Today wasn’t really much of a DONSA (Day Of No Scheduled Activity). I had 12 things on my to do list that I wrote out last night, and if I include doing laundry (which somehow didn’t make the list), I’ll have hit 8 of 13 after this post gets finished. So much for a ‘day off’ as it were. Things are going well, and thus I’m continuing my weekly update. So without further ado, here are this week’s pictures:
Here we have one of the IA checkpoints our battalion owns. The CHUs house both the CP operations area and the soldiers who man this checkpoint. That’s right, these guys live ON the checkpoints, 24/7 between leave periods. They are committed to security, in a real and tangible sense. More on that later.
And here, believe it or not, is the standard issue IA ‘Light Gun-truck’.
Here are the real gems for this update: Two pictures of foot traffic on MSR Tampa between Ad Dujayl and Balad.
The thing about these photos is that these were pilgrims, walking on foot from Dujayl to the mosque in Balad to commemorate the anniversary of the death of the 11th Imam (Imam Hasan Al-Askari). There were a large number of local sheiks sitting at one of the markets along the roadside, and there were tables set up a couple hundred yards from each of the IA checkpoints where locals were passing out fruit slices and cups of water to the pilgrims. The trip is around 40km (24.8 miles), and as we learned from our terps, hasn’t been done in three years, due to the lack of security along the route (and the Al-Askari mosque in Sammara having been destroyed). Like I said before, the IA is committed to security. They’re getting results (despite whatever the US Media is crapping out), and the population does feel more secure. I’ve got more good stuff that has occured in the last week, but I think I’ll stick with the current ‘week delay’ pattern with update information, as another layer in our OPSEC armor. Until next week…
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