Who our troops are and what they’re doing

One of my favorite milblogs is Acute Politics, because Teflon Don, the soldier who writes it, has the soul of a poet. That is, he manages to combine astute on-the-ground observations about military life in Iraq with really beautiful writing. I see a shift coming, though, because Teflon Don is heading home. In his last post from the Middle East, he details his task force’s accomplishments and they are impressive:

Missions Performed – 647
Improvised Explosive Devices Reduced – 458
Kilometers Traveled – 51135

The remainder of the post explains a bit more about what those numbers means, as well as the sacrifices his task force made to achieve those ends. The post is a good reminder of the people behind every one of those statistics bandied about in Congress. Real people take real risks to try to make things better for Americans in Iraq, for Iraqis in Iraq and, by extension, for those of us at home, who take shelter behind our forces.

I’ll look forward to seeing (a) whether Teflon Don keeps his post going when he’s stateside and (b) what he’ll write about if he does.

Congratulations on a job well done, TD, and welcome home!

UPDATE: Apparently Harry Reid hasn’t been reading Teflon Don’s blog, because he claims that over one million people have died in Iraq, with a fifth of those deaths from car bombs. Even the MSM hasn’t reported numbers like that. Denis Keohane delves into the obvious problems behind Harry’s numbers.