Good News

Here is an excerpt from an e-mail I received from one of my OCS buddies in Iraq. I have taken out some stuff for OPSEC. Hello all and greetings from picturesque Iraq! Another historic event has passed and I feel honored to have been a part of it. The Iraqi Constitutional referendum went off with no major hitches much to my surprise. To give all of you a little background, during the January elections my battalion area of operations (AO) had NO POLLING STATIONS AT ALL due to the Anti-Iraqi Force operations against coalition forces. During this historic event, there were 7 in the battalion AO. And to further place emphasis on the good job the National Guard is doing over here, my company had been selected a few months ago to serve as the Division Reserve Force (DRF) and my platoon was the DRF for this event. We have done a lot of work leading up to this event but none of us expected the turn out or quiet that we witnessed. My platoon had been called out 3 times over the 5 days leading up to the vote to respond to events in the division AO and had been sitting on an Observation Point (OP) for a day prior to the big day. With the strong leadership of the Iraqi Army (who lead this historic event), the support of the Iraqi Police and the bravery of the common Iraqi men and women, this historic day proceeded with no major events. October 15th, 2005 will definitely be a day to remember. I even got the opportunity to meet GEN Aziz and sit in on a planning meeting with him. GEN Aziz is an extremely bright and charismatic man and I can see why he is adored by his troops. It was great meeting him. I wish I could have gotten a picture!