Al Zarqawi meeting arranged with Allah

Shortly after 9/11, someone had asked General Schwarzkopf if he had room for forgiveness for the terrorists who had perpetrated the attacks. Stormin' Norman's response was classic (and has since been quoted famously by Denzel Washington as Creasy in the movie Man on Fire): "I believe that forgiving them is God's function. Our job is to arrange the meeting." The big news around the base today is that the number one person on Iraq's "most wanted" list, Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, has just met his maker. The operation took place not far away from where I'm based, actually. We're all hopeful that it, along with last week's successful operation against Hasayn Ali Muzabir, who was in charge of Al Qaeda operations near us in Samarra, will improve conditions here. If we're able to reach this high up in the organization, it gives me higher confidence that we're at least starting to get a hold on some of these people trying to kill us. The other lunch table conversation is revolving around the revelation from the VA that nearly all active duty personnel (anybody who has SGLI) had their personal information on the laptop that was recently stolen. I have always thought that the military in general was generally careless with social security numbers and dates of birth, but never thought that a breach like this could affect 2.2 million people. I guess the good news is that I'm literally only one of a few million people and anybody trying to exploit this information will likely pick one of the others, especially if they go alphabetically. It's nice being in the "W" section of the alphabet. As big as news is outside the wire, events inside the wire are relatively routine. It's still hot (although I think today was 'relatively' cool compared to the last few). It was only 111, as opposed to the 115-117 we've seen the last few days. I guess you do learn to adapt to the heat. That's it for today's excitement. Off to call the credit agencies to put an alert on my file.