Developments

Happy Halloween. I passed on the caramel apples tonight at dinner, although I did dip into the plastic pumpkin for a handful of candy corn. Some of us joked about walking the labyrinth of trailers surrounding the embassy trick-or-treating. There are five or six identified 'neighborhoods' in the embassy compound, consisting of a few hundred trailers in each neighborhood. I live in "Embassy Estates." Some of the more fortunate live in "Poolside" or "Palisades." Tomorrow night there is a showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show. Some people are taking it very seriously. There are a few of us here with Philly connections, and each of us had seen Rocky Horror at one point or another down at the same theatre downtown on Third Street. We went around the table at this morning's staff huddle and identified those likely to have never seen it, those likely to have seen it once, those likely to have seen it multiple times, and those likely to have performed it. We were fairly accurate in our assessments of our co-workers; I suggest that this could form the basis of a new kind of Myers-Briggs personality testing. Extrovert, Intuitive, Transvestite, Judging… I apologize for thinking the entire United States was on fire, but I only get a few minutes of TV a day and every image was one of worried newscasters about to be engulfed in flames. There were a few days when I was certain that somehow North America had undergone spontaneous combustion, or maybe a drilling accident had awakened great big dragons that were bringing fiery destruction to mid-size American cities coast-to-coast. No dragons, I take it. But apparently you can see California burning from outer space. And celebrities are 'really pitching in' to save their communities. Yes, I have a choice between Fox news and BBC World Edition, and Fox usually wins out. I don't give a hoot about Labour's identity crisis, or rugby. Far less about rugby, actually. Two things I can't stand - people who have no respect for another culture's sports, and rugby. And people who paraphrase movie quotes. In case you have a news deficit like me, I'd like you to know that Baghdad is a hell of a lot better now than it was when I got back here in February. Attacks are way down. I've been doing a lot of knocking on wood lately, but we had a lot more mortars and rockets raining down on us a couple of months ago. I've seen a lot more political cooperation between people that I never thought would talk to each other than I ever have before. I don't want to be another guy who says we've turned another corner here in Iraq, or that we've got anybody on the ropes, but I tell you I've never felt this kind of momentum here before. The elections of December 2005 were probably the closest I've felt to anything like this - and it wasn't long after that when Samarra changed everything. So my optimism isn't without reservations. It just really feels like we are on the verge of making some real progress here. Trick-or-treat.