41st IBCT Update

Apparently war has stopped being "boring."

My brother's unit is protecting supply convoys, and he was in one of two trucks hit by an IED last week. No injuries--they're using "new Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles" and apparently they work. Quick, nobody tell that clown who quadrupled government spending and now claims we have to cut defense programs...

41st IBCT Update

My brother's unit arrived in Iraq last Tuesday. On Friday a report about three servicemen killed in Basra, no names given totally freaked me out...until I got home from work, accessed my e-mail, got out a map, and realized he was actually hundreds of miles away. Spent the weekend feeling really stupid. I need a big black-and-white outline map of Iraq to color in provinces and label cities, like you do with the U.S. in grade school (or used to, anyway).

Chatted with him on Facebook for an hour or so tonight, mostly about Star Trek (don't ask). Here's a photo of him (bald spot and glasses, he says) and some of his fellow soldiers hanging out in Kuwait.

Everything's been quiet so far--he says "war is boring"--and it can just stay that way as far as I'm concerned. :)

Irony...

The Daily Kos has noticed that the Sadr militia--I assume the same Sadr militia that Kos support in their effort to liberate Iraq from evil imperialist soldiers from that hellhole of Christofascist gay oppression, the U.S., but please tell me if there is more than one Sadr militia--are torturing and killing gay men in Iraq.

Unsurprisingly, they are willfully clueless about the "why." Apparently it's W's fault, because everyone loved gay men when Saddam Hussein was in power. *blink*

Interesting, not in a good way.

Can't say I'm surprised. Gays sentenced to death in Iraq for crime of homosexuality. I'm not sure why people expected differently; even if the government was completely secular, the people voting for its members aren't. Not that UK Gay News will note there's a reason homosexuality is a crime in the region...or maybe in the UK they legally can't.

(And of course, the commenters can't seem to figure out which religion it is that wants to kill them.)

Family stuff

My little brother is in the Oregon National Guard and will go active duty in April and to Iraq in June or July. Luckily he doesn't burn to a crisp in daylight like I do.

Well, it's different now, but I still think we can't leave until the job's done--can't create a vacuum for Iran/Syria/Al-Qaeda/etc--and I feel kinda bad that my brother is a much better person than I am. He's under strict orders to pass along the addresses of buddies in his unit who don't get packages/letters from home for whatever reason so I can "adopt" them (he has two other sisters who will keep him in Blistex and magazines, not to mention our mother). Maybe I can be a little less useless.