What's in store

October has the potential to be an interesting month. Hopefully my assumptions are wrong and I’ll spend the month racked out in my bunk with my head phones on. But as Ramadan (a notoriously violent Islamic holiday these days), election-day, and Saddam’s trial loom near, I anticipate being rather busy for at least the next thirty days. We’ve got ourselves a little triple-whammy of chaos and destruction. The bureaucrats that decided October would be a good month to ratify a new constitution AND try the country’s former leader for war crimes must have been packing their pipes with something a little stronger than tobacco. Regardless of my reservations, one way or another this month is going to be a historic one for the people of Iraq. Hopefully it will be remembered as the month when the Iraqi people replace a long history of despotism with a new era of (quasi) democratic governance. Right now my unit is waiting to see what our role in these events will be.