Holiday cheer

I apologize for not posting anything sooner. We've been working really long days and time to write or do anything else has grown short. It doesn't help that things have become pretty dreary out here. The weather has been real shitty, which up until recently meant a decrease in enemy activity (more about that later), but besides all that everyone has been starting to feel the monotomy of things; what was once the new and exciting is now the old and boring whereas every day was something new, they now seem like something fit for the remake of Groundhog Day.
I don't think I've made it clear but we've been back in Mosul for going on a month now and by all accounts we're back with the rest of the brigade for good. We've been the Operational reserve for the theater, which was why we went to baghdad, fallujah and ultimately Mosul.
I still don't have very much access to the news. Stars and Stripes doesn't seem to exist up here and thats about the only dedicated source of news out here. You can check things on the internet but when you have to wait an hour for a half hours' use it's hard to keep fully abreast of things, especially when you have to worry about paying your bills and everything else in between online. I guess there is a drawback to using the computer all the time.
Anyway, I guess Mosul has turned into the hot spot in Iraq. I don't really doubt that, it's just I haven't really seen it. I guess it's the law of averages but we had a lot more contact when we were here the last time. In fact, we haven't had any except for the last few days and a short spurt at the end of last month.
The thing we've encountered a lot in the last few days is executions of coalition symphatizes and Iraqi national guardsmen. These guys have no shame, they'l go out on the major road dump a group of dudes they've kidnapped into the middle of the road and spray em. One time we found a group of guys and several who had been shot in the head were living up to about 30 minutes after we found them, so they couldn't have been sitting there too long. The thing is, that most of the people go around like nothing happened. I mean it's not really too much different from home where no one has seen or heard shit, but you can still tell that something happened if you can't figure out who did it.
Other than that there hasn't really been anything happening to us, which I guess can be attributed to the infantry's attitude towards us, whereas we have a HUGE area outside of mosul and the infantry has small ones inside of it. Our plt will pull 13 hour patrols on the outskirts while the infantry (on average) doesn't even devote a fraction of that time to the interior. So the only real chance we have of receiving any kind of contact is when we drive through the city to wherever it is we are going. They've even started making us go around the city entirely which is a monumental pain in the ass when you have to drive 45 minutes for what should be a 10 minute drive.
Between the near non stop missions, the massive area we have to cover in porportion, the amount of dead bodies turning up and the general attitude that the infantry has towards the scouts, the tension is getting pretty thick all around. For instance, because they forgot we were apart of their battalion a lot of our mail got lost in transit. I'm just now getting stuff from halloween. They also have this general aura of superiority which gives off this impression that somehow we are incapable of working in the same areas or doing the same things they do, despite the fact that we were fighting in those same areas, taking casulties and doing everything they were weeks before they even hit the sand. Needless to say its pretty annoying, especially considering that things didn't blow up in Mosul until after we left.
Anyway, I have no intention of turning this into a bitch fest and I fear I've said too much already. In other news, it is apparently almost christmas. I couldn't really tell, but my roommate assures me that there are decorations everywhere. I guess I haven't really taken the time to notice. I haven't spent a christmas with friends or family in 3 years now. So I'm kinda used to it and all I really want is a day off. That would be sweet. So, on that note I hope all of you have a happy holidays.


This last part is pretty much for me, so I can keep a log of what I've read. This isn't the entire time I've been here just since the last update. I don't expect anyone to be interested but it's another thing to stem off boredom for me.

War and peace - Tolstoy
Fear and trembling- Soren Kirkagaard
The highwayman- R.a Salvatore
Uncle tom's cabin - Harriet beecher stowe ( I actually have to finish this, the accents were killing me)
Critical essay on wahabbism (some dude)
Now reading The pope and the heretic (some dude again)