Saturday, February 23, 2008

Not Much to Say

My life has come to a grinding halt. At least, that's how I feel right now. I can almost taste being home yet its impossibly far away. Adapting to the new job has had its trials, but I am just starting to get the hang of what I think they want me to do. If only they knew what they wanted to do, I'd be all set.

I have gained a different perspective on how the training of the Iraqi Army is going. Now that I have a birds eye view instead of a ground level view, it does appear that we are making some really good progress. The section I am in is responsible for generating the new Iraqi Army Brigades, training their Soldiers and Officers, and then making sure they have all the equipment they need to get into the fight. Once they are recruited, trained, and equipped, we turn them over to group of Military Training Teams (MiTTs) who supervise their entry into "the fight". I wont say everything is going smoothly, but I do think as far as generating an Army goes, there has been some good progress made in the past year. Michael Yon has a great article about all of this and his interview with LTG Dubik, who is the commander of the unit I fall under.

I've been able to travel to the one of the training complexes in Besmaya and see an Iraqi Brigade graduate, and it was a pretty interesting experience. I posted some pictures about it last week. Other than that, things are going fairly well. There is a pretty good group of Captains in the area I work in, a few of which have also spent the last year training Iraqi's, so we have a pretty unique perspective on alot of the operations underway. We're also really sarcastic and short-timers, so it's not that bad of a time. Except when we get yelled at. Which is alot.

7 comments:

Joe Donato said...

....keep up the sarcasm, getting yelled at only makes it better.

Jo Castillo said...

Hi Jason, It must be like a roller coaster when you are sort of a short timer. Sounds like your work is paying off. Thanks for posting for us.

unhappycamper said...

How many days?

You can put up with this shit standing on your head.

(BTW - there's a beer or two waiting for you and the Mrs. in Boston)

Keep your head down, my friend.

David M said...

The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the blog post From the Front: 02/25/2008 News and Personal dispatches from the front lines.

Anonymous said...

It was good to hear from you. Hope things are good with you over in Iraq!


"You gettin short!" like the enlisted folks in my HHC 2-87th Inf Bn would say when we were getting ready to ETS...

Best wishes with your remaining time over there...STAY SAFE JASON!

Bag Blog said...

It is amazing how just a slightly different perspective can give a whole new outlook. Hang in there. I understand the "almost taste being home yet..." Stay busy, be with friends, etc - it all helps a little.

Mariam Weber said...

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