What Kind Of Day Has It Been?

"It's been that kind of day. Yesterday the electricians blew the breaker controlling the power to my room's heater, a fact I didn't learn until late in the day. I made an appointment for the KBR repair crew to come by to fix it, but their main desk reversed the times I'd be there and not, so they came while I was out. Repeatedly. I tried one last time at 1930 to get a repairman, and was told, "Tomorrow." Great. It only hit 34 degrees last night, it wasn't that bad.

Then the day didn't get much better. Our patrols were hit by not one, not two, but three EFPs in the space of two hours. Only good luck and poor placement by the bad guys saw to it that they inflicted minor damage and injuries rather than deaths. As a topper, another conventional IED destroyed an Iraqi Police truck just out of our sector, adding one dead Iraqi policeman and several bystanders. All this kept us pretty busy all day long. The base is still a giant mudpit from rains yesterday, there's still months to go on my tour, and I haven't had a good night's sleep since October.

The week's been little better. Tuesday was much like today, IEDs and EFPs one after the other. And there's growing murmurings in the press and on the street that the 6-month unilateral cease-fire called by Muqtada al-Sadr is going to expire without renewal very soon. He called the cease-fire after open street-fighting between his Jaysh al-Mahdi militia and the Badr Corps, the militia loyal to the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a party very closely tied to Iran and in control of the Ministries of the Interior and Defense. He called the cease-fire for his own reasons, but the resulting huge drop on violence has been hailed by the dimmer talking heads as 'Proof! Proof!' of the success of the 'surge'.....a peace that may soon come to a sharp and bloody end."
All Quiet

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