I say “Back in Iraq” because I just recently returned here after being allowed to go home on what the Army is calling Environmental Leave. I just spent two weeks at home with my wonderful wife and three beautiful daughters. It was a blessed time of renewal and relaxation. I have been renewed both emotionally and spiritually. Now, however, the difficulty will be in making it through the next 9 months or so. Since we have only been here for three months, that means that, if the Army only keeps us for a normal 12 month tour, we have 9 left. I love simple math ;-).

As you may have surmised from the absolute paucity of entries into this blog, there really hasn't been a whole lot going on here. I am, to be specific, quite bored. Not that I am complaining mind you, as the alternative to boredom in this environment, as I might have mentioned before, are not something for which I would wish (nor I hope, would any sane person...although you'd be surprised). I don't want to whine about being bored (I just wanted to mention it), since our comrades up north are certainly not bored, and I pray for their welfare constantly (and ask that you do so also).

I would like to counter some of the negative news I've been hearing and that has been relayed to be when I was home. The people here in the Southeast, are, for the most part, very glad that the Coalition forces are here. Make no mistake, it's a fragile relationship at best, but where they are now is infinitely better than the place they were in under Saddam. They have more schools, more electricity, more food, more of just about everything than they've had in some time. And, they are about to get more freedom than they have ever had in the history of this area with the sole exception of the Garden of Eden. It irritates me to hear people discuss Iraq as a quagmire (a la Vietnam). For one thing, we've only been here for a little over 2 years. In addition, in Vietnam, we were fighting for an entirely different reason with different goals and political machinations. Just think about how many years it took to plant a democracy in Japan and restore the democracy in Germany after World War II. We still have troops in both of those places. When was the last time a nation invaded another country, removed its parasitic totalitarian government, and spilled its own blood keeping the peace in an attempt to provide that country with the opportunity to become free? This isn't territorial aggrandizement; we have plenty of lebensraum. It isn't about oil; we existed without Iraqi oil for 10 years and could continue to do so for the next 100. It's about doing the right thing, and, as most individuals who have ever done the right thing should be able to attest sometimes that hurts no matter what level at which you are doing it.

I guess that's enough for now. I'm going to try and keep this updated a little better in the future now that we have fairly regular access to the Internet.