Burning oil

I woke up the other morning to the smell of something burning. This in and of itself isn't unusual, but this was a stronger smell than normal. I made sure it wasn't me, got dressed, and went outside to meet Chris to go to the MWR (moral, welfare, recreation- the gym). As it was still dark, we didn't see anything out of the ordinary and went to work out. When we came out, the eastern sky looked like it was going to get a downpour, the rest of the sky was clear. So that's were the smell is coming from- the idiots blow up the oil pipeline again.

Now correct me if my logic is flawed, but what do these guys expect to do for profit if they were to take over the country- sell sand? They either don't think that far ahead (they don't) or they really don't think that they can win.

It goes back to logic and reasoning.

A car bomb disables a Bradley, the crew escapes, and the local morons think it will be cool to dance on a burning vehicle. Once again they don't think ahead. It's a military vehicle with military hardware, we're going to either recover it (which means we'll bring in a lot more troops and equipment to get it) or we'll destroy it. I just can't feel any sympathy for the guys that got smoked. What makes it even funnier (for lack of a better word) is that the smoke from the burning armor is toxic; similar to the coating on the stealth planes.

This same reasoning, or lack thereof, shows up time and time again. The recent bombing of the police recruits is somehow the American's fault. The scary thing is that there are Americans who follow the same thought process- gun control being a primary example (I was reading about the assault weapons ban expiring). "We should ban them because they kill people". Yeah, they just grew a set of legs, walked over and shot someone.


I was thinking about some of the problems here and the current administrations admittance that they didn't expect such an influx of insurgents. I think that one of the other big problems is that the existing infrastructure was in such poor shape before we got here. A lot of the equipment is obsolete, much is poorly maintained, parts are non- existent, etc. Much of the population is uneducated and even more are illiterate. The US budgeted a lot of money to rebuild, but it's getting sucked up by other projects brought about by insurgent activity- uparmoring Humvees, increased security, etc.

Enough with the negative waves.............


The weather has definitely changed a bit. Last week we were over 130 at the hottest part of the day, yesterday was only 112. Two mornings ago it was 60 degrees and that was actually chilly with the wind.

I'm still working out every day and running every other day. I take one day a week off from lifting. I ran two and a half miles today; I'm very proud of myself!

Yesterday was a good mail day too! I received my headphones, more food, and some magazines. I also discovered that if I put the camera on self timer and put it on the dashboard of the truck I can take self portraits- I've got some really goofy pictures of me now.

Speaking of the truck, I got it stuck the other day. What makes it so bad was that I got it stuck in exactly the same spot that Chris got it stuck in before. I was watching for the gazelles and had planned to avoid the ruts but I guess I came up on them faster than I expected. The sand and dust here is almost fluid-like in some areas, it settles into low lying areas. I drove into the ruts and it looked like I hit a land mine- dust went everywhere and the truck went Thunk! I goosed it and nothing happened so I shut it off and called Chris. Luckily there was a Humvee not far behind me who stopped and got his tow strap out. Chris showed up with Juan and Duane who promptly began making jokes. The differentials were hung up on the center of the rut but Humvees are geared really low so pulling it out was no trouble.

Well kids I need to get back to work.