The guy who sent me the remote-control fart machine email last week makes amends by forwarding me this email from a friend in Iraq:

Hello again from Iraq,
Things here have been pretty bust lately which is good – there is
nothing worse than being bored over here. Guarding the main FOB in a
tank continues to be a pain when I do it, for some reason every high ranking
person who passes by feels the need to come bother, which is distracting for us, not to mention making it impossible to actually fire when someone gets that close. Hopefully well take care of that mortarman soon so we can take down that OP. Things in our company sector have been pretty quiet as of late, just the usual small incidents.
The other night my roommate and I went out with my platoon to meet with an informer in the desert so he could turn over some rockets and that was pretty cool. Got to experience moving on foot through a mild sandstorm at night to find a big well dug into the ground. It was funny, we were prepared to pay him in US cash as usual, but he wanted was a soccer ball for his nephew or something.
On the first I had probably the most fun since Ive been here. In
response to that big insurgent camp that was found just south of us on
LakeThartar we went to go sweep our entire desert sector and our part
of the lake, which is the middle eastern equivalent of one of the great lakes.
The terrain was crazy, and we did some things in our humvees that I never
thought possible. Pretty scary at first, but wound out being a blast driving around after that. Later in the day while checking out a suspicious camp of nomads on the coast I managed to sink my humvee down to the doors.
One of my privates had his camera, and when I get the picture Ill send it
out. Pretty funny except a tank had to pull us out. Got to call some
mortar fire missions for training, and that was pretty fun too.
Well, Im sure that there was more I meant to include, but Im staying safe
and I have to go. Hope everyone is doing well back in the states.