The Family Letter

I know I’ve mentioned the concept of OPSEC before… It drives some of what I can and cannot post up here and on Facebook, both now and while I was deployed.  But what does bad OPSEC look like, you ask?

Check it out.  Ouch.

Every now and again I’ve done the “what states have you visited” map thing.  It has been a while since I’ve updated that, so I’ll do so and paste the results at the end of this entry.  In the meantime, though, I got hooked this morning on “what cities have you visited.”  I’ve already wasted a ton of time on this one, but have enjoyed thinking of memories from those places.  I used a looser definition for cities than I do for states.  With states I say I’ve been there if I’ve spent at least a night,  For cities I decided on any place I’d stopped, even for a bit.  I’ve never overnighted in Asheville, NC, but I was a tourist there for a day, for example. Sometimes I had to chose cities near somewhere else I’ve visited, like a town near McGuire AFB, NJ (bases were not choices).  Some are seriously approximate, like where I tried to mark the base I visited in Iraq.

If you can see my Facebook profile, you can see the map/list.  UPDATE:  You will need to sign into Facebook before you click that link to make it work.  I am looking for a way to just put the map here, but thus far it seems like a Facebook-only app.

Here’s the States map:

visited 26 states (52%)
Create your own visited map of The United States

And here’s the world (using the same, looser interpretation I used for cities):

visited 7 states (3.11%)
Create your own visited map of The World

For those wondering, yes, the host nation which must not be named is on there.  Don’t bother with a magnifying glass, though…  At this scale, it doesn’t even look a little pink.

Okay, enough of that.  Later!

After the last two days of news I felt I needed to post something different:  The election process isn’t perfect in Iraq, and has been marred by violence, but not universally.  Heck, even our election process is far from perfect.  Anyone remember 2000?

Along the same lines as yesterday’s news story is this one that caught my eye today.  Which made me think:  Would the threat of random bombings deter me from going out to vote?  Or, more broadly, what would deter me from voting.  Where’s that line where I’d say, “I realize this is my civic duty, and that if I do not do this I lose my say in the direction my city/state/country is headed, but there’s no way I’m going out there to vote?”

Depending on the status of my country, and what hung in the balance, bombings might just be enough.  If there were random bombings on election day in this country, though, things would have deteriorated enough for me to really want some say in what happened next, so perhaps I’d still make the effort.  It may be one of those things that you just can’t know until you’re there, staring at the decision, weighing the pros and cons.

It all puts some of the comments I’ve heard right here in this country into perspective, though.  ”It’s really cold today, and rainy, so I don’t think I’ll go vote.” “I heard the line was over an hour to get in, I guess I’ll pass this year.” “One vote really doesn’t make any difference, so why bother wasting my time.”

I seriously hope the Iraqi people don’t hear any of that type of talk from over here.

From CNN.com this morning:

Baghdad, Iraq (CNN) — A suicide bomber ended a series of deadly attacks in central Iraq by detonating explosives in a hospital emergency ward where victims of two earlier blasts were being treated.

Nothing like thinking, “Wow, I survived a bombing.  I’m in pain, but at least I lived to make it to the hospital where they’ll patch me up and…”  Boom.  Geez.