Minor Setbacks

Heading towards the chow hall for lunch, and we feel the tell-tale concussion of a detonation. "Sure hope that's a controlled det" quips D squared. If an engineering team or EOD team finds a roadside IED or weapons cache, they destroy it on the spot if possible. So hearing random detonations is a somewhat common occurence.
Fifteen minutes later, we are just about to sit down, and another faint shock wave is felt from inside the chow hall.

"You feel that one too?" Says D squared.

"It's gotta be controlled detonations."

"So close together? I don't think so, they aren't announcing anything" he says as the "big voice" remains silent about controlled det warnings. "Lets hurry up and try to finish our food. This might be another one of those days."

We sit down and quickly try to get through a tray of food. As a few minutes tick by, I suddenly feel the need to speed through my tuna wrap and macarroni salad. Other medical personnel nearby have radios, and they squawk to life after a few bites. Eric jumps up and heads to another medical table to clarify. Sure enough, the Army TOC starts sending out staccato messages of "inbound patients, I say again patients are inbound to Charlie Medical". Trays are hastily snatched up as we make our way next door to Charlie Medical. Little did we know those couple of bits of food were going to have to carry us through another afternoon of trauma patients. Never got a chance to take a sip of that coffee.
The "big voice" picks this moment to come to life: "clear all roads to Charlie Medical. I say again, clear all roads to Charlie Medical." The big voice chimes in all afternoon as waves of patients come in for treatment.

Despite today's setback, the intel we are receiving mirrors what is in the media: Ramadi and the Anbar Province are improving. Sunni leadership in Anbar have formed the Anbar Salvation Council (ASC), and are working with U.S. leadership. The ASC is officially opposed to al-Qaeda, and is working towards stabilization of the region. Sheik Fassal Al-Giood of the ASC states "al-Qaeda has not stopped attacking Anbar. Today's incident is a reaction to our work."
As stated in a previous post, Doha gets a second chance, Ramadi has seen a surge of new police recruits and officers. Much of the raw infusion of new officers is due to the ASC leadership supporting regional stability and sending their tribesmen to the recruiting stations to become officers.
After all is said and done, Charlie Medical treats 15 blast casualties. The critical are flown with an En-Route Care RN to Al Asad. An update from a good friend at the Army CSH at Al Asad said one of the patients remained in critical condition this evening, and will require intubation and a ventilator at least overnight.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6631663.stm
The last two photos were taken off the AP wire.

Milblog Documentary

A link to a documentary produced last year featuring some of the most prominent 'milbloggers' at that time. Most are still active in the community, and continue to inform.
After watching, I came away agreeing with the comments they were making "it started as a fluke", "I thought it would be a better way to inform family and friends", "once I started getting emails and feedback, I felt I now had a responsibility to everyone". I echo those sentiments, and feel this is one of the few ways to "humanize" the war, to lend a voice that would otherwise never be heard.
The title is Talking to Somebody without Talking to Anybody. I have a slightly different take: When I sit down to write an entry, I feel as if I am reaching out to talk to Everybody. Just my interpretation.



Side note: YouTube has portions of the Milblog Conference recently posted in the past two days.

Remembering Sgt. Mike Stokley

Sgt Mike Stokley, son and husband, is remembered by his father, Robert, at the 2007 Milblog Conference in Washington D.C. A message about the price we pay, and who pays it.....

A great article about En-Route Care Nursing by the Marine Corps. News. Features a few colleagues "roughing it" at Taquaddum (not that I'm complaining). We went through training at Camp Lejune, including water survival and flight training, and now cross the desert together keeping patients stable while racing them to higher levels of care.
http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf/main5/92253599E321409A852572C200170567?opendocument

Doha gets a second chance

"Well, I say we just keep her. She can stay in the barracks with us."

"She is so cute, I would just love to adopt her as my own. Is it ok if we just 'claim' her as ours?"

Just a few of the comments I hear as I wade through medics and corpsman on my way to see Doha. She's the MVP of Charlie Medical this morning and is coming in to get pins extracted from her femur. A few days ago, Tim removed the rod that connected the two parts of her leg together when it was broken during a VBIED attack. This morning, we remove the last of the hardware as the most recent radiograph films show excellent healing.

She lost her father in the attack. He was no ordinary Ramadi citizen, but one of the more influential leaders of this emerging province. His deep commitment to the safety and well-being of Ramadi directly resulted in a phenomenal push for Iraqi Police recruits. This one man takes most of the credit for the robust police force we now have in Ramadi and the surrounding areas of Habbaniya and Khalidiyah. His legacy of faith and passion for his Country still reverberate in this area, as his death resulted in another wave of new recruits that showed up for training after the attack.

We remain encouraged by the positive reports we are receiving about life in the surrounding areas. New markets and restaurants are opening every week, and although Doha was orphaned and her life forever changed on that day, lets hope that a renewed Ramadi and Anbar Province will give her the life she deserves: a life without fear or repression; a life filled with opportunity to take her second chance and do great things.......

Had a great conversation with Badgers Forward today at lunch. He's responsible for keeping our convoy and patrol routes clear of IED's. Badgers Forward runs an insightful blog about life in the Sunni Triangle and his responsibilities as he spends time on the road between Ar Ramadi and Fallujah.
http://badgersforward.blogspot.com/

This week in Washington is the annual "milblogger" conference. By coincidence, the Army has recently published a 79 page regulation directed at Army milbloggers stating mandatory registration of all blogs by Army personnel and personal email scrutiny.
Blogs have become a powerful tool for the ranks and continue to attract a lot of attention from leadership both in Washington and in the field. The concern is that authors are not educated about or aware of operational security, and are giving away valuable information via their entries.
Is it just me, or do I have more at stake to ensure I don't give out operational details more than anyone else? I know the vast majority of milbloggers are acutely aware of this paradox and potential risk, and we carefully scrub any information that could lead to information gathering.
One of the first thing on my plate upon arriving in-theatre was to notify my command that I was going to operate a blog while deployed. After some initial questioning and general flak, I was given the nod and was warned to protect confidentiality, privacy, and above all OPSEC. I also happen to know that Central Command has reviewed my blog along with our public affairs officer. I can't say I felt "embraced" by leadership, but at least they felt comfortable enough to allow me to lend my voice. If one phrase described their attitude, it would be "vague tolerance".
My fear: there may be a general crackdown on milblogging without any real evidence to support operational risk management. My opinion: without us, you will never get the stories from the "trenches" so to speak. These are the stories the media either never hears about, or refuses to publish.
Freedom of speech is the concept of the inherent human right to voice one's opinion publicly without fear of censorship or punishment. Please do your part and support all of the milbloggers out there who play by the rules, and breath life into the daily struggle.

"Once milblogs are outlawed, only outlaws will have milblogs-you can quote me on that" Greyhawk, publisher of the Mudville Gazette

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/05/the_army_has_is.html
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/05/white_house_wei.html
http://time-blog.com/swampland/2007/05/let_slip_the_blogs_of_war.html
http://www.blackfive.net/main/2007/05/new_opsec_regul.html
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/003467.html