.365: A Guide To Coming Back
"It was appropriate that my journey to Iraq ended like it began - on September 11. Six years earlier (September 2001) as a sophomore in high school, I had already made up my mind about joining the Army. The attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon simply sealed the deal. I didn't discuss what kind of job I wanted with my recruiter or the dude that signed my papers. I wanted to go infantry. I wanted to put a bullet in the heart of any Taliban that crossed my path. I wanted them to pay dearly with their lives.
As fate would have it, I wasn't bound for the mountains of Afghanistan but the septic waste strewn cities of Iraq. I don't regret for one second my experiences there, both of triumph and tragedy. My battalion led the way in perhaps the most daring offensive of the whole war to capture al-Qaeda in Iraq's self proclaimed capital of Baqubah. The men I had the utmost pleasure to serve with will be my closest friends until the day I die. It's all downhill from here; I'll never make new friends that are on the same level of the men I shared life, love and loss with during our fifteen month combat deployment.
This Friday marks one year since the bulk of my battalion landed outside of Tacoma, Washington. I wasn't fully prepared to have clean air infiltrate my lungs or cool September air swirl around us as we departed the plane after nearly 24 hours of flying. Though nearly half of my fellow soldiers had one tour under their belts, it was difficult to anticipate how we would deal with coming home. With that said, I hope to be of assistance to those coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan by dishing out a bit of advice based on my experience of redeploying, getting out of the Army, finding a job and starting school."
Army of Dude
As fate would have it, I wasn't bound for the mountains of Afghanistan but the septic waste strewn cities of Iraq. I don't regret for one second my experiences there, both of triumph and tragedy. My battalion led the way in perhaps the most daring offensive of the whole war to capture al-Qaeda in Iraq's self proclaimed capital of Baqubah. The men I had the utmost pleasure to serve with will be my closest friends until the day I die. It's all downhill from here; I'll never make new friends that are on the same level of the men I shared life, love and loss with during our fifteen month combat deployment.
This Friday marks one year since the bulk of my battalion landed outside of Tacoma, Washington. I wasn't fully prepared to have clean air infiltrate my lungs or cool September air swirl around us as we departed the plane after nearly 24 hours of flying. Though nearly half of my fellow soldiers had one tour under their belts, it was difficult to anticipate how we would deal with coming home. With that said, I hope to be of assistance to those coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan by dishing out a bit of advice based on my experience of redeploying, getting out of the Army, finding a job and starting school."
Army of Dude
posted by madtom at 7:22 PM
2 Comments:
Not on topic, mt, but a topic you and I have discussed in the past. I don't know if you caught this today.
MSN--The death of OPEC
Posted Sep 11 2008, 07:01 AM by Douglas McIntyre
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Saudi Arabia walked out on OPEC yesterday, saying it would not honor the cartel's production cut. It was tired of rants from Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and the well-dressed oil minister from Iran.
As the world's largest crude exporter, the kingdom in the desert took its ball and went home.
As the Saudis left the building, the message was shockingly clear. “Saudi Arabia will meet the market’s demand,” a senior OPEC delegate told the New York Times. “We will see what the market requires and we will not leave a customer without oil."
OPEC will still have lavish meetings and a nifty headquarters in Vienna, Austria, but the Saudis have made certain the the organization has lost its teeth. Even though the cartel argued that the sudden drop in crude was due to "oversupply", OPEC's most powerful member knows that the drop may only be temporary. Cold weather later this year could put pressure on prices. So could a decision by Russia that it wants to "punish" the U.S. and European Union for a time. That political battle is only at its beginning.
The downward pressure on oil got a second hand. Brazil has confirmed another huge oil deposit to add to one it discovered off-shore earlier this year. The first field uncovered by Petrobras has the promise of being one of the largest in the world. The breadth of that deposit has now expanded.
OPEC needs the Saudis to have any credibility in terms of pricing, supply, and the ongoing success of its bully pulpit. By failing to keep its most critical member, it forfeits its leverage.
OPEC has made no announcement about any possibility of dissolving, but the process is already over.
Maybe the Saudis like the Chinese seem to have discovered that old proverb.
Better the devil we know...
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