Now that the war in Iraq has wound down and my nephew is on his way home, my entries here will wind down, as well, I guess. It's nice that the worst of the fighting is over. Americans can be very proud that we didn't lose as many people as many naysayers had predicted - thank goodness.
Someday the Iraqi's will realize the vast majority of American's have honorable intentions, just as their people do.

It's frustrating to read about the Iraqi's complaining about the US so much already. Too many of their people are cynical about our motives. Overall, the vast majority of Americans just wanted to see a serious threat to our security (Saddam Hussein, in case you've forgotten already) out of power. It was not intended to be an anti-Muslim offensive at all.
Freedom of speech for their people is a great thing, but allowing the fanatics to get themselves so worked up could wind up being too dangerous for the troops who are still over there.
SOMEONE needs to convince their people that we do NOT intend to be there any longer than we need to. We'll just make the country secure and move out.

It's interesting -- and hilarious -- to read and hear of the many world leaders "demanding" that the US let the UN take care of all post-war Iraq issues. You guys really ARE kidding, right? As far as humanitarian areas, yes, that sounds practical, but nothing else. The UN has proven itself incapable of making truly beneficent decisions on world matters. Give us a BREAK, people.

Things have really wound down in Iraq. Now we just have to deal with ticked-off Saddam loyalists and looters. I guess our leaders were caught off-guard by the amount of looting going on. Yes, the soldiers need to protect themselves from snipers, etc, but we should have planned for policing strategies, too. As always, hind-sight is 20-20, isn't it?
Michelle turns 14 today and Mark leaves for his band trip to the Bahama's, too.
We're diving into training at Arbitron so we can handle the rewrite of the majority of our software from 20+ languages to just a few - .NET and Java.

While Dot and I were watching Michelle play in her lacrosse game today, I called sister Judy to get details on what will be going on next weekend for Easter. It looks like we'll be driving down to Virginia Beach Saturday afternoon and coming back Sunday. Terry's driving down, too, but maybe not until Sunday. This will be fun.
My nephew, Andrew, was afraid for his friend, Nathan White (no relation), an F-18 pilot who was a sword bearer at his wedding to Leigh. Nate had been shot down in Iraq back on April 2nd. We got word today that Nate had, in fact, been killed in that presumed friendly-fire incident. These types of accidents are hard to take and now Andy knows one of his best buddies is dead because of one. Even though I didn't know Nate, it really depressed me to hear about it. Maybe because I know Andy will be so down about it. Our sincerest condolences to Nate's family. I believe he had a wife and 3 children.

Check out this very interesting article if you want to understand why Iraqis are doing certain things to celebrate Saddam's fall from power.

When I was in the Navy, we learned the best way to get along with people from countries other than our own was to learn some of their customs. Yes, their government was sadistic and cruel, but the people seem quite interesting to me.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/world/newsid_2936000/2936505.stm

I've been checking out several of the Arab news sites. To say their perspective of this war is different from ours is a blasted understatement.
While I'm not totally convinced the Iraqis needed something as drastic sounding as "liberation", I hope their next leader is nowhere near as sick as Saddam and his sons were. The Arabs seem to not mind dictators like Saddam. We would have left him alone if he hadn't gotten "too big for his britches" and decided to develop weapons that would be usable beyond Iraq's borders. Sept. 11th made the USA believe in pre-emptive strikes. I don't like us being this way, but we HAVE to protect ourselves.
What is it with the Arabs? They don't believe that we just want to get rid of Saddam (and his psycho sons) and get the heck out of there. If I see signs of our gov't sticking around, I WILL let my own government know of my displeasure. Count on it.

It looks like Baghdad has fallen, but there are still pockets of resistance around Iraq. Now the mopping up starts. I hope we don't lose many people during this phase.
Now we'll see if doing this for the Iraqi people was worth it.
My nephew's ship (USS Abraham Lincoln CVN-72) is heading home. He should be home within a month. Now my sister can relax a little. The worrying has been rough on her, I'm sure.

The airport, as well as all of downtown Baghdad, went quickly. The Iraqi people sound like they're smart and will recover from years of Saddam's idiocy, but their military is as pathetic as it was in 1991. Little, if any, challenge to our troops.

It appears the Saddam International Airport, now the Baghdad International Airport, will be taken fairly quickly by our forces. Considering all of the big talk coming out of Saddam, it's interesting to see how quickly their troops get run over. Just as much of a joke as they were in 1991. Sheesh...
My diabetes training last evening was interesting. I'm allowed 60 g of carbs per meal at 3 meals, plus a snack, per day. Now the trick will be to find good-tasting food that's low in carbs and, since I need to lose a fair amount of weight, low in fat. This should be interesting.
Mark comes home from a student government trip to Ocean City since last Wednesday. I can't wait to see how it went.
Potomac Playmakes has its opening night tonight for Murder At The Vicarage. Another great Agatha Christie murder mystery.
I'll be heading to Glen Burnie, with Dot, tomorrow to work on Barb Ingino's computer. She got a new one and wants my help transferring data files to it from her old one.
Sunday is the end-of-season party at Whitetail from 3p to 7p. I was hoping the whole family could go, but Heather and Michelle has a lacrosse game that day. Too bad!

It's nice to see the gas prices finally going down a bit. Regular is now $1.55/gal versus $1.59 a couple of days ago.
We haven't heard from my nephew lately, but he warned us this might be the case once the war heated up. As a matter of fact, I don't much about the USS Abraham Lincoln at all these days.
It looks like the poop is about to hit the fan around Baghdad. Our troops are within a few miles (<10) of the city and getting positioned to take over the airport. The next few days should be quite interesting.
Even though we got some snow in Hagerstown last weekend, we've had very comfortable weather for the past couple of weeks. Sweet!
I start my diabetes training class this evening. It'll be from 6pm until 8pm for the next 4 Thursdays. I can't wait to finally find out what foods I should avoid and which ones I should go for. I've tried to "be good" for the past few weeks, but I really need this class to help me.