Let your balilaika sing what my guitar longs to sing...

The Scorpions wrote a song in the late 80's called "The Winds of Change." It was a German band writing about the end of the Cold War. They actually performed it on the remains of the Berlin Wall soon after it came down. Maybe it's cheesy but the live recording of it is one of my favorite songs and always gives me chills.

I mention it because at the end of a briefing where all the sub-elements updated the commander, a little video/slideshow of recent events was played. It showed clips of Iraqi soldiers working with the Iraqi people, delivering supplies, running medical clinics, and taking on a lot of little daily functions that we used to do here alone. "Winds of Change" was the soundtrack to it. Fine, it was propoganda, though only for internal consumption. But it fit.

Theirs is now an Army of volunteers that for all it's issues and continuing growing pains has braved unimaginable personal and family risks to get where they are now. It is actually becoming a trusted civil institution.

I read a story in I think the Washington Post or NY Times about the Iraqi Security Forces stumbling. Of course. And they will continue to for a while. But they are making huge steps forward and the training wheels really are coming off and are completely off in many ways.

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I heard a lot of people were worried when they heard about the one troop that chose to kill himself and four of our brothers today. We're fine. We are angry. We are saddened by the loss of four of our own in this way. As for the shooter, I don't care how rough his situation was, how distraught he was, or anything else. There may have been signs in his command about his worries and maybe some kind of intervention would have prevented this. I don't know and do not have the information to judge it. I do know that the shooter crossed the line from suicide to murder suicide and I can no longer recognize that person as having been a peer.

We are here to take care of each other. We failed that troop. But that troop unforgivably betrayed us.

It reminds me of a CNN story about the animal that raped and killed a young Iraqi girl and killed her family when he was in the Army and deployed here a few years ago. The article was actually sympathetic to the convicted criminal and tracked with the sickening narrative of the Army turning people in to monsters and this war making the poor veterans go mad--with the obligatory references to President Bush and Vice-President Cheney being the cause of this crime somehow (beyond President Bush ultimately being responsible for the deployment).

When patronizing and insulting tripe of that nature is written about today's murderer, do not believe it. When it continues to be written about any criminal that happens to disgrace the uniform, do not believe it. You, the civilian that may stumble upon this, owe us that much.

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On a lighter note, I was able to Skype with my Dad. He took a grainy snapshot of me through my webcam.

And we may have found a stash of meals. I'm going to run over there w/a truck and just grab them.

There's only one thief, the rest of us are just trying to get our stuff back.