Finally back home. I'll post pics when I get a chance.
posted by Ray at 9:02 PM

Well, technically I'm supposed to be home by now, but I'm not. We ran into some car trouble. That is probably the understatement of the year though. The car has broken down several times and I've had to take it to several different repair shops and gotten various things fixed. First it was the alternator that crapped out in Front Royal, Virginia. It took the shop two different tries and 4 days to fix that one. Then we started having massive oil leakage starting in Tennessee. We made it to Conway, Arkansas before we finally committed to taking it to a shop. Before then we had just been refilling the oil every couple hundred miles. Anyway, they tried to fix it once, but it didn't work so they are trying again tomorrow. So hopefully after tomorrow, it will be clear sailing from then on. But then again, that's what I thought after the alternator deal. Sigh. So the revised tentative schedule is now going to be back home sometime middle of next week. Hopefully... unless something else breaks...
posted by Ray at 3:45 PM

Well, in a few hours I will be flying to Rhode Island to pick up some things I left over there and drive it all back in the car my aunt gave me (thanks Aunt Susan!). So, that means a cross-country roadtrip! I'll probably be gone until around the 15th or so. I will try to get online to check email and other stuff, but it will probably be brief. The cities I'll be passing through include: Providence, New York, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Knoxville, Nashville, Memphis, Little Rock, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, Albuquerque, Flagstaff and possibly Las Vegas. So if anybody wants any souvenirs from one of these cities or in between, let me know and I'll do my best to get it for you. Ok, time to go finish packing!
posted by Ray at 2:10 AM

Well, now it turns out that 16 soldiers died yesterday in the Chinook crash. There will probably be a lot of rhetoric in the next few days regarding the continuing aggression in Iraq so I thought I'd throw my opinions on the matter in.

Overall, the media does a pretty poor job of representing the situation in Iraq. Yes, attacks do and have been happening for some time and they probably are not going to go away for some time. The problem is quite complex and difficult to solve. I'm sure many of you have seen the recent reports about foreign fighters coming in from Iran and Syria. Although these reports are relatively new, these occurences are not. From the very beginning of the war, this has been happening. Islamic extremists, possibly with ties to Al-Qaeda, who are bent on destroying anything related to the United States now have their targets literally at their step. Basically, they weren't able to get to us, so now since we came to them, they are having a field day. How to stop this? Well, unfortunately, you can't. At least not totally.

What is important is that we leave Iraq in a better state than when we found it. There are a lot of people out there who would like nothing better than for us to totally pull out of Iraq. It would be a huge mistake to leave Iraq before it was able to sustain itself with a stable government representative of its people. A lot of progress has already been made - power generation is up, schools are open, hospitals have more supplies, and best of all the Iraqi people have freedoms previously restricted. There is still a lot of work yet to be done however, and it would be a disgrace to those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for this cause.

As to whether the cause was worthy intially or not, I don't know. The stated reasons for invasion was the threat of WMD in the hands of a reckless dictator, which led to the assumption of the pre-emptive strike doctrine. I think this point can be pretty well debated both ways. However, although WMD was the stated reasons for war, I believe that they were the only ones given because it was the most easily understood.

During the intervening years between the two gulf wars, Saddam terrorized and massacred the citizens of Iraq through a totalitarian regime that controlled everything from what was allowed on TV to who was worthy to get electricity to what was in school books to who got essential food and medical supplies. I could go on and on here not from what I see in the media, but what I have directly heard from Iraqis I have spoken to. I have heard stories of dissidents being imprisioned for years, parts of their body cut off, or killed for voicing an opposition to Saddam's rule. The Fedayeen Saddam were the most loyal to Saddam because they were hand-picked from the prisons of Iraq. They were the most violent criminals including murderers who were given a choice between jail or service to Saddam doing what they enjoy most - terrorizing, mutilating, and killing. Iraqis who wanted to succeed were forced to join the Ba'ath party and those who didn't were relegated lower income and menial jobs.

Unfortunately, this kind of environment causes the people to become highly dependent in thought and a society where rumors are indisputable. What evolved was a generation of people who could not fathom what independent thought and freedom entailed. This has made it difficult for Iraqis to assume leadership roles in the rebuilding and shaping of a new Iraq.

I think it would be difficult for a person to not empathesize with the plight of the Iraqi people under Saddam's rule. However, is this enough justification for war? We all know that diplomacy is pointless when members of the UN Security Council vote based on the fact that they would lose hundreds of millions from lost debt if the Saddam regime no longer existed. I think war should be the last resort, but it is difficult to see what alternative if any would have been viable.
posted by Ray at 1:22 AM

U.S. helicopter shot down in Iraq

14 US soldiers were killed today in Iraq when their chopper was shot down by a shoulder-fired missile. They were all headed to R&R too. Too sad to really comment on this right now...
posted by Ray at 3:43 AM