I read recently that Donald Rumsfeld declared that the success and stability of Iraq relies ultimately on the Iraqi people stepping up and taking responsibility for their own country. I imagine Rumsfeld and others running the war believe a big part of that will come in the form of Iraqis going out and voting when the time comes in late January.

Contrast that article against a conversation I had with an Iraqi contractor doing some work here on post. He asked me what I thought about the upcoming elections, and I replied that I thought they were very important. "Democracy is a lot of work, but it brings many wonderful benefits with it" I told him. To this he replied that there is a lot of education that needs to happen in Iraq. When you tell an Iraqi to go vote, many of them don't even know what voting means, much less have an overall conception of what democracy is.

I found myself going back and forth between Rumsfeld's comments and my conversation with the Iraqi contractor tonight. Clearly there is a bigger issue here than just getting Iraqis to vote. An Iraqi democracy will require much more than just security and stability. There is a need to raise the overall education level of the average Iraqi. There is a fundamental issue of poverty and all the associated problems that accompany poverty here in Iraq.

If my history lessons do not fail me, did not even our founding fathers see the danger in having an uneducated and ignorant population making decisions about national leadership? This is how we ended up with electoral system, in part to create a buffer between the need to have the people represented in national politics and the reality of having an uneducated population make decisions on a national scale.

Even after the election in January, even assuming the violence stops, Iraq has a long long way to go on it's road to becoming a democratic nation. Am I pessimistic? Not necessarily. I suppose I am pragmatic. I see some of the political, social and cultural issues confronting the Iraqis and it seems clear to me that they have a lot of work to do. Whether they finish that work successfully, I suppose, will rest in large part with the Iraqi population. Then again, the same was true of America when we first started out. Fortunately for us we had friends who helped us along as we developed as a nation and a people. I hope we're able to do the same for the Iraqis.

Hey, guess what? It's Christmas day!! I would like to wish everyone the obligatory Christmas greeting, hope you get all your presents, and you enjoy an eggnog for me.

Today it is very gray outside. Cold, windy, overcast and rainy. I also woke up with the pipes dripping on me as I slept *lol* But you know what? Who cares, it's Christmas. Leaky pipes are why God made buckets, right?

I would like to thank everyone who emailed or sent me a letter or a package or some other form of support over the last month. It's very nice to hear from everyone, even people I've never heard of! I received cards from the First Presbyterian Church in Cazenovia, NY; the Blue Star Mothers of America from Ontario, NY; a package of goodies from Pack 165 out of Spencerport, NY; and two HUGE boxes from the good folks at National Fuel Gas out of Cheektowaga, NY. I also received packages from the Buffalo, Rochester, and HQ cells of the 8/98th BN (my home unit). And of course, my family has sent me a ton of stuff as has Kelley, my sweetie pie *awwwww*.

It was nice to open presents on Christmas morning sitting in front of my little Christmas tree. It makes it feel a little more like being home. I hope you all have a nice Christmas celebration. If nothing else, I have a fuller appreciation of just how nice it is in the States. I hope you all have that appreciation as well!!

Some more video clips you may find interesting. All of them are under 6 MB.

First up, a couple of extended versions of videos posted previously:

• The full version of the AC130 Spectre Gunship clip. Significantly longer with more detail.


• A longer version of the Apache Gunship clip, from start to finish.

This next one is a new clip. Footage of either an Australian or British commando crew (can't tell which) storming a beach. Very funny! (Seriously, it is funny. Nobody dies in this one.)

And lastly, for those looking for an outlet for all that excess Christmas shopping rage, I invite you to view this little homage to America's Air Force, appropriately titled BOOM!

One more clip, just because this one cracks me up:

• Terry Tate: Office Linebacker

This one has nothing to do with Iraq ;-)

Scenes from Operation Iraqi Freedom:

• Footage from the camera of an AC130 Spectre Gunship engaging targets somwhere in Iraq


• Clip of a Coalition aircraft attacking insurgents in Fallujah early in the war


• Video from the thermal camera of an Apache helicopter gunship

I received a neat video clip of a convoy driving through what looks like Baghdad.

Click here to view the video. You can left click to view it, or right click the link and choose "Save Target As" to save it to your hard drive. It's 3.4 MB, so it's an easy download even for folks with dial-up.

For those who may worry, I was not on this convoy nor have I experienced any dangerous moments since I've been in country. I just wanted to give a glimpse of what it's like on the ground occasionally.

Although, perhaps only of interest to baseball fans:

Anyone who just makes blanket statements such as "Dump Piazza and Floyd" and other inane remarks doesn't understand baseball. They can only dream of Windexing other people's windshields for $1 per car. Teams just don't take on $15 million salaries for average players -- not even the Yankees. It's just not that easy to ship off Floyd and Piazza like that. They have little market value. It's like trying to sell your 1988 IBM computer with Windows 3.1, a 5 1/4-inch floppy drive and 1.2 megabyte hard drive for $500.

From Newsday.com.

From Time.com:

In the end, the steroid controversy may be less about what we want for athletes or children than about what we fear for ourselves. The performance enhancement of society promises to get only more radical, especially as genetic engineering grows more advanced. When people of means can buy sharper brains and stronger bodies for themselves or better genetic profiles for their kids, juiced-up athletes will be the least of our ethical worries. If Giants slugger Barry Bonds deserves an asterisk next to his home-run records, maybe we will deserve asterisks next to our salaries, our sexual conquests and our kids' SAT scores.

Read the full article here.

A quick little movie for the day.

Happy birthday to me . . .

Happy birthday to me . . .

Happy birthday dear meeeeeeeee . . .

Happy birthday to me!

I'm 29 today for anyone counting. Next year, I'll be 29 for the second straight year.

I Yahoo'd myself tonight. Know where I came in? Number 24. 24?!?!? How did I come in 24th? Who are these other Mark Rhodes'? There's some knuckle head British singer who has at least 10 spots in front of me. Have you ever heard a song by Mark Rhodes? Neither have I! I should be at least number 14.

Since I've got the Blogger site open, I thought I may as well share a funny thing that happened to me a few days ago. I mean, I thought it was funny. My sense of humor can be a little off sometimes though, so you may not find it funny. Regardless, here's the story . . .

I was reading a book called The Third Pandemic about this pneumonia bug that mutates, develops immunity to any known antibiotic and proceeds to wipe out 80% of humanity. Your classic post-apocalyptic killer bug vs. humanity type of story. (Good book too, if you get a chance to read it. I've since finished it and I must say it was enjoyable. If you're really looking for a good "humanity gets wiped out by disease" story, I recommend The Stand by Stephen King. But I digress.)

Anyway, I had just finished reading a couple chapters of the book when I hopped on the computer to catch up on the news at CNN.com, and what do I see? A story about how the WHO predicts there will be a new strain of bird flu emerging from Asia in the next couple years for which there will be no shots, no treatment, and will kill millions of people.

Kind of wierded me out. Then I got a chuckle out of the coincidence of the two occurrences.

OK, it's not really funny at all reading about it. But I laughed at the time.

I haven't written anything in a while so I thought I'd throw up a quick post to catch up with anyone who may be watching.

We received about 140 Russian made cargo trucks today, so I spent all morning directing traffic as we unloaded them off the back of semi-trucks. 70 semi-trucks take up a lot of space, just in case you were wondering.

I was called to go to the ESS building to see what was wrong with their internet. Turns out ESS moved into a new building and just took up their satellite from the old building and moved it to the new building. They don't have any of the tools to realign the satellite dish with the satellite however. They're just sort of pointing the dish in the right direction. I told them that was their problem. Satellite connections are not like horse shoes and hand grenades.

Otherwise, not too much to share. It's been quiet and uneventful. Just programming radios and working on computers. I'm working on getting some Iraq pictures up, but I can only spend so many hours a day on a computer. When I spend 5 hours installing and updating someone else's computer, I don't really feel like coming back to my room and working in Front Page and Photoshop. I'm sure you all understand =)