No New News

Another BORING day here in Iraq. But, boring is bliss for me. I am not in a hurry to get shot at. Just laying around watching DVDs and working out at the gym. Got to drive around in new Hummers that are armored more than the regular up armors. I actually like driving this one more than the lighter ones. It feels more comfortable to drive. The seats aren't bad either, unlike the older ones, they are pretty comfortable. It's amazing how much the DOD spends on Hummers that aren't even up armor and yet they are pieces of shit. Always having to get something repaired. The lowest bidder strikes again. Despite that, these new ones are really good quality. Got to make sure the Air conditioner works for when it starts to get very hot here.
5 important Senators came to Baghdad to see how things are doing over here. Though they are in the Greenzone where I am not. Anyway, that's all the news I have for now.

Just Another DAY

Not much has been going on for me lately. Just sitting around watching DVDs and reading any news paper I can get my hands on. The chow hall is NICE, better than the one on post back home. Food is sometimes better too. Since I had nothing really to do, I thoroughly cleaned my M4. That made time go by faster, plus listening to popular music while doing it. I wish I had some Break-free Powder Blast gun spray to make it easier and quicker to clean the gun. They wont let us fly with Aerosol, so we can't bring it. Plus, they wont send it through postal service to us.
I haven't been hearing it, but my buddies tell me like how they got woken up because they heard some rockets fly pretty close overhead but there was no explosion. They also talk about mortar attacks they've heard. I have only heard one explosion from a mortar. Maybe my hearing sucks lately.

Back in the 'Raq

I finally am back in Iraq after being away LESS than a year. Though I'm in the slightly different location I was last time, I'm still in Baghdad. Much has changed since I was here last time. Sadr City is no longer a bad neighorhood like it was last time I was here. It's one of the best areas in Baghdad to be. We kicked their butts pretty hard and Sistani told them to not listen to Sadr, and so they didn't want a piece of us anymore. Now, there are other areas in Baghdad being hotly contested by insurgents. They think many of them are from those who fled Fallujah before the big offensive. Security is pretty tight on the FOB. Can't enter many places without an ID card.
I've re-learned again that not all Iraqis hate us and most are nice people in general. I had to come here and again and not watch the news to see this. Iraqis come up to us and want to talk to us and want to serve us drinks and food sometimes. We found a big cache of weapons. Definetly not for self defense some of these weapons we found.

Don't expect me to write in here alot, I'm pretty busy. I will definetly keep it up to date, but I can't promise I'll be able to post often.

Ku WAIT

More time has passed and not much has happened. Except, we got extended alittle longer to train alittle bit more. Otherwise, I would be up north right now. Which again, I see as a good thing. It's been hell trying to get in contact with my family lately. Recently, both times I've gone no one was home. Though, I contacted my mother the first attempt when I got here. Still, just watching movies and playing cards. Though, after breakfast we go over training for an hour or 2. However, everyone knows their piece of the puzzle and know's everyone elses piece of the puzzle. Instead of people just getting complacent about it because we are so used to it, which would cause mistakes in itself, we just talk about it for the most part. I just saw my buddy who left our unit a year ago and went to 3rd Infantry Division. It was good to see him again and talk about old times. He wishes he was back with our unit. We are leaving for Iraq, VERY SOON. Though, because of operational security, I will not say. Which is another thing, I hope people don't get the impression that once I get in Iraq I am going to write about the exciting fire fights I may get into. If you want that, you might as well go rent a war movie. That type of stuff I keep to myself, I don't even talk about that to my family. I will talk about many other stuff, but I am not going to talk about action we will probably see up north.

Kuwait

I have arrived in Kuwait and have been here for little more than a week. It feels like I've been here for a month. It has been very boring and all I've been doing really is watching movies on my mini DVD player. I also have some music to keep me busy. I'm pretty cut off from the rest of the world. I can get on the computer and phones, but I don't want to wait 1 hour just to get on the computer. I have called back home once so far. Just to say that everything is ok. I definitely can't say when I'm going up north, but it will be very soon. What we will be doing is general stuff you see troops doing on TV. Conducting checkpoints and raids maybe even real Infantry stuff like Ambushes and all that. One thing is for sure, we're going to be working alot over there. We are going to constantly work for many times longer than most Americans work. That includes working on Weekends as if they were just any other day. We didn't make it up north for the elections, though, that wasn't the objective time to get there anyway. I read in the Stars and Strips it was a big success. It is my only current way of knowing what is happening around the world. We have been doing alot of training in preparation for going to Iraq. It still hasn't helped time pass by, even though it is good training. Though, I'm sure "Joe" would rather sit around and watch movies all day or hang out with their friends. This is like a catch 22. We can stay here and be BORED out of our minds, but we're not taking hostile fire. Or, we can go to Iraq and get nice TVs, have easy access to phones and Internet and living comfortably, but at the same time we're in danger of getting shot. I would rather be bored.