Worst Job In the USAF…

… will soon have a new meaning: To be stationed at the "isolated airstrip called H-1 in the western desert" of Iraq. H-1 will be one of four bases—north, south, west and Baghdad—the US will maintain in Iraq, according to Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt in The New York Times. Though I can never bring myself to trust anybody named Thom, the article does some interesting geopolitical skylarking (about establishing pickets of "influence" stretching from the Middle East through South Asia and reducing the "footprint" in Saudi Arabia and Turkey). There's also some more detail on the open secret of Eastern European logistical support for the Iraq war.