29 February 2008

Iraq News 29 Feb

The Good: The Iraqi Presidency council has approved the execution of Saddam's cousin, Chemical Ali. He was involved in the genocidal Anfal campaign and I don't think many people are going to be missing this guy. The Arba'een pilgrimage in Karbala has finished up and the Prime Minister has declared that "We have suceeded in eliminating sectarianism", a bit optimistic but it's a helluva lot better than report of mass casualties due to intrasect violence like the last pilgrimage in Karbala in August. Also, Turkey has actually listened to international diplomatic pressure and withdrawn its forces from northern Iraq.

The Bad: On a selfish note, as Jason mentioned on his most excellent blog, today is the 29th of Feb in a leap year, which means one extra day of deployment in Iraq for me and everyone else. You win this one, US military, but I'll get you back, I won't forget this!

The Ugly: While Afghanistan and Iraq are usually in the limelight, let's not forget about our other strategic defense interests in the rest of the world. Admiral Keating discusses the resource drain at PACOM.



No one will be shedding tears for this guy

2 comments:

KA said...

yes, my husband had said the same thing about the leap year - that extra day!! He thinks they should compensate everyone for that extra day of misery. Give everyone an obscene amount of money! You know.... for the sake of morale.

Nixon said...

The only time you should worry about us is if we STOP complaining. You're in the service, you know the routine, haha.