Alright, this is for Mike Shames. What a guy...
I was just going through my personal email inbox- I'm a little behind right now, sorry about that. Mike dropped me a line that he was in Pittsburgh visiting Monica's family - with little Sammy in tow. Says he checks the blog all the time- my apologies for the lack of entries this summer- its been tough to keep up with lately - not for lack of things to talk about; I was in a meeting with the Prime Minister yesterday- is that name dropping? Yeah? Oh well. Well, anyway my team and I are gearing up for the big September report that Crocker and Petreus are going to give. A couple of us are putting together notes for a report that is intended to provide the overview of what is happening to Baghdad - politically, socially, demographically - a daunting task. This is so much harder than grad school. I laughed out loud after I typed that. Of course it is, dumbass. They know that. What else should I be sharing; stuff that won't get my clearance yanked. Okay, so my old friend the Governor - yeah, he's still here - most of the old guys actually are - at least the ones in the major offices. Another local council member got assassinated the other day. A week after another council member and his son were shot to death. That was about two weeks after another assassination of another local official we worked with. This isn't what I wanted to write about, Mike. Actually, I was going to talk about the Governor. We went out to Abu Ghraib last week to meet with some Sunni tribal leaders - maybe you've read about some of the progress made in getting local tribes to turn against Al Qaeda? It's real and it's actually happening. Not to paint too rosy a picture - we didn't all sing around the campfire- but I did get the chance to thrust my hand into the carcass of a lamb looking for tasty morsels as part of a lunch date with some former insurgents. Traditional feast. The real deal. Since this is really just for you, Mike, I'm trying to make a pun with 'sheikh' in it - like, "There were enough Sheikhs to Sheikh a stick at..." Yeah, doesn't quite work when you write it out. But I'm using that "I'm the guy telling a joke" voice, so if you read this out loud and try to impersonate me - impersonating someone funny telling a joke - maybe you'll laugh. Or maybe you're just laughing now, because this subtextual narration is getting ridiculous. I wish I were in Pittsburgh. On the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia - but Pittsburgh wouldn't be bad. Again, I would have said that with my W.C. Fields voice - which is essentially just an exaggerated 'guy telling a joke voice' because anybody our age really doesn't know who the hell W.C. Fields was, but at least we get the reference. But back to Pittsburgh - hope the visit is going well. Hope fatherhood is going well. I hear that's a good gig - if you can get it. Take care, and yes - I promise to write more.
