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.
A couple of soccer tournament notes:
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.
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.
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