Update #7 - April 26, 2006

Finally here and my first mission (JOB) is pretty nice. It’s safe and I work indoors. I get to see and talk to a lot of bad guys in a secure location where they have no way to hurt me. Every day I try to make time to talk to them and learn about their culture, talk to them about what they think of the United States , the War and their religion. Another plus to my job is that I’m picking up Arabic fairly quick and I get to play with some cool toys from time to time. On the picture attached, there I am holding 2 RPGs found in a raid from a weapons cache that would have been used against us. Progress is being made everyday here but it’s unfortunate that the news does not reflect that. Other than the extremists, the Iraqi people don’t hate us as much as we think. Everyday I get a thank you from people we’ve captured because what we do is making a difference. By the time I’m done I hope to have a big enough vocabulary to communicate back to them. I’m taking things one day at a time and enjoying every minute.
Thank you for your support,
SGT Santana, Alexandre C.
Bco 181 Engineers
APO-AE09342