Iraq calling

2005-12-31T06:00:00.000+03:00

Sunset near Ad Diwaniyah

A lot has happened since my last post. The elections two weeks ago were a positive step forward. We'll have to see how the horse trading over the new parliament goes. As I've said before this is slow and messy work. The elections were not perfect, yet huge numbers showed up. Other problems with the Interior ministry prisons have cropped up. This is the danger of the militias. Many militia members were given jobs in the ministry and abused their position. The hope is that the next interior minister will be from a party with no militia ties.

I continue to be baffled by the media coverage of Iraq and the US government's inability to break through in getting the message out that the juggernaut of progress is moving in Iraq. The media is a strategic battleground and the target is primarily the American public. The insurgents still believe that they can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat with the right mix of made for TV bombings and killings. That is their strategic focus, not to hold any significant piece of territory or gain public support for their cause. They believe the fulcrum is American public opinion. If they can just keep up the metrics like number of attacks per day or number of "collaborators" killed, the Americans will pack up and go home. On a parallel track they seek to slow rebuilding and any deviation from their plan for Iraq. The average Iraqi may be unhappy with American soldiers on the street but they suffer as a direct result of insurgent violence and sabotage of the economy.

In the coming year more Iraqi security forces will come on line and take over more responsibility. The economy will continue to expand and the insurgency will become increasingly irrelevant and as a result weaker. We will have at least some troops in Iraq for many years to come.

My prayer for all Iraqis in the coming year is for peace, for prosperity and for God's blessing and mercy to be poured out on them. I think of my Iraqi friends, their children and families and pray that I might soon be able to return to them, sit in their houses and celebrate their new life, one build with their blood, their tears, herculean effort and faith in the future.

Happy New Year

2005-10-10T03:25:00.000+03:00

I know that my Iraqi friends will be eagerly awaiting Saddam Hussein's trial due to start soon. Most of the guys I knew were local Shia whose families had suffered under Saddam. The city of Balad apparently had some troubles around the beginning of the Iran/Iraq war. Some men refused to go off to fight and Saddam's goons came around and rounded up several hundred men, who were never seen again. They sometimes asked me if I knew where Saddam was, If he was still in Iraq. I told them I was sure he was still in Iraq and it seemed to please them that there was a glimmer of hope that he would receive punishment for his crimes. I didn't tell them that our unit was in charge of his medical care. For my friends the death penalty seemed an appropriate punishment for Saddam, several said that they would do it themselves. I remember reading an Iraqi's reaction to seeing Saddam on TV in the courtroom last year. He wept uncontrollably, it was proof to him that his personal tormentor, who had loomed so large in his life had been stripped of all his power. His tears were the tears of unimaginable relief.

The trial will be watched closely by both sides. The prosecution will portray Saddam as an amoral criminal. The defense will portray Saddam as the greatly misunderstood leader, a scapegoat for an out of control superpower who aided Saddam and set him up for a fall. Expect the picture of Donald Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand to figure prominently.

There is a danger to giving Saddam a stage. He is not stupid and can be pursuasive, insidiously so. There were several American personnel that had daily contact with Saddam, who incredibly started believing some of his BS. I know one said "he's a misunderstood guy, he's an intellectual, he writes poetry". To most people this would seem impossible, and I found it appalling. The problem is over time, in a vacuum, a person becomes immune to what you know this guy did and its only the present that matters and when he's speaking what you want to hear the fog descends. This is the danger, not to the Iraqis - they know him too intimately, but to those who want to pounce on the immorality of the US invasion. The subtle twisting that Saddam is capable of will be on full display. I guarantee that we will hear more about how Saddam was a threat to no one, he was a bastard but really the US is the problem. The Galways of the world will decry the injustice and proclaim the proceedings a show trial. They should rightly be ignored. This is too important for the average Iraqi. If this trial is somehow botched and Saddam gets anything less than life in prison, the corrosive effect on peoples trust of the justice system will be difficult to remedy.

2005-10-08T04:37:00.000+03:00

I've been following developments in Iraq closely. I'm confident that progess is happening. The current offensive along the Euphrates is a good sign. That so many Iraqi troops are involved in the fight is better. It means the center of insurgent operations is getting further and further from population centers and butting up against the Syrian border.

Much was made about only one Iraqi Army battalion being able to operate independently (category 1). What has been missed is that many other battalions are involved in counter terrorism operations all over the country. They may need logistic support or perhaps aircover from the coalition troops, but they are doing the job.

One incredible statistic I heard was the dramatic decrease in the number of mortar attacks in Ninewah province (Mosul area). Last year they were getting 300 a month. I remember have a somewhat sick contest between Mosul Airfield and us at LSA Anaconda to see who would have the most indirect fire attack in a month. Some months MAF would win, sometimes we would. This last month, in the entire province there were less than 10 mortar attacks. This is significant, but is only a part of the picture.

We noticed a dramatic drop in the quality of our enemy during our year. In the early spring of 2004 we were receiving aimed fire from mostly mortars and some large rockets. One Katusha Rocket was fired from 28km out and hit the base, just missing a housing area. We also had mortars consistently hitting around important command and control areas of the base. By the fall, the insurgents had apparently lost the professionals and guys who didn't know what they were doing were firing potshots at us and for a period couldn't even get a shot over the wire. Gradually the institutional knowledge faded leaving unskilled guys who were much more likely to get themselves killed that kill anyone. There were the odd lucky shots and we had a number of fatalities and injuries but nowhere near what it would have been if they knew what they were doing.

The IEDs were a different matter and they have increased in lethality. They are really the only thing that the insurgents have left. This is in direct response to being unable to launch any effective operation other than suicide attacks against civilians.

The insurgency will continue for a while as they continue their downward spiral of lack of effectiveness (except at getting media exposure), lack of public support and their own lack of vision.

The Fourth Rail has been giving excellent coverage on the current operations and interesting analysis.

2005-06-13T06:58:00.000+04:00

Just a short entry. I'm finding it impossible to keep things up on this blog. I'll just write when I can.
I attended a Memorial Day ceremony in our town and talked with our Congressional representative Rob Simmons. He's been a great supporter of the troops and I thanked him for that.

I keep up with the goings on in Iraq through the Army publications off the MNC-I website.

The other day I found the 81st Brigade's newletter, the Desert Raven. These were our force protection guys at Anaconda and throughout the theater, they also trained some of the Iraqi National Guard Battalions. I came across the pictures of the Iraqi soldiers who were killed by a car bomber at one of our gates in January. The gate was 250 meters from where I lived and we felt the blast that morning. The soldiers were manning the first checkpoint when they were killed. Looking at their pictures made me feel a closer connection to these men, whom I never met yet they died protecting me.

2005-04-25T06:38:00.000+04:00

This morning at church we sent off our Pastor's daughter, who will soon be going to Iraq with the Air Force.

Some of the Doctors that I deployed with in January of last year are now back in Iraq. The Docs go for 90 days, but some look like they may do that 90 days as a kind of annual thing. The ranks of some of the specialists like psychiatrists and a few surgical specialties are thin and they can expect a quick turnaround. In our Battalion we had Physicians and Dentists from something like 27 states and territories. Lots of state surgeons and a boatload of full bird colonels and one former general who took an administrative bust so he could stay in the Army a little longer (Generals have to retire at 60). He'll retire at General pay so don't feel too sorry for him.

Yesterday our family support group threw a party at a local casino. I couldn't make it because its a little nuts in my house now. Our new daughter was born on April 13th and I'm taking a few weeks off from work to help out. We need to reach a new equilibrium with 5 kids.

I've heard from a few people in Iraq. The general consensus is that attacks at their bases have decreased, with a spike in the last week. The civilian casualties are terrible and seem to be the focus of the remaining insurgents. Its really hard to get the true picture from what I read and watch on TV. I wish I had my SIPRNET terminal back and could get a less filtered view. The wrangling in the new Iraqi government is not productive and may be putting some wind back in the sails of the insurgency, demoralized by the elections. My impression is that Iraq moves forward still, the vast majority go about their lives, University students are taking exams, farmers are harvesting the spring crops, businessmen sell their wares, engineers rebuild infrastructure. There is hope for tomorrow.

Some blogs I've been reading this week are Major K, the battalion Intel Officer in an Army Infantry Unit, 365 Days and a Wakeup from a Captain in the same unit and the Blogs of two Marine Cobra pilots stationed near Ramadi. Some of the pilot's descriptions of accompanying CASEVAC flights brought back memories of the many times I saw the Marines flying casualties to our hospital in Balad, the CH-46s would come in 50 feet over our building and land at the pad while their Cobra escorts circled our base.

2005-04-05T06:07:00.000+04:00

This week the Abu Ghraib Prison was attacked twice by a large group of anachronisms...I mean insurgents. The attack was the sort of thing that has happened several times using car bombs, RPGs and small arms. Since our medics ran an aid station at the BCDF (Baghdad Central Detention Facility) we kept an eye on the intel from the neighborhood. We were warned on multiple occasions of just such an attack, trying to breach the perimeter with a VBIED and then driving another one in for more damage. A ground attack would follow as insurgents streamed into the compound to free the prisoners. It was worrisome when a detailed map of the facility showed up on a website sympathetic to the insurgency. Their plan looked good on paper, in practice these attacks never achieved their goals. They did, however, show how much they cared about the prisoners inside by mortaring the place all the time. In April 2004 a barrage killed over 20 prisoners and injured 100.

Because of the stupidity perpetrated there, Abu Ghraib has assumed even greater significance as a symbolic target after the elections because of the insurgency's limited ability to conduct attacks without killing large numbers of innocent people and pissing off the Iraqi public. Their PR guy is doing a terrible job and should be fired (up).

I remember back in the summer of 2004 when things were going on in Samarra an SF officer lamented how badly we were being beaten in the PR war and how the insurgency was expertly manipulating the international press into a strategic weapon. Now the International press has been defanged by the Iraqi elections and the insurgency is desperately searching for the magic bullet event that will inspire their people and fan the flames. They are now reaching the point of being delusional to think that their actions will inspire anyone other than themselves. The magic bullet does not exist. The Juggernaut of public opinion is moving swiftly and many of them are finding themselves crushed beneath its momentum, turned in or fought outrightly by citizens with a much different and more compelling view of the future. They have reached a critical point from which they will not recover. The insurgency is like a satellite in a decaying orbit. I can say that confidently now. There were some dark moments last year for me when things looked like they were spiraling out of control. I was always optimistic but there were some moments of doubt.

March was reported to have had the lowest number of attacks since February 2004 (the lowest). Attacks are down to 40-50 a day. Let me tell you a little secret. Attack numbers have limited utility (though it is good to have less). When we measured attacks, we liked to have the numbers broken down to a bit finer detail. Total attacks in a given day could include kids throwing rocks at a convoy, a guy taking one or two potshots with an AK-47, unaimed RPG, mortar and rocket fire and ineffective IEDs. Most of these type of attacks produced few, if any casualties. The more important metric was complex attacks and ambushes that indicated a certain level of sophistication, mass casualty car and suicide bombers, and aimed indirect fire. I don't think I would be going too far out on a limb to suggest that there has been a more precipitous decline in the latter types of attacks indicating that the insurgency has lost its best and brightest. This was what we were observing when I left in January.

2005-03-19T15:58:00.000+03:00

The political wrangling hopefully will conclude soon with a coalition government. Despite some violence, it seems to me that the progress continues in Iraq. It also seems Iraqis are more optimistic than Americans about their future.

Several coalition partners have announced phased withdrawals bowing to political pressure at home, these include Italy, Ukraine, and Bulgaria. The Netherlands ended their time this past week and most will soon be gone.

It was interesting to watch the spins on the second anniversary of the invasion.

I particularly like the headlines "As Anti-War sentiments mounts, nations drop out of US coalition" and "The incredible crumbling coalition". Some people are still trying to make Iraq out to be an unqualified debacle, despite evidence to the contrary. There were protests around the world today because of the anniversary. The crowd in London was the biggest I heard of at 45000. They had hoped for over 200,000. In the US over 500 protests were planned. The papers commented that there was "less enthusiasm" for participating than in past anti-war rallies. Hey, that's what a reality check does!

I think the recent events in Palestine, Lebanon and the elections have given a few in the rabidly anti-war crowd some pause.

A case in point of progress is Sadr City, a huge mostly Shiite area in Baghdad. In September the 1st Cav was getting over 150 attacks a week. Moqtada's Militia was running rampant. The Cav did a few things that made a difference. First they hunted down and wore down the militia. They would make a lot of noise like an entire brigade was about to come through and the bad guys were on edge for weeks waiting for the big attack. When they did go in it was no contest. After that, there was a large weapons buy-back program. I watched the numbers every day and was amazed by the number and type of weapons, hundreds of mortar tubes, thousands of mortar rounds, 5000 plus anti-personnel mines plus everything else including a US made Dragon anti-tank weapon. I sat in Intel meetings where the buyback was poo-pooed as just a way for the insurgents to turn junk into cash as happened a few times before. In Sadr City the stuff had to be operational to get the big bucks. The commander believed that this would put some much needed cash in the hands of the families of Sadr City. A few weeks later a massive employment program hired over 15,000 people to rebuild roads, sewers and other parts of the infrastructure. The end result is now Sadr City is a completely different place. The weekly attacks are down to between 0 and 5. To put it a different way, the insurgency in Sadr City flatlined, while the citizens came back to life. It is still poor but positive signs of life are all around.

The pullouts really don't cause me any concern, they are reflections more of local politics than things getting too hot in Iraq. The chance of the security situation unraveling because of the pullout of several thousand coalition troops is slim to nil. The improved security is a testament both to coalition and Iraqi troops and security forces. I hope our troops will also be able to draw down a bit in the coming year. The absence of the Italian pizzeria in Tallil is more problematic. The Italians are in a relatively quiet part of the country that is predominately Shiite. Save a few roadside bombs once in a while, the place is stable. One of our doctors in their zone went outside the wire visiting villages and Bedouin camps with the Civil Affairs guys almost every day.

All the coalition troops have done an outstanding job in their respective areas. The leadership of many of the countries often sent troops despite the unpopularity of the enterprise. I always appreciated any coalition troops I came across as comrades in arms whether they were Polish, Ukrainian or Mongolian Infantry, Thai Medics, Japanese engineers, Australian surgeons or British Special Forces. Everyone who was there and those who continue to be have played a very significant role in rebuilding Iraq of which they should be proud.
The Iraqi military and security forces are shouldering larger roles and taking over jobs the coalition once had to perform.

2005-03-13T07:19:00.000+03:00

I've been looking through some very interesting old photographs at the site Iraqipages. In 1914 steamships could travel all the way up the Tigris from the Persian Gulf, a feat not possible today. Also, I love those round asphalt covered baskets used as boats. They called them Quffas and even transported water buffalo in them.

I have found some old itineraries for package tours around Iraq. They give an interesting glimpse of what hopefully will be possible in years to come. Apparently after 1993 this group offered three package tours of Iraq. The first visited the main historic and archeological sites, the other two were specifically geared to Christian and Muslim groups respectively.

2005-03-12T05:45:00.000+03:00

A major story this week was the bombing at a funeral in Mosul.

Its sad that the criminals continue to target so many innocent people. I wonder how much was paid to the bombers family. We observed that a large number of the attacks were funded by the moneymen. Apparently ideology was not a strong enough incentive anymore. Unfortunately the Italians reportedly paying 6 million dollars to free the female journalist doesn't help. Too bad they didn't pay 6 million Lira.

I just came across an abstract of a study that examines the effect of the US invasion on suicide bombings in Israel. The theory was that the removal of Saddam Hussein, who paid handsome rewards to the families of bombers, would decrease the number of attacks. This would indicate that the financial rewards tipped the balance for some people. The study found evidence that attacks were lower on average after the invasion and that perhaps 1100 casualties had been avoided. This assumes a steady state for all other variables, which can't be the case. The security fence has been given quite a bit of credit for the decrease. The paper does, however, provide food for thought about the role of financial incentives in terrorist activities.

For things like setting up IEDs and firing a few mortar rounds at the coalition I think its fairly clear from the evidence we saw that its easy to find a few yahoos to do it if the price is right. On the other hand I would be willing to bet that providing them with a steady peaceful job would be more attractive to them.

On the good news front I'm happy about the Iraqi reality TV show where terrorists give details of their exploits on camera. I think it confirms much of what we knew about the large numbers of criminals involved in the insurgency. Many, if not most, are in it for, shall we say, less than idealistic motives (e.g. You can make a good bit of money kidnapping people and stealing their stuff).

2005-03-06T05:18:00.000+03:00

My apologies, my postings for February were pretty weak. I'll get back into the swing of things now I'm back to my normal schedule at home. Last week I went back to work and caught up with what's been going on since I've left. At home, the kids are very busy little people and take a lot of my energy.

I have definitely felt a bit out of the loop lately in respects to the goings on in Iraq. In Iraq, I spent hours each day reading intelligence summaries and tactical updates. I've gone from feast to famine. I know better than to try to form much of an opinion based on what I see on TV. I'm trying to find some good sources on the ground instead. I have both soldiers and Iraqis that I can correspond with by email, but I haven't done much of that yet. The 3rd rotation military bloggers haven't had time to settle in. There are only a few I've found so far. Many of the larger units just got into position and are learning the ropes. When the initial learning phase is over, some will start blogging. I started about 3 weeks after we arrived in Iraq in March of 2004.

In the meantime, I found I can still read some of the publications I read while I was in Iraq. At LSA Ananconda the Corps Support Command puts out a weekly newspaper called the Anaconda Times, The Stars and Stripes newspaper puts out an insert in Iraq called the Scimitar and other commands also have there own publications. Many of these publications are published on the web and provide a much closer and comprehensive view of what's happening on the ground than the National Papers back at home. Its like reading your local paper, except the neighborhood is Iraq. Multinational Forces Iraq (MNF-I) has a good website that has photos and press releases as well as the MNF-I publications I mention above.

In addition I read blogs by Iraqis which give a different perspective on what's going on. Among my favorites are Iraq the Model, Healing Iraq and Friends of Democracy. I also go to Iraqi Blog Count which has a huge list of links to Iraqi blogs running the gambit from a teenage girl in Mosul to bitter baathists to Iraqi professionals.

Just a little tidbit I picked up from a DoD news briefing from 3March. Apparently the maneuver commanders are saying that the sophistication of the IEDs is decreasing. As a result they are seeing a trend towards larger bombs deployed in an attempt to make up for lack of precision. To me this suggests that the experts are being killed or captured or the environment is such that the insurgents are unable to use the same tactics. Most IEDs are command detonated, meaning that some guy is watching the target and is using either a remote control device like a garage door opener or they have a wire running to the bomb and they blow it manually. I heard a general commenting some days ago on the fact that the US casualty rate in February was the lowest since last July. In part they attribute this to an increase capability to jam remote control devices. Increased actionable intelligence and the participation of Iraqi security forces in counter-insurgency operations also has helped.

The civilian casualties in the last two weeks have been horrible. It seems every other day I hear about 20 or more civilians or Iraqi security forces being killed. The bombing at Hillah proved one more time a lesson the average Iraqi knows too well. The insurgents care nothing about Iraq's future, because they are not a part of it. Each outrage galvanizes the public against them. It was a plan full of folly from the beginning to think that a people who endured the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam's lunacy and years of deprivation would be intimidated into surrender when they can see the way forward now.

My opinion is that the tipping point has been reached. Despite the daily tragedies, they are far outnumbered by the daily triumphs and progress. The elections have appeared to have sent shock waves out that have emboldened people throughout the Arab world. Though full of pain, the rebuilding continues.

"They who sew in tears will reap with songs of joy.
He who goes out weeping carrying seed to sew,
will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him" - Psalm 126

2005-02-21T06:00:00.000+03:00

Like last year, the Ashura was a target of opportunity for the bad guys to kill some more innocent people. It was also another opportunity for the Iraqi populace to see the insurgents true colors. Since the plan to derail the election obviously failed, the insurgents have returned to a previous idea, trying to foment a civil war. The problem with this plan is that it failed several times before and the truth of what they are doing is obvious to the majority of Shia.

Ashura is the commemoration of the the death of Hussein near Karbala at the hands of Yazid's Army. Ashura is characterized by mourning and we often see pictures of men marching through the streets with chains or swords.

I've talked to quite a few people since I got back home. The number one question is "what is it really like there?". I think behind this is a fundamental distrust of the picture being painted here in the US. On one side the "sky is falling" commentariat who seem a little less strident after the elections and on the other side the rosy optimists. I would put myself among the optimists and think that there are good reasons for doing so.

I think many people were struck by the turnout and character of the elections. After being treated to almost two years of the out of control chaos theory of Iraq, a fairly orderly and largely successful election created a good bit of cognitive dissonance. Maybe Iraq is not the deadend basket case it is portrayed as.

The newly elected body now needs to get down to business and write a constitution and the government needs to continue building capacity and control in all their functional areas, especially security and infrastructure. In December there will be another election. Between now and then the insurgency needs to either reinvent itself, a skill they seem to be lacking, or accelerate their downward spiral of declining operational ability and legitimacy.

2005-02-15T17:54:00.000+03:00

Saturday was my last day of active duty. Most of us will take a few weeks of terminal leave before we return to what we do as civilians. For me that means returning to being a husband and Father and getting back to the Connecticut region of the American Red Cross Blood Services as a researcher in their Epidemiology and Surveillance program.

Even though I was technically allowed to say where I was and who I was as long as I didn't discuss operational details, felt it was better not to. Now that I'm back I'll let you know that I was the Battalion Intelligence Sergeant for the 118th Medical Battalion out of Newington, Connecticut. We were stationed at LSA Anaconda in the Sunni Triangle. I had the opportunity to travel around the country, maybe not as much as I would have liked to, but probably more than the average soldier. My day job in Iraq was to provide the Commander with situational awareness for our areas of operation, which was one of the largest for any Battalion sized element in Iraq (from the Turkish to the Kuwaiti border). I went to Intel and Force Protection meetings and spent most of the time reading and digesting the huge number of intel products that are put out every day by everyone from the CIA to company commanders of maneuver units. For the people who wondered why a medic should know about anything other than my tiny slice of Iraq, it was my job to see the big picture and keep my Commander in the know.

My flight home from Kuwait took us north over Iraq again. I recognized a few places, the result of a year of staring at maps. I saw a familiar bend in the Tigris river and in the early morning haze I could see a plume of smoke coming from the burn pit on Anaconda. Further north I saw snow covered mountains near the Turkish border, then larger ones in Turkey itself.

Flying over Wales I could see Mount Snowdon rising out of the cloud deck.

The first part of North America I saw was Newfoundland and a few hours later we landed at Fort Drum.

Our week at Fort Drum went slowly. I stayed in the BOQ so I had my own room. Of all the things we did, medical checks, turn in of equipment, paperwork, demob briefings. I'm pretty sure it could have been compressed a bit. One of our docs outprocessed in 36 hours when he came through in May.

The weather at Fort Drum was incredibly warm compared to when we left, it stayed in the 30's all week.

Being at home has been wonderful. All my kids have grown so much. My baby, Jennifer, just started walking a week or so before I got home. It was hard missing her first year but my wife did a great job of sending me pictures and keeping me updated on her progress.

I'll probably go into my kid's school this week and talk to them about Iraq. Next week is February vacation so we'll be busy.

As for this blog, I'll still be writing, though less frequently. I still have many friends and comrades in Iraq and I'll always feel like I have a stake in what goes on there.

Thanks for everyone's support during this last 15 months.

2005-02-02T13:11:00.000+03:00

I just had my dufflebags inspected by customs and loaded to go to the airport later today. All I have left is my backpack.

The time in the camp flew by. I entertained myself yesterday hunting giant gerbils.

I've been talking to some of the incoming guys. Lots of Hawaii National Guard guys. Some of the companies came from American Samoa and Guam.

Well I'm running low on Internet minutes. I'll write more from Fort Drum.

Thanks for everyone's support. It encouraged me a lot during my time here.

Looking forward to Home.

Signing off from Operation Iraqi Freedom II.

Out

2005-01-30T09:05:00.000+03:00

Its election day in Iraq. We will watch from down here in Kuwait as Iraqis express the will of the people. Whatever happens today, the very fact that the elections are happening at all and according to plan is a victory in itself and a step forward.

I think of all my Iraqi friends at this time. Some Shia, some Sunni. Some will vote and others will not because of direct threats against them. Hopefully all will benefit in the long run.

I think of several guys in particular who worked with us. They have endured so much in the past year, kidnapped family members, one had his house mortared by insurgents and his children injured, death threats to themselves and their families, even verbal abuse and insults from US soldiers who think they are the enemy. I know these guys are heroes and the rebuilders of Iraq. Every day they defy the terrorist's ambitions by getting up, going to work and not giving in to despair. They are winning by sheer will power. They would not admit greatness themselves, they are all humble men. They will tell you "what else can I do". That's the difference, the only way they see is forward, to fight in their own way. Others wait and see in the safety of inaction. As it has always been, the people of action and vision, will make the way for the rest.

2005-01-27T15:45:00.000+03:00

My last day in Iraq was yesterday. The morning was filled with last minute things like going to the mail and cleaning our tent out. Being the last out means that you get stuck with a lot of crap to throw out.

Another medical unit from our state just got in and will be here for the next year. It was good to see some familiar faces wearing the same patch we do. We gave them as much stuff as they wanted, microwaves, carpets, refrigerators, electronics, cds. They happily carted them away in the back of an ambulance.

While we were packing up we heard a rocket whistle in close to us but with no boom. We looked at eachother and continued working thinking it was a generator or something. When the alarm sounded we knew it had been incoming.

The rocket landed ten feet infront of the gate guard to the hospital across the street from our shower, causing a extreme blood pressure jump for the guard. EOD was out there later digging it out. That would be our last incoming for our deployment we've had over 600. We lost 13 comrades on our base both US military and Iraqi National Guard.

The last of our Battalion, including me, left Iraq at 19:30 local time yesterday on a C-130. As we did some hard banks after takeoff I could see the lights of my home away from home for the last year fade into the distance.

I'm now in a camp in Kuwait for a little while. Soon we'll be back home.

2005-01-24T17:24:00.000+03:00

After a break in the weather yesterday, we are back to rain and mud today.

Yesterday, I went on an unscheduled mission back to the International Zone in Baghdad. We flew down just as the sun was coming up. The fields are very green with new crops coming up. A few fields had stubble where corn had been harvested.

After landing at the helipad, we walked out to the main drag near the Embassy and up towards our Brigade HQ. The IZ is much different than when I was first there in October. More security and blast barriers, more visible guards and everyone needs to be in Body Armor and have a loaded weapon. A few days after my first visit, 2 suicide bombers hit the bazaar that used to be near the embassy and the Green Zone Cafe.

At the Embassy we got a nice tour by a Sergeant in the unit in charge of the place. We went to a room that soldiers call the Rocket room. On one end is a large painting of rockets flying off to kill Saddam's enemies, on the other is a painting of a mosque. I believe its the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. The artwork on the walls and ceiling are incredible, hand carved and painted designs, metalwork, intricate chandeliers. I saw room after room of incredible craftsmanship and opulence.

One room I visited was called the Green room. Its the one that Saddam appeared with his cabinet seated at the head of a large table.

I've visited a few of Saddam and his son's palaces. It really boggles the mind that so much money could be poured into these projects, to the detriment of the population. The work is incredible, but it was paid for in blood.

The palace is called the Embassy Annex because the US Embassy is being built elsewhere, though it won't be completed for a while.

We flew out in the afternoon. Every time I fly out of Baghdad I go in a different direction. This time I flew east out over the Tigris right by the Ishtar Sheraton, past a large church in the Eastern part of the city and over an area with large numbers of low walled buildings. It was incredible the number of water buffalo crammed into pens in people's courtyards. In the distance I could see the split blue-green dome of the Martyr's Memorial and a large stadium.

The Ishtar Sheraton on the East bank of the Tigris River

View of Eastern part of Baghdad

2005-01-22T20:50:00.000+03:00

It has been raining all day and into tonight. Its miserable outside, which should keep the bad guys indoors at least until it stops raining. Our tent has been billowing in an out and sounds like its going to be ripped up and blow away. Everyone who could, stayed out of the cold and the rain today. A short walk to the chow hall soaked me to the skin.

The forecast for tomorrow is mud. Mud in the showers, mud in every building, mud in our tent no escaping. The temperature should be nice in the upper 50's.

We missed this particular type of weather last year. At this time last year we were doing our field exercise at Fort Drum, NY with an ambient temperature of minus 27 degrees F.

Most of the Battalion is already back in Kuwait. After the transfer of authority to the last incoming unit the rest of us here will join them. I don't envy them in Kuwait. Many units are just sitting in tents in overcrowded camps sometimes for a few weeks waiting to catch a plane home. That makes it bearable though...going home.

Sun Pillar - Fort Drum, New York January 2004

2005-01-22T01:37:00.000+03:00

I now have less than a week left in Iraq. I'll be in Kuwait for the elections. The thought is that the insurgents will try to really ramp up the violence 2 to 4 days before the election for maximum intimidation effect. I'm optimistic that Iraqis will come out and vote. From watching various programs on TV I'd think that no one is going to vote. The guys at Iraq the Model think differently as do I.

In our neck of the woods, we've had a few rocket and mortar attacks in the last week. Only a couple hit close enough to me where I could even hear them. Activity is up a bit but really not that much. The insurgents seem to favor targeting people who don't shoot back.

Yesterday our EOD guys were going crazy. They were blowing up things all day making mushroom clouds several hundred feet tall. A couple times they forgot to tell us, so we wondered if we had a rocket attack. The worst case of not being notified was a couple months after we got here the Air Force dropped a 2000 pound bomb just outside our gate. That shook a few people up.

For my Iraqi friends and all Iraqis I pray for a successful election, the first of many.

2005-01-18T22:31:00.000+03:00

It rained all last night, alternating between pouring and sprinkling. The wind kicked up and helicopters flew into the hospital making for a very noisy night in the tent.

I spent most of the day in my tent reading "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. It wasn't until later in the day that I realized how ironic it was. The characters in the book are all men and women of action, who must remain in motion, while I wasted my day doing mostly nothing, including a long nap in the afternoon. I was the Randian anti-hero, notable in my ability to get nothing done and having no goal. Well, I'm not to concerned if its only for a day.

Since dinner I actually have been doing a few things like checking up on the current situation.

In Mosul the security situation has improved, despite the kidnapping and eventual release of the Catholic Archbishop. The insurgents are trying to maintain the perception of total lawlessness by focusing their efforts on high profile, soft targets that don't risk confrontation with American or Iraqi security forces. The murder rate in Mosul has actually dropped significantly in the last week, but the insurgents are very savvy at using the media as a strategic weapon.

In a few days the location of polling stations will be published. This will probably kick off the insurgents final hurrah, which will last until the 30th. Several security measures such as limiting vehicular traffic and closing the borders have been widely published.

My guess and my hope is that Iraqis will come out in large numbers defying the small group of terrorists and criminals trying to keep back the tide of history. In a few days we will see.

2005-01-17T21:01:00.000+03:00

I''m sitting in my tent, rain is pattering on the roof and there is a roll of thunder every few minutes (we ran internet lines out to the tent). A helicopter is passing overhead, about to land at the hospital. I have less than 2 weeks left in Iraq and probably around 3 left in Theater.

Last night our headquarters det left for Kuwait. We marched over with them to the holding area where they waited for the C-130 out. Most of our gear was hauled down to Kuwait by flatbed, so with the exception of a handful of people we didn't have to convoy back. Most of our Battalion is now waiting for us in Kuwait. Hopefully we'll leave, as we came a year ago, the entire battalion on one big jet.

Its a bit lonely, with only a few of us left in headquarters.

I woke up early this morning to the sound of three mortar rounds leaving the tube. I didn't wait to find out whose they were before I jumped into my boots and went inside the building. Last week I heard a mortar launch a few hundred meters outside the wire, it hit a hangar but didn't damage anything. It turned out this mornings launches were our guys doing mortar registration.

Later in the morning I went down to the clinic. The replacements just arrived last night. I met a couple of the new PAs and had lunch with them. There have been a few delays with the incoming unit and some people felt like they'd never get there. Now they can look forward to leaving soon.

2005-01-15T20:11:00.000+03:00

Today was our last official day of our Iraq mission, we did a transfer of authority ceremony this afternoon, after an excruciating 5 run throughs of the ceremony.

As we walked out of our tent to walk to the ceremony practice, the sky was just lighting up in the east. A single contrail from a plane stretched from one end of the horizon to the other forming a giant arch taking up the sky and illuminated by the rising sun. I said it was like a gate we had to go through on our last day, oops wrong direction...that way is Iran.

Most of the company will be leaving in the next few days. I'll stay around with a few of the leaders to torment the incoming unit a little more and waiting for the last unit to replace our guys at the clinic.

2005-01-12T23:13:00.000+03:00

We haven't had any mortar or rocket attacks here for a week, which is a long time in these parts. Its only happened three times since getting here last February. Word is that the insurgents are planning something they call a "day of fire". Probably the usual business of trying to cause as much damage as they can. A lot of car bombs are supposed to be roaming around the country. Our recent car bomb apparently was perpetrated by two Saudis.

Eighteen days before the elections. Several groups have stated that their snipers would gun down voters at the polls. Think about that, the act of voting is seen as dangerous or offensive enough to warrant a deadly response. With 6000 polling sites throughout the country, its impossible to or provide a high level of security for them all. On election day we'll see the heights of bravery as people come out to vote with knowledge of both its dangers and importance and the depths of cowardice as some voters are attacked and unfortunately injured or killed. Its up to all Iraqis to ensure their sacrifice was not in vain.

2005-01-11T01:51:00.000+03:00

I had a fairly relaxing day. A couple meetings in the morning, then tying up a few loose ends in the afternoon. I met my contractor friend who just came back from a business trip to Germany. He said he'll be laying low until the elections are over. Its the last time I'll see him before I leave. I've been lucky to have as much contact with Iraqis as I've had, though I would have liked more. I'll keep in contact through email.

The lull across the theater continues, for how long we don't know. The insurgents are probably moving and refitting in anticipation of attacks near the election. We have seen these spikes a half dozen times throughout the last year. My expectation is a relatively brief period of violence followed by another lull. The insurgents are running up against a few problems. One is leadership, the other is logistics. After the last Fallujah operation attacks dropped dramatically and changed to less confrontational, lower risk attacks. There was a need to preserve the fighting strength that was left. Quite a few insurgent leaders and enablers (like the moneymen) have been rolled up recently. I think the leadership crisis is real and significantly impacting their ability to sustain attacks.

As others have said before, the insurgency in Iraq comes nowhere near the gold standard Vietnamese insurgency, with large scale popular participation. The insurgents are viewed generally as dangerous criminals, sometimes as nutty zealots. They are savvy and have a very good handle on how to play the media. As a result I expect a number of large scale "made for TV" attacks in the coming weeks, followed by a crowd of talking heads discussing how everything has come undone. After the elections we will see more attacks, however, successful elections will further erode the credibility of insurgents of every stripe.

Another element of the insurgency is the subcontractor. A significant number of people we catch are paid to plant a bomb or fire a rocket. They do it not necessarily for ideological reasons but instead to make a desperately needed buck or sometimes because of threats on their own lives or their family. If the security situation was better, they would likely be happier working on a reconstruction project.

2005-01-08T19:20:00.000+03:00

Well I have officially been evicted from my office and bedroom. I'm living in a tent with all the officers and senior NCOs. Its like a big frat house. We still are doing our jobs (most of us) for a little while longer. The incoming unit is about to take over. Tonight we are having a big cookout with steak, lobstertails and a huge amount of food.

There have been a few bumps with our replacements and it hasn't exactly been the smooth, friendly transition that we experienced with the unit we replaced in February. It could be an Active Army/National Guard thing. Since we've had no problems with other Active units the real reason is probably because there are a few asses involved who's attitudes lead the way. Anyway I'm sure they'll do a fine job when they take over and I wish them luck. It will be an important year for Iraq and they are a big part of it.

The insurgents will undoubtedly try to cause trouble just before the election in the form of mass casualty attacks against soft targets. I think that the Iraqis like the Afghans will pull it off. It will be messy, but an important step forward.

2005-01-03T19:12:00.000+03:00

I woke up this morning to the sound of an explosion. It was the sound of 5 men dying. A car bomb blew up just outside our base about 500 meters from my building. As is often the case these days, it was the Iraqi National Guard who took the brunt of it. These men were doing their job, as they do every day, keeping us and their comrades safe. Doing what they could to bring peace to Iraq, they gave their life for their country. They will remain in my mind and heart among the honored dead. They should be regarded as such everywhere.

I'm getting sick of people who characterize all the Iraqi security forces as corrupt, bumbling fools. Most are honest and increasingly capable. Men of action, not words. There is so much moral distance between the armchair pundit who secretly revels in each attack and outrage because it validates their loathing of what we are doing here and the Iraqi soldier, policeman, border guard, or election worker who gets up each day and does his job knowing, yet suppressing for the sake of sanity, that today they might be killed and reviled as enemies of the people and apostates.

January, by all accounts, will be as bloody as the insurgents can muster. They will rage but the Iraqi voters have within their power the ability to deal a devastating blow against them with the stroke of a pen mixed with the bravery of showing up.

2005-01-01T21:35:00.000+03:00

Sunrise on the airstrip waiting for the Sherpa to be loaded. These planes are great for carting equipment and people all over the country sometimes flying 20ft off the ground. My favorite ride next to a blackhawk helicopter.

Homemade Italian Pizza for Lunch, cheese, ham and artichoke. The base I visited was in the Italian Division area, there is a pizzeria on post that make homemade pizza and calzones. Italian music videos were on the satellite TV and a poster on the wall proclaiming the accomplishments of Operazione Babilonia, the Italian's piece of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The great Ziggurat of Ur. Temple to the moon god.

Looking down on the tombs area.

Another view of the Ziggurat.

Looking up from the underground entrance to a royal tomb.

Mounds of debris from excavations containing a huge amount of pottery shards.

The rebuilt "House of Abraham" built on the foundations of a rich mans house from the approximate time of the Prophet Abraham.

2005-01-01T01:44:00.000+03:00

I just got back from a trip to a base near Nasiriyah in the southern part of the country. The flight down in the sherpa was enjoyable. I could see the snow-capped Zagros mountains in Iran as we flew south along the Iranian border.

The green Tigris valley faded to the sandy, absolutely flat desert of the south, criss-crossed by irrigation canals large and small. Near Nasiriyah I saw large areas of the former southern marshes that have been reflooded. I also saw large areas white with salt, the irrigation water carries salts with it that slowly build up and poison the soil.

My mission took me to a base that is right next to the ruins of ancient Ur. One of the ancient Sumerian cities, it is the traditional home of the prophet Abraham. In the 1920's and 30's the treasures of the city made it the most famous archeological site in the world, the excavations closely followed by the world press. Because of its biblical associations many Europeans traveled to this remote location to view it for themselves. Agatha Christie visited the site, later married one of the excavators and wrote a novel set in the excavation site.

I was lucky enough to tag along with a group of logistics guys who had arranged to tour the ruins with a local guide. The site is far from completely excavated, many years worth of work remain.

The site itself is dominated by the great Ziggurat, the temple to the moon god. One of the expeditions rebuilt some of the Ziggurat. We climbed the stairs to the top and had a great view of the surrounding desert and ruins. Natural asphalt was used to cement the bricks together. The guide told me that even today there are asphalt springs near the Iraqi city of Hit, these springs have been known from ancient times. Heterodotus referred to them as the fountains of Is.

We walked through a smaller temple and then the ruins of the royal palace.

One of the most striking parts of the ruins are the royal tombs. Both commoners and royalty are buried in a large brickwork area. Many of the commoners were buried simply wrapped in a reed mat and placed in a small nook along with a few personal items, some had their bones put in ossuary jars. The most spectacular part was the tombs of the Sumerian royalty. The tombs were large vaulted rooms where the excavators found many human and animal remains along with that of the king or queen. In these tombs they also found the gold, silver and priceless artifacts that captured the public's imagination only eclipsed at the time by the discovery of the tomb of King Tut in Egypt.

As walked past the tombs large piles of rubble from the excavation of the tombs lined the pit. The rubble contained a gigantic quantity of pottery shards mixed in with the dirt.

On the far end of the excavations was a house rebuilt on the ruins. It was the house of a rich man with 30 or so rooms, 4 courtyards, 3 stairs cases and a very modern drainage system made of interlocking ceramic pipes. This has been called the house of Abraham, because it is from approximately the same time period and his father was thought to be a very wealthy man.

The final part of the site we visited was called the Flood Pit. This deep excavation uncovered evidence of 2 large floods in the region, one 2900 years ago and one about 4000 years ago. The excavators at the time attributed the second flood to Noah's flood.

When things are safer, there are many sites like Ur that could support a tourist industry. There is a five year plan to continue excavation at Ur and also to build a hotel and some tourist facilities to support visitors.

The base I stayed at has had 1 rocket attack in the last year. The south part of the country is relatively safe, save an occasional roadside bomb.

Pictures tomorrow - server problems this evening

Happy New Year

2004-12-28T05:19:00.000+03:00

We now have two units cramped into our building, ours and the incoming unit. I haven't been kicked out of my room yet but I now have the incoming unit's XO staying with me. I made a lot of noise this morning getting dressed at 3:15AM. I'm traveling to one of our outlying units today and had to be up early to catch the plane. It turns out now I'm not leaving until after 6. I thought my traveling days were over here, happily I was wrong . I'll get to see our Battalion Surgeon again. He volunteered for another rotation and was posted down south.

Depending on my schedule, I may get to visit an archeological site located next to the base. I'll post some pictures when I get back in a few days.

2004-12-26T01:22:00.000+03:00

Christmas here was gray and rainy outside but we had our share of good cheer.

My Christmas present was unexpected. I logged on to Yahoo messenger and found my children were up early (before 6AM). My wife turned on the webcam and I was able to watch my children open all their presents and they could see me through my webcam. It was nice to be able to see them and chat over the computer with my wife giving the running commentary. One of the guys from my unit had a Santa Outfit and mugged for the camera and the kids.

Later in the day we had a party down at the clinic. It was good to get together with everyone and celebrate the holiday.

Thanks for all the good wishes from everyone back home. It means a lot to us here.

Merry Christmas from Iraq!

2004-12-24T23:53:00.000+03:00

Christmas eve here in Iraq. We have somehow acquired real Christmas Trees from a nursery in New York. I think the Air Force flew in several hundred. One of our dentists who rotated home sent some nicely wrapped presents which went under the tree in our office.

On the computer network there was a lot of traffic joking around about Santa being cleared for transiting Iraqi airspace and needing an up-armored sleigh.

We expect a spike in attacks tomorrow. We got a report of a suicide attack near the Libyan Embassy in Baghdad a few hours ago. Many Iraqi Christians are keeping things low key this year because of threats against the Churches.

Everyone is thinking about their families back home. Last year we were still at our mobilization station at Fort Drum. We all had a pass to go home for Christmas. I was home for a week because our daughter was born on Dec 23rd. Next Christmas we'll be home.

I found out that 2 of the soldiers killed and 13 injured in Mosul were with a Maine National Guard unit. The Engineer unit was our next door neighbor at Fort Drum. You could tell a soldier was from the unit anywhere on base because they all had fur lined eskimo hoods for their gortex jackets. Being from Maine they were ready for the -20Fahrenheit weather.

2004-12-23T01:19:00.000+03:00

The attack on FOB Marez in Mosul has turned out to be caused by a suicide bomber. The details of the investigation will be released later today. Its now just after midnight on Thursday here. The Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs just had a news conference with the information.

I got my first indication this morning at a meeting. We were told that several people debriefed after the incident indicated that the explosion came from inside the chow hall not from an airburst rocket. Later I talked to one of our doctors who happened to be up in Mosul yesterday. He rushed to the hospital and helped triage and put in chest tubes. Being an experienced trauma doc it was good that he was there. While they were triaging outside the hospital, they got mortared, some landed only yards away. He said the injuries didn't look like the usual rocket or mortar injuries and it might have been a bomb carried in.

The initial reports said that a 122mm rocket was involved. I think the reason this was said was because small bb sized ball bearings were found. Certain Chinese, Russian and South African 122mm rockets have these packed inside.

This afternoon I sat down and talked to a couple of our Iraqi contractors. We talked about the security situation for them. Though it is much better for them, they still need to be very careful. One recently had a family member kidnapped in retaliation for him working with the Americans. He asked about where I live. If it was safe to go anywhere whenever I want. I told him my town was very safe, in fact we don't even have our own police. The State police cover our town. I was a little taken aback at how incredulous he was that I had absolute freedom of movement. It made me realize how lucky we are back at home. I told him that I pray for the same to be true in Iraq. He replied "inshalla" - God Willing.

I went to another civil affairs meeting. We talked about the village water treatment projects that are ongoing and plans for a regional water distribution district. The new units seem eager to get started on their projects in the surrounding communities.

2004-12-21T21:32:00.000+03:00

It was a black day for us today.

At lunchtime we had an attack at a FOB in Mosul hitting a dining facility. Unfortunately, there were large numbers of casualties, including over 20 killed and more than 50 injured. We mourn for our fallen comrades, pray for the recovery of the wounded and comfort for their families.

We heard about the incident soon after it happened medevac choppers scrambled from all over the area. All 4 US military hospitals got patients from Mosul. Soon we heard the choppers arriving, flying low over our building, the crew chiefs sticking their heads out to check the approach. Our hospital had choppers backed up waiting to land at the pad with some of the worst patients because we have a neurosurgeon. Several of our teams are up in the area so we anxiously waited for their sitreps. We later found out that they were not in the immediate area when the attack happened.

Its not something that we dwell on but each one of us know deep down that this could happen anywhere. It was a random tragedy. We've had our share here, thankfully they are few and far between. Earlier this year we had 3 soldiers killed and 25 injured when we were hit by a 127mm rocket. We've had other deaths and quite a few more injuries. Since we've been here our base has had over 550 rounds of mortars and rockets shot at us (we keep count). Sometimes they hit their mark, mostly they don't. Mosul has been getting indirect fire all year. We had three of our guys injured up there this spring.

We reached an important milestone today. Most of our gear was loaded into a large steel shipping container. I am officially living out of a dufflebag which could last a while. We spread out plastic sheets on the ground and emptied every footlocker and dufflebag out for the customs people to inspect. There is a large list of banned items that we are not allowed to bring home including weapons, explosives, artifacts and even rocks for fear of contaminated soil. Save a playboy magazine or two (also banned) we were good to go. Two Coast Guard guys did the HAZMAT inspection. Other than the port security guys down in Um Qasr they are probably the only Coast Guard guys in the country. I know the CG has more people working the ports in Kuwait.

Tony Blair came to Baghdad today to try to boost the election effort. Any help is welcome.

2004-12-21T01:13:00.000+03:00

The twin bombings in Najaf and Karbala were targeting the police and civilians. The Shi'a south has been relatively quiet for a while. There are a number of bad actors around who would love to stir things up among the Shi'a among them Zarqawi, the Baathists and even Moqtada Al Sadr, who would not mind undermining Sistani's authority.

The level of intimidation, especially of anyone related to the election will most likely get worse as we approach the end of January. After witnessing the violence of the election workers being dragged out of their car and shot on Haifa Street in Baghdad, people will need very strong spines to continue on. I am hopeful that they will. My prayers are with them.

For me it was a normal day. A few meetings and lots of busy work preparing for the new unit. We had two indirect fire attacks today, but as usual it was the junior varsity team who can't get it over the fence.

2004-12-18T21:35:00.000+03:00

The weather has really cooled off. A few mornings ago it was 18 degrees Fahrenheit in Mosul, here it got down in the 20's. This evening there was a large halo surrounding the moon caused by ice crystals in the air.

More and more new units are arriving, we'll be some of the last of our rotation to go. The new commanding unit on post have decided they own our parking lot and put a guard at the gate and won't let our trucks in.

I went to the gym this morning for the first time in a long time. Just after I finished, the alarm went off and we had to take shelter under a building. Some of the Filipino staff from the gym , were in there with me. One of the ladies opened a Christmas card that a soldier had given to her and was showing it to all her friends.

Walking back I saw some soldiers decorating a big wood and metal frame they had built in the shape of a tree. We have a giant inflatable Santa and a Christmas tree on our roof. This week we have received lots of boxes from friends and family as well as groups that want us to have something for the holidays. Its all very appreciated by us. I have gorged myself on cookies and chocolate today.

Last week we had the USO come through. Robin Williams and John Elway plus some others came and did a show and then a meet and greet. I think they continued on to Afghanistan. Throughout the year we've seen a steady stream of entertainers and stars come through to ours and other bases to support the troops. The most out of place one had to be the rapper 50 Cent giving a concert when it was 115 degrees. Everyone had to wear their helmet and body armor and carry their weapons. Not your usual rap concert. Personally, I have a lot of respect for anyone who takes time out of their schedule and visits the troops. Wayne Newton also came through with his variety show which was actually the best overall event. In our own twisted sort of thinking we almost wish for a mortar attack while they are on base, just so they can see how we live.

I continued my packing today and took a nap.

2004-12-13T23:14:00.000+03:00

I took a nap after work this evening so I can stay up to watch the geminids meteor shower. As an added bonus a bright comet is also visible near Orion.

I'll be heading up to our roof for a few hours. My room mate is now down in Kuwait dealing with redeployment issues but he left me his 10X50 binoculars.

Another quiet day working with my replacement. We attended a weekly meeting which has been totally revamped by another incoming unit. Luckily all these guys have worked together back in the states and should have no growing pains.

The big thing we're waiting for on Wednesday is the publishing of the consolidated candidates list by the government. This is a necessary thing but will have some unfortunate side effects. For the bad guys it represents a high value target list and we are almost sure to see a surge in assassinations. You have to be a very brave person to run in this election, you are sure to make it on someone's hit list.

The Iraqi government has floated the idea of an election period instead of one discrete election day to try to increase the security of the election. Stretching things out a bit would cut down crowds and the attendant risk of a mass casualty attack. Intimidation and discrediting of the process is now highest on the insurgents agenda.

The insurgents are far from a monolithic group. The craziest and most outrageous are Zarqawi's bunch of screwballs but the greatest long term threat may be the former regime elements who have the most experience with grass root intimidation and organization.
Some have argued that the insurgency must have grass root support because of ongoing violence. I reject that idea. A relatively small group of people can cause chaos and being intimidated is not the same as support. Another trend that the average Iraqi understands fundamentally is the merging of the insurgent and the criminal element. Now so much of the insurgent activities are funded by kidnapping, robbery and shakedowns that the ideal of the noble freedom fighter has gone right down the toilet. The insurgents may still be portrayed as such in some venues outside of Iraq but the fact is undeniable here that the insurgent ranks are populated with large numbers of criminals who are in it for personal enrichment.

The greatest heroes in this fight are the Iraqi Police. They are an imperfect bunch, however every day tens of thousands of men wake up and in an incredible act of bravery show up for work. These are the guys bearing the brunt of the insurgent's fury because they are the greatest threat along with their comrades in the Iraqi Security Force. When security can be achieved at the lowest level, the great pent up ambition of the Iraqi people will come into full flower. I think they deserve so much credit, they put their hope in the future on the line every day at great personal risk.

2004-12-12T02:24:00.000+03:00

Its 2:30 AM and for some reason I'm still up. Today's highlight was that my replacement came today. I spent a little time with the guy who will be doing my job for the next rotation. Because my job is a bit more involved than some others, he has come ahead of his unit along with a couple others in headquarters. Tomorrow I start training him. I'll actually have quite a long time to do so compared with others.

I read an interesting article on Forward Surgical Teams in the New England Journal of Medicine. It talks about how innovations in battlefield medicine have kept the mortality rate among battlefield casualties to 10%. The lowest rates ever recorded. I printed out a copy for the commander of one of the FSTs that is staying with us as they get situated. Soon they'll move out to one of the remote FOBs. Over the last year we have had 4 teams stay with us. One relocated from Iraq to Afghanistan.

I've been procrastinating finishing packing my gear. I don't relish the idea of going back to living out of my dufflebag. The big metal shipping containers have to be packed far in advance of our leaving and we probably won't see them until late spring. Anything we might need in the next months has to go in a dufflebag so we can bring it with us on the plane.

We now have a new higher headquarters. They just came in less than 2 weeks ago and are currently driving us crazy with all their new rules and requirements. I think this is a common thing. We are used to doing thing one way and they have grand ideas of how things should be. I've seen the same thing with several new OIF3 commands coming in. The new guy thinks that now they will do things the RIGHT way. Soon enough we'll reach a new equilibrium, we will find that some things they do are better and they will come to understand that some things are done as a result of time tested trial and error and changing some things is unwise. Unfortunately, hard heads and large egos have a way of slowing down this process.

2004-12-09T01:23:00.000+03:00

Today I went to a civil affairs meeting for the post. One unit was leaving and the new unit was taking over. It was a time for the units who have been here for the last year to take stock of what we've done during our time here.

The civil affairs officer who ran the meeting is a great guy we've worked with on a number of projects. He's typically outside the wire four or more times a week, coordinating dozens of projects benefiting the people who live around our camp. He meets with the town councils, sheiks, school headmasters, religious leaders, and medical personnel trying to prioritize the needs around us.

The Army budgeted 5 million dollars for civil affairs type projects in our area for last year. Units stationed here sponsor a project and with the help of civil affairs go through the contracting process and provide soldiers when necessary to carry out the project. We spent it all except 200 bucks. Next year the budget is another 5 million dollars.

Some of the projects done included building or repairing and furnishing 15 schools serving thousands of children, building 7 clinics, providing radio equipment for a local fire department and police department, providing renovations, a new ultrasound machine and an internet cafe to the local city hospital and providing water filtration plants for 24 villages. In addition people back home have sent school supplies and clothing for the children. Soldiers, Airmen and Marines have distributed thousands of backpacks filled with school supplies sent through Operation Iraqi Children. The medical units have also run clinics with our PAs, doctors, dentists and optometrists seeing hundreds of patients.

One of the best part of these projects was to get soldiers off the base and out to meet the people we are trying to help. My missions out to the villages for medical clinics or delivering school supplies were the most satisfying of my time here.

A colonel stood up at our meeting and emphasized how important these projects are both for the local communities and for the soldiers. He recounted how he had brought members of a combat unit out to a village to distribute school supplies. The only time these guys were outside the wire before this had been 7 months of combat patrols. He said its important for the soldiers to see the smiling faces of people who genuinely are happy you are there, which by the way is most people in our part of the country. He said it had a profound effect on the soldiers and allowed them to see the bigger picture and get a better sense of why we are here. It hard to care about the local people when you spend all your time ducking mortars and getting shot at.

I've been very fortunate to have been able to travel around the country and to participate in some of these projects. Every soldier I talk to who has done the same considers it time well spent.

2004-12-05T02:45:00.000+03:00

I'm up all night for CQ duty. I wasted some time going through our hundreds of satellite channels, most are in Arabic. A new one I found today was Al Jazeera Children's channel....great.

In the military we have a term called IO which stands for Information Operations. Yes, this can encompass propaganda or "spin", but at its core is getting out our story in a favorable light. Ideally this shouldn't be a big problem if we believe we are doing the right thing here.

I recall a Special Forces officer I met in the Green Zone who worked with the 36th Commando of the Iraqi Army. His comment to me was that we were categorically losing the IO war, largely courtesy of the international press. The 36th Commando is a small but highly significant success story in the Iraqi Army. A special operations group composed of Shi'ia, Sunnis and Kurds it is the most professional and effective force in the Iraqi Army along with their sister special operations group. The men of this unit have been incredibly brave and performed significant missions in Najaf, Samarra and Fallujah. His frustration was that in Samarra 36 CDO secured a main mosque being used as a operating base for insurgents, arresting a couple dozen and securing a large weapons cache, causing minimal damage and denying another repeat of the Najaf Mosque standoff. A CNN camera crew was with them during and after the operation. The crew was concerned only about finding civilian casualties and what violations of the laws of war had been committed not what good work 36 CDO had done.

Now the military is doing a little something about IO. Since their story has not passed through the main stream media filter, they are providing a site where members of the media and the general public can get stories and photos directly. I think its a fantastic idea that needs to be expanded. I think the average American who gets all their Iraq news from the TV and newspapers will have a dramatically different view after reading some of the stories from Iraq. The site has links to the various newspapers that are published on posts around the theater as well as pictures and stories from Combat Camera, our front line Public Affairs people.

DVIDS -Digital Video & Imagery Distribution System

2004-12-04T01:29:00.000+03:00

Incredibly, we've only had two mortar rounds fired at us in the last 10 days. The locals are feeling a bit more confident turning in the bad guys resulting in the capture of some very large fish and probably the cause of the current lull.

Most likely, some of the insurgent groups will try a large scale operation before the election and continue the harassment of the population to discourage voting. Hopefully we can head them off at the pass. No doubt, someone will be unhappy with the election so post election violence is also a distinct possibility.

Zarqawi seems to have come unglued, now everyone hates him (inside Iraq). He condemned Sunni clerics for not issuing Fatwas to support the fighters in Fallujah. His group is suspected of killing three prominent Sunni Clerics. He has always shown his contempt for the Shi'ia whom he considers heretics in addition to the Kurds and the Christians. Today his group bombed a Shi'ia mosque in Baghdad. So now we have the situation that he considers no group in Iraq worthy of living. His goal is simply chaos, which every Iraqi I have spoken to sees clearly. He can't be neutralized quickly enough.

The most excitement I've had was being electrocuted at physical therapy. To strengthen the muscle supporting my knee, they decided to do something called Russian E-stim. Basically they attach two electrodes to either end of the muscle and turn up the current until I can't tolerate the pain. It looks strange as the muscle contracts while all the other stay relaxed. I get to do this 3 times a week. I suspect if I was at home I would have stopped PT a while ago, but it can't hurt (that much) to continue for a little while more.

Some of the units around post are getting into the holiday spirit. Our office is decked out in Christmas lights, I saw a big glowing inflatable Santa and the trailer in front of our building has "Peace on Earth" spelled out in white Christmas lights. We are having a Christmas bazaar coming this weekend. I'm looking forward to a ride on a camel. Somehow the vets authorized one to come on post. We've been unsuccessful getting a goat for a goat roast.

I must have told 20 different Iraqi contractors in the past six months that if they could get a camel on base they would make a huge amount of money giving rides and charging people to pose for photos. Everyone would want a picture. Anyway, these rides are free but only for one day. I may camp out.

On December 15th, the government is supposed to publish a unified of candidates for the 30 January elections. Luckily a few of the groups that called for delay have backpedaled and are now saying the vote should go ahead. This includes the Interim president Ghazi Al-Yawar, a Sunni Sheik who will be meeting with President Bush in Washington on Monday.

The weather has been beautiful this past week. The skies are a brilliant
blue with some fair weather clouds. The temperature has been in the lower sixties during the day dropping to the upper thirties at night.

I spent the evening reading some blogs written by Iraqis. A list can be found at Iraq Blog Count.

2004-11-27T20:55:00.000+03:00

Today I spent some time with two of my Iraqi friends whom I haven't seen in a long time. They have been laying low because of the threats of kidnapping and death threats against contractors working with the Americans. One of our mutual friends was kidnapped a few months ago on the road to Baghdad. He eventually was ransomed for 40,000 dollars.

My friends seem to have a very good handle on what we call the atmospherics. That is, the mood on the street and the general security situation. They told me that the security is good again for them and they feel confident to come back. Their confidence in the future is very high.

Next week for the first time in their lives they will travel outside Iraq. Its hard to the understate the significance of this trip for these two men, roughly my age, who until recently had no chance of leaving. This will be a business trip to Germany to buy some factory equipment for a new construction material factory that they are setting up. They'll be gone for a month, but I'll keep in touch by email. It seems every Iraqi I meet has a yahoo or hotmail email address. I asked them why they chose to build a particular type of factory and they told me that they saw the future would be all about building. They are general contractors now and want to also get in on manufacturing some of the building materials. They contacted suppliers in Germany and arranged for visas. The Germans were eager to work with them. Because of guys like this who have hope in the future of their country and the ambition to help create that future, I have confidence that Iraq will succeed as a nation.

We had lunch together and chatted about a wide variety of things. One of them said that if things are calm in Najaf and Karbala in the spring, he will bring his whole extended family for the pilgrimage called Arbaeen. If there is violence only the men will go to represent the family.

We also talked about some of the positive changes in the country since Saddam fell. For one thing, marriages are way up. One of the reasons is in the former regime a couple needed to get government permission to get married. This invariably involved a significant amount of "baksheesh" or bribes. Now people simply need the approval of the family and no longer have to pay off officials or have officials prevent them from getting married.

Another interesting thing we talked about was about Yassir Arafat. He said that many people in Iraq didn't like him because he had two faces. I wonder if it has something to do with Saddam's support of Arafat and paying the families of suicide bombers. It was surprising, since I thought Arafat had widespread support throughout the Arab world.

It seems that Iraqis are more independent minded that some people give them credit for. I saw a report last week that both Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya are quickly losing marketshare to two local Iraqi TV stations. Also note that most of the calls for Jihad are coming from non-Iraqis. Like a lot of people, they don't like to be told what to think, especially from people outside Iraq. This is a good thing.

2004-11-26T23:07:00.000+03:00

The chow halls went all out yesterday. KBR apparently brought 200,000 pounds of turkey, 45,000 pounds of stuffing and 25 tons of potatoes into Iraq.

The chow hall decorations were crazy. There was the huge 4 foot long Mayflower boat made out of bread, dozens of carved melons and pineapples, big bread cornucopias and a three foot alligator whose skin was made of pinapples and its mouth was a watermelon.

The food was good and the whole day was fairly very relaxing. It was a good sign that we didn't have an attack on the holiday. It follows the lull that we are having. We haven't had anything fired at us in 3 days, the longest we've gone for a long while.

I called my family last night and talked to my wife, my sisters, my brother, my sister in law and my brother in law all gathered at my parent's house with 10 grandchildren running around (well, not the babies). For once I think it was actually colder here than in New England.

Today was a cool blustery day, which we started early with 6AM sandbagging detail. Nothing really exciting. I saw the two Iraqi kids at physical therapy. They had a translator with them today so they were a bit more talkative. The girl actually knows quite a bit of English, but is sometime shy about using it. I spent the rest of the day preparing for and going to meetings. Dinner tonight was a little less appetizing. A corn dog, fries which I slathered with melted cheese and chili, and some tomatoes. A new thing that they are doing in our chow hall is making milkshakes. One of the guys has a few blenders next to the ice cream station where he spends a couple hours at each night making mostly strawberry shakes.

We all recently had our blood drawn for G6PD deficiency testing. We have been taking chloroquine since April for Malaria prophylaxis. We need to take primaquine at the end of the mosquito season but people with a certain enzyme deficiency can't take it because it may cause hemolytic anemia. Testing everyone in theater has proved to be a logistic challenge to say the least. The Air Force was smart and tested everyone before they deployed, the Army is doing it now with the new troops coming in, but has to catch up with us.

I broke out my Arabic CD again. The classes are now held on the other side of post at a very inconvenient time. I do want to start going again if I can fit it in.

2004-11-24T22:51:00.000+03:00

All the chow halls are busily preparing for Thanksgiving tomorrow. Each one tries to outdo the other in food and decorations. The base commander will award one of them the top DFAC (Dining Facility) award.

Some of the units for OIF 3 have already arrived in theater. Several units from our state are on the ground. We've actually met with some of our replacements, even though we aren't leaving for a while. Its a good feeling to know that we'll be leaving soon enough. Seeing the replacements makes it more tangible. Part of the transition is trying to transfer the knowledge of everything you've learned over the last year to the incoming unit. It takes a lot of organization and reflection on what went well and what didn't. It prevents the new unit from making the same mistakes and lets them build on our successes. For the maneuver units this is essential. The enemy invariably tests the resolve of new units in an area. We can't give them any slack.

Our push against the insurgents continued in N. Babil province today. This area has been a problem for a while and some of the guys from Fallujah ended up here. Instead of letting them regroup and reconstituted, the idea is to keep them off balance. The goal is to allow the elections at the end of January to go on. There are other hotspots and the assassinations of government officials and candidates will continue in an effort to influence who makes it into office.

There are reports that Moqtada Al-Sadr is getting very frustrated with his henchmen. While he gives the nice political face to his organization, he is furious that his orders to assassinate Allawi and other officials have come to nothing. We may see some more activity from him.

Theater-wide we are continuing to see short-term positive effects resulting from the Fallujah operation. Attacks are down significantly, and those that do occur are not causing as many casualties.

2004-11-20T23:13:00.000+03:00

Clearing operations continue in Fallujah. Attacks are down across theater by at least 50% compared to last week. The danger exists that, as insurgents sense the situation slipping away from them, they will get increasingly outrageous in their tactics. With two months until the election it will be a rough ride.

I've been following two stories out of Fallujah. The first is the unfortunate incident with the Marine shooting the injured insurgent in the mosque, caught on film. The reaction to the incident has been bordering on hysterical. In my opinion the Marine acted in accordance with the situation as he saw it. Keep in mind several incidents that day gave proof that even dead bodies were potentially dangerous. A booby trapped body injured 5 marines and killed one and a dying insurgent reportedly pulled out a grenade as his final act. Again the tactics of the insurgents dare us to become barbarians. One gray situation becomes an international incident and a propaganda coup. More disturbing is that he may have delayed action because he felt he needed to verbally justify his actions to the news crew.

Al Jazeera showed the clip all day long interviewing people on the street whipped up into a frenzy. One guy said that this proved the Americans behavior in Fallujah was just as bad as those decapitating innocent civilians and the idiots who killed Margaret Hassan. Luckily most Iraqis know better.

The second story, again promulgated by an eager media is that of a humanitarian emergency in Fallujah. There was a story that US troops blocked a Red Crescent convoy was blocked from entering the city by US troops. The story had to be refuted by the Red Crescent itself before anyone believed it wasn't true. The ministry of health made extensive plans to take care of displaced civilians, setting up food distribution and medical support. Throughout the operation the main hospital was taking patients and two clinics stayed open in the city. The fact is that most civilians left the city for outlying areas.

The moral of the story is that mayhem and misery trump progress in the news, even if it has to be made up. The Fallujah operation will be portrayed as a dismal failure, responsible for spreading the insurgents into the far corners of Iraq to cause mischief. We will have to wait and see how this effects the insurgency but I have to think removing over 2000 insurgents and disrupting a major command and control center can't be all bad.

2004-11-18T22:10:00.000+03:00

Here's some pictures from my trip to Baghdad earlier this week. The first picture is a busy street in Baghdad on the east side of the Tigris river. Its amazing how many satellite dishes are around, even in the poorest areas. I think this may be the edge of Sadr City (AlThawra).

This next picture is of the former Grand Saddam Mosque, now called the Al-Rahman (The Merciful) Mosque. Still under construction it was to be the largest mosque in the world when completed with 64 domes and 20 stories tall able to hold 30,000 worshippers. Saddam went on a Mosque building spree after the Gulf War. He wanted a grand mosque named after him in every one of the provinces. He also reportedly donated 25+ pints of his own blood for the purpose of writing the whole Koran with it. This is housed in the Mother of All Battles Mosque in Baghdad. What a nut!

The last picture, though hard to make out is a group of people, mostly children, in a field with a flock of sheep in the farmland outside of Baghdad. Everyone in the group waved to our helicopter as we passed over.

2004-11-16T21:15:00.000+03:00

My soccer injury has wasted a lot of my time in the past week. On the plus side I did get a helicopter ride down to the International Zone in Baghdad to visit the hospital.

The ride to Baghdad was good for sight seeing. The fields are now green from the fall rains. We came in to the International Zone from the east, flying over Sadr City and the parts of Baghdad lining the east bank of the Tigris. Crossing the Tigris we passed low over the Al-Rashid hotel and the Iraqi government offices.

We landed at the helipad and some guys from Brigade picked us up in a white chevy Tahoe. Last time I walked but it was a bit too far with crutches. I had a quick visit to the PT department at Ibn Sina Hospital where many of the car bomb victims go. Saddam even had a hernia operation there a few months ago. Now its manned by an Army hospital unit.

Rushing back to the helipad in the back of a humvee ambulance we managed to hitch a ride with, we arrived just in time for an afternoon ride back to our base. We flew west out of the IZ over the Baghdad Zoo, now devoid of animals. To our north were two large unfinished mosques that Saddam was building, The Saddam Mosque and the Mother of All Battles Mosque. We made a stop at another base in the Baghdad area and picked up a few more people, then flew back out over the date groves and fields to our base.

We've continued to get rocket and mortar attacks on base. In fact yesterday I woke up to a couple of loud thuds followed by the alarm siren.

2004-11-11T22:10:00.000+03:00

Tonight is one of the most important dates during Ramadan - The night of destiny also called the night of power. The actual date seems to be different for Sunni and Shi'ia here. Usually on the 27th day of Ramadan Muslims believe that the angel Gabriel (Jabril) started to reveal the Quran to Mohammed. On the night of destiny many Moslems pray all night "one night worth a thousand months". It is also unfortunately another excuse for some to do mischief. For us this was no exception tonight. Illumination flares were lighting up the area north of our base to help troops in contact. We also had a number of mortar rounds come in an injure some of our third country national workers. Throughout the country we've had a spike in attacks.

Major combat in Fallujah should be wrapped up within 72 hours, probably less.

Today we spent time watching coverage on Yassir Arafat's death and reactions around the world.

2004-11-10T21:18:00.000+03:00

The Fallujah operation seems to be going as planned. Its a messy, dirty business. We've been receiving casualties for the last few days. Soon the civil affairs teams will be moving into Fallujah to help with restoring public services as the civilians return home. Huge amounts of reconstruction money has been allocated for reconstruction.

The elimination of a safe harbor for the insurgents in Fallujah will not be the end of the insurgency, but the momentum of success can bring a life of its own. The most important element is that the Iraqis gain confidence in their leaders and security forces. I think things are moving in the right direction.

Today we had a higher level of attacks in other areas throughout the theater as a reaction to Fallujah. We expected this and will deal with the situations as they arise or intelligence surfaces.

When I went for PT today I met two Iraqi children who come to the base twice a week for physical therapy. The children are a brother and sister who were injured in a mortar attack. The little girl is in a wheel chair and can't use her legs. Her brother had the bones of his leg fused after the injury and is in need of additional surgery. The kids were very happy to be there. I said hello and exercised my stock Arabic phrases. They both teased me because I told them I hurt my knee playing "Toba" (Soccer). While I was lying on my back getting my knee iced they both came by and tickled my feet.

On my way out I grabbed some candy from a box that said "candy for our patients-take more if we made you cry".

2004-11-08T21:16:00.000+03:00

I've been hobbling around today. Yesterday I got a knee injury during our soccer tournament. The physical therapist thinks it is fairly serious but can be treated here. As a result I get to go to physical therapy every morning. Our soccer schedule was a little too ambitious. The tournament was crammed into 4 days. It turned out that yesterday we had to play 3 games, 2 back to back. We were all beat up the end, I couldn't walk(or at least dance a jig), we dropped 3 people off at the clinic and this morning the clinic saw 8 people from various teams. I guess if our biggest problems in Iraq are soccer injuries, we'll be lucky. The Iraqi guys who got me cleats Saturday were amused to see me with a knee brace.

In Fallujah Operation Phantom Fury has kicked off. Once again the Iraqi Army's best units are involved, specifically 36 Commando. Today they seized Fallujah General Hospital, which was used to great effect for propaganda purposes in April. The Marines and US Army troops have started to move in. We have been seeing the big Marine CASEVAC helicopters and Army Blackhawk Medevac choppers coming into the hospital here. Its always a sobering thing when the big gray twin rotor choppers pass low overhead as they approach the hospital LZ. You know that your wounded comrades are in that thing. I always say a prayer for them.

Today one of our contractors who I haven't seen in a long time stopped by. He has been staying away for a while because of threats against people working with us. He was on post to pick up one of our other contractor's son who was wounded in a mortar attack. This little boy was lucky, he got some shrapnel in his flank, was medevaced here and spent a week in the hospital. His neighbor, another child, was killed in the attack. The boy was very cute and seemed very happy to be going home. We gave him a few little gifts before he left.

2004-11-03T19:27:00.000+03:00

I just came back from a whirlwind aerial tour of Northern Iraq. I was up with the Stryker Brigade near Mosul on a mission yesterday and today. I caught a medevac flight up there after failing once again to find a space on the Sherpa. I came back on a Cav Blackhawk.

My return flight involved 6 stops, 2 refuels and hundreds of miles from Mosul to the outskirts of Baghdad plus a few backtracks. I really enjoy the helicopter rides, zipping over the countryside with people waving and sheep and birds scattering beneath us. The terrain up north is very different than the flat green plains of the Tigris valley. Heading north there is an east-west chain of hills a couple hundred feet high that rise up out of the flat desert. Further north near Mosul the land is hilly and very rocky. The Tigris winds through the city with lush vegetation on both sides.

On the way up we pulled some high G turns when the pilot thought he saw someone planting an IEDs and circled to investigate.

The FOB I visited was very isolated, really in the middle of nowhere. The good thing about the place is that it is so quiet. They rarely get attacked because of their remote location. The food was better than at my base. They have the same contractor as the Cav in Baghdad complete with the milkshakes to go.

On the way south from Tikrit, another of my stops, we saw huge numbers of sheep. In one location it looked like dozens of shepherd had gathered in one place with their tents, vehicles and probably 5000 sheep. I even saw a small herd of camels of three varieties (brown, black and white).

Last night I walked from the trailer I was staying to the MWR tent to send an email and watch the beginning of the election coverage. I got back to base around 10:30 and have been watching the TV throughout the day. Kerry is scheduled to give a concession speech around 9pm our time. I'm glad its over and I'm happy with the result.

My Medevac flight north

Hills north of Tikrit

City of Mosul

2004-10-31T22:12:00.000+03:00

I just got back from a mission with the Marines in the Western Desert. It was interesting to see another part of the country. We flew less than 100 feet off the ground. Near our base we flew over big vineyards with the grapes climbing on a grid of lines attached to poles about 5 feet high. Away from the Tigris floodplain, there was dry scrub. I saw many trench wells surrounded by very green plots of corn and even rice.

We were lucky to fly over Lake Tharthar, the largest body of water in Iraq. Tharthar was created by flooding a large basin containing a much smaller salt lake with flood waters from the Tigris River. When we were out over the lake, all we could see in every direction was water. I could have been flying over the North Atlantic, the scene was the same.

West of Tharthar, the land had more relief than the plains of the east. There were deeply carved wadis and flat topped plateaus. Some of the cliffs were a couple hundred feet high. We crossed the Euphrates river as we flew west . It was a green ribbon cutting through the brown desert.

Near an old Iraqi base, the perimeter was lined with tank revetments and trench fighting positions cut into the desert floor.

Fallujah looms large in all our minds, it will be a hard fight however the outcome is sure. Luckily a majority of the civilians have left the city. Things have stepped up here with more harassing mortar and rocket fire today on our base. When major operations start in Fallujah, we can expect flareups in hotspots around the country and pile on by different groups along our supply routes. Fallujah will likely take weeks as the ground commanders calibrate their offensive.

On a different note, I was interviewed on National Public Radio on Thursday last week about my nature observations in Iraq. While I was out West the interview aired in the states. I had a lot of positive comments from people who appreciated seeing Iraq from a different perspective.

Surf's up in Iraq - Western shore of Lake Tharthar

Trench Well in the desert

Crossing the Euphrates

2004-10-29T21:02:00.000+03:00

There's a paper out today in the British medical journal The Lancet titled "Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion in Iraq:cluster sample survey". This paper that estimates 100,000 excess deaths in Iraq since the invasion has been getting wide play in the media and pile on play on anti-war websites.

I've read the paper and offer my opinion on the papers methodology and conclusions.

As my Epidemiology professor was fond of saying. In statistics you can never know the truth, you can only approximate it. The validity of that approximation is dependent on the quality of your data.

I'll leave it to others to analyzed the statistical specifics but I wanted to bring up the point that the much touted 100,000 deaths figure is not set in stone, even to the authors. For example a measure of the certainty is seen in the gigantic confidence interval in the excess death rate (8000-194000). In other words based on their data there is a 95% chance that the range of excess deaths could be as low as 8000 and as high as 194000.

A problem with estimating violent deaths on a country wide basis in Iraq is that violence is very focal, a neighborhood may suffer a disastrous event such as a major car bomb. If a neighborhood like this is included in the survey, representing virtually none of the population, the mortality estimates will be skewed towards being too high. Too me their sampling methodology is not as robust as it needs to be, I'm not sure given the situation there is one that could be. The numbers also fail my first statistical test, the believability test. When the statistics say something that doesn't seem right, its a good idea to look closely at the results. Sometimes a result may be correct, but chance in statistics can be a dangerous thing. Chance alone can produce spurious associations like linking a stock price to the grape harvest in Chile.

According to their data, if Fallujah is excluded as an extreme statistical outlier approximately 90000 of the excess deaths were caused by violence. This would be 6000 people a month for the last 15 months. I just don't see this magnitude of civilian deaths on the ground.

I don't knock attempting to quantify the health effects of the conflict. The war is a a very messy business, everyone suffers. I would agree with the study that infant mortality, at least in some areas went up because women stayed at home to have their babies because of security concerns. Violence also has claimed thousands of civilians. There is no doubt that violent deaths have increased dramatically in some areas. The authors did what they could with the data. Here is a great statement of the obvious from the paper "In this case, the lack of precision [of the study] does not hinder the clear identification of a major public health problem in Iraq - violence" - you don't say!

The authors to their credit seemed fairly rigorous in their statistics and appropriately reported their wide confidence intervals and noted the lack of precision in their data. I cannot ascribe pure motives to the press reports. First many fringe element websites as well as CNN et al. have latched onto the 100,000 number as straight fact and attributed all these deaths directly to the coalition, forgetting the Zarqawis of the world who care nothing about wholesale slaughter. There is also the spurious argument that because only a few thousand people died a year because of Saddam's regime and more people are dying now this somehow highlights the immorality of the entire operation. Very simplistic, flawed logic and very short term thinking.

The most direct route to improved health in Iraq is the quick demise of several thousand individuals responsible for the majority of the deaths of civilians. I reject the argument that coalition military action is the primary public health problem in Iraq.

2004-10-28T05:56:00.000+03:00

The sky in the east is orange, the sun will be up in a few minutes. I had the last glimpse of the lunar eclipse about 10 minutes ago as the moon faded into the lightening sky. We were lucky here in most of Iraq, totality came at 5:23 AM, before sunrise.

I woke up at 4:30 and went outside to see a dark bite out of the top of the moon. Over the next hour the shadow progressed, revealing a dark reddish-orange moon with an ever decreasing bright crescent until totality came.

The Blood Moon seems to be auspicious for the Red Sox at least, in the 8th inning they are up. Let it not be so for the insurgents but instead one of impending doom.

2004-10-27T23:27:00.000+03:00

Today was an earlier than usual morning for me. I woke up at 3:30 in order to get to the flightline to try to get a seat on a plane for a mission. By 6 AM it was obvious that I was going nowhere. We will have to put in a request and get me officially manifested. Sometimes Space-A works, often it doesn't.

My roommate gave me a 9mm to carry, since its much easier to lug around. This is a good idea in the Green Zone because they have started restricting long guns from certain areas. I suspect this stems from the fact that very few senior officers carry and M-4 or an M-16. Keeping the riff-raff out. Where I'm going I felt much more comfortable carrying my M-16 and over 200 rounds as opposed to a 9mm pistol and 30 rounds.

The plane flying to where I'm going is a small flying box called a Sherpa. They fly less than 100 feet off the ground to avoid enemy fire. By the time you hear the Sherpa it has passed over. An unfortunate side effect is that the risk of bird strike is high and every pilot in theater has hit at least one flock.

On another front, National Public Radio would like to do a story about my birdwatching antics here in Iraq. I talked to the producer a few days ago and we had a nice chat. I have to arrange a good time to get interviewed. Hopefully people can hear that despite the images of chaos and destruction, one can find both peace and beauty here if you look.

In the PX this evening my roommate and I went to pick up prizes for tomorrow's Halloween Bingo. We ate diner at Burger King, the first time I've eaten there since it opened. Some of our guys seem to have reverted to an all fast food diet consisting of Burger King and Pizza Hut commodities. Paper Burger King bags and Pizza Hut boxes fill up many a garbage can around here.

In the checkout line at the PX we met an Australian doctor working in the hospital. She and I chatted about some of the same places in Indonesia where we both had visited.

I'm jealous of my sister. She is in Thailand visiting relatives. Eat some nice weird fruit for me and try some of the roasted termites please. Give some to Mr. Baby too.

2004-10-26T20:51:00.000+03:00

We are getting ready for the fight in Fallujah. The timeline is classified but everyone including the insurgents know its coming. It will be a symbolic fight for them and us. A successful outcome is needed to allow elections in the region.

Other than harassing fire we are fairly quiet in our area. A couple of rockets came in today.

I heard of an unfortunate thing that happened this morning. A civilian contractor in his 60's suddenly died while waiting to go home. The Air Force medics tried to use the AED to shock him but his heart wouldn't get going again.

I'm starting to think more about getting back home and getting back to my job. I still won't leave until next year but we have more days behind us than in front. This week my colleagues are attending an annual scientific meeting which we usually attend together and present some of our research findings from the last year. Next month they will be in Miami at the Tropical Medicine meeting....I'll really miss that. It is by far the most interesting meeting I go to. The get together before the meeting has the absolutely best food and drink. I also missed the Trop Med meeting last year because of my mobilization.

At home my wife is expecting our 5th child this spring. Thankfully, I'll be home for the baby. She is doing a fantastic job holding everything together, but it is very hard sometimes. Our friends and family have been very supportive and help a great deal with babysitting, food, cleaning the house, yardword and just being there. I couldn't be doing my job here without their help.

2004-10-24T21:40:00.000+03:00

I am sore. The Army 10 Miler went well. I managed to run it in around 90 minutes. The race was well attended with people coming in from some of the outlying FOBs and we even had a few Brits and Aussies.

At the 3 1/2 mile mark we had our first turn around. As I approached the turn the first of the runners came past me running the other way. Way out in front of everyone was a guy wearing a blue shirt with a large Superman symbol on his chest. He was running so fast I first thought he was on a relay team, I was sure he'd fade. He never slowed down, Superman won the whole thing, 10 miles in 56 minutes.

It was a good diversion for a few hours.

The turn-in in Sadr City is winding down and will soon enter the next phase, verification of disarmament by going house to house. Some of the yahoos tried to get a bit more money for removing the IEDs but no dice. In the last few days truckloads of weapons were being turned in. I think the total for anti-tank mines is around 9000, thousands of RPG rounds, mortar tubes and rounds. I've seen the list and it is huge. We know not all the weapons are gone but it is significant progress. After verification a huge public works program will try to rapidly improve the infrastructure and provide jobs to the locals. Unfortunately I have seen little positive in the press about it.

The idiots who kidnapped the CARE director on her way to work have managed to accomplish something. They have somehow got Al Jazeera to criticize them. They had a story in which insurgent leaders in Fallujah condemned the kidnapping as unjustified. I hope things turn out well for her. To date all female hostages have been released but I don't put it past them to break tradition.

2004-10-23T20:58:00.000+03:00

The pace of work is picking up. We need to maintain operations while preparing to transition things to our replacing unit. The clinic is busy with routine things like orthopedic injuries and respiratory infections. I will hopefully leave my base a few more times in the coming months on some missions. I enjoy seeing the different parts of what's going on in the country. I'd love to get up into the north. Some of our guys drove up to the Turkish border accompanied by the Iraqi National Guard. They told me the mountains and the rivers were beautiful, a completely different landscape than we have around here.

We are back to wearing all our gear (helmet, Body Armor) when we are outside. Full battle rattle. We have been getting an increased amount of mortars and rockets coming in so the base commander thought it was a good idea.

The insurgents have been for the most part laying very low. We all expect some sort of push by them before Ramadan is over. Our operations are keeping them off balance, though they will get their shots in when they can, like the suicide bombers in the international zone.

Between now and the elections at the end of January is a pivotal period for the country. If we can maintain the momentum, we can tip the balance in the right direction.

At home in the US, the leaves have turned and are falling off the trees, my wonderful wife carries on taking care of our four children. I wish I could be with them. A few days ago the baby pulled herself up and stood for the first time. The other three children clapped and cheered. They insisted that my wife take a picture of all of them together. Its very hard missing things like that but the work we are doing here is important and I don't regret coming here.

2004-10-21T21:38:00.000+03:00

Its CQ time again. I get to stay up all night and with my trusty CQ runners, make sure the place doesn't burn down, answer any calls during the night, make sure the generator doesn't run out of fuel, and take people who need to catch flights out down to the flightline.

We had a nice dust storm today when a cold front came through. Sand blowing, covering everything with a nice coat of light brown dust.

Our local guys have returned, there had been some specific threats against workers at the beginning of Ramadan. They are all fasting for Ramadan, as is one of our soldiers who is Muslim. During Ramadan, observant Muslims are supposed to read the entire Koran, which is split up into 30 parts, one to be read each day. There are several special days during Ramadan, some are exclusively observed by the Shi'ia and others like the night of power are recognized by all. The night of power is night they believe the Koran was revealed to Mohammed. The actual night itself is said to be hidden to encourage observance throughout the month however it is often observed on the 27th night.

Ramadan for us is considered a higher risk time because some insurgents see it as an auspicious time for attack. The Koran says the night of power is "better than a thousand months" meaning acts of charity, prayer, etc gain a better than at other times. Some also extend this to "martyrdom". We expect the risk of suicide bombers to be very high around this time at the end of Ramadan.

The push is on to get all the absentee ballots back home. Everyone was encouraged to register and request an absentee ballot and was given every opportunity to do so. I sent mine off in the second week of October. In the chow hall the post office has a notice that they will be flying all absentee ballots overnight express until November 1st. Even if someone didn't get a ballot from their district they have blank emergency ballots that can be filled out and sent in.

All the Red Sox and Yankees fans woke up at 3 AM this morning to watch the 7th game in the series. There were a lot of happy Red Sox fans by the time I got up because of a Red Alert. One of our subordinate units is from Massachusetts and there was undoubtedly mayhem in the clinic this morning.

2004-10-17T21:52:00.000+03:00

Yesterday was a pretty relaxing day for me. I slept late and then read Isaac Asimov's I, Robot a collection of short stories revolving around his 3 laws of robotics. I finished that book in a day. In contrast, I've been slowly digesting another book that is considerably denser called Nabokov's Blues. It examines the second passion of literary giant Vladimir Nabokov of Lolita fame. He was a very serious amateur lepidopterist specializing in a group of small butterflies referred to collectively as the Blues. I remember visiting the insect collections at Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) several times and seeing a small framed photo of Nabokov sorting butterflies over one of the benches where he worked in the 1940's. Its interesting putting more context in that photo and learning about his contributions to butterfly systematics.

Our Jamaican soldiers, of which we have quite a few, have been cooking some good food. One of the guys came back from leave with all sorts of goodies. We had jerk chicken on Friday along with corn meal dumplings and fried plantain, I had some little fruit in the lychee family that somewhat resembled longan which they called guinep. Today they cooked salt fish and akee Jamaica's national dish.

As expected, there has been an increase in attacks since Ramadan started. These attacks continue to be ineffective potshots on our base. Today we had 3 Red Alerts, all the rounds landed outside the wire. To me this means that they are having trouble getting close enough to the fence because of our patrols.

The amounts of weaponry turned over to the police in Sadr City is astounding. We are talking about hundreds of mortar tubes, thousands of mortar rounds and antipersonnel mines and a gigantic array of everytype of other weapon you can imagine from AK-47s to RPGs up to a 500 pound bombs, hundreds of 155mm artillery rounds and hundreds of thousands of rounds of rifle ammo. At first I was skeptical because Sadr has pulled this trick before, using it as an opportunity to rearm. In the past turn-ins we only got a few hundred inoperable old rifles, this time we are getting far more than expected. Its proved so effective that the amnesty program and weapons buy back is likely to be expanded to other parts of Iraq. This is another sign that the locals are sick of the destruction and willing to help clean up the problem.

2004-10-14T23:10:00.000+03:00

There has been a theater wide lull in enemy activity for the past week. Attacks are significantly below norms. The conventional wisdom is that there will be a surge during Ramadan as happened last year. Ramadan starts tomorrow.

The insurgents see Ramadan as an all or nothing chance to prove that the Iraqis and coalition cannot maintain security. They will go all out because they know that time is not on their side.
The winter rains will limit their freedom of movement and they know if they can't bring massive destabilization and, more importantly, massive doubt in world public opinion they will fail. If they fail, the momentum of the government and the new security forces coming on line may leave them fatally weakened. We have started an major offensive of our own leading up to Ramadan to blunt their efforts.

Ramadan also happens occur at the same time as the US elections and the start of voter registration in Iraq.

In our neighborhood the bad boys have not been successful in their attacks, it seems that they are having difficulty even getting shots over the wire. The maneuver elements have been sweeping up a large number of weapons caches which appears to be putting a serious dent in the bad guys supplies. To me just the fact we are finding the caches is a positive sign. It means the locals are now more willing to tell us where they are. My guess is like in Samarra and Fallujah they see the insurgency as only affecting them negatively and are acting accordingly.

Today two suicide bombers got into the International Zone for the first time, places that I walked by less than a week ago. It was not totally unexpected. One was the Bazaar area and the other was the Green Zone Cafe. Both areas were off limits to US personnel since a bomb was found at the Cafe by a sniffer dog on October 5.

On our camp, the amenities keep coming. This week both Burger King and Pizza Hut opened on post. The place was swarmed. Personally my favorite place to eat is the Iraqi National Guard chow hall, which is only open for lunch. Last week I had lamb, hummus and Iraqi flatbread along with some excellent Basmati rice cooked by some of the Indian KBR workers. Very few US soldiers eat there.

The weather has been getting milder. Today it only got to 97 degrees. The mornings are in the high sixties, which is perfect. There are a lot more clouds these days. During the Summer there were no clouds for weeks at a time.

This evening we pulled the tables and chairs out on our patio and played bingo with some people from the Air Force.

2004-10-11T21:01:00.000+03:00

I've just come back from a short visit to the Green Zone in Baghdad. We now call it the International Zone. I needed to go down for a meeting at Brigade.

Early Friday morning I hopped on a Blackhawk with a few other soldiers heading to the IZ. This time we flew without the windows, which made for a windy ride. The fields on the way to Baghdad now are filled with corn. Most of it is just flowering. We also passed over a huge expanse of date palms, probably a couple square miles worth.

As we passed over the Baghdad suburbs there were big differences between the neighborhoods. Some were slums with little huts made of sheet metal and garbage everywhere, others had large houses with neat gardens and clean streets with Mercedes and land rovers parked outside.

As we approached the International Zone and the Tigris River that bisects the city I saw the first large buildings I had seen in Iraq. The unfinished Saddam the Great Mosque rose like a huge grey monolith out of the city. There were also the highrise hotels, the Al-Rasheed, the Mansoor, and the Sheraton. We passed over the hands of victory monument with the huge crossed swords and the Monument to the Unknown Soldier that looked like a squat flying saucer.

We piled out of the helicopter and made our way to the US embassy, the former Republican Palace. Civilians and military were eating breakfast in one of the hallways made into a dining area. We checked in with some of our folks working there and then took a twenty minute walk up to the place where we were staying.

The building where we stayed was part of a complex of little villas set in a park like area with ponds, green lawns, flowering shrubs, luxurious trees. This area used to be the stomping grounds of some of Saddam's closest cronies.

The IZ is an area of several square miles with controlled access, making it a bit safer than some other parts of Baghdad. Unlike other Bases where we operate, over 10,000 Iraqis live in the International Zone. Street crime is sometimes a problem. One guy working at the hospital was recently stabbed and barely made it. It is recommended that people travel in groups, have a magazine in their weapon and avoid traveling at night. Private security guards are everywhere checking IDs and controlling access to compounds.

I spent an hour wandering around the gardens and the ponds. There was a small palace I visited overlooking the Tigris. The ponds had a resident flock of domestic geese that made a racket when I walked by them.

My stay was not without incident. During one of my meetings we heard an explosion and the entire building shook violently. We all moved to an internal hallway. The lobby of the building was filled with local women in colorful pastel headscarves taking cover. People said they thought it was a car bomb, but we later found out that a 107mm rocket had impacted on the otherside of the building within our compound. The explosion killed 3 Iraqi security guards and injured a soldier. Unfortunately the bad guys still sometimes fire into the area.

When I was not at my meetings I walked around a saw some bombed out palaces and ornate gates. At the end of one road was a checkpoint called "Assassins Gate" where multiple car bombs have gone off trying to run the barriers. The area I was walking around was the target of the "shock and awe" bombing at the beginning of the war.

Early one morning I made the mile or so walk out to the Monument to the Unknown Soldier and to the Hands of Victory parade grounds. An Iraqi policeman gave myself and another soldier a private tour of the monument. The structure is like a big pancake with metal ribs and a clamshell sheltering a glass and metal box containing a stainless steel sarcophagus of an unidentified soldier from the Iran-Iraq War. From the top of the monument we had good views of the city, still shrouded in morning fog.

We flew out of the IZ at night. As we walked to the landing zone there was a lot of small arms fire on the far side of the Tigris. We waited a while at the LZ and chatted with an SF officer who agreed that the International media is a big problem and seems bent on seeing only the bad. In Samarra they took a news crew into the mosque after the Iraqi Special Forces secured it, showing all the weapons captured and the fact that they hadn't done any damage to the structure. The news crew apparently had other plans for their story about collateral damage and Coalition Forces overkill. Mayhem sells.

The weather was weird and we had a little rain and a lot of lightning. Flying out of Baghdad was visually impressive. The lights of the city spread out beneath me in every direction. A couple times a minute the city would be lit up by a flash of lightning.

It was good to get back to my home base. Its a little bit less claustrophobic than the International Zone.

Corn Fields

Baghdad Suburbs

Park behind my house

Gate on the road to Monuments

Monument to the Unknown Soldier

Closeup of clamshell and sculpture containing the sarcophagus

Hands of Victory parade grounds

2004-10-06T21:25:00.000+03:00

This morning we had our PT test. Its not a requirement in a combat zone but since we have the opportunity we took one. As we were waiting to start the run I was watching 3 white storks circling above us. We heard a loud boom and the red alert siren so we all sprinted to the motor pool building and hung out until we went green. Afterward we finished the run. I came in a minute slower than last time, but I also had a few less red blood cells.

The temperature is still getting up over 100 during the day. Yesterday was a bit weird weather wise. The morning was overcast and cool. It even sprinkled a few drops.

I've noticed some Samarra spin regarding civilian carnage and the locals not wanting us there. I know some civil affairs guys going up to Samarra for a couple of weeks so I'll have first hand accounts. They are very annoyed at the international press on the coverage of what they consider a very successful operation that the locals welcomed. As usual the press is for the most part staying bunkered up in Baghdad and sending local stringers up to get the story, mostly short on objectivity.

I met some people from a forward surgical team today. The poor guys have been here for 9 months and now have been ordered directly to Afghanistan. The FSTs or Fast Teams as we call them are unique small units that bring Trauma Surgery and ICU capability to the battlefield. They set up operating sites in remote areas and stabilize patients unit they can be evacuated.

2004-10-03T18:56:00.000+03:00

Around midnight last night a blood call came over the radio. Since I was the type they needed I went over to the field hospital and gave a pint. Because platelets only have a shelf life of 5 days the blood bank doesn't stock any. When a patient needs platelets on our base they are given fresh whole blood. Not the ideal situation, but better than nothing. Other higher level facilities have plateletpheresis machines that can separate out platelets.

Because I have been in an area endemic for both Malaria and Leishmaniasis I will be deferred from donating blood for a year after I leave, as will all the military personnel in Iraq. The reason I was allowed to donate here is because everyone is exposed here and finding a non-exposed donor is impossible. Most of the packed red cells and plasma we use here are collected in the US and shipped. Local donors are just used when platelets are needed or in the event blood bank stocks are depleted. This happened in April when the hospital had 100 traumas in 24 hours.

I have a PT test on Wednesday. We'll see how I do on my run. I'm not expecting any world records. Yesterday I ran 7 miles so I'm not too worried. At the end of the month I'll be running in the Army 10 miler.

2004-10-02T01:12:00.000+03:00

Statements made by myself and others about Samarra are being taken to task by some in light of the new combat operations there. I will make some clarifying remarks because some people like Kos have characterized positive statements as blatant propaganda with no basis in fact.

I said that Samarra was a symbol of progress because we had been expecting for months that the place would be another Fallujah-like stronghold. The insurgents had free reign from May until September because our focus was elsewhere and they were relatively contained. The fact is that we were pleasantly surprised when it became apparent that large numbers of the insurgents, including foreign fighters were drummed out of town or at least laid very low because the residents were fed up.

The 1st ID did roll unopposed into the middle of the city and met with the new city government. This does not happen in a city under the control of insurgents. Facts on the ground started to change in the past 10 days. There were indications that some of the insurgents were returning. We knew that there were a few die-hards remaining and laying low who would need to be kicked out by force, the time was deemed right to carry out a large scale city wide sweeping operation, planned months ago. The characterization of progress in Samarra still holds. There are pockets of resistance that do need to be eliminated. I expect less than a week of fighting. The government reported over 80% of the city under control by this afternoon. Not exactly massive resistance. Then again, the Iraqi army commandos stormed the famous Golden Mosque early on, precluding another protracted Najaf-like standoff at a Shi'ia holy site. We learn, we adapt.

The real story remains that the people of Samarra chose to take things into their own hands and make the insurgents at the very least unwelcome, many did leave. The Samarrans chose and we are more than happy to help them. To use the clearing operation of a few hundred insurgents in a city of over 100,000 as a rallying cry for some peoples beloved idea of our descent into chaos is based largely on corrupt wishful thinking. The situation is not static, nor do we expect it to be. We have setbacks and disappointments, like the return of some insurgents, but my assessment of Samarra is much more success than failure. I think the maneuver element commanders would agree.

2004-09-30T21:17:00.000+04:00

The moon was a pumpkin orange as I walked back from chow this evening. It must be all the dust in the air. The dust has been blowing for the last few days. We wash the tables on the patio in the morning and half an hour later the have a layer of fine brown talc. Keeping things clean is impossible.

Here's my day today. We were all up early filling sandbags, still working on sandbagging all the trailers. The Sergeant Major decided we needed to clean up the outside of the building so I spent an hour doing that. At work I spent 5 hours finishing up a mind numbing project. I picked up a couple groups of people coming in on aircraft, then I went to listen to a VIP give a pep talk to the troops. In between we had 3 Red Alerts. It looks like the indirect fire hiatus is over. The good news is they are not hitting anything. Last week the bad boys did dumb things around here like trying to fire a mortar round without a tube and firing rockets from tubes that were too small and sheared off the stabilizing fins. Needless to say the varsity team has either been killed or has moved to another area. Unfortunately the JV will probably learn fast if we don't get them.

Tomorrow we change the time back an hour, I'm not sure why we're doing it so long before everyone else. We are now 8 hours ahead of the East Coast. Tomorrow, and for a few weeks, we will be 7 hours ahead.

In Baghdad there were some horrific bombings that killed and injured scores of children who were gathered for the inauguration of a sewage plant. Our hearts go out to all their families and we pray with them for peace. The terrorists lack basic humanity and must be neutralized. Their goal is to spread fear and paralyze the population, grinding the rebuilding to a halt. My prediction is that this will steel the hearts of Iraqis to fight against the rot of terror with a firmer resolve, it will do the same for us.

2004-09-28T22:30:00.000+04:00

Though we won't leave until next year, the wheels are already in motion planning for our exit and our replacements arrival. We all like thinking about going home but there is a lot of work between now and then. The job of moving one unit is gigantic, every detail must be worked out far in advance to make sure every person and every piece of equipment makes it back in an orderly manner. All the while you need to continue with your mission until your replacements take the reigns. On the other end hundreds of units need to be identified, in the case of the reserves and National Guard, called up. They need to be paired up with a unit to replace and resources realigned so there will be no operational gaps during the transition. Details like the timing and coordination of convoys, how to turn in and redistribute equipment staying in theater, finding housing for transient troops, performing customs inspections, washing vehicles with detergent before going on the supercargo ships, settling finance issues plus a million other things must be done.

Now try doing that with over 200,000 troops in a short amount of time going in both directions. Food, medicine, fuel, water, repair parts for vehicles, ammunition.......As someone recently said Logistics is combat power. Without a good logistics system the military is useless. During the first part of the war, fuel trucks refueled tanks and convoys as they raced toward Baghdad, cargo trucks were right behind with food and water. Now stockpiles of food, water and fuel allow bases to operate without resupply for weeks on end if necessary. The Loggies never rest.

2004-09-23T21:27:00.000+04:00

Not much excitement today. We got rocketed for the first time in 5 days. It was just a single potshot that hit nothing. This is the longest break since June. Enemy activity has been very low for the last few weeks. This probably won't last, the bad guys need to prove that they are still viable. Also with the upcoming elections in both Iraq and the US, there is a need on their side to cause as much havoc as they can.

I read Allawi's speech and agreed with the assessment, despite the problems there is tangible progress.

2004-09-20T01:45:00.000+04:00

It looks like we are entering another media feeding frenzy based on reports on the contents of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq. This document was produced by the National Intelligence Council which serves as a senior advisory group to the Director of Central Intelligence.

The report from July lays out several scenarios for the coming year ranging from a tenuous peace to full blown civil war. Its important to take the report in context. Because it was published in July the estimate lacks the input of the last 3 months of actual experience on the ground. More importantly it was most likely written during and immediately after the April uprising, which looming large in the analysts mind might have somewhat colored the analysis.

My observations on the situation here on the ground are not in agreement with the assessment that things are flying apart and quickly becoming untenable. I've noticed a trend that those individuals here with access to classified theaterwide tactical intelligence seem to be more positive about the outlook for Iraq than those with more limited or local access. The media fall into the latter group. It is easy and natural to focus on and extrapolate horrific, yet localized events (car bombings, kidnappings, assassinations). The danger, which I think the media has fallen into, is drawing conclusions about the country as a whole with relatively few data points. Being locked up in the Al-Rasheed hotel and the immediate area really is not conducive to getting a handle on what's going on the rest of the country.

Two cases in point arguing that the situation is moving in a favorable direction. Najaf and Samarra. A Marine Major at MNC-I HQ wrote a very good letter, summarized here describing what's happening.

Despite all the self-imposed operational constraints in the Najaf operation, it was a very successful operation that in addition to destroying large parts of the Mehdi Army, turned the public sentiment against him and furthered the position of the Interim government. Iraqis responded positively to the IIG actions and various units of the Iraqi army performed in an exceptional manner. Najaf, no longer a hotbed of insurgency has become peaceful again and infrastructure projects are proceeding full bore. In the south attacks have been reduced to a negligible level. Simply put the threat of a Shiia uprising, always remote, is now gone. Splinter groups will still cause problems but the populace will increasingly distance themselves.

In Samarra, foreign fighters and Al-Qaeda have been operating relatively unmolested since the spring, a result of the sequential nature of our operations. The residents sensing an impending Najaf-like assault basically kicked the insurgents out of town. The 1st ID rolled into the middle of this "no-go" area without a shot fired. It is a model that will most likely repeat itself, perhaps not as peacefully. The locals realized that they were being left behind in the reconstruction because some yahoos wanted to bring back the dark ages. The people decided which side they were on and acted accordingly.

As I've written before, this is not easy nor will everything go well all the time. Ethnic tensions in the Kurdish and Turkomen areas will need resolution and several hotspots like Fallujah and parts of Baghdad need to be dealt with. Zarqawi's thugs will still try and sometimes succeed in inflicting mass casualties. Its a battle that demands patience and determination. There are many agendas out there both to paint a rosier picture or a bleaker picture regardless of the facts.

From my window we are making slow, sometime painfully slow, progress. From a strategic standpoint we cannot fail nor, in my opinion, will we.

2004-09-18T23:51:00.000+04:00

I didn't need to be at work today, but its gravitational pull sucked me in for 2 1/2 hours anyway.

I spent much of the day reading and writing. I also took a short trip to the laundry pond to check out the birds. The next few days I have a lot of work to do.

The temperature has been cooling down. The highs this week have been in the nineties. At night it has dropped down to the 60's. By December we will have highs in the 60's and lows down to the 30's.

The thing I'm not looking forward to is the mud. The rain in the late fall and winter is unpredictible. Last year several of the bases flooded when they had several inches of rain in less than 24 hours. The dust here is the consisency of talcum powder and in some places is 6 inches deep. It makes nice mud that sticks to everything.

College football has started which means that the TV in the chow hall is always on a football game. This evening I was stuck in the chow hall because of a red alert and ended up watching West Virginia play Maryland.

2004-09-16T08:29:00.000+04:00

Sometimes I need a shot of optimism from outside to counter dark feelings that things are going to hell fast. Last week some of my fellow soldiers in another unit were injured in a car bomb attack, some of them I know fairly well. God was with them. They were pulling security outside the vehicle when a guy broke out of a line of civilian cars and started heading for them, if the 50 cal gunner had hesitated, everyone could have easily been killed. The suicide bomber blew the car up about 40 feet from them. Their vehicle was completely destroyed. One described to me seeing the orange flash, feeling the heat and being lifted off the ground and thrown through the air. Several Iraqis were burned alive in their car right next to them. One of the guys said he'll never forget the screams and the smell of burning flesh. A few of the soldiers have pretty significant injuries but they all should recover. I was happy to get to see the group getting evacuated to Germany. They were banged up, covered with shrapnel wounds and burns, but thank God they were alive. The incredible thing is their desire to return to their jobs here in Iraq. Its not always this way, many would jump at any opportunity to get out of here. These guys have made our mission here their own, they see the purpose and importance. They take seriously their responsibility to their fellow soldiers. I am honored to serve with such men. Reflecting on this encourages me to do some attitude adjustment on myself.

Two AP photos of their vehicle

I get a renewed sense of purpose when I read things like this from an Iraqi blogger named Ali from Iraq the Model

"I don’t want to predict anything here but I want to say that if America decided to get out of Iraq before the job is finished, that will be not only disastrous but will be (in my opinion) the worst thing America ever did. Freeing Iraq (again in my opinion) was the best thing America ever did. It gave oppressed people everywhere a hope and a belief that the mightiest power on earth, the symbols of freedom is on their side and that it will help them in one way or another to get their freedom. Their misery has stopped looking eternal. Retreating now will prove some people’s theory that America is an imperialistic power that only care for its interests, and although there’s nothing wrong with caring about one’s own interests, most Iraqis and millions of oppressed people in Darfur, Iran, Syria...etc. like to think more than that of America. Keeping the course will turn this thought into a firm belief. We understand perfectly that sacrificing lives and hard earned money for the sake of others (although there IS a personal interest here but it maybe not so clear) is a very difficult thing to do, and we know that it’s too much to ask, but tens of Millions of oppressed people around the world with brutal sadistic regimes laying their heavy boots on their chests preventing them from even breathing freely, not to mention speaking out or doing something about it, all these people have no one else but you, Americans, to turn to. You are our/their only hope".-By Ali.

2004-09-15T22:15:00.000+04:00

Things up in Baghdad have been a little crazy for the last few days. Sunday our guys had half a dozen car bombs along with a couple dozen rockets and mortars. Since then there were several other mass casualty events. We are now in a race with the insurgents. Don't be surprised when more of the same comes. Both the coalition and the insurgents will pull out the stops leading up to the election.

On the plus side, Moqtada Al-Sadr is now out of the picture. He has completely alienated himself from the people with the behavior of his militia in Najaf and Kufa.

We were at high alert for a few days as a precaution but things have calmed down now. The PX, Gym and all other MWR facilities were shut down during the alert. People were getting stir crazy, running low on cigarettes and chewing tobacco. When the PX reopened there was a run on the place.

We've been here for over 6 months. The monotony is getting to some people. Most people read, exercise or play video games to pass the time. The pool has reopened and is also a popular spot.

Some units are getting ready to redeploy back home, it will still be a while before we get to do the same. The Air Force deploys for 120 days and the Navy and Marines for 180. The Army still wants 365. Hey, lets spread the wealth.

2004-09-11T22:30:00.000+04:00

It seems so long ago, September 11, 2001. Without it I would most likely not be here in Iraq. I have little substantive to say other than I remember. I remember listening to an EMS feed over the internet from New Jersey as they planned to set up mass casualty collection points at Liberty State Park for 2000 people each, I remember 400 people showing up at the local Red Cross to donate blood, I remember the silent skies for days afterwards and of course the images of the towers and the people, the fire fighters and the collective grief, the heartbreaking picture strewn streets of lower Manhattan.

It was a beautiful clear New England day for me. I dropped my son off at his school giving him the usual ride on my back as we crossed the field to where his class lined up outside. I jumped into my car and turned on WCBS, Newsradio 88 in New York City as I always did on my way to work. A few minutes later an announcer came on and said a small plane had hit one of the towers. A reporter was at the scene describing what he saw when the second plane hit. By this time they had determined the planes were passenger jets. I knew then that it was a terrorist attack. The panic, the disbelief of the reporter was disturbing. The rest of the day and in fact the next week passed as a blur for me.

That morning we saw clearly the enemy and though time passes, we can't forget. We are at war.

2004-09-09T01:45:00.000+04:00

Sometimes you know that someone's looking out for you. Last night at one of our higher headquarters a 107mm rocket came right through the roof of the operation center. It bounced off the floor and then the wall and came to rest unexploded on the floor. They quickly relocated operations and let EOD take care of the round. This morning they were back in the Op Center cleaning up with a gaping hole in the ceiling.

2004-09-07T22:47:00.000+04:00

Sleep was not in the cards after duty this morning. As I was getting in bed we had a red alert. I got back to bed about 9AM only to be woken up 2 hours later by our preventive med officer cutting wood with a circular saw right outside my window. I didn't get back to sleep until 6:30 this evening after my briefings were done. An hour later I was up again because we had more incoming rounds.

Fighting has erupted again in Sadr City and we've had a lot of US casualties in the last 24 hours. 7 Marines and 3 Iraqi National Guard Soldiers died in one vehicle bomb incident near Fallujah.

2004-09-07T01:04:00.000+04:00

Another all nighter on CQ. Not much happening. That's the usual for night duty. Its usually not good when you get a call after midnight. Other than the people coming in on late flights needing to be picked up, they are usually emergency calls. A Red Cross message for someone, casualties or a theater-wide accountability check because some soldier is reported missing or captured.

My runner will clean the building, we'll do radio checks with the defense operation center and brigade HQ. I will do a security check around our area. I will drink at least 5 or 6 cups of tea and then at 8AM I'll get to go to sleep. Unfortunately tomorrow I have to prepare some powerpoint slides for a battalion briefing so I'll be up around 11AM.

This is the first CQ duty I've had to do since I came back. Because of promotions we have a bigger pool now so I do it less often. I will have to cover for my roommate in a few days.

I had a long phone call with my family this evening. The internet phone was working better than before. There were 11 kids running around my parent's house, 8 grandchildren, one of my sister's nieces and two neighbors.

Yesterday we had our Labor Day picnic. It was a pot luck and we had a great variety of food. Our section did the Jerk Chicken on the barbecue.

2004-09-05T20:47:00.000+04:00

The news this week was depressing. The attack in Russia was very disturbing, the images were heartbreaking. Its a dark thing that the terrorists have passed the last psychological barrier between humanity and acting like rabid dogs.

In Najaf and Kufa there were reports of Moqtada Al-Sadr's guys having an unauthorized Sharia Courts inside the mosques. When the police went in they found several dozen multilated bodies they brought local tribal members as witnesses. Sadr is spinning it as people killed by the coalition, however local tribal members see it differently and have started hunting down key Sadr Lieutenants. Two have already been killed.

We are in a definite lull period. After their setbacks from the last few weeks, the bad guys are trying to figure out their next move.

Kidnapping remains a favorite activity for them. Last week I found out one of my Iraqi friends was kidnapped and held for ransom. Thankfully someone payed and he was let go. On one hand we are happy he wasn't harmed, on the other hand the kidnappers are encouraged to do more of the same. A majority of the kidnappings seem to end that way, though some go very badly and people end up dead. One of the guys in a local village was kidnapped about a month ago and the people in the village raised 100,000 dollars to get him back. Kidnapping serves two purposes, intimidation and raising cash to buy weapons. Sometimes people know who's responsible, but they are too intimidated to say or do anything about it.

2004-09-01T21:00:00.000+04:00

My buddies brought me some more figs and dates today. There are dozens of varieties of dates. They brought me a selection of orange, yellow and even red ones. I also had a little Arabic lesson which consisted of me pointing at dozens of objects and asking what the Arabic word was for it.

One of our contractors just got married and just came back from his honeymoon up in the north. His bride is 16. Its pretty routine here for women to marry so young. He negotiated for quite a while with her family on the terms of the marriage (the brideprice).

He is Shi'ia and is happy that Moqtada Al Sadr is out of Najaf. Though he wouldn't have minded Moqtada getting his final reckoning. Soon he and his family will travel to Najaf, to visit the Shrine and to visit the graves of his relatives buried there.

Things have calmed down considerably since things resolved in Najaf. Moqtadas guys have gone to ground at least for now. I expect him to surface again. Reports of mutilated bodies being found in his ad hoc Sharia court inside the mosque have turned many people against him. Some people are also mad at Sistani for letting Moqtada avoid a final reckoning.

2004-08-29T20:40:00.000+04:00

I'm back at my base after traveling around the country for the past 4 days.

Thursday night I was visiting one of our units at their base near Baghdad. One of the Company Commanders was going to give me a ride to my trailer. The truck we were going to leave in ended up having a dead battery.

As we were walking back into the clinic a white suburban and a Bobtail came tearing into the parking lot. A guy jumped out and said they'd been ambushed on a supply convoy and his buddy had been shot. A KBR truck driver was sitting in the front seat, his thigh and leg covered with blood. I helped the medics on duty carry the guy in and put him on a stretcher. He had been shot in the upper leg and had kept on driving far past the ambush. Everyone dropped their trailers by the side of the road and drove as fast as they could to the nearest base. Our doc cut off all the guys clothes and I got him some oxygen. His buddies were very worked up, very happy to be alive. Eventually one of them asked the guy who had been shot if he wanted some pictures taken. The injured guy said yes and was ready for his cameo. Luckily the bullet missed the major arteries. He later went to the Combat Support Hospital for definitive treatment.

Another guy with them couldn't catch his breath. He got oxygen and a breathing treatment. It turns out he had suffered from smoke inhalation the day before and was on the convoy so he could come up to get an X-ray. The excitement of the ambush plus his damaged lungs was not a good combination.

The next day I woke up early and took a 2 hour walk around the base before my meeting. The base is a system of palaces set on large lakes. The buildings were incredible with marble and carved wood doors. The main palace is set on an island in the middle of the main lake. Saddam had a boat house and several yachts which he used to sail around the lakes. There were lakeside apartments for his cronies and a hunting lodge.

After our meeting we convoyed south to another base near the ruins of Babylon. Its really a Polish base with some Americans. At my base we have two clothing options, our Desert camouflage Uniform (DCUs) or our PT gear. The off duty Polish guys were walking around in their Speedos and sandals! The place is lush and green, right next to the banks of the Euphrates. The soldiers throw bread into the river and big schools of fish come and devour them.

I was able to spend a few hours in the ruins and at a Presidential palace that Saddam had built on a large artificial hill overlooking the rebuilt Palace of Nebuchadnezzar. Saddam fancied himself a modern day Nebuchadnezzar the rebuilder of the glory of the Babylonian empire. He reportedly spent 750 million dollars rebuilding on top of the actual ruins. The palace and temples were partially rebuilt, placing new bricks right on top of those from the Babylonian period. Just like King Nebuchadnezzar who placed bricks in the wall with cuneiform inscriptions proclaiming his greatness as the builder of the city, Saddam had his own bricks written in Arabic saying how great he was for rebuilding the city.

I talked to a man who ran a small shop selling souvenirs and books about Babylon. He turned out to be a trained Archeologist and we spent some time discussing the layout of the city. I was interested in seeing where they think the prophet Daniel was thrown in the lions den. He pointed me to an area where archeologists found an underground area of large rooms with vaulted ceilings that are believed to be a prison in the administrative part of the palace. I walked around the area. Some parts were like a labyrinth leading to dead ends.

The most spectacular part of the ruins was the remains of the Ishtar gate. The glazed blue bricks of the actual gate were carted away to Germany in the late 19th century. On both sides of the entrance were bas-relief dragons and bulls representative of two of the Babylonian gods. Near the Ishtar gates were two long processional roads that the Babylonians paved with asphalt.
There were other parts of the ruins that Saddam didn't get a chance to ruin. I even found cuneiform tablets just lying around next to a sign in English and Polish "If everyone takes just one piece, what will be left of Babylon?" The archeologist told me that some excavation has been planned but there isn't any money now. Even with all the damage that Saddam did building on top of the ruins it was an incredible experience walking around the place where so many historical figures walked and the scene of many stories from the bible.

The last day of trip before I flew back to my base was spent at another palace complex in the greater Baghdad area. I spent most of it visiting some of our companies stationed in the area. I also got some birding done at both Babylon and at the palaces in my free time.

The rebuilt Palace of Nebuchadnezzar

Processional Road paved with asphalt. Built in two parts they are over 1000 meters long.

View of the Ishtar Gate

Closeup of the Dragon of Marduk

Cuneiform tablet about 1 foot square just laying on the ground

Sign in Polish and English in the ruins. The stones in the background are from the time of Hammurabi.

2004-08-26T20:57:00.000+04:00

I'm traveling for the next few days. This morning I had a fantastic flight on a blackhawk helicopter cruising over farms, villages and desert on my way to a large base near Baghdad. The flight took about an hour. I'll post some pictures when I get back to my base.

I saw some interesting things on my flight. In the desert areas I saw some large trenches some 20 or thirty feet deep. The trench turned out to be wells, with a long ramp leading down to the water at one end. This enabled people to bring their sheep and goats below ground level to the water.

Every so often we climbed in altitude so we could cross powerlines, then we would dive down sometimes 20 feet off the ground. Steering to avoid the flocks of cattle egrets and doves that we were scaring out of the flooded fields.

The door gunner did a test fire just as we were passing a mining operation, startling a few of my fellow passengers who had fallen asleep.

At the base that I'm now at I went to a 1st Cav chow hall. I give it 3 stars. I had stuffed bell pepper, barbecue ribs, avocado stuffed with chicken salad, and lots of fruit. On the way out they had milk shakes to go. I had strawberry.

Next we hit the PX and the Bazaar. Unlike our base, where only a few vendors come in, this base has a large permanent bazaar inside some large tents. People inside haggled over old coins, hammered copperware, rugs, silver, electronics, knives, musical instruments.....you get the picture.

Tomorrow I'll take a walk around the base early in the morning before my meetings.

2004-08-25T21:39:00.000+04:00

Just a few meetings and running around base today on a couple missions. Tonight I have to clear out the digital camera because I'll soon be visiting a few other bases where our battalion is operating and I plan to take lots of pictures.

Even though I just got back here I'm looking forward to a change in scenery. I may even go fishing.

The dates have started ripening in our area. When they are ripe they turn from a hard yellow or orange fruit to a squishy brown, looking almost like they're starting to rot. At this point they are filled with sugar and very tasty. I've eaten a whole bag full in the last day and I plan on eating quite a bit more while they are in season.

I just heard that Al-Sistani has arrived back in Iraq unexpectedly. According to some reports his convoy has left Basrah and is already making its way to Najaf. He has called for a march on Najaf to save the Mosque. This will be interesting.

Back at home my kids are getting ready to start school soon. It will be a welcome break for my wife after a summer full of activities with our 3 older children plus the baby.

2004-08-25T00:52:00.000+04:00

Another rude wakeup this morning. This time it was the sound of rockets swishing overhead followed by huge thuds as they detonated. Four in quick succession. People wasted no time getting in the bunkers. Most had been sleeping seconds before. These were the biggest rockets to hit in months, 127 mm. They landed about 500 meters from us. One of our guys had an up close and personal while out for his morning run and dove under a 5 ton truck. Thankfully no one was hurt. This effectively ruined my plans for the morning. We didn't get back to normal for about 2 hours then it was time to pick up our workers.

Our outdoor Olympic size pool, after a 5 week heyday has closed because of low chlorine and cloudy water. After it is drained we might see it open again. It will be in the 90's here well into October and even a few days in November. The pool seems so out of place but it was here before the war for Iraqi officers. It even has a 3 level platform for diving, the highest being 10 meters. It took months to refurbish.

The pool has been very popular because its a good escape. The entire pool is ringed with a fence and plastic sheeting. When you walk in, you forget you are in a combat zone. People tanning on patio chairs, others playing volleyball in the pool, and invariably someone doing something stupid off the 10 meter platform. There's even a pool shop where you can buy bathingsuits and snacks.

Compared to the privations of the Marines and Soldiers in the outlying FOBs (Forward Operating Bases), the amenities here are embarrassing. The plus side is that they get to use the facilities when they come through.

Far from the pool, in Najaf, things are still dragging out but the end seems near. The shrine is completely encircled and there are probably only a few hundred left inside. The guys inside have very little ammo left and except the fringe elements, probably have little will to fight. All the fuss over the handover last week may have been a ruse to allow Moqtada to escape. We'll see.

2004-08-23T22:38:00.000+04:00

Our section had escort duty today. For the last month or so we've been getting day laborers to fill sandbags and put them around our living trailers. To say that this is a labor intensive project is an extreme understatement. Every sandbag gets a couple shovel fulls of sand and weights at least 20 pounds. It takes 16 guys a couple days to do a trailer. We have used countless dump truck loads already. Each trailer can take up to 2000 sandbags, stacked up an all four sides to give protection from mortar and rockets. We have lots of trailers.

All over base the sandbagging craziness is evident. Other units have contracted KBR to deliver sandbags already filled to their trailers and big piles of hundreds of sandbags are scattered throughout the living areas. They have over 100 workers filling sandbags everyday loading them into trucks and carting them all over the base. Some units fill sandbags for PT in the morning. I can't even begin the calculate the sheer number of sandbags the base is using. One contract, not even involving the housing areas called for 300,000. The problem with sandbags is that they are only a temporary solution. The canvas bags usually rot through after about a year and the plastic ones last about the same time broken down by the sun's UV rays. Before we sandbagged some of our tents we had to spend several days getting rid of all the split open ones from last year. This cycle will continue until everyone is living and working in hardened buildings.

The laborers have been the same group of 16 for a while now. Usually they get picked up at the gate and its a smooth operation. We look for the supervisor who wears a black fedora and for some reason has been given the nickname "Peter Pan" by one of our Sergeants.

Today we had a little snag. We went up to the holding area where the laborers wait and didn't see the regular group. Hundreds of laborers sit in a big fenced off area and wait to be hired. We went out into the holding area and waited for a while, the guys sitting down tried to get your attention, sometimes jumping up. The guards kept things under control. We later found out that there was an IED near the gate and they stopped letting people in. We grabbed some of the last guys available and got them through the Iraqi Army security.

One young guy was our translator. He carried a plastic bag with a framed picture. It was a pencil drawing he had done for a soldier based on a photograph given to him. He was a little businessman, charging 20 dollars for a framed drawing. He even had a business card. I would say he was 15 at the most, though he told me he was 21 and someone else that he was 17.

He said because he was the supervisor he wouldn't work. He was also diabetic and carried insulin with him in a little bag made from a sandbag. This little guy sat in the shade and puffed away on cigarettes all day.

One guy told our soldiers that because he didn't have a job he couldn't afford a wife. The little supervisor piped up and said he didn't have a wife or want one. "If I had a madame I couldn't buy cigarettes, a woman is expensive. I would rather smoke"

I think the 7 to 12 dollars a day these guys make is only a secondary consideration for some. The fringe benefits for working on base can be worth far more. Everyone is an entrepreneur, selling watches, jewelry, and if they don't have something they can get it for you tomorrow "no problem". Also we often give them stuff to bring home. Sometimes our workers will cart away an old shower or lumber or sheet metal. When we tell a group the money for a certain project is running out they invariably say that they will work for free, at least for a while until more money becomes available.

2004-08-22T01:46:00.000+04:00

I decided to change the template. Note to self - don't start project like this at midnight again. I forgot all the little things that needed to be done like putting in the haloscan and sitemeter code. Well its almost done and yes the comments are at the bottom. I still have some cleaning up to do.

Off to bed. I need to get up early for Church.

Out

2004-08-21T22:00:00.000+04:00

On my way to visit the clinic this morning I heard a distant thud and felt a barely perceptible pressure wave. This happens almost every day and usually means one of two things. First we just took a rocket or a mortar round in our area or alternatively EOD is conducting a "controlled blast".

A controlled blast is when the Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) guys have rigged some unexploded thing (bomb, bomblet, mortar, rocket....) with C4 to blow it in place. EOD is incredibly busy both on and off base. Many rounds come in that don't explode on impact (my favorite type). Sometimes the rocket or mortar round was buried in a weapons cache for over a year, sometimes under water. The motor might be good, allowing the rocket to fly, but the payload explosive might be bad or the fuse non-functional. Sometimes the guy firing at us doesn't know what he's doing and fires with the fuse not properly screwed in.

Usually we get a radio warning like "controlled blast in 5 minutes" then we get a grid. Sometimes people don't get the word and there's a big explosion, freaking people out.

The blast I heard turned out to be a mortar lobbed at us and a few seconds later the red alert siren started wailing. I ducked into the nearest building and spent the next 45minutes there.

The building happened to be where some of the Iraqi translators I know work. We caught up on what's been going on since I last saw them. One of the guys was telling me about his crazy commute to work. This guy lives about 40 minutes away from our base in a very dangerous area. He said that to prevent being targeted for working with the Americans he leaves at different times of the day and drives a different car each day, borrowed from friends and relatives. He carries a weapon which he checks in at our gate every day. His route often has IEDs and car bombs blowing up, but generally they target American convoys, civilians are advised to give them wide berth so they don't get caught up in an IED attack. The biggest danger these days is bandits. Sometimes contractors coming off of base are targeted because they have money from their dealings on base. The bandits may be common criminals or they may be insurgents simultaneously getting funds for their activities and terrorizing or killing people who work with us. Another of our contractors sometimes parks his car several miles from the base and walks to the gate so his car isn't identified. We once had a contractor kidnapped right out of the parking lot outside the main gate.

We talked about "toba", that's soccer in Iraqi Arabic. As in many countries it is by far the most popular sport. They asked me why it wasn't so popular in the US (as a major spectator sport). I told him if Americans can't dominate a sport they don't want to play. Too much competition.

The Iraqi Olympic soccer team has just won their game against Australia. If they win one more game they will be guaranteed at least a Bronze medal. Soon after the game ended there was tracer fire coming up from the villages near us in celebration. I heard that Baghdad was lit up with celebratory fire.

Down in Najaf things still haven't completely resolved. Some bickering over the keys and procedures for handover. Two nights ago Moqtadas boys took an incredible punishing. Yesterday reports started coming out that the Iraqi Police had taken over the shrine without a shot. At the same time we were getting reports from the Marines that the IP and the Iraqi National Guard were not in the compound. There's still some confusion what's going on. It could be that the IP are in the outer compound but not in the actual shrine itself. Several hundred of the dudes tried to run away with no weapons and blend into the population. It didn't work because they all looked like hell from two weeks of fighting (dirty, unshaven, looking like they hadn't slept in days) and were easily identified by the police and arrested. We won't know for sure exactly what's going on until the dust settles a bit but things are looking like a final resolution is coming. The people of Najaf are apparently very angry about the militia firing from the cemetery and the shrine. The more the militias are marginalized the better. I wouldn't be surprised if Al-Sadr himself ends up in Iran.

2004-08-19T06:14:00.000+04:00

I've been having trouble with the phones trying to get in touch with my wife since I got back. We get connected for a minute or so and then loose the connection. Very frustrating.

Last night a group of us watched Iraq play Morocco at the Olympics. It was a good game, both teams seemed pretty evenly matched. The penalty goal was bad luck. Iraq ended up losing 2-1. Despite this minor setback, Iraq advances to the final eight teams as the point leader in group D. I was disappointed that Iraq lost because Iraq can use all the reasons to celebrate they can get and I was planning to go to the roof and watch the celebratory fire going up from the nearby village if they won . Good luck to the team in the next round. At the half, the station we were watching had highlights of athletes from other Arab Countries. Swimming, boxing, and volleyball from the Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians, and Egyptians.

In Najaf there are positive signs this morning. Apparently Moqtada al-Sadr blinked. The government told him that they were prepared to end the standoff with Iraqi Special Forces, most from a battalion made up of Shi'ia, ready to storm the compound. No American forces would enter the Shrine area. His gift for self-preservation seems to have trumped his other considerations. I'm not sure what was up with the government's former concessions to him, maybe it was just an attempt to make him show his true colors and discredit himself. He has willingly sent hundreds of his follower to their deaths by convincing them that they could stand up to regular Iraqi and American troops. He dared us to become barbarians by holing up in the Shrine. They were so brazenly confident that they didn't even fortify their mortar firing positions. His fighters were poorly trained and often lacked even rudimentary infantry skills. Its criminal that he allowed these guys to fight when they had several opportunities to express themselves in the political process. There's much more to fighting than pointing a weapon in the general direction of your enemy. Note also there have been no problems, as in April, when a few Iraqi Army units refused to fight.

There are still hot spots that need to be dealt with and the government will be doing just that in the coming weeks. We will continue to see some significant fighting with a mixed bag of former regime elements, foreign fighters and Moqtadas militia. I feel hopeful that these are pops and crackles of the dying embers of anti-Iraqi forces rather than the signs of a fire ready to spread. Slow, painful forward movement.

2004-08-16T23:42:00.000+04:00

The security situation has degraded in the last few weeks. A bad sign is the Iranians being picked up in Najaf and other areas. If the Iranians are actively sending fighters, as both the Interim government and the US military are insinuating, this needs to be nipped in the bud quickly.

Other than an moderate increase in indirect fire attacks on us, we haven't seen many effects from the increased activity in Najaf and Baghdad. The potential for a serious uptick is there but hopefully upcoming operations will knock things down a bit.

On the local front the clinic that our Battalion contracted to build in a nearby village is nearing completion. Hopefully it will be staffed and operational soon.

2004-08-14T22:21:00.000+04:00

I had an interesting 1st day back. Minutes after getting back to my unit, one of the local Iraqi guys started having seizures and needed a medic. When I got there he was completely out of it as usually happens after a seizure. His friends were very concerned and where trying to get him to come to by shaking him. Someone had called the ambulance so we put him on a couch. I told his friends that it would take some time for him to feel better and they didn't have to shake him. No one spoke very good English so I managed to get a little info in Arabic, I ran into a wall when it came to asking if he had epilepsy or was taking medication. Eventually one of our contractors came and started translating. The guy went to the hospital but was released a few hours later. It turns out he was epileptic and this happened fairly often. He had some medication at home that he took.

An hour later we had our first rocket attack since my return (2 hours before). I've been back 36 hours now and we've had 4 red alerts with maybe 15 or so rockets and mortars. A little more than usual but probably just excitement caused by the goings on in Najaf and Samarra. I spent one alert alone in a bunker near the laundry facility, I expected it to be filled with Filipino workers but they all must have gone to the other bunkers.

We had another red alert when I went to dinner. We heard two rounds impacting fairly close to us so we rushed into the mess hall. Unfortunately the guys stop serving food when the alarms sound so I scrounged some noodles from the self-service bar and slopped some chili and melted cheese on top. I also grabbed some "Moroccan Parsley Salad". Pretty strong stuff - just parsley, onions, and tomatoes.

2004-08-14T10:54:00.000+04:00

I'm back on duty in Iraq after a three week hiatus. The trip back took about 40 hours. I was awake more or less for two days straight. I got back here around 11am yesterday morning and didn't sleep until 6pm. I slept for 14 hours and now I'm pretty well recovered.

The highlights of my trip included seeing my first Segway in action. These are the two wheeled self balancing scooters that came out last year. A policeman rode one around the Atlanta Airport. He really hammed it up maneuvering through a dense crowd then doing a little spin and backing into the elevator. It was amazingly effortless. I want one.

As I usually like to do while flying I did a lot of sightseeing. Flying into Georgia I had fanastic views of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Southern Appalachians, all shrouded in blue morning haze.

Flying across Europe I saw the Bavarian and Austrian Alps. Even at 30,000 feet some of the mountains looked huge, the highest had snow at the tops and had their peaks sticking out above the cloud deck.

We flew across the Black Sea and over Turkey and into Iraq on our way to Kuwait. The sun had set but I saw the lights of Najaf and Nasiriyah as we flew over. Kuwait City was a sea of lights as we came in.

After a short stay in Kuwait I took a C-130 back to my base. I was next to the window again and since the sun had come up I enjoyed the views of the country as I headed north. The barren desert and few burning oilwells in the south gave way to the farmland of central Iraq.

As we started decending, the flight crew put on their body armor and helmets. Because its a combat zone we made a very steep descent and made some crazy maneuvers with the plane.

On the ground we waited a few minutes for the cargo to be unloaded. I heard the pilot say to one of the crew "I really like this girl who runs the flightline". I thought he meant he liked how smoothly things went. When I left the plane following 50 of my closest friends I saw he meant he really liked how she looked. It was a very discordant image with everything around being camoflage or olive drab. An attractive young woman in red running pants a white top with a multicolored silk scarf tied around her neck and wearing designer sunglasses approached with a clipboard and directed all the soldiers to waiting buses. She climbed on our bus and said in a thick Russian or Eastern European accent "welcome to Iraq". Someone should put the scene in a movie, it was that weird.

2004-08-08T05:33:00.000+04:00

I've been having a great time with my family. The time is passing too quickly. Soon I'll be back in Iraq.

My children and I have taken a few little trips around our home. On one we went geocaching, which is trying to find a cache set up by someone using a GPS to find the coordinates. My three oldest kids and I found a cache's coordinates on geocaching.com that was near our house. With coordinates in hand we followed a bike trail about a mile into the woods, then had to cross a small stream. When my GPS said we had arrived at the cache site we started searching around. My oldest son found a big mason jar covered in duct tape hidden under an old log. Inside was a notebook with entries going back to last August. There were also little toys and trinkets that people left behind. The kids left a polished rock and took a few toys. The outing was a fun treasure hunt for the kids. We'll have to try some more sites when I get home. Actually there are a few geocaches in Iraq I may try to find when I go back.

Last week we took a day trip to New York City. The first stop was the Pokemon Center in Rockerfeller Center, followed by the Circus Maximus - Times Square. We were treated to the Naked Cowboy playing his guitar in the middle of the place clad only in his fruit of the looms, boots, and a cowboy hat. His website proclaims that he aspires to be "the most beloved entertainer of all time".

Though we had a great time in the city I was reminded of the connections between why I'm in Iraq and what is going on at home. Walking by the NASDAQ offices we saw the place surrounded by police in response to the heightened terror alert. From the observation tower at the Empire State Building looking south, the familiar skyline seems so empty without the twin towers. A bronze plaque on the south side of the observation tower has the outlines of the buildings you can see from that point identifying the major ones. In the location where the towers stood there are dashed outlines with the words "World Trade Center - destroyed 2001"

Some of the Iraqi coverage has been comical. I'm not sure how many times I've seen a special update where the headline is "Explosions Rock Baghdad" only to find out it was a single mortar round that happened to land within a mile of some news organizations offices. That is simply a non-event and two blocks away, the average Baghdad resident goes about their business happy that it didn't hit near them, but undeterred from living their daily life.

The Sadr business is more serious but it appears that they are being pummeled. As I've said before, most of the Iraqis that I've talked to, admittedly not a random sample, consider Sadr's militia to be mostly street criminals who in other circumstances would be victimizing Iraqis.

When I get back I'll have a better sense of what's really going on.

Out

2004-07-31T14:45:00.000+04:00

Its Saturday morning. Little baby woke up at 5:45. I gave her a bottle and she went back to bed. The other three kids have decided its time to start the day.

The baby is at a very fun age. She laughs and giggles a lot and also has a blood curdling scream which she sometimes does for fun. Being with her is so much better than pictures and the webcam. Seeing the children grow is what I miss most about home. Everyone is a little bigger but the baby has changed the most. The last time I saw her she was one month old. After I leave the next time she will be over a year old.

I haven't been able to watch much TV but I did see the news about the bombing in Baquba. Its strange watching footage from Iraq on my living room couch. It seems so remote and unreal. I saw a Fox news guys reporting from Baghdad in the Powell news conference who I remember from one of the civil affairs missions this spring. He and his crew drove up from Baghdad along with their 5000 dollar a day security crew of ex British SAS guys.

The rest of my leave will go quickly. Next week we have plans for the beach with my brother and sister in law from Texas and their 3 little girls.

2004-07-29T16:33:00.000+04:00

I'm currently on R+R back at home in the US.  The trip from my base in Iraq to home took 63 hours in total.

I started with a C-130 ride out of the country. I positioned myself near a window so I could get a good view flying down to Kuwait. We climbed to a safe altitude and headed south over the muddy Tigris river and the green checkerboard of farms in the valley, then out over the desert. I saw a lone Apache helicopter slowly flying low over the water following the river. It reminded me of a hunting shark.

Coming into Kuwait the landscape is all flat sandy desert as far as you could see. We passed over big junkyards in the middle of nowhere filled with thousands of rusting Iraqi tanks, trucks, and artillery pieces from the gulf war.

We landed in Kuwait and processed through a base there. Compared to anything in Iraq the place was like a resort. The food court even had a Starbucks, in fact there were two on base! We had a customs briefing on everything we couldn't bring home and then had a shakedown inspection just to make sure. After the inspection you are put in a segregated area so you can't slip something back in your luggage.

Because of my connection arrangements I ended up flying down the east coast and then back up the same route after my plane change in Atlanta. I had great views of the greater Philadelphia area including downtown on the way south and New York City on the way north.

My wife and kids were waiting for me at the airport. It was great to see them. It felt like I never left, except the baby is now 7 months old and she's a lot bigger.

The past few days have been spent catching up, playing with the kids, seeing family and relaxing.  The kids are very active, I definitely get more sleep in Iraq.

2004-07-23T00:10:00.000+04:00

This morning I helped some of our Preventive Med guys check the mosquito traps around post. Two of us had never been before. Another guy was up all night and knew were all the traps were. I told him he could sleep for a few hours so he could go with us in the morning. When I came in the office he told me that he didn't sleep and he wasn't going. He said that he'd show us where they were on a map and he was going to sleep. A classic private move. I said it was too damn bad that he didn't sleep and he was coming with us. It turns out we would have never found half of the traps if he didn't come. Some were under bushes or in the middle of nowhere.

The traps are mesh bags open at the top with a small lightbulb and a fan to blow them into the trap. They are designed to catch mosquitos and sandflies. Mosquitos spread vivax malaria here and the sandflies spread leishmaniasis. The Prev. Med job is to keep track of the mosquito and sandfly populations and to test the sandflies for leishmaniasis.

Today we had 16 local workers filling sandbags for us. One of the living trailers needs over 2000 sandbags to protect it from mortars and rockets.

Each morning hundreds of day laborers come to one of our gates looking for work. This is in addition to the thousand plus local guys with contracts who come each day. One of our Sergeants has the system figured out. He's the first one in line so he gets the people he needs and goes. If you get to the gate late often all the laborers have jobs for the day and no one is left for you. Especially if KBR or the Department of Public Works has a big project. This morning, again, he was first in line. He wanted the same crew as yesterday. The gate guards summoned him up to the worker waiting area. Already some guys were calling him by name. He went over to get the guys he wanted and 50 workers jumped up crowded around him. The guards freaked and three of them started yelling for everyone to sit down. Guys continued calling out our sergeants name and crowding around him like he was a rock star. Eventually everything settled down and he took the 16 guys and jumped in the 2 1/2 ton truck.

Filling sandbags all morning long is pretty heavy work but these guys got right to it and loaded up the entire truck. At lunch time our sergeant crammed himself and 4 guys in the cab and the rest were hanging all over the back of the truck. He drove down to our area so the crew could have lunch.

While our sergeant was having lunch I watched the crew. Most of them come from the village just off base, many of them were in the military in Saddam's time. I had a great time chatting with them. Some of them could speak a little english and I exhausted my full arabic vocabulary. Several guys asked me if it was possible for me to get them a permanent job on post instead of doing it day by day. I said I couldn't. Then I was offered a large selection of fake rolex watches to buy. I declined. Then I was asked if I would sell them my crappy Timex watch. From what I've been offered before I think I would get $3.00. One guy wanted me to give him some boots to replace his worn out plastic shoes, then 5 of them wanted footwear. I had none to give.

Some of the guys had distinctly different opinions from some of the other Iraqis I talked to. One guy said that Saddam, Bush, Alawi and every other leader was bad. He said that he thought his life would be better by now. Another guy told me he was not a Muslim, nor a Christian and it was just between him and God. He upset the muslims when he said "Mohammed no good". One of them told me not to listen to the old man because he is crazy from the sun.

Other news today, our third rotation of physicians and dentists came in tonight to start their 90 days. We've depleted all the docs from our state so we currently have two from Montana, one from Hawaii and one from New Jersey. Today we got docs from New Mexico, Wyoming, and Tennessee.

Only one big boom today when a 120mm mortar round hit the softball field. Luckily no games were scheduled for the middle of the day. A few guys nearby got their bells rung but no more.

Out

2004-07-20T19:01:00.000+04:00

We've had lots of home improvements done on our building recently. The building used to be officer quarter for the Iraqi Airforce. We have no running water, though we have a shower and toilet in each bedroom. One day, we've been promised, they will work. The good thing about the building is that its very sturdy. The walls are 16 inch thick cement and the roof is a slab over 20 inches thick. It would take quite a hit to make a hole in it. Bigger sized rockets are being shot at us lately, its a side effect of having to fire from further away. Lots of the rockets are meant to fire from helicopters. The insurgents usually rig up some ad hoc firing mechanism made out of things like PVC pipes and alarm clocks for timers. Sometimes they're not too smart, the first rocket off will fry all the wires to the others. Sometimes they are devilishly ingenious hiding their roadside bombs. We've even had them in the carcasses of dead dogs by the side of the road.

On the home improvement front, the building has been networked for our two Internet systems plus the the Army secure network. In the past few weeks we had a flagpole put up, along with tiles in shape of a red cross around it. We also had a staircase made up to the roof where I sometimes go for breakfast or at night watching the F-16s drop 2000 lb bombs. We had a patio tiled and had the local workers cover the patio with a wooden roof. There's always some improvement going on. I'm a little afraid that it will be too nice and the big boys on post will want the building for themselves.

Tomorrow is cleaning day. Instead of PT we'll spend some time in the early morning cleaning up. One of our higher commands will be visiting this week. Our section will be power washing the patios.

2004-07-15T23:26:00.000+04:00

Just finished reading a well written and interesting blog from one of the guys in the Stryker brigade up in Mosul. He's riding around in an armored vehicle on missions every day doing infantry stuff. Made me feel like I'm doing very little in comparison. Same stuff every day here, it lacks the excitement and adrenaline of combat patrols. Its also less tangible, except when I occasionally work as a medic.

We've got some Strykers here too. During April, when all the convoys were getting hit they started accompanying the trucks. The PMO (Provost Marshall) - the sheriff on post had to get the guys to slow down while driving around base. They were tearing around the perimeter road and caused some accidents with other vehicles. The tanks sometimes have similar problems of not playing well with others. A few days ago one of the tanks broke down when out on patrol. The recovery vehicle went out and picked it up. On the way back somehow the towbar came undone. The loose tank rolled right over some poor guys car - a small opel. We will send the reimbursement team out and make restitution. Someone joked at one of my meetings that the army just bought a "new, mint condition 1989 Opel with a very rare Elvis music collection". Commenting on the fact that we will pay significantly more than the car was worth partly based on exagerations from the owner. Hey, he didn't ask for a car pancake!

This evening I washed one of our Humvees so it could be turned in to get air conditioning installed. I started seeing hummers with a two big external fans mounted on the roof about 3 weeks ago. I guess the kits must have just come in. We have a couple trucks now with AC and people tell me they work great. I've experienced the alternative and I think I'll take AC.

After the motor pool I went to dinner and had steak and shrimp. Lately I've been going to dinner around 8pm after I get off work. Another Sergeant and I usually take our time eating sometimes staying until 9:15pm. Its much less crowded than earlier. At 8:30 they stop serving. The Bangledeshi guys who work in the chow hall all have a meeting before they are allowed to eat. Usually there are only a few soldiers left. We call this the "Union Meeting", though its likely the exact opposite. One guy tells them things I imagine to be what they are doing wrong and what they will be doing. After the meeting there seems to be a hierarchy of who eats first. The first group leaps from the table and race each other to the food which is usually 1 to 2 plates of rice topped with some curry concoction. Some of the guys are very young, maybe 18 or less if they lied on their application. I often think about how the TCNs (Third Country Nationals) deal with working here. For some it must be very isolating. I know some of the Filipino guys have 3 year contracts to work here, away from family and friends.

I'm not sure what the effect of the Philippine withdrawl of troops will be on the Filipino workers here on base. We have well over 1000 of them. A few weeks ago a mortar round landed right in the middle of a cookout some of the guys were having. I think 15 or so were wounded, several very seriously. A few were evacuated to Germany for medical treatment.

Politically, the withdrawal is another victory for the terrorists following that of Spain. The terrorist are drawing extremely dangerous conclusions. The threat to the US this summer and fall is very real. I think a terrorist attack for the purpose of throwing the election would backfire. Bush would be sure to win. Of course removing the current administration is just one of many goals. America is an ideological and moral enemy and any pain inflicted is seen as a plus. If they are thinking strategically they will not attack before the election to give voters a chance to kick out President Bush. I fear that they think Spain and US are more similar than they actually are.

2004-07-14T22:49:00.000+04:00

Today was the 25th anniversary of Saddam coming to power. Some fools decided to mark the date by blowing up a car bomb in Baghdad, killing a dozen people and injuring 50. In a separate incident the governor of Mosul was killed.

Despite the violence, there have been some positive signs. Now people are starting to turn against the foreign fighters like Zaqawi in earnest. More people are willing to turn them in and some have reportedly left the country because conditions have deteriorated for them. Iraqis have decided that they won't tolerate the foreign fighter's and Al-Qaeda's willingness to inflict civilian casualties. This is good news.

Today we had a full bird colonel flying back to Baghdad she went early to the terminal to catch the chopper. A while later she gave us a call and said she had been bumped. Usually Colonels are the ones doing the bumping. When we went to the terminal we found that not only was she bumped but so was another colonel, a battalion commander and his XO who had a morning meeting. I turns out they all got kicked off because a band that had played here needed to go down to Baghdad for a show! The pilot wasn't happy.

2004-07-10T22:42:00.000+04:00

We got out of the "full battle rattle" at least temporarily because of a slackening in attacks. There is a cost-benefit equation at work. Wearing all that gear definitely degrades your performance, though it can also save your life avoiding the ultimate in performance degradation. Now I am enjoying being unencumbered. The attacks on us have decreased significantly in the last 5 days or so.

I had a relatively cool walk this morning because we had cloud cover. The clouds kept the temp in the 80's until after 9AM which is unusual these days.

Two days ago we broke our temperature record. Somewhere between 123 and 126. Our mercury thermometer only goes to 125 so when it gets really hot we'll use a digital. Stories about 150 degree temps are probably a result of uncalibrated thermometers. 136 degrees in Libya was the highest official temp ever recorded. I can tell you that our porto-potties definitely exceed 150 during the day. I'm expecting to find someone dead in one from heat stroke. Maybe I can submit that to Guinness book. Highest recorded porto-potty temperature (cooked an egg on the floor and threw it in the loo).

2004-07-06T00:26:00.000+04:00

Everyone is waiting for the interim government to announce its new security measures which may include a limited amnesty of some of the anti-coalition forces. Co-opting some of the insurgents is the sort of mildly distasteful pragmatic type of thing that the government will try to do to put down the insurgency. The announcement has been postponed twice in three days.

More distasteful to me is dealing with Moqtada Al-Sadr. There are reports of negotiations between the government and some of Sadr's lieutenants. Politically he is not viable, at least according to the Shi'ia I've talked to. Still him sticking around isn't a good thing for stability.

For us its been status quo more or less since the handover.

2004-07-03T00:08:00.000+04:00

I have CQ again. I'll be up all night. Tomorrow we have the first of two July 4th celebrations. Tomorrow we'll head down to the TMC (Troop Medical Clinic) for lots of food, volleyball, karaoke, and hanging out. On Sunday we've been invited to go up to the Medical Logistics Battalion for their party. The Medlog is an active duty unit out of Germany. They are responsible for getting all the medical supplies to everyone in the theater, including blood. Very busy people with lots of friends.

This will be my second 4th of July outside of the US. The first time, in 1990, was under better circumstances. I was scuba diving in Indonesia at the Nusantara Diving Center in Menado on the Island of Sulawesi. Very cool. Then I went to Tangkoko National Park and saw some rare critters only found on Sulawesi.

The last few years we've been going up to Boston to have a 4th of July Thai style. My sister, my Thai brother in law and the large extended family. The food is great, Shrimp, crab, and my favorite sweet and sour ribs. Some of the relatives call my youngest son by his Thai nickname - Pi Chang (big brother elephant). Many Thais have animal nicknames.

Today was a national day of rest and prayer for the Iraqis. Things remain relatively calm.

2004-07-01T23:57:00.000+04:00

The big news today was Saddam Hussein was informed of the charges against him and shown on TV. Only CNN and Al Jazeerah were allowed to film and people had to rely on pool reporters. This was the first public glimpse of Saddam since he was pulled out of a spider hole near Tikrit. The Iraqis I spoke with today are very pleased with the new government. They feel confident that things are going well. I'll have to get their reaction to Saddam's performance tomorrow. Several have told me they hope he is found guilty of a capital offense and is eventually executed. OK, tell me how you really feel...

Tonight we had our weekly bingo game out on the patio. This week we had people from 4 units. I actually won a folding chair. One of our sergeants got all the bingo stuff from the VFW back home including that little cage thingy that you spin with the balls in it. We also got punch cards from back home.

Things are definitely quieter across the country than we expected, that could change 10 minutes from now. Our local yahoos still are taking potshots but they have to worry more these days if they're going to make it home. Our increased firepower and surveillance is helping. Various operations are going on that are really putting the squeeze on the bad guys throughout the country. I think Zaqawi is worrying more about his own neck right now than his operations. We've dropped a couple 500 pounders on four separate occasions in the last 10 days on his safehouses. Also the bounty on his head has been doubled.

2004-06-27T21:59:00.001+04:00

Yesterday I rode with the ambulance crew at the fire station as an extra medic. It was interesting watching the goings on. One of the working dogs came and got his bath under the fire hose.

The firemen on post are from both Air Force and Army units. They respond to all fire emergencies on post and on the airfield. The trucks are rugged looking with turrets that can fire 250 gallons of water a minute.

The fire crews spent most of the morning doing maintenance on their equipment, washing the trucks, checking out their turnout gear.

Like any firehouse, when things are slow at the station there's food, movies, and a bunkhouse to get some rest. Things can go from slow to full throttle in seconds. These guys often get calls after incoming rounds catch something on fire or someone has done some ad hoc wiring in a tent. Our medics always go with the fire crews, sometimes they have purely medical calls like gathering up a heat casualty yesterday.

I got a small taste of what is routine for them. We had a round come in starting a fire and injuring someone with shrapnel, unfortunately not all that uncommon. We pulled into the scene behind the engines. The fire crew did a great job knocking down a fairly significant fire. We picked up the casualty and brought him to the ER. His wounds were not serious, though he had quite a few little holes in him. His uniform looked like swiss cheese. He was lucky. The other medic stuck him with an IV and I told the guy soon he'd be doped up and getting a purple heart. We went back to the scene and stayed to keep an eye on the firefighters until they were finished. The temperature yesterday was 115 degrees it was much, much hotter next to the fire. All of the guys were soaked and exhausted when the fire was out.

The cleanup took a while after we got back. Hoses cleaned and hung to dry, refilling oxygen tanks, cleaning out all the trash and washing down the back of the ambulance.

After seeing everyone in action I had a much greater appreciation for the emergency crews here on post. We know we can count on them when they're needed.

Out

2004-06-27T21:59:00.000+04:00

The early handover seems to have been a good idea. We haven't yet seen the catastrophic attacks that were threatened for today. I'm sure we'll seen some show of force,if only to prove to themselves that they are relevant. The plans to assassinate Bremer obviously won't happen.

The new prime minister and president are making some smart moves. Appealing to the Iraqi populace to participate in their own security by denying insurgents refuge and aid seems more legitimate than coming from the Americans. Martial law in some areas is almost a given, it may lack the restraint of the coalition. The government can and will do things that the Americans won't. My opinion is that the government is making a big deal about getting control of Saddam partly as personal insurance, holding Saddam and his top henchmen hostage. The implicit threat is that if the leadership is harmed the gloves will come off. Some of the bad guys (Baathists) still care.

I think the Iraqis on the street are watching and waiting. This will be a rough summer. Everyone hopes for stability, but isn't quite sure how it will turn out.

Progress has almost reached critical mass. The average Iraqi has no desire to go backwards, they can now dare hope for tomorrow. No matter what Michael Moore says coming here was worth it and was in our national interest. To tell an Iraqi that we shouldn't have come because there weren't any weapons of mass destruction (which there were) seems foolish. "Sorry, we helped you under false pretenses please forgive us"

On our front we have had more mortar and rocket attacks lately. There were lots of car bombs in June. We call them VBIEDs (pronouced V-BIDs) or Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device.

The creature comforts continue to improve. We are getting a food court built. Coming soon is a Burger King, a Subways, Starbucks, and a few other things. I'm almost embarrassed. Living in luxury while others are in squalor in some rat and sandfly infested tent on the Iranian border.

We also have an outdoor pool being tiled. It would be a shame if one night a rocket cracked the seal after all that work.

I'm hoping that things will calm down so I can travel around a bit more. I'd love to get up to the Kurdish areas. Some of our guys are way up north. They described the mountain roads and the grasslands to me. So much different than my current home. It may be that the only way I see what I want to see from the Archeological sites to the wildlife is to come back on my own.