Thursday, August 17, 2006

I know your looking for pictures. I have been taking them, most of them I can't post. I have some I will post soon. We are supposed to have internet in our rooms soon, which will make it much easier to update this. I wanted to share one story. The other day, during a mission, I found myself sitting on a hill, eating dinner with a Khurdish officer who was in the Iraqi Army. We talked throughout the night for maybe four hours or so. The conversation started with Saddam's atrocities on the Khurds and continued on into the overwarching problems that we face, which are the ingrained cultural distrust between the Khurds and the Arabs. This was introduced by Saddam and beat into the populous for 35 years. Its amazing how much you learn just by listening to someone talk. The discussion went into the school systems and the difficulties of working out a system of violence and militarism introduced into schools by Saddam. We had Khurdish food, mostly a meat with rice and a flat tortilla bread. I'm telling you, its not bad at all and it doesn't make me sick, so game on. I'm staying busy, very busy. I'll post some pictures as soon as I can. Sorry if I haven't responded to everyone's posts. I'm not ignoring anyone, just very little free time for me.