PCS to LinkedInUSAF: Optimism Trumps Fear #5

The banner for this blog says it all, optimism ultimately defeats fear! Here's the fifth installment of the latest CENTCOM Press Releases. And again, solid progress this last week!

Two big things happened this last week: the palace in Tikrit handed over and al-Zarqawi loses some support. Most of us saw the short bit of "newsworthy" footage that took place during the ceremony to turn over the palace. Someone lobbed a mortar round over towards the folks in the ceremony - it was a dud. And, people thought that al-Zarqawi was dead during the raids earlier on, but, not so lucky. Good thing is that there was a close confidant that did get taken out - slow, steady progress.

And, more than 4,000 people have running water! Seems that on the 23rd of November a new water supply was completed to a small town of folks living in ad Diwaniyah suburbs. This small announcement is one of 21,000 other projects that have taken place over the last two years. In fact, over 500,000 folks' lives have been improved in such a short amount of time! A hearty THANK YOU goes out to the MDCSS (Multinational Division Central South Soldiers)!

Bad Lots
Tons of terrorists getting arrested and tons of weapons caches seized. Daaaang, nice to see that things are being cleaned up. In fact, it is even better to see that locals are turning in the Bad Lots, and the Iraqi Army is playing bigger and bigger roles as things progress! This just means that the situation is getting better and from this point onward missions will become quicker to execute, more frequent, and resulting in bigger gains. Momentum!

That LOOONG Arm!
A big part of the propaganda machine in Iraq has lost some momentum. Jaysh al-Mujahideen terrorist lieutenant and propaganda ch ief was captured throwing a wrench in the "machine" - oh, the long arm!

Well, for the CENTCOM posts, here ya go!