Prisoner release - US-run prisons in Iraq let prisoners go when they determine there’s no more useful information that can be beaten out of them.  The people let go today had been locked up for between one and four years and now return to a totally reshaped area of Iraq under the supervision of a sheikh they’ve never heard of.  There’s not a lot of opportunity for them to commit major crimes in Jurf as Sahkr, especially with a brutal sonofabitch like Sheikh Sabah al-Janabi keeping tabs on them, but a couple of them look pretty determined to try.

Shiites continue to kill each other with great zeal down the road a bit.  We’re regularly rolling out main battle tanks again, for the first time in months.  It’s been two years since I was a gun loader/photoguy on a tank crew, and I’m really, really looking forward to doing it again.  The sensation of riding in a 70-ton M1A1 Abrams is not of movement upon the earth, but that of the earth rotating to meet you.