretty ticked off that a lot of "fake sheiks" are running around acting like they are in charge. Apparently, during the hard times, all of the big sheiks ran off to other countries, and now they are starting to come back. The big sheiks are trying to re-assert their power and take control of the population away from the fake sheiks. Here is what I have learned:

In order to be a sheik, you have to:

1. Have a historical lineage of sheiks.

2. Have at least 2,000 people under your care/control.

3. Be recognized by the other sheiks in the region.

We have two real sheiks, according to the rules. Sheik Sammi and Sheik Hatif. Sheik Hatif is the one that is getting upset the most, because the fake sheiks have taken control of the tribal support council. He feels that only true sheiks should be sitting on that council. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister has signed a letter appointing the fake sheiks (Sheik Q from earlier posts, is a fake sheik) to the council, so there isn't a legal leg for the old sheiks to stand on right now.

I just shake (no pun intended) my head and wonder how this country will progress past all of this. Now, you have the central government (which isn't really helping the people out here), the local government (which also isn't helping the people out very much), the fake sheiks on the tribal support council (not helping much) and now the "real" sheiks trying to grab some sort of power. To me it looks like a bunch of kids arguing over who is going to play, instead of adults sitting down and trying to work out the huge problems the area has. The only folks I can see that are trying to help folks out are the ISF (Iraqi Security Forces) and the US Forces. Sigh.

Soccer Tournament update:

We went to Shaab Stadium last weekend for the tournament, the first game was pretty close for a little while, but the other team got worn down in the second half and couldn't match the 3-1 NP team's speed, we ended up winning 3-1, but should probably have won 6 or 7-1, we missed 3 penalty kicks and hit the cross bars twice. That victory put us in the finals.

For the finals, BG Emad said he was a little concerned, the team we were playing was an Iraqi Police Patrol (kind of like traffic cops) unit and they, umm, had some players that might not have been in the unit. Of course, we had some players that technically were not in our unit so we didn't complain too much. It was a pretty close game, but their ringers were a little bit better than our ringers, and they won 2-0.

A couple of soccer tournament notes:

There was one female that played on our combined team, Specialist E from Naples, Florida. She was quite the hit with all of the players, they were fascinated that a female would step onto the field and play with them. On day two of the tournament, a radio reporter asked to interview here and let us know that she was the first female EVER to play soccer in Sha'ab Stadium. The stadium has been around since 1966, and she was the first. Kind of cool. She said all of the right things during her interview (no, I didn't know that I was the first . . . This is a great honor . . . I hope that other women are able to play . . . ) I got some photos of her playing, but everytime I tried to get shot of her on the sidelines she was smoking a cigarette, I didn't think that would be very inspirational. I will find some other photos from folks with better cameras and try to post those. There is really no way to verify that she was the first, but it is pretty cool to think about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Shaab_Stadium

Sha'ab stadium was kind of cool, but it was your basic all concrete stadium. I thought it was going to be hot as all get out, but most of the stands were in the shade so that helped out a lot. There was also a press box in there, with Uday Hussein's original couch in it. I took a seat in it just for history's sake and so I can ask folks at some social event whether or not they have sat in any of Uday Hussein's furniture.

For both soccer games we took two busloads of local hooligans and National Police shurta to the stadium, they were the only fans in the joint and were very vocal. The crew included a three or four piece band, any song they played was good enough to get up and dance for. They did get kind of quiet towards the end of the second game, though.

The stadium was a multipurpose stadium, it has an olympic sized track around the soccer field, which was pretty cool.Alls I could think about was spinning some quarter mile intervals during the game, but I didn't have my running shoes or fast shorts (for those of you that followed my Boston Marathon blog last year - - - I didn't bring the fastest shorts EVER here, but I did bring the pair that I ran the Boston Marathon in last year, they are pretty fast, just not the fastest shorts EVER).

Speaking of running, I hit the 30 mile a week mark last week. I had a couple of nice 7 milers, 5 miles worth of interval work and an 11 miler on Sunday. I have decided to violate one of the rules - - I run with my Zune MP3 player. That probably sets a pretty poor example, but to be honest, most of the time that I run, I am the only person out there running, and there is no traffic to speak of so, I just take the chance. With the civilian internet being back up I can download Car Talk and This American Life, two of my favorite radio shows. Those make the runs go a lot better.

I downloaded a training plan for the Army Ten Miler, which is 4 OCT 09. I probably won't be able to get to DC for the race, but who knows. If I do get a number in the deployed soldiers lottery, am able to get to the east coast by that weekend and find myself in DC, I want to be ready to run my favorite race.

Soccer Game and Achmed

What would a war be without a, without a, without a soccer game? Our higher headquarters, one of the brigades from FT Bragg, decided that it would be a great idea to have a soccer tournament with all of the Iraqi units teams playing, along with a few token US soldiers. Iraqis are pretty good at soccer, US guys are kind of good at soccer, so it was an OK idea . . . There are 8 Iraqi units in our area so the brigade set up a pretty simple single elimination tournament. We had to travel down south to play an Iraqi Army unit. I have seen home field advantages before (penn state vs. Nebraska, that penn state receiver was waaaaay out of bounds in 1982, but the home refs made sure he was in; and who can forget the florida state robbery in the 1993 Orange Bowl? Two Husker TDs called back, unsportsmanlike conduct when the fsu fans stormed the field with 15 seconds left?), but Iraqis take the the home field cake.


First half, 1-1 tie, pretty even match, our boys are more talented, but the Iraqi Army team has a lot of speed. First 3 mintues of the second half, the National Police score two quick goals, seems like the game is over. 30 minutes go by, the Iraqi Army gets a break and scores one, 3-2, no problems, only a few minutes left (the halfs were 30 minutes long), just lay back on defense and play keep away. 25 minutes later, the ref gives two of our players red cards for asking him how much time is left, so we are down to 9 players. 20 minutes later after it is obvious the Iraqi Army team isn't going to score, the ref finally blows the whistle and ends the game, a victory for the National Police.


Turns out the Iraqi Army unit had threatened the ref with arrest, unless they won. Kind of funny. Interesting story, one of the players that got a red card on our team was an American, he became an instant hero to the National Police. After the ref carded him, he went off the field, as soon as the ref turned his back, he went back on the field and played a few more minutes until the ref saw him, and chased him off the field with the his red card waving. Everytime I see him I call him Two Cards.


Achmed: BG Emad's father suprised him last week and brought his youngest son down from the big city to visit dad at work, it was pretty cool meeting three generations of the general.



All's Achmed (4 years old) wanted to do was drive one of our MRAPs:





Other notes:


Not sure if anyone reads the comments, but my brother-in-law, Wade, has decided to start the taunting early. He has thrown down the gauntlet on fantasy football this coming year, even trying to give me advice (?): Matthew Stafford. Yeah, right, rookie quarterback, Detroit Lions. Almost as good as drafting a kicker that didn't make a team . . . . Starting my research now.


Ice Cream:


One of the huge injustices of this mission is that the smaller bases, where most of the soldiers that get out and do stuff live, have small chow halls, with not the best amenities. While the big bases (FOBs) have palatial chow halls with great extras. One of the best extras is Baskin Robbins Ice Cream (chocolate, vanilla, cookies and cream, jamoca almond fudge, strawberry and pralines and cream). I have mentioned this before, Superman's favorite flavor is Jamoca Almond Fudge, prior to this month, I didn't partake of the delight. For some reason lately, I have started to have a hankering for ice cream, so I have broken down.

Today, we had a meeting at FOB Loyalty with one of the National Police about the SOI, one of the parts of the meeting was lunch. COL A, the acting commander while BG E is on leave, bugged me for two days about the meeting, lunch and ice cream. He didn't really care about the meeting (an SOI transition briefing) but he did care about the ice cream. He asked me three times before the meeting whether or not we would get ice cream with lunch. When the meeting went past 2 PM, he got worried because the chow hall closes at 2 PM, so he asked me a few more times. The meeting ended, he practically sprinted to the chow hall, ate lunch then started to talk about the ice cream. It was funny to watch. He ended up asking for vanilla, kind of cute. When I came back to the table with a scoop of vanilla and a scoop of jamoca almond fudge he was mad that I didn't tell him he could have two flavors, not sure if we are going to win this war with only one scoop of ice cream.

Quick Post

The civilian internet is back up, I will post some pictures and knock out an update later on this afternoon.

We have a Sons of Iraq meeting in the big city today, should be a hoot. The SOI program as we know it is supposed to be transitioning away, with the SOI being absorbed into several Iraqi government ministries. I think this will be a big deal and hope it is done right. If not, there will be about 2000 or so unemployed, former insurgents that are ticked off at the Iraqi government roaming around our sector. Hmmmm.

Blogger's Blues

For some reason I haven't really felt like blogging, maybe hitting month number 9 of a 12 month deployment has kind of brought a melancholy or writer's (blogger's?) slump. There were a couple of positive things: We have our redeployment timeline: Our replacement team shows up mid-August, we go back to Kuwait at the end of August and back in Kansas sometime in September. Our replacement team has also contacted us, which means they are starting to suffer through the training in Kansas, and they are sending one of their team members here this week.

And a couple of negative things:

The past couple of weeks were mostly quiet until a couple of days ago: There were a few rockets launched at COP Cashe and there was an IED yesterday. Only one vehicle was damaged in the IED attack (mine resistant vehicles do their job) and thankfully there were no casualties involved in either attack. The rocket launching was kind of strange - - basically they lean a rocket up on a rail, point it in the general direction of the target and let it fly. Kind of like trying to hit a bulls-eye target with a bottle rocket launched from a coke bottle. Not a whole lot of accuracy. None of the rockets came close to hitting anything, but it is a tactic we haven't seen in our area for over a year.

Prior to this week the National Police made some pretty high level arrests that seemed to take the wind out of the insurgents cells, but then these two events mark an upswing in attacks in our area. We will see how the next few weeks go.

Couple of other notes:

The National Police received the first of their Up Armored HMMWVs last month. BG E had a short ceremony where each of the HMMWVs were dabbed with sheep's blood for luck (unless you happen to be the sheep that gave up the blood). They have been cruising around in bright blue and white HMMWVs now for about a week. This makes me pretty happy - - BG E is in a safer vehicle and doesn't stand out nearly as much as he did when he was cruising around in his armored Toyota Land Cruiser.

Survivor, the best non-football show EVER, is wrapping up it's 18th season (they run two series a year, so really they are in their 9th year, but who is counting?). Tragically, the finale will be in a couple of weeks and that will leave me with absolutely nothing on TV to look forward to. Sigh. If anyone is watching, my money is on JT, most folks like him. Stephan is a good guy, but doesn't have the crowd behind him.

There will be a definite TV draught until pre-season football starts to warm up again along with Fantasy Football . . . . I can't remember where I stand vs. Wade, but he beat me last season which means I need to clean his clock again this year. Going to be tough to do, though. I am deployed and only have limited exposure to football (starting excuses early is always a good strategy). I am going to try to recruit a few team members this year, we'll see how that goes.