Hello Condi!

I woke up to the sight of the entire Iraqi press corps at the foot of my bed today. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in Baghdad and gave a joint press conference with the Iraqi Foreign Minister.

The message from the press conference was that Iraq is fine. The surge worked and now it’s just down to democratic growing pains. I guess that’s what she calls car bombs and mortars.

Matt has dubbed the Iraqis that frequent the CPIC embed room, “the eaters”. They are here, no doubt to work some, but by-and-large many just they bullshit with each other, talk on their mobile phones very loudly, surf the internet and eat everything in sight. I used to think that mobile ring tones in the states were annoying. Not any more.

Leaving the bathroom before going to bed I heard the incoming alarm followed by 2-3 explosions that sounded like they were a few blocks away.

I watched the remake of 3:10 to Yuma on my laptop. Not a bad western, but the end was pretty improbable with the bad guy having a huge change of heart. Wouldn’t it be great if people could realized they were “evil”, giving them the ability to have an epiphany like Russell Crowe’s character? Problem is that nobody really is evil, or at least “evil” people don’t see themselves as evil. They just make choices and to them all those choices and deeds are justified based on the circumstances that brought them to that point. Evil is just a term people use to pigeonhole people with diametrically opposed ideologies so they can deal with them.

Deep thoughts, I know, but wow am I bored.

On the uspide, it’s Gunner’s birthday today. I wish him lots of love and laughs and I can’t wait to get home to play with him. He and his sister got light sabers right before I left. I imagine the house is taking a beating.