Happy (belated) Birthday, Marines!

November 10th was the USMC birthday.
The chow hall cooks outdid themselves for the occasion. I had the best T-bone steak I've had since I left home, shrimp in some sort of cheese wine sauce, and lobster tail with lemon butter. After dinner, the entire post received two real beers to toast the Corps with. Let's just say morale was high.

As I mentioned in my last entry, the fighting has picked up a couple of notches since Saddam's conviction and death sentence. As usual, the American media is making things sound much worse than they actually are. The attacks aren't particularly damaging, but they are steady, and it starts to wear on you after a while. Lately, I've seen demonstrated time and again just how undisciplined and untrained many of the fighters here are. That's not to say that they can't be deadly, or lucky, and sometimes, they are. Sometimes, we encounter one of the truely skilled fighters- often a holdout from Saddam's army, foreigners, or a member of one of the al-Qaeda affiliates. More often, an attack ends with soldiers shaking their heads and saying "At least we don't have to fight people like us".