Boring Story

Most of the stories from Iraq these day are boring - but in a good way. Michael Yon posts and talk to Instapundit that he hasn't seen any fighting in a day in Baqubah. Baqubah was the center of the insurgency 30 days ago, now it's 90% pacified. Ninety percent is not 100% and 10% bad guys means there's still work to be done. But from 100% to 10% in 30 days is huge progress.

And Michael Totten is now in Baghdad going out with our troops and he seems to be 30+ days to late for the action. His sector of Baghdad is quiet, too. You can follow his days in Baghdad with the 82nd Airborne at his site, but here are is a little from his latest post.

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Everyone was friendly. No one shot at us or even looked at us funny. Infrastructure problems, not security, were the biggest concerns at the moment. I felt like I was in Iraqi Kurdistan – where the war is already over – not in Baghdad.

...
[Totten]“This is not what I expected in Baghdad,” I said.

[Lieutenant Wolf] “Most of what we’re doing doesn’t get reported in the media,” he said. “We’re not fighting a war here anymore, not in this area. We’ve moved way beyond that stage. We built a soccer field for the kids, bought all kinds of equipment, bought them school books and even chalk. Soon we’re installing 1,500 solar street lamps so they have light at night and can take some of the load off the power grid. The media only covers the gruesome stuff. We go to the sheiks and say hey man, what kind of projects do you want in this area? They give us a list and we submit the paperwork. When the projects get approved, we give them the money and help them buy stuff.”

...
“The kids here do seem to like you,” I said to Lieutenant Lord.

“They do,” he said. “In Sadr City, though, they throw rocks and flip us off.”

The American military is staying out of Sadr City for now. The surge hasn’t even begun there, and I don’t know if it will.

...
“Man, this is boring,” one of them said to me later. “I’m an adrenaline junky. There’s no fight here. It won’t surprise me if we start handing out speeding tickets.” So it goes in at least this part of Baghdad that has been cleared by the surge.

...
“Man, this is boring,” one of them said to me later. “I’m an adrenaline junky. There’s no fight here. It won’t surprise me if we start handing out speeding tickets.” So it goes in at least this part of Baghdad that has been cleared by the surge.

“When we first got here,” said another and laughed, “shit hit the fan.”

It was all a bit boring, but blessedly so.