One of the curses of being here (Iraq) for OIF1 was the lack of good literature. As a result, I had to rely on others to send me things to read. Even internet was hard to come by. Not anymore! This place has a fairly decent selection of magazines, though the ones I read seem to come in only upon rare occasions. I've always found the AFEES collection of titles a little bit short on intellectual value and fairly high on the low-brow side of things. I'll leave that little tid-bit of information for you to roll around in your skull. I still rely on my loving wife to send me magazines, as well as the rest of my family back in the States, but when I come across a magazine that interests me I can't help myself....I buy it.

This leads me to my purchasing of the magazine "Foreign Affairs." For those of you who haven't read this magazine, and have an interest in international politics, this is a wonderful magazine. This issue (November/December 2005) is choked full of articles on Iraq, an issue near and dear to my heart. It has an excellent essay written by Melvin Laird, the former Secretary of Defense under Nixon. I went into the article thinking he would be fairly conservative, but I was proven wrong. Though conservative, Laird displays an eye for sticking by his "guns" even if they run contrary to the conservative agenda. He explains his views as to what we have done wrong here in the gulf and what we can learn from what worked, and didn't work, in Vietnam.

Well, outside of the new magazine, not much of anything is going on here. Work, work and more work. It's all quite monotonous and I believe it's sucking the life right out of me. I'm trying to stay out of the negative on this though so I won't dwell on it. Let us just say, Stop-loss sucks!