The Battle Rages On

Needless to say, we were all shocked to learn about the Iraqi National Guard ambush. Under no circumstances should they have been traveling as a large unarmed group like that- not that the terrorists have any excuse for what they did. It just pains me to see those ING guys doing something so blatantly wrong. I don't think we'll see a repeat of that mistake.

It was definitely an inside job. The ING is being infiltrated by insurgents, and the insurgents are capitalizing on their security soft spots. The ING guys need to tighten up those soft spots, or it'll continue to get even uglier.

I think this attack may very well backfire on Zarqawi. He aimed to scare the ING soldiers throughout Iraq. I think he just succeeded in making them very angry. I'll be surprised if Zarqawi lasts until mid November. We'll see...

Missing Explosives

How can we lose almost 400 tons of high-powered explosive material? This is one of those things that just doesn't make sense if you don't know the context. I'm having trouble understanding it myself, but I'll tell you what I do know. When we first crossed the border to start the invasion, we saw some very strange things out in the open desert. Things that weren't supposed to be there. Fighter jets. Randomly scattered tanks and armored vehicles. We even found helicopters hidden underneath foliage on the riverbanks. This was all part of Saddam's bizarre strategy. He knew we'd come in there and thump him. He was hoping that we'd level the country and then leave it in shambles. After we left, he would reemerge and pick up the high-value pieces of war machinery that he cleverly scattered throughout the countryside. Not a brilliant strategy, but please understand his limited options. We recovered most of the jets, choppers, and tanks in a relatively short period of time. We stopped seeing them around after about 3 months.

Well, it looks like Saddam also scattered his cache of explosives- removing them from his main bunker and stashing them who-knows-where. We hoped to recover those explosives before the looters got to them. Unfortunately, the looters had the inside track, because they were the ones that scattered them in the first place. These explosives would fetch a very high price, and the potential destructive capabilities are not something we'd like to deal with.

I'm not certain that this happened as I described, but from the information I gleaned thus far it seems to add up. Stay tuned...

Better News

Make sure you check out the Mudville Gazette. It's a great site.

New Location

I moved during the weekend. I'm not at Camp Arifjan anymore, but I'm pretty close. It may or may not affect my ability to blog away at the pace I've been on. I'll do my best. Thanks for all the support!