Soldier's Diary: Making Progress in Iraq Makes the Time Go by Faster

Fox News.Com ^ | August 14, 2006 | Capt. Dan Sukman

[WmShirerAdmirer]

BAGHDAD — Editor's note: U.S. Army Capt. Dan Sukman is serving a one-year deployment to Iraq. For previous entries and his bio, see the Soldier's Diary archives. 14 August We are getting a little bit closer to our redeployment. Some members of our replacement unit have started to arrive to see and learn what is going on in the AO [area of operation] they will take over. Seeing soldiers from this unit start to arrive makes you reflect on where they will go, and what they will accomplish once we are gone. We will not leave South Baghdad as a completely secure environment; there will still be a lot of work with numerous missions to be done. They will start their fight where we finished ours. I think the rotation of units is a good way to fight this battle. Having fought this fight for nearly a year now, bringing in a new unit will force a new set of eyes with fresh ideas to solve the problems we face. They will look at how we operated, adopt some of the same techniques, and of course over time, they will completely change direction in regards to some tactics we may have used. When we finally get home it will be inevitable that we will hear, see, or read in the news the latest happenings in South Baghdad. Some of the news will be good, some of it bad, and at times there will be a moment of armchair quarterbacking from home. It will be momentary, as we know the enemy and the situation we turn over will be completely different than the one our replacements will face after we are gone. It's just the nature of ...

E-mail Captain Dan at soldiersdiary@gmail.com. Click here to read his bio.

[rlmorel]

Ping for later read...

[hsalaw]

Thanks for the link to the Capt. Dan diaries. Wonderful reading about daily conditions, activities, and thoughts about Iraq. I've bookmarked that site for later thorough reading.