By Alex Berg
Last Thursday, the Iraqi Parliament ratified the Status of Forces Agreement, a deal to have U.S. troops out of Iraq by 2011. SOFA hits home for many Americans, especially those with family and friends serving in Iraq. But for some Cornell students and Ithacans, the war extends past the news and television reports into the hot Iraqi desert itself.
Major Richard E. Brown, a training instructor in Cornell’s ROTC program and Army Reservist, was deployed to Baghdad for the first time in 2004. He was deployed again this past October to the Forward Operations Base in Kalsu, Iraq, 30 miles south of Baghdad in the Babil province.