Haven’t updated the log for a bit and I’ve got some time tonight. The AC Adapter on my Inspiron 9100 got cooked. For several days prior to that I kept wondering what that ‘burning plastic’ smell was…mystery revealed. A close friend is sending me a replacement and then when I return to the states I’ll have the bad one exchanged. I got the warranty Dell offered. I am not certain it had the ‘war zone’ clause in it.

Things here in Dewaniah are painful at best. All of the reasons I loved being in a line platoon, headquarters lacks. Basically, I’m a gunner here, but the mission style is very different. Instead of going out and mixing with the general population daily and collecting intelligence and being an ambassador you just drive out on the open highway for hours and hours. For me personally, I loved being able to ‘taste’ the culture and I *loved* taking photographs very much, meeting people and improving my elementary Arabic. Furthermore, I felt like I was actively making a difference in a community. Everyone here is motivated by the need to impress someone else and common sense gets battered in the process. It’s more of an endurance test now and on some level I am already finished with my tour here. Oddly, I feel like I am the only one who appreciates the humor, irony and tragedy of this insane production. Think about it, an organization that puts people in positions of leadership based on their ability to push their own body weight off the ground a given number of repetitions. Now I am just the guy that guns on the way to drop somebody off or some other empty logistics mission. Headquarters seems to lack a corporate mission or a collective identity that is fundamentally a part of any line platoon, not to mention the camaraderie. It’s just the nature of administration. These things are here, but I wouldn’t call them defining characteristics.

Part of me feels like I owe the Iraqi people an apology for my lack of service. One of my biggest regrets to date is the day I witnessed the car bomb in Hilla. Over 100 were killed no more than a few hundred yards away from where I was standing. In a moment of uncertainty someone made the call to return to our base. I often wonder about the civilians that lay dying in the streets that we abandoned as we ran away with our first aid kits, weapons and training. We squandered an opportunity that day to do something great for someone else. We’re all going to feel deaths sting some day and if I had to choose between slipping away from this life in a sterile hospital room or being killed while trying to give life to someone else, I would honestly prefer the ladder.

There is so much reorganizing and moving about right now that some people I know have ended up here, but for the most part I’m not really a part of the group per say. You just can’t make up for suffering through brutally torturous conditions at Fort Dix with people. It’s more of an office environment/taxi service hybrid. The facilities are not even comparable to the Spartan living conditions of Camp Charlie, but then neither is the company. I have my sense of humor about the whole affair and am trudging through with my bruised positive attitude in tow. I’m starting some correspondence courses this week and working out more which should go a long way to improve the security situation here in Iraq.