Iraqi Election Day

Everybody’s holding their breath for this election to go off smoothly. So far, so good. We’ve taken all of our convoy vehicles off the road for the day; everything’s been pre-stocked at strategic locations around the country to get thru the day. Only emergency travel. We do have our combat units out, that hasn’t stopped, but for the most part they’re pulled out of the inner cities and taken up overwatch positions away from the polling stations and view of the public. The Iraqi Army and Police are pulling front line duty and doing well.

This is huge. They had 70% turnout for the referendum vote in October and this one is even bigger. We’re hearing that even some of the hard-lined leaders are urging their people to vote having learned quickly that’s it better to be working from the inside instead of scratching on the door from the outside. That’s a step, maybe a leap.

We had two rocket attacks yesterday, haven’t heard if there was any damage but again this is such a big base that unless it’s a prominent target we don’t really hear the end result. It had been pretty quiet up here the last 2-3 weeks and then all of a sudden the attacks in the last couple of days happened. We are in the middle of the Sunni triangle and we do track the attacks up and down our supply routes. Overall the attacks are down but they are more lethal. All of our vehicles on the roads are heavily armored, a byproduct of the outrage last year when un-armored HMMWV’s and trucks were taking a lot of hits. Now when they get hit, we get reports of them rocking the vehicle and getting shook up inside, but no major injuries. That’s extremely good news.

I guess it’d be even better news if they’d quit altogether. We're hoping that the elections calm everyone down and give them an opportunity and a reason to focus their energies elsewhere.

Seems appropriate over this holiday season, we certainly hope they get the spirit...