Jazzah

I will be going on Mid-Tour R&R this week. Needless to say I am quite excited to finally be going on my Jazzah. Jazzah is the Iraqi term for leave. I'm not sure what it exactly translates as, but it's one of the Iraqi Words for vacation. Now, the Iraqi Army and other Security Forces have a quite liberal Jazzah Policy. It seriously seems like they get a day off for every day or two they work. It's a shame our Jazzah policy isn't the same, LOL. Then again, if it was, we wouldn't be able to accomplish anything, which might explain some of the problems the Iraqi Security Forces tend to have.

I've recently come across an excellent site for getting information on the Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan. It provides more historical context and has some great references to see the progress in the conflict in Iraq.

The Institute for the Study of War (That definitely sounds like a dream job: What's your Job? Oh, I Study War) in partnership with the Weekly Standard offers an incredibly broad comprehensive reference for individual operations, politics, and maps to track the various battlefields in the War on Terror. Here's the link and I heartily encourage everyone to check it out and play around the site. I have spent quite a bit of time on it putting together an Offier Professional Development on the History of Diyala. I can't email the product out, because its 13MBs. I wish I had known about the site prior to the deployment because it would have been an incredible resource in educating myself about past-CF operations in the area. The next link is specifically for Diyala Province.

It is an example of some of the heavyweight scholars who are doing some serious scholarship and research on the War in Iraq and Afghanistan. I would recommend adding this to one's reading of the Global War on Terror (joining the Long War Journal, Michael Yon, and the Iraq Report).