The Liberal Soldier

More on Politics

2008-01-27T05:13:00.000-08:00

I have a membership with Netflix. They take about 2 1/2 weeks to get here sometimes, but they get here. I was watching a documentary about the 2000 election. The documentary focused on how the election was stolen from the Democrats. I have to stop watching that stuff, because every time I watch stuff like that I just get more and more angry. The audacity...just the audacity of the Republicans to go to those lengths to steal the election. It just boggles my mind. It's hard (still) to put my mind around just how disgustingly duplicitous the Republicans were--and they got away with it. Where the hell was the "Liberal News Media?" Those bastards are lazy but they sure aren't liberal.

It makes what we're doing here all the more galling because if Gore hadn't been cheated out of the election we probably wouldn't be here in Iraq. All the bad stuff that has happened in the last 7 years, or most of it, wouldn't have happened. Naturally, if a 9/11-type of attack had happened the Republicans would have blamed the Democrats for being "soft" on terrorism. I'll tell you what--they may have been better at combatting terrorism because there would have been continuity of the effort and emphasis on the problem. Bush and Co. were looking at China as the bogeyman, not Osama. I have to stop because I am starting to REALLY get angry.

So Obama won the South Carolina primary. I'm not surprised. I am surprised by the margin of the vote, though. Clinton, if she is going to win, needs to change the subject and get her machine rolling in the states voting on Feb. 5th. Letting the press (who hate the Clintons) dictate the tempo and the news coverage is not helpful; she needs to dictate the news. She can do it. I am actually gravitating to her a little because I think the press, enabled by the Republicans, are doing a hit-job on her. Straight up, they are doing a hit job on her. Edwards, my candidate, just isn't going to win it, but he can still influence the outcome. I think the only time I voted in the primary for the eventual nominee was probably 1996, when I voted for Clinton, and 2000 when I voted for Gore. In 2004 I voted for Wesley Clark, and like I said, this time I voted for Edwards.

Well, the next 7 days will be pretty interesting. Not too much is being spoken about this around the office (surprise!). Most of them are republicans, and all the Republicans suck, so there isn't a whole lot to talk about. Good for them. It's about time they all shut the hell up.

OUT

90 Days and counting

2008-01-25T02:41:00.000-08:00

I've said before that I'm a National Guardsman from Maryland, and we were mobilized for serving in Iraq on 23 April 2007. We were (are) scheduled to be on active duty for a year. Well, we are approaching the finish line here. there is no reason to believe we'll get extended, so in about 90 days (give or take a few) we should all be at home, kicked back, drinking a cold one and celebrating a job well done. Our unit was given some pretty high praise by the Deputy Commander for Multi National Corps-Iraq, MG Simmons. He congratulated the unit on a superb job of sustaining the level of support here and making a positive material difference in the quality of life for soldiers here at VBC.

So as I get closer to leaving, I have been looking back on the last 270 days spent on active duty (and the 220+ spent in Iraq) looking for some meaning. There are fewer people getting killed here than there were when we first arrived. It was pretty wild when we got here. I think everyone probably thinks that before they go, except maybe the guys who were here in the beginning. Despite the blather from people like John McCain, the country doesn't seem a whole lot closer to coming together politically than it was back in June. You know, when you hear the pro-surge folks say that it's working, if they were honest they would say that the military objectives of the troop surge have been achieved. Of course, since there never has been a Plan B to the surge, qualifying the evaluation of its effectiveness begs questions; like, what else can be done by the US to get the sides to come together? The answer is, nothing. Or questions like, now what? The troop surge lasted (at full strength) about 6-7 months. There just are not enough forces ready, equipped, manned and trained to come over here. We are down to 17 Army Combat Brigades and two Marine Regiments. The contributions of countries like Georgia and Macedonia and Tonga, while appreciated, are frankly inconsequential.

So when I look at how I spent the year here, I sort of have mixed feelings. I'd be ashamed if I had wormed my way out of serving here, but I really don't have the sense of pride I hoped I would. I think it's because we still don't know how it's going to turn out. And with the election coming in the fall, now is not the time to be expecting bold new ideas about what to do here. By the way, I finally got my absentee ballot and filled it out. I will say that I felt pretty proud to be voting from a war zone. You know, people back home decline to vote when it's rainy or they want to eat dinner or they're tired, and I can tell people: dammit, if I can vote from a war zone, then you can vote from a peace zone. Get off your butt and do your civic duty. I voted for John Edwards in the Maryland Democratic Primary. I think we need someone who is going to kick some ass in the White House...uhhh, wait a minute. Maybe that isn't what I mean to say. We have someone like that in there now. I mean that we need a guy (or gal) who is going to do the right thing, and fight the morally right battles. That is sorely lacking in the current administration. They have to be one of the most immoral and unethical cabals to ever have the reins of power in recorded history. That takes a lot.

So, when it comes down to it, things here, in my opinion, will kind of reach an equilibrium over the next 12-15 months. After that, I am not optimistic. It's a mess. Yesterday the Iraqi government stated that they want to start transitioning US units to support roles this summer. THAT will be interesting. If they think that our units will just sit tight on the FOB waiting for a 911 call for logistical support, they are smoking crack. The Iraqis don't have the same concept of Operational Security (OPSEC) that we do--in fact, OPSEC is a foreign concept to them. The idea that we roll out only when they need us sounds like it could devolve into a more dangerous situation that we're in right now. Now we have the initiative. If we're simply a reactive force we'll be putting our soldiers at risk every time they leave the FOB. Not a very good idea.

I think I know what's best for this country. In fact, I should be named King For Life. I even picked out the throne I want to rule from:

Nice, huh? The big copper thing to my left is my "genie-in-a-bottle."

Here are a few pictures I took that I thought were interesting. This one is of two UH-60 Blackhawks landing. It looks like one of them is about to land on the water. I took it on my birthday, basically because there wasn't a whole lot to do that day.

I also took this picture of the sun coming through the clouds that same afternoon.

Finally, I took this picture of the sunset about a week ago. As plain as this place is, we have really been getting some nice sunsets the last few weeks.

That's all for now. I will be back this weekend or early next week. See you later.

OUT

Yet another day

2008-01-09T03:38:00.000-08:00

(Originally written on Christmas Day, not posted until 9 January)

Happy Groundhog Day! Actually, today is Christmas Day. Unlike a lot of other folks here serving, this is my first Christmas on a deployment away from home. In 2003 I was mobilized for a CONUS mission to Andrews AFB in Maryland, which was close enough to home for me to be at home Christmas Day. This is a little bit different. The vibe of Christmas, you can feel it a little bit. We have the day off, people are around their CHU’s all day since they don’t have to go to work, and it does feel like a non-work day. Of course, there were what must have been a few controlled detonations somewhere nearby, and waking up to them is something that makes one a little nervous. Anyway…

So, since I get to read the news everyday on the internet, I am trying to figure out how the country feels about this whole scandal with the CIA taping these abusive interrogations, then destroying the tapes. First, how it is that we as a country can have serious dialogue about torturing people just mystifies me. People who are self-proclaimed Christians are foaming at the mouth that we need to be torturing people in order to get information. Second, the fact that the CIA actually filmed this stuff, then kept it around for awhile, is a little strange. Why film it? To refine the technique? To record all the information, like a police interrogation? Who was the guy behind the camera, and what was he thinking? I can say that yeah, in the aftermath of 9/11, I definitely wanted revenge. I didn’t care about anything but retribution. The problem is that those days are long gone.

Let’s consider Afghanistan for a second. We are barely hanging on there; we are able to keep the Taliban and Al Qaida from taking control of the entire country, but neither we nor NATO have the force size to eradicate both of those elements from Afghanistan. Why? Because we have about 150k troops here in Iraq, that’s why. We went to war here because the administration lied, and our friends gave us the benefit of the doubt. Now, the truth is out, and the other military powers who COULD help--England, France, Germany, hey--what about bringing the Chinese into this?--don’t believe a word that the president says. And the countries who are here in Iraq are, shall we say, motivated by other incentives to be here. What do you think the Albanian Army brings to the table in Iraq? I’m asking myself the same question. The Macedonian Army? The Army of El Salvador? Well, maybe they can bring some counterinsurgency experience to the table, but frankly, what they fought is a whole lot different from the political environment here. The Ukrainian Navy is here, too. These forces are here in small numbers, so small they are frankly inconsequential. I don’t know how much money they get for being here, but it’s enough, I guess. The administration is using the US Army to pay for the house, and they’re using these little third-rate banana republic armies for the window dressing.

And what are the Democrats doing to get things right? Hmm. Not a whole lot that I can tell, other than playing the waiting game. I’ve said this before--they need to show some brass balls and present an alternative solution, one that doesn’t involve trying to force Bush to do what they want by cutting off funding for the troops. I still find it hard to swallow that they have been in charge of Congress for a year now and they’ve rolled over for Bush on all of this stuff. Bush is no Bill Clinton when it comes to his political skill, and the Dems are standing there getting pummeled. Something I learned as a young second lieutenant was pick and choose your battles--the Dems in Congress are picking all the losing ones. They look impotent and ineffectual.

And here Bush is, just whistling past the graveyard--literally--as he plays out the clock. Disgraceful.

I was going to try and upload some pics. That will have to happen a little later. I am having some "technical difficulties."

I’ll have some more very soon.

OUT

Back from Hiatus

2007-12-14T00:03:00.000-08:00

Hey folks,

It's been a long while since I have posted to the blog. There are a couple of reasons: 1) I was ramping up for mid-tour leave at the end of October and things were just too busy for me to post; 2) When I was home on leave I was enjoying family time and wanted to stay away from the computer as much as possible; and 3) When I got back around Thanksgiving I was so "happy" to be back that my mind just was not in the game. It still isn't, exactly, but it's a lot better than it was.

So a lot has happened over here since the middle of October. The good news is that by a lot of measures violence is down. The bad news is that there isn't a lot of analysis as to what the causes are. I see none of it in the papers or on the news. The worse news is that the Iraqi Government has failed to take advantage of the dip in the killing to solidify a cohesive government structure that shares power with the Sunnis. That is going to be a requirement for any long-term stability here.

Also, right before I went on leave I sent a letter to Stars and Stripes to register my dissatisfaction with them for carrying Ann Coulter's column. I know what you're thinking--that stupid bitch can get paid to write? Yes, it's true. Just go to the local bookstore. Anyway, the letter set off a string of hostile letters to Stars and Stripes defending her and calling me all sorts of names. Hey, the letter was a little over the top, maybe, but the irony of the whole matter was that I spoke in the same sort of tone that she uses in her column. The buttheads who love to read what she has to say got real angry when those same kinds of words were directed her way. Irony is just wasted on some people. The best parts of the whole thing were that 1) The day they printed the letter was the day I came home on leave; and 2) I signed my name with a non gender-specific nickname. That made it impossible to know who was really the one that sent the letter. It was beautiful!

I even got an e-mail from a Colonel Charles Mitchel at MNC-I headquarters asking if I was the one who had written the editorial in the paper that day. The guy got my "Out of Office " reply, so I guess he figured it wasn't me. I mean, don't you think that's completely inappropriate? What would have been the reply to me had I told him, "yes?" I can only imagine. Anyway, I regret that I wasn't present for the storm. But interestingly, I have had many people come to me and give me positive feedback for doing it. That made me feel pretty good.

That's all for now. I have lots to talk about, and I'll share it in the coming days and weeks, with pictures.

OUT

General Sanchez speaks out

2007-10-16T01:43:00.000-07:00

Hello,

Today is just one more day in a year of long days. I'm only 14 days away from getting ready to go on leave. I can't wait. It will suck coming back, no doubt about it. I entertained the thought early on in this deployment of just not taking leave. In the end, I figured I owed it to myself and my family to go back when I could. it was nicely timed so that it's almost right in the middle of the deployment. When I get back we'll be more than 50% done.

So this past weekend LTG (R) Ricardo Sanchez, the Combined joint Task Force-7 (CJTF-7) Commander from 2003-2004 (or maybe until 2005, I can't remember). Anyway, he commanded what has morphed into Multi National Force-Iraq (MNF-I). He came out and said that this is a nightmare over here, with no end in sight. It was interesting the way he framed it. Basically he was saying that the political leadership constrained the military from fighting the war the way it should have, particularly by limiting force size. This is a man who many hold liable for the insurgency flourishing during the summer and fall of 2003. Thomas Ricks, in his book Fiasco is especially hard on his leadership. Maybe he's had time to reflect on what he could have done differently.

He also had little good to say about the surge. I wonder if what he is saying is representative of what other retired Generals are thinking. I just saw the Senate Minority Leader from Kentucky on the TV last night saying that the surge is working and we're making remarkable progress over here...that means the talking points are being sent out again. It ain't "working," everyone. The enemy knows that, and the soldiers know that. he made the statement to the effect that things in the south were quiet and peaceful. This is the same place where the Brits left and handed local control over to the Shiite militias. Quiet? Peaceful? How in the world can the surge be working there when there are no soldiers there? I am totally mystified by that statement. Again, the talking points have been distributed, and they are coming back out on the news. I am hoping that things work out here; I am not encouraged by what I have seen and what I know. So Mrs. Clinton, I hope you're paying attention. When you come in to office you need to have a plan ready to execute immediately.

OUT

Keeping us busy

2007-10-13T00:53:00.000-07:00

So we had another rocket attack this past week. I'm a little bit surprised that the news got out so fast. They had the story nailed within about 12 hours. I don't think it was because MNC-I had a press release, either, although I'm sure they had to say something after the news got out. Fortunately, no one in my unit was injured, Unfortunately, 2 soldiers were killed and almost 40 were wounded. A couple of TCN's were injured, too. You know there are some places in this world that have dire poverty when the people will come to this place for a job.

So I think I talked about my fraternity brother in my last post...it is so ironic to run into him here. We hadn't seen each other in over 10 years, and it takes a war to bring us back together.

I was told that the statistics being reported about the numbers of insurgents being killed and captured are, shall we say, a little bit misleading. Units out there are fighting people who are connected through a spiderweb of alliances, tribal affiliations, gang affiliations, and sect affiliations. When the "insurgents" are killed and captured, however, they are reporting that they were members of Al Qaida. on a couple of levels, this is dishonest. First, a lot of the anti-coalition activity in the Baghdad area is done by Shia groups who hate Al Qaida in Iraq (AQIZ). Second, there is a great deal of internecine fighting going on between the Shia groups; they are jockeying for control. Third, the Sunni-Shia fighting that does occur is between Sunni and Shia. So all of these activities get counted as "anti-coalition" attacks or events, which clearly they are not. I don't want to sound like I'm nit-picking here, but what is being reported ends up being wrong, which then ends up influencing policy, which then produces a solution to the wrong problem--which then gets implemented, with the expectation that positive results will flow from it. It just won't work like that. We have soldiers doing a tremendous amount of work here, and that ends up getting wrapped around a policy that will not succeed. What amazes me is how the morale stays as high as it does. I think what happens is that the soldiers (who think about it) tend to internalize their doubts and keep them to themselves. Saying them out loud is tantamount to saying the Emperor has no clothes. And the soldiers plug along, doing the work of the superhero because that's why they came here.

One of my objectives here during this time was to do some informal professional development. I set out to read 5 books from the Army Chief of Staff's reading list. It is a list compiled for Officers and NCO's to use for learning about leadership in history, and to make the leaders of today think about what the leaders of the past have faced and how they solved the challenges of warfare and leadership, etc. So I have read two books already, and I'm on my third--The Memoirs of General Ulysses S. Grant. It's actually a pretty readable book. Anyway, his take on the Mexican War, while I'm sitting in my CHU in the middle of Baghdad, is really kind of interesting. The Mexican War was 160 years ago, but it just demonstrated to me that officers of that time faced the same moral dilemma some of us struggle with in this war. And that's about all I've got to say about that.

I ordered a laptop, so when i get that online I'll be back to more frequent posts and I'll be putting up pictures again. Having to go to the MWR facility to post is a little inconvenient and I can't plug a thumb drive into the terminals here. I have a bunch of cool photos that I haven't been able to show, so in the next few weeks I will be putting a lot up. I go on leave next month, so I probably won't post too much then, but we'll see. Until next time...

OUT

First one of the month

2007-10-06T10:30:00.000-07:00

I am now unable to post from the pc on my desk. That makes writing this blog extremely difficult to do. Mainly because I am reduced to using a laptop from the Pre-Cambrian period in one of the "internet cafes" here on the installation. It's tough using older equipment; it's even harder to use it when overuse has caused the keys on the keyboard to be virtually unreadable for most letters.

It took me about three tries to write that.

Lots to talk about, but I can't really do it here with this laptop. I will be writing for the next two days. I also need to get some sleep tonight because tomorrow I am running in an Army Ten-Miler "Shadow Run" here at VBC. A shadow run is a ten-miler being run on the same day as the official one, just somewhere else in the world. I'll be able to tell my kids and grand kids that I ran a shadow run in Baghdad one day. That's kind of cool.

Next time I write I will be on a better computer. Maybe I'll order a laptop now since the commander back home ok'd the purchase. But I want to talk about spending 48 hours here with a fraternity brother who also happens to be here in the Army. I hadn't seen him in probably 10 or 12 years, and it took a war to get us back together. Amazing. And I also have more to say about the rest of what's going on. And I have some awesome pictures. So, this has taken me about 25 minutes to type, and I've about had it. Talk to you all later. Be safe.

OUT

More fallout from the Report

2007-09-26T09:22:00.000-07:00

Hey folks, just keeping it real in the field--out in Baghdad, Iraq, where in the mornings now it's actually pleasant and in the afternoons it's about as hot as it is at home on a hot summer day. In short, It has gotten pretty livable here.

I have been doing a little more reading this week--not reading the report from GEN Petraeus so much as reading some analysis done prior to the delivery of his report. I read another short paper from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (www.csis.org) regarding the effort over here. The title sums up the writer's thesis:

"America's Last Chance in Iraq: Changing US Strategy to Meet Iraq's Real Needs"

It is yet another short, fascinating analysis of the war done by CSIS. The first sentence should be read by every news anchor in the "Liberal News Media" before each story on the war: "America has no good options in Iraq, and the odds of any form of enduring success are even at best." The author, Anthony Cordesman, goes on to add what I think is the seminal point that the conservatives AND the liberals are really missing: that we have a moral obligation to take responsibility for what has happened here. Those who say that the "surge is working" and those who want immediate withdrawal are both failing to acknowledge that this is no longer an experiment in democracy, no political science class practical-exercise. There has been a huge amount of carnage and destruction here on the human side that we as a nation are morally accountable for. I never voted for The Decider, but enough people did that we now have this train wreck on our hands. We all have to come together to solve it.

As a logistician over here, I can tell you he is right on point when he enumerates the challenges of withdrawal. He also points out that we do not control the battlefield--in other words, there may be a time where we are forced out at a time not of our own choosing. In my opinion, when we decide to leave, the items that require the most effort to evacuate out of here are what the Army calls "major-end items;" i.e., trucks, tanks, MRAPs, weapons systems, etc. They obviously need to be some of the last things to leave with any unit that rolls out of here. If we take most of the usable major end items, demilitarize or destroy the ones that we don't want, and sell the remainder to the central government we should be pretty happy. They facilities here are no great shakes, but we need to stop using temporary solutions for them and start building lasting infrastructure that can be turned over to the Iraqis. Our failure to address the needs of the people has so embittered segments of the population towards us that some of this stuff might get destroyed anyway. I've said before that some of the mistakes here just can't be undone. Mr. Cordesman writes that the ideological nightmare of half-formed plans and the incompetence of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in the beginning are two of the crucial early issues that have shaped the present situation.

Another interesting point Cordesman brings up is the situation in the southeastern part of the country. There was no surge there. The surge was mainly in Baghdad, Anbar, and Diyala. The British were the primary force down south until recently; now the Shi'ite militias are in control. 30% of the country's population and 80% of the oil exports are down there. The oil constitutes 90-95% of the entire government revenues, and this asset is in the hands of rival Shi'ite factions. Question: What do you think they are doing with the money? Hmm. Another interesting fact is that numerous factions are being supported by Iran, presumably because they are hedging their bets on who will come out on top. Furthermore, Iran is just as confused as we are about the alliances and loyalties of these groups. They are not controlled by Moqtada al-Sadr, or the government of al-Maliki, or the Iranians for that matter. A lot of the factions are criminal enterprises.

I'm getting worn down by all this. It's like reading bad news every damn day. Is there room for optimism? Always. But realism needs to take hold in Washington, and I think that the question of how well the Iraqis can take over for us is summed up pretty well in Cordesman's report. The Iraqi Army is showing great promise, but we can't push too much onto them too soon or they'll cave. The regional police will end up being sectarian in composition in most places. And the national police "cannot be healed or reformed. They are a symbol of sectarian cleansing and Shi'ite abuse of Sunnis." Not a pretty picture. These NP's are infiltrated by the Shi'ite militias and just are useless.

I was going to post some pics, but the internet here has royally sucked for about three weeks, and stuff downloads and uploads so slowly that I don't have the patience. I have attempted to upload a picture for 20 solid minutes and...nothing. I'll try again next time.

OUT

Long week

2007-09-21T08:39:00.000-07:00

Hello,

This has been a long week. Ramadan is in full swing, and the natives have decided they're going to get a little restless at night. It's not as dangerous as it is annoying. So, during the day they can't eat, drink or smoke at all. After sunset they eat. I guess after they get a full tummy they decide to go out and make some mischief. It will be nice when it's all over.

It's also been a long week because I spent all of last week giving a technical review to a bunch of proposals. Some of that was some dense reading. And at night, after I was done, I had to come in to the office and catch up on stuff I couldn't do during the day. This week has been like two weeks packed into one. And while it is cooling off at home, we are still having daytime highs hovering around 110 degrees. I know I've said this before, but I don't know how the Iraqis can stand it. They get power for a few hours a day if that, and have to sleep in the humid, hot night air. It's cool at night now (at least it feels cool; it could be 85 degrees for all I know) so it's not as bad as July and August, but still. At least when Saddam was in power they had that much.

Speaking of Saddam, I am finishing up a book called, The Generals War, by Bernard Trainor. It's amazing to read it now since it was published in 1995. There are names in there from the Bush Administration (Failure #2) like Powell and Cheney, but also people like Paul Wolfowitz and Zalmay Khalilzad. I just got through the last chapter and I'm reading into the Epilogue, and I'm serious, it's hard to read the last two chapters. Trainor didn't have a Magic 8-Ball, but he ties a lot of the "problems" we faced through the '90's with Saddam to the indecisive conclusion of the war. Reading that book, you really get a whole different sense of what happened during the war than one got reading the papers or watching the news at that time. Then, you knew the Air Force had done a lot of damage, but you got the idea that the Army had been fighting tooth and nail to get up into Iraq near Basra. It was actually the Marines who did most of the ground fighting. Furthermore, because Schwarzkopf was such a rigid thinker he didn't pick up clues along the way that should have told him the enemy wasn't going to stand and fight. That assumption guided his entire approach to the ground piece of the war. His objective was to destroy the Republican Guard. He never achieved it. He stopped the war--or allowed it to be stopped--before that happened, and it allowed Saddam to recover a lot of his fighting capability. That enabled him to hold on to power. We also stirred up the Shiites in southern Iraq, and they thought we'd come help them rise up. Problem was, when Bush was saying that he hoped the Iraqi people would rise up and topple Saddam, he really meant that he wanted to see someone in the military topple him; he didn't want the Shia to do it. So there was never any thought given to helping them as they got crushed by the units that streamed out of Kuwait and were reconstituted. By the way, 12 years later, these were the same Shia that Vice President Cheney said "would welcome us as liberators." He must have hoped they had one hell of a short memory.

Schwarzkopf comes out in the book as an interesting individual. He seemed to lose his spine when he had to confront Powell at the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Another thing that probably had negative effects at the end of the First Gulf War, and DEFINITELY had negative effects in the second one, was the military's absolute insistence that they were the ones who decided when they would leave the battlefield. This is what I mean: CENTCOM, commanded by Schwarzkopf, had every intention of getting the soldiers out of the Middle East as quickly as possible. That makes you incapable of really asserting yourself after the cease-fire. If things go wrong, you're already shipping personnel and equipment home, and the military had no intention of sticking around to enforce the peace. This group of officers were of the Vietnam-generation officer corps, and felt that the civilian leadership had abused them. They weren't going to allow it again. Well, because of the itch to get outta Dodge, Saddam stayed in power and we invaded 12 years later. And, oh by the way, when we invaded this time, again, the military had no plan to stick around to enforce the peace. The "Generation V" officers, after being subjected to a war they felt the civilians had lost for them, AND a decade (the 1990's) of peace keeping missions, felt a revulsion towards anything not directly related to the prosecution of war. The whole "we don't do peace-keeping" attitude ended up blowing up in their faces. If they did a little more peace-keeping they would have had to do a lot less war making.

And look where we are now. We have The Decider, a man utterly devoid of ideas and credibility, shooting off his mouth about a newspaper ad from MoveOn.org. I guess running off at the mouth about something like that keeps him from having to come up with a solution for the way out of this war. And again, going back to the book, when I see names in there like Wolfowitz and others it just makes my skin crawl. You know, we're still here and clowns like that are long, long gone. The Decider will transition from a completely broken president to a completely broken ex-president in about 16 months.

Anyway, I highly recommend the book. I'll blog some more shortly, and I promise I'll have some good pictures.

Drama

2007-09-16T08:15:00.000-07:00

So we got some incoming this past week. Had a little drama. Fortunately no one in my unit was hurt, so that's a good thing. I have been so busy that I really haven't had much time to take a whole lot of pictures. And we're definitely forbidden from taking pictures of anything that may get damaged from fire from the outside.

The workload here is just going up and up. We are getting just a ton of materials and supplies that were ordered by the unit we relieved, and my piece of land to store it in is starting to get pretty cluttered.

Anyway, the big news of the week, aside from our own little drama, was the drama taking place in Washington. You know, the Democrats are really disappointing me. I don't know what's going on over there, but they have had 10 months to come up with alternative plans to counter what The Decider has "decided" to do, but they've come up with nothing. They should be going on the offensive here, and the silence is just deafening. I can't believe they aren't out there picking apart the report and the testimony delivered last week. The violence here is down? Really...I just spent a week reviewing construction proposals, and every one of these proposals had a plan to house the workers in a compound within the walls of the base they were building on. It wasn't for convenience, because these companies were going to hire Iraqis. It was for security so the workforce didn't get killed. They were also discussing keeping the materials from being stolen or destroyed on the roads. If the security situation is so "good," if "the surge is working," why is this necessary? What "work" was the surge supposed to do?

i found one comment GEN Petraeus made to be particularly noteworthy. He said words to the effect that most if not all of the military goals of the surge had been met. I don't disagree with that statement. The problem is, and the so-called "Liberal News Media" never quite got the implication of that statement, the goal of the surge was a political one, not a military one. Meeting the military objectives was supposed to enable the political objectives to happen. By The Decider's own math, the government here is not meeting all 18 benchmarks. I'd love to give an 'atta-boy for making a nice effort, but people are dying over here. Americans, Iraqis, and even a few coalition forces. "Nice try's" are pretty irrelevant when the killing and the ethnic cleansing go on without pause. I tell people, what would you think if there were as many killings in Baltimore (or wherever you live) every day or every week as there are here? You'd think it was complete chaos. If not chaos, you'd probably wonder how people can live like that and not be irreparably harmed. But hey, all we hear from the right-wing G.O.P. TV on Fox, and the Lazy News Media of the mainstream, is that "the surge is working." If I see one more Republican Senator or Congressman mouth those words on TV I will just throw up.

The troops here are tired. The morale from what I can tell is pretty good, but damn they are tired. And a few people who are "outside the wire" guys with some experience under their belt wholeheartedly agree with the Jones Report (referenced in an earlier post): the Iraqi Security Forces cannot do the job. Period. They can't now, and won't be able to a year from now. But hey, with the crew making the decisions now, it's all about being able to blame the guy who follows Bush. It's gonna be a Democrat if they pull their heads out of their fourth point of contact (military for "ass"). And I can see it now: that the Democrats will be in a situation of no-win choices. And the Republicans will be lobbing bombs from the sidelines, as if 8 years of filth and lies and misguided, dogmatic policies never happened. I don't have a crystal ball, but believe it, folks. That day is coming.

Tomorrow I'll try to get some interesting pictures. I got a tripod, so now when I take longer-range shots they'll be steady. We'll see. Talk to you in a bit...

The "Report"

2007-09-12T09:44:00.000-07:00

So, the CG of Multi-National Forces-Iraq (MNF-I) has given his testimony to Congress. Bush did an excellent job of minimizing expectations, and predictably, the Democrats failed the country. Great. Looks like we're staying the course until January 20, 2009.

The thing that angers me is that this is such a colossal waste. Not just American lives, but hundreds of Iraqis are killed every week. The White House may direct that the statistics get massaged to reflect what they want, but Jesus, the situation isn't a whole lot better here. We still can't leave the base. They are still firing junk on our position. Guys are still dying. And what is happening in Washington? They're playing footsie under the bathroom stall. What a damn disgrace.

The surge has done such a great job, it's "working" so well, according to John McCain and others, that when we bid construction contracts they have to build a compound for these guys to live in for their safety. That's pretty standard. Amazing. We still run convoys with armed escorts up and down the roads. When will The Surge That Is Working end that practice? I was watching The News Hour on PBS over here and Jim Lehrer asked Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) if he thought Gen Petraeus was "spinning" the report to reflect what he wanted it to say. Lugar's response was very interesting. I am paraphrasing because it was like 14 hours ago that I saw it, but he basically said that Petraeus came prepared to deliver a point of view and he defended that point of view. To my ears, calling it a "point of view" was significant. Here is a Senator who is widely acknowledged to have credibility in foreign affairs saying that the guy was not presenting a balanced, objective report. I mean, hey, what would have happened if he reported that this is a total fiasco? He's have been awarded The Solid Brass Balls Award and been shown the door. Besides, they are all complicit in this mess and they truly want the chance to make right with it all. I can respect that. But damn, this mission is lost, folks. Lost.

So what do we do now? In my own humble opinion, I think that what we need to do is start making deals. We will never, ever create a government here that replicates our own. In fact, Sen. Lugar pointed out on the News Hour this morning that the Iraqi Constitution--the one we strong-armed them into creating--specifies that the central government does not have the sort of power that ours has; the power is decentralized. I think the conservatives would call this concept "States' Rights." Here it is done to acknowledge the power and influence in this culture of clan and tribal ties and lines of authority. Man, and the Neoconservatives that created this mess just thought that we could come in here, knock off Saddam, and all would be well. How childish. And people voted for them? I would be ashamed to have that much blood on my hands, I know that much. But I tend to think that Bush sleeps like a baby at night. He's got a place waiting for him when he goes to the next world.

Till next time, go to this website and read the Jones Report regarding the capabilities of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF): http://forums.csis.org/isf.pdf

OUT

Football Season's here!

2007-09-09T09:41:00.000-07:00

So as I write this entry it is about 20 minutes before 9:00 pm. The football season started on Thursday with the (formerly Baltimore) Colts thumping the Saints. Tonight--today in the US--is when the first Sunday football games start. The Ravens are my team, and they play tomorrow night against the Bengals. If the Ravens play on offense they way they are capable, and play solid defense they will win. If Ed Reed freelances too much and gets burned, or they pick on Samari Rolle, ballgame. They lose. The Ravens have not been a very good come from behind team for some time, if ever. They have to play carefully.

So I have spent a lot of time out of the office this past week because we are getting all kinds of supplies in here and I have to coordinate the pick up and movement to our Class IV Yard. "Class IV" is the Army Supply Class that includes engineer barrier material, construction material, etc. Class II includes stuff like tents and shelters. Anyway, we just got an avalanche of that kind of stuff last week. Here is how the stuff has to be handled:

I took the picture in black & white on a lark just to see how it looked. I may do that a little more when I take pictures of people. We'll see. That container fits right onto the back of a 40' flatbed truck, which then carries the whole thing to wherever it needs to go. They also make them in 53' and 20' sizes. They are both designed to go on trucks, ships, and trains. You got some smart people who can figure out how to make something that will fit on all those modes of transport, plus will carry more cargo than if you just packed the stuff on pallets or in boxes.

The place that I put most of this stuff is here:

What I will do before I leave this place is get some video of these machines to show my son when I get home. He loves watching construction machines.

I was thinking about the band I saw perform here last night, and I would compare them to a micro-brew beer: they may not be available in a lot of places, but they are high-quality. It makes you wonder, how many other bands are out there like this one that probably get very little support from their record label (if they have one)? Why do we get fed the corporate BS music when there are bands like this out there that you never hear on the radio? Thank goodness they came out on this tour, and I definitely want to thank and give kudos to the folks at USO for getting them out here. They have an ear for talent, for sure. It was just a very cool time.

Anyway, time for football!!! Gotta run. I will be in meetings almost all of this week, so my blogging my pause. If I do get to it, I may do a little venting, so please have patience with me...thanks!

MWR Night

2007-09-08T12:10:00.001-07:00

Tonight we had a surprise performance by a pretty cool band from California. They're called Wilson Gil and the Willful Sinners. They're a rock and roll band that kind of makes you think about all those bar bands you saw when you were in college that just rocked the house when you saw them. They were really, really good. They were also pretty funny in between some of the songs. They had a pretty strong stage presence. Here's a picture of me with Tony Gil himself:

That's Staff Sergeant Fiorani in the background being a doofus. That's not like him; he's usually the doofus in the foreground.

They were really cool. Listening to an American rock band in Baghdad is a little strange. I talked with one of the guys in the band (Joe Dean) who mentioned that this was definitely one of the more "different" venues they've played. I imagine Afghanistan is a lot more austere. They played there during the summer.

They also are down with an energy drink they have here in the DFACs called "Rip-it." It's just like Red Bull except for the price tag. It's free! Woo hoo! They were all trippin' on the stuff. I'll tell you what, I have my own stash in my office cube for when I need a little boost.

Like I said, if you get the chance to see this band you need to do it. Great bunch of guys, and great music. Coming over here to play for us takes some courage. They aren't even armed.

Check out their website: http://www.wilsongil.com

Thanks guys!

Get ready for next week

2007-09-07T10:43:00.000-07:00

Here we are again on another Friday. This week, like almost every week since I have been here, has flown by. That's a good thing. My leave comes up in a couple of months and if the weeks go by like this, I'll be home in no time at all. It will be an exciting flight going home, and a very depressing one coming back. How could I be happy leaving this behind?

I learned a lot about the global commercial transportation system these last ten weeks. It's amazing how long it can take some things to get here. The mail can get here as quickly as 5 days. The supplies that come over on ships can take two months or more. I got slammed today with 11 40' trucks worth of stuff that I had to sign for and take possession of. It took a full 7 hours to get this stuff loaded, moved less than 2 miles, then off-loaded. I am smoked! It wasn't as hot as normal today, maybe only around 105 or so.

DAMN!! I just checked it out--it was only 95 degrees at 6 o'clock tonight. I thought it felt cool!

Anyway, the moral of that little story is that when it rains it pours--I had nothing come in that I needed for weeks, and all of a sudden I get 11 truckloads of stuff the unit we replaced had ordered. They left two months ago.

So next week GEN Petraeus delivers the report that the White House will be writing for him. I do not envy that man. He is being set up for failure, and to be honest, both parties share some blame. The Republicans are blowing the trumpets, saying that "the surge is working," when it isn't. And some of the Democrats are backing away from twisting Bush's arm about getting out of here. let me tell you something--the soldiers here want to do the job. They want to do it right, and they want to go home. Morale is pretty good, but they are tired. This is my first tour here; I personally know guys who have been here two, three, and four times. It's time for this junk to end. The Democrats, instead of speaking loudly, they need to get into a meeting with Bush and hammer his ass. Problem is they're too beaten down, and I think probably still a little hesitant to use the same disgusting, soulless political tactics against Bush that he used in them. I say go for it--and do it soon. Meanwhile the meat grinder goes marching on. Petraeus now says that we can start sending a Brigade home by Christmas. I have a feeling it won't be ours.

Check out the GAO report here:

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d071195.pdf

I really get irritated when Bush and the cronies claim that the tribes in Anbar are coming over to our side because of the surge. That is complete BS--the fact is that Al-Qaida in Iraq (the Iraqi-populated Al-Qaida, not the Osama bin Laden Al-Qaida) was forcing the tribes in Anbar province (and Diyala to a lesser extent) to intermarry with them in order to insinuate themselves into the tribal and clan fabric of these areas. The sheiks resisted, and it escalated very quickly from threats to targeted murder to mass murder. The sheiks finally said, "enough," and that's when they turned. If you read the CSIS paper that I linked in a previous post, you'll see that this current cooperation with the government and US forces is in their self-interest; if the tribes feel like the government here won't give them a fair shake all bets are off and they'll be shooting at us again. Anthony Cordesman gave the government up to 180 days to give the Sunni tribes a place at the table or else they go back to being hostile. So, how did an extra 5 brigades enable that to happen? It didn't. And it started well before the surge, anyway. The extra troops here in-country are in a position to exploit this development, and let's hope we do. But as has been said already, the military has held up its part of the bargain. There is nothing else we can do--we have reached the limit of our effectiveness. The Iraqi politicians have to sort their stuff out.

And on the subject of shooting, that plane that was shot at (the one with the Senators and Congressman) was flying out of here last Friday. In fact, I saw one of the Senators--Richard Shelby from Alabama--in the chow hall around 5:30 or 6:00 that night. Then three hours later he's getting shot at. I swear--I had nothing to do with it!!

It would have hit the fan if that plane had gone down. Whew! Well, Bush would still say "the surge is working," I guarantee you that. I think he's drinking again, to be honest with you. Both him and Cheney. The depression and shame they must face every morning would crush me. But I wouldn't be that arrogant and dumb and disgusting to start with. I'm ranting...anyway, pay close attention next week when the General is in Washington. Read between the lines.

So a few more pictures. This is where I live. It's called "Freedom Village." We call it, "The Ville."

Sometimes I end up spending a lot of time in that trailer in the foreground. I don't know what I'd do for a home-cooked meal right now...but it would be a lot.

There is a lot of history at this place. There is a place down on Camp Striker called "The Zoo." There was actually a zoo down there, with tigers and birds and stuff. There was a story when the war was going on about tigers being loose in Baghdad--they came from here. They were so malnourished that they had to be killed. But here are some pictures of the area (what's left of it).

Nothing says, "4th Infantry Division was here" quite like this:

This was probably someones home who had some importance...

And if whoever lived there was tired of walking around, hell, they could take the dinghy.

And this is me, taken about 4 hours ago:

One other thing about the tigers--I was told by someone who was here in 2004 that back in '04 they found that a tiger was up in one of the camps here that was called, at the time, "Tigerland." When the Iraqis still owned the place it was where they let wild animals loose and hunted 'em. Hearing that I immediately thought of the Loeuvre in Paris. Anyway, they discovered him up there hiding in the tall grass by one of the canals and had to go find him with a humvee and shoot him with a .50 cal. Imagine walking to the shower trailer one night and finding a tiger eyeing you up for dinner.

This was going to be a short post. When I took that picture I was tired and hungry. Now I'm even more tired. This post rambled a little bit, but like I said up top pay attention next week. It's about to get very interesting.

OUT

Busy week

2007-09-03T11:51:00.001-07:00

Hey Folks,

I was out of the loop all last week because we were at a pretty high OPTEMPO here. Lots of stuff to do to prepare for upgrading and expanding facilities. It is amazing how fast the day can go by. I feel guilty telling my wife how fast time flies here because she's at home with our five-year-old, in a big house, managing the home and trying to squeeze a few minutes out of each day for herself. Sometimes she'll get a few moments, most times she doesn't. It's definitely not easy. Here's a picture of my little buddy:

They went to the beach this year, and he caught himself a ghost crab. He wanted to play with it (these things have pinchers, by the way) and convinced Mom to let him bring it back to the cottage with him. Crabs need to be at the ocean or they die. This one has definitely expired, but hey--he's still having a rockin' time with it! Good for him. I get to spend ten months at the beach. What sucks is that they won't let me go to the ocean.

So I go back to my CHU after chow and turn the TV on while I'm changing. Armed Forces Network (AFN) has about 9 channels, and they do a pretty good job of mixing up the programming. There is a re-run of an episode of "60 Minutes" with one of the Marines involved in the Haditha killings being interviewed. Apparently he is the only one still charged with murder. The guy doing the interview is just such a sanctimonious a**hole; I mean, these dramatic little squints and expressions and sighs for the camera...that Marine had to have the patience of Job not to roundhouse kick this jackass square on the mouth. And I'm watching this interview with this sense that the guy doing the interview is judging the Marine in front of him, asking these gentle little leading questions, like, "But Bill (or whatever the sergeant's name is--I can't remember), throwing grenades into rooms of a house...how can you do that? How do you do that without getting PID (positive identification)?" Jesus...Close quarters battle (CQB) is extremely dangerous and you have less time to react than a guy has to swing at a fastball, and this is life or death, not sports. You clear a room with shock and speed, not by slogging through the house like you want to buy it.

Another thing the questioner did was sneer at the way we are trained to identify hostile acts and hostile intent. The sergeant made a pretty good attempt at explaining it, but hey--that just wasn't good enough to this guy. The Iraqis know what to do, and that's what the Marine said--they know the deal. If something goes boom, and they get accosted by Americans, stop, show your hands, get on the ground, and allow yourself to be searched. They KNOW the deal. These guys--according to the sergeant--were stopped in a car a hundred meters from where the IED destroyed a vehicle, killing at least one initially and wounding others. He thought they were involved. At the time, radio-controlled IED's (RCIED's) were being used by insurgents in some parts of the country.

Anyway, they were ordered out of the car, and--according to the sergeant--attempted to flee. Yes, folks, that can constitute hostile intent. How?? This is how--they know to get down and be searched. If they flee they could be fleeing in order to fight another day. They are refusing to follow orders in this case, and therefore displaying hostile intent--the intent to not comply. I wasn't there, but this guy claims they ran. No one there at the time (that I am aware of) says anything different. You're going to indict the guy because everyone on the scene agrees? Wonderful...

These guys were ambushed and assaulted three houses they thought they received small arms fire from. In my opinion, from what I know of the incident, yeah, they overreacted. The smugness of this guy asking the questions was just vomit-worthy. Give the Marine some credit--he has a pair of solid brass swingers for even agreeing to do the interview, and he kept his cool throughout. But it just left a bad taste in my mouth, so I was motivated to go workout. Not like I was when "Cheryl" was running her mouth at me, but close. Anyway, other stuff is going on here...

Bush made a spot visit to Iraq today. His remarks were, um...I don't know, a little underwhelming, maybe. What the heck can he say at this point? He's desperate to back up his "Mission Accomplished" moment. This is so far gone from what they thought they accomplished; it's nothing like they thought it would ever be. It will never be what they thought they had created. It never was. It never could be. They have prepped the battlefield for the report next week to be delivered by GEN Petraeus. Oddly, he's delivering it with the US Ambassador here, but the White House is actually writing it. Am I the only one who thinks that is totally bizarre? With all the brainpower over here, they don't trust the man in charge to write the report, so the political hacks and cronies will write it for him; it gets presented as "his" report, and he takes the HEAT rounds for it from both sides. Yeah, a real profile in courage from the resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Just remember the old adage--believe half of what you see and none of what you hear.

So here are some more photos of T-walls I took in the last few days, and baby you can believe them:

This one was simple but really well done.

Here's a good one:

I love it because the Personnel Services Branch (PSB) unit here is all gung-ho and stuff. Definitely a lot of esprit de corps.

Here's another good one. I love the eagle holding the mailbag:

Even the postal company is keeping it real with the T-wall art. Here are a couple more:

Here's one from the MP unit that just rolled out of here:

These guys are down on Camp Striker:

Okay, time for bed for me. I'm beat. I'll be back at it soon. Next time I'll post pictures of one of the compounds here that used to be pretty nice before the war. See you later.

Don't believe the hype

2007-08-26T00:57:00.000-07:00

Got this little gem from the New York Times edition of August 25th, 2007. It seems that the papers are finally starting to report on what motivates Iraqis to blow up American and Coalition forces. The gist of the story is that the surge is causing more Iraqis to be detained in Coalition-run prisons. The military has known this for some time now; I am just amazed that the so-called "Liberal News Media" hasn't call the Derelict in Chief on this:

"Nearly 85 percent of the detainees in custody are Sunni Arabs, the minority faction in Iraq that ruled the country under the government of Saddam Hussein; the other detainees are Shiites, the officers say...

"...[M]ilitary officers said that of the Sunni detainees, about 1,800 claim allegiance to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown extremist group that American intelligence agencies have concluded is foreign-led. About 6,000 more identify themselves as takfiris, or Muslims who believe some other Muslims are not true believers. Such believers view Shiite Muslims as heretics.

"Those statistics would seem to indicate that the main inspiration of the hard-core Sunni insurgency is no longer a desire to restore the old order — a movement that drew from former Baath Party members and security officials who had served under Mr. Hussein — and has become religious and ideological.

"But the officers say an equally large number of Iraqi detainees say money is a significant reason they planted roadside bombs or shot at Iraqi and American-led forces.

“'Interestingly, we’ve found that the vast majority are not inspired by jihad or hate for the coalition or Iraqi government — the vast majority are inspired by money,' said Capt. John Fleming of the Navy, a spokesman for the multinational forces’ detainee operations. The men are paid by insurgent leaders. 'The primary motivator is economic — they’re angry men because they don’t have jobs,' he said. 'The detainee population is overwhelmingly illiterate and unemployed. Extremists have been very successful at spreading their ideology to economically strapped Iraqis with little to no formal education.'

"But the detention system itself often serves as a breeding ground for the insurgency and a training opportunity for those who, after they are released, may attack Iraqi or American-led forces, military officers say.

"According to statistics supplied by the headquarters of Task Force 134, the American military unit in charge of detention operations in Iraq, there are about 280 detainees from countries other than Iraq. Of those, 55 are identified as Egyptian, 53 as Syrian, 37 as Saudi, 28 as Jordanian and 24 as Sudanese."

Where do I start? They Iraqi men are angry because they have no jobs? They are illiterate and unemployed? And we have KBR here, bringing in Pakistanis and Indians and others from all over the Third World, doing manual labor (for next to nothing) while the Iraqis have no jobs--in their own country? Wouldn't that make you a little bit angry? The unemployment rate in this country is over 40% but we import people to work at the bases. Maybe the locals would be more trustworthy and we wouldn't need to bring folks from other countries if they sensed that we were here to help them and not exploit them!

And even better--the American people are told that, "we're fighting them over here so we don't fight them at home." Of the 24,000 detainees in this country who are being held for attacking Coalition forces, Task Force 134 can positively identify exactly 280 that are non-Iraqi. Wonderful. We're going to this expense to fight the equivalent of two rifle companies over here. And--oh, by the way--we don't have any idea how many people are being held by the Iraqi government. "According to John Sifton, a researcher with Human Rights Watch...[T]he American military in Iraq will not provide numbers for detainees held by the government of Iraq.

“'The allegations of abuse are far worse for Iraqi facilities than for those detainees in U.S. custody,' he said. 'It is difficult to know the Iraqi detainee population. There are both official and unofficial Iraqi detention systems.'”

That is just peachy. This lying has got to stop, folks. Write your reps in Washington; I have. They can ignore us when we do it individually; they can't if we do it collectively. See ya 'round...

Almost forgot...

2007-08-25T04:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, as a sign of progress in Iraq, insurgents blew up a pipeline leading to an oil refinery. This picture was taken in the afternoon after it had been burning for a few hours. I don't know how far away it was, but that is a very big plume of smoke...

This is the same plume of smoke as seen from a different location on the installation about 2 1/2 hours later:

I heard last night at chow that it was a pipeline, but I wanted to wait until I saw that in the paper before I posted the pictures. This morning the sky was really obscured. I think it was probably the residual smoke.

This is the pond right next to where I took the last picture. That's a mosque to the right and an incomplete watch tower to the left. The watch tower was started by Saddam's people. I liked how still the water was...sometimes the geese swim in it.

Okay---last but not least today, here are some Marine aviators getting ready for a mission...

Reality Check

2007-08-25T02:43:00.000-07:00

Hey folks! It's been a few days since I posted...I hope the last post made you laugh a little. That's what it's all about--making it through this deployment with my ass and my sense of humor still intact. I'll keep everyone posted on any interesting developments or reactions. Maybe "Cheryl" will even grow some breasts, who knows. She definitely won't grow any testicles. But seriously, chickenhawks are scum. Bigtime scum.

So the White House is already starting to minimize expectations about the report on the surge here in Iraq. That can NOT be a good sign. I have felt for a long time that people like Casey and Petraeus were being set up as fall guys. The guys in uniform do what the guys in suits tell them to do. When the guy in the suit says, "The commanders on the ground determine the requirements, and they tell me they don't need more troops," what does that say to the commander who may have said that once but doesn't feel that way anymore? It tells him he needs to sit down and be quiet.

The president once said when Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) head L. Paul Bremer was here that no one was requesting more troops. When Bremer leaves, he finally says that he requested 40,000 more troops during late 2003 or early 2004 and was told, "no." Don't hold me to the dates, I think that was the time frame; he left in June 2004 anyway, so it was no later than June 2004. But Bremer was a tool, anyway. God, the catastrophic mistakes that guy made by disbanding the Army and forced de-Ba'athification of the civil service. Those two blunders will be seen by historians as where this violent, intractable fiasco traces its roots to. Had things gone differently then I might not have ever been here to put this blog together. But here I am, and Bremer, four years after he did that, is back in the States living safely. And I bet it never weighs on his conscience, either.

Which brings me to an enabler for this disaster to continue. The president spoke at a convention for the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) last week. War is good for business for these veterans groups, and I'll tell you what, business for them has been pretty good. It seems that anytime Bush wants to take a break from exploiting the uniformed military, the veterans groups call a conference so he can be the keynote speaker. Last week it was the VFW, next week it's the American Legion. I am more familiar with the Legion than the VFW because my Dad is involved in the Legion. Frankly, I think both of those groups are a bunch of bloodsuckers. What on earth are they trying to do? Do they think having some love-fest with a walking, talking, disaster of a man will draw in new members? Has direct mail gotten so expensive that they need to angle for free news coverage to drum up business? How pathetic; how sadly, horribly pathetic. And these are organizations that are supposed to be devoted to the continued welfare of the veteran!!! Jesus, with friends like that who needs enemies?

Another thing that angers me is the coverage. The so-called Liberal News Media just regurgitates his garbage with vacuous reporting. The story is, "Here's the president, and here's what he said, back to you, Katie," when they ought to be taking some time to digest what the statements being made really mean. I saw the Full Of eXcrement (FOX) News Channel report that he was comparing Vietnam to Iraq, and I said out loud, "Isn't it a little bit late for that?" Hey, I thought it was humorous, but some of the guys around me didn't. No one said anything. So Fox reports that, and the average Fox viewer agrees with the president. Most of the rest of the country doesn't buy the BS. But where is the "Liberal News Media?" If they are going to be called Liberal, they damn well ought to start acting Liberal, but they don't and they won't. They ought to have a headline story about how unwilling the president was to serve in Vietnam, and juxtapose that lack of service over his repeated admonitions that "there is tough work ahead." Hey, major combat operations were supposed to be over in May 2003. Why are there 20+ brigades of soldiers here now? I guess he was lying then, because I read the papers everyday and I never remember him saying that major combat operations had flared back up.

Really--what's up with that? Why isn't that moment of theater staged at taxpayer expense constantly being replayed on the news as a demonstration of how discredited this administration is? I see the tape of Bill Clinton saying he didn't have sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky more often than I see the Mission Accomplished moment. And Bill Clinton's libido isn't responsible for 3,700+ dead soldiers and hundreds of thousands of dead civilians. The first President Bush must be thoroughly ashamed of his son, considering how refused to drive on all the way to Baghdad in '91. What do they talk about at the cookout on the 4th of July? They sure can't talk current events.

The point I was originally trying to make, that these older veterans groups act as a stage for the exploitation of veterans, is important. Organizations represent people. It is assumed that an organization speaks for their membership. The president doesn't make speeches like the one he made last week on the steps of Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He makes them where his handlers and puppeteers can manage the images and create their own reality. Spending time with the wounded and the families of the dead forces him to confront the truth that the rest of us see. No one represents the families of the fallen, and their grief is so private that no one should try. I hope that when folks see that the VFW or the Legion are buying into the BS, they recognize that the soldiers in the fight know what's going on. I have no interest in joining them, and if they ever make the mistake of calling my home or knocking on my door to get me to join, I will blast them so hard they'll wish they had never even seen my name. Anyway, onto more interesting things...

...like more T-wall art. I took these pictures today. Like I said, there are some very talented and creative people here on this installation. Take a look at these:

How would you like to have to drive this piece of equipment? It might get a little bit claustrophobic...

I love the sense of humor some people have. Look closely at the blade on the Stryker vehicle to the left...

Back to some T-walls...

The one kid died the day after Christmas...

And another one...

I'll post some more next time. See y'all in a little while.

More of the same...

2007-08-23T11:43:00.000-07:00

Hello from Baghdad, where today it was 114 degrees, and man did it feel like it. Whew. I was out doing my thing and decided to take some more pictures. By the time I got back to the office it was after 1:00 pm and I was just totally smoked. My PT suffered tonight as a result. It was hard to get motivated and I reached muscle failure pretty early.

My PT has been a good news/ bad news story. I am building muscle, but I'm not burning fat quickly enough. I weighed myself tonight and I'm 185 lbs. My goal at the start of this deployment was to get down to 169. I'm definitely going in the wrong direction, but that's not hard to do here. The amount of food they serve here is just out of control. You have to tell them to slow down on what they dump on your plate or before you know it you're working a 4,000-calorie diet each day. I took a "before" picture a couple of weeks ago; if I hit my target I'll post them side by side so people can see the difference. If I don't hit my target weight, all photos will get quietly and permanently deleted...

So one of my last posts dealt with chickenhawks. They are a subspecies of that most disgusting of contemporary animals, the Cowardlius Republicanus. Well. I have an acquaintance, a guy I'll call "Cheryl," who is the poster child for this kind of animal.

Wait--I know what you're thinking..."Pat, you said that this is a dude but he's got a chick's name. What's going on?"

Very observant. This person was born male, but only grew to be half a man, hence the chick's name. It's not "his" real name anyway. She knows who she is. Anyway, I'm digressing...back to the story.

So I'm here, in a war zone, where soldiers aren't shooting at paper targets so they can feel good about themselves, they're shooting at bad guys (who are shooting back, by the way) in order to save their ass. This chick thinks it's funny to quote Democrats who were equally gutless and didn't fight to keep the president from invading this country four years ago. You know what I mean--the ones who said junk like, "Saddam Hussein, bad bad man, needs to be removed from power, etc.," mostly during the year prior to the invasion. Oddly, she never mentions the times Bush and Cheney expound at length about why invading Iraq and destroying the Hussein government is such a bad idea. She gets selective amnesia about how Bush and his cohorts, seven short years ago, would sneer at the idea of nation-building (exactly what we're doing right here, right now). But hey, that's to be expected. Nation-building sucks; nation-building when Kellog, Brown, and Root (KBR) is performing the work under non-competitive contracts--buddy, that's called a retirement account when you leave office.

Damn it, I'm digressing again. Anyway, "Cheryl" is sending these silly f***ing e-mails, just peppering my inbox with 'em. I'm like, screw it, she'll get bored and start playing with dolls--sorry, poseable action figures--again anytime now. I go work out, go hit the showers, and go to bed. That was Tuesday night. So I'm sitting here in my office yesterday afternoon, about to go to chow, and she starts sending them AGAIN! I'm like, Jesus Christ, is this chick stalking me? Like, I'm done with this whole business, I actually have a war going on here that sort of has my attention, and this woman is still going at it. She wouldn't serve when it was her chance--in Vietnam, where lots of women served--but she'll put on the cheerleader's outfit, wave the pom-poms, and enthusiastically send other people's kids off to war. She just wouldn't let it go.

Well, yesterday was the wrong day for that kind of junk; we had incoming here that was a little unnerving, and 14 soldiers died in a helicopter crash in the hills up north. 14 soldiers who had hopes and dreams to go back to after the Army. 14 people who had families that were worried every minute they were here, and friends, and all of them now are beside themselves with grief that this chick "Cheryl" will never, ever know. And she just keeps sending this garbage. Not only is it immature for a woman approaching retirement age to do something like that, it's just downright disrespectful. So I told her to show some respect for the dead and knock it off. Tell me--what do you think was the response? Was it (a) silence, or was it (b) more verbal diarrhea? If you selected (b) give yourself a chuck on the shoulder and a 20 oz. bottle of red Gatorade from the Dining Facility (the DFAC, pronounced "dee-fack").

I was just enraged. It definitely motivated me for my workout after dinner (think Robert De Niro in "Cape Fear"). You know, it must really suck to be like "Cheryl." I mean, having to go through life, masquerading as the tough girl when the seminal event of her generation is a war; you know, the time when someone who wants to play the tough girl can actually play the tough girl, and she passes it up. Okay, fine--so she chose to Park in College for a few years until things cooled off; whatever, lots of other people did the same thing. They just didn't come out of the experience with such an abundance of self-loathing that they decided the only way to feel better about avoiding the war was to cheer for other wars to start so that they could act tough with their friends. Again, it must suck to carry that kind of shame. But I wouldn't know--my country called and I answered. The person calling the shots this time happens to be a dangerously ignorant, semi-retarded chickenhawk like "Cheryl," but I think that's why she loves the guy so much. They were cut from the same bolt of cloth.

It's the same kind of cloth used for diapers.

But am I bitter? Nah...why be bitter?

I'll be blogging at you later, so stay tuned...lots of interesting things go on here every day, and I'll be back to tell you about 'em. Thanks for reading.

Question

2007-08-22T01:52:00.000-07:00

Before I forget--When Chuck Norris gets drunk, he doesn't throw up, he throws down!

Okay then...

Is there anything worse in this world than someone who would expect others to do what they themselves are unwilling to do?

Is there anything in this world worthy of less respect than a coward?

In my opinion, no. Cowardice comes in many forms. I chose, 18 years ago this past March, to enlist in the Maryland Army National Guard as a Private. It was 1989. The Soviet Union was still a country. They had been forced to leave Afghanistan my mid-1988, and it seemed that they were weakened but by no means as weak as they would become. There was no hot war involving the US at that time, but the Cold War was still very much alive and well.

I chose to join the Guard primarily for money to use for college. As an infantryman, I was trained to fight the nation's wars, not study. I knew that at some point I could be called upon to fight, but let's face it, in 1989 the Guard was seen as a strategic reserve force, not the operational reserve it is today. While possible, the likelihood of mobilization for war then seemed pretty remote.

Within two years of my enlistment, we invaded Panama, Kuwait, and southern Iraq. The Soviet Union, for all intents and purposes, imploded and ceased being a conventional military threat to Western Europe. Hearing that term these days, "Western Europe," brings back memories of when Europe actually was divided between East and West. If you didn't live at that time, it's a hard concept to really relate the full flavor of what it was like. Bottom line, the world changed dramatically and a lot of amazing and important things happened in a very, very short period of time.

But I stayed in. I was offered a shot at Officer Candidate School which I took, and became a commissioned officer in the Maryland Guard in 1994. Still, even with the increase of OPTEMPO for the active component, the Guard was seen as a strategic reserve--break glass and use in case of war; otherwise leave it on the shelf. But we still trained for war. When March 1995 rolled around, had I remained enlisted, I could have ETS'ed (allowed my enlistment to expire and get out) but I didn't. I didn't because I enjoyed being in the Guard and I felt that it was important to be ready to defend our country. It would have been really easy to leave; hell, nothing really was going on that was incredibly violent with regard to the deployment of ground forces. We had peacekeeping missions all over the world, notably in Bosnia, but these weren't "hot" wars. Bosnia had the ability to flare up and get violent, but it never did to any appreciable degree after the Dayton Accords of 1995.

So here comes September 11. Within the first few months after that event, in the Guard you had a pretty clear choice: either stay in and risk getting mobilized and deployed somewhere, or finish your service and move on. Some of my more conservative friends chose the latter course. Whatever. I mean, there just aren't a whole lot of flaming liberals like myself in the military anyway, which is frankly disappointing, but that's another discussion for another day. But with the guys I hung with in the Guard, I was pretty surprised how many thought invading Iraq was the right thing to do. These were educated, company-grade officers.

When my unit was mobilized to go to Andrews AFB in January 2003 to augment the Air Force Security Forces unit there, the men got separated from the boys to a degree. Those who were unable to deploy because of physical problems (but the Guard had carried, anyway) couldn't go with us. Some were more or less put out, or allowed to ETS and not brought back. Some of the officers I knew who were cheerleaders for the administration suddenly realized that they might actually have to back up all the bluster and B.S. I was really surprised when a close friend of mine, who was a supporter of invading Iraq, got excused from the deployment and subsequently resigned his commission. I was pretty stunned. He was a good guy, but this is what he turned out to be when it counted:

I think what he told me was, and I am paraphrasing, that if he got mobilized (on that deployment) he would have to leave law school in the middle of the year, it would set him back with getting internships, he wouldn't be able to pay off his loans because he wouldn't be able to get the job he wanted, etc. Again, for a supporter of the war in the first place I was pretty surprised to hear him put it like that. I was like, damn, he's not even trying to rationalize it, he's just telling it flat out.

Well, he wasn't the only person I knew like that in the Guard. Their numbers started to thin as each new deployment came up. Until December 2004 they were pretty much CONUS, or Continental United States, deployments. in December 2004 we mobilized a rifle company to come to Iraq. Again, another round of should I stay/should I go with some people. Not with me. I still wanted to serve my country, even if it meant deploying in support of a complete fiasco like this one.

So now I'm getting to my main points--what kind of person asks sacrifice of others when he/she is unwilling to make that same sacrifice? And is there anything worse than being a total coward? I can now answer both questions. The kind of person who expects others to be willing to die for his country when, as a young, able-bodied student he stayed in college and declined to serve is a low form of life, indeed. There are many names for people like this--wuss, chicken hawk, punk...choose your favorite. We all know people like this; sometimes we realize it, sometimes we don't. Sometimes we assume that the guy standing next to us with a beer in his hand, talking a good game and dizzy with testosterone, has served in the military. maybe it's his love of guns; maybe it's his interest in military history. Heck, maybe it's because when he talks military stuff to you and he says, "A friend of mine who was in the Special Forces in Vietnam told me..." you want to believe that the person is a patriot; you want to believe he's a warrior.

Well folks, someone I know talks a very, very good game. But that's all he's got--all talk, no game. When his country needed him, this is what he turned out to be:

And that's quite a shame. It's a shame that chicken hawks survived the Vietnam War and 58,000+ patriots were sent to their deaths. In my opinion that is what's happening here in Iraq. The guys from the last war (see above) are feeding these guys into the meat grinder:

The punks from the Vietnam generation are trying to redeem themselves with the blood of the lions, the warriors, of this nation's youth. How does it feel to be half a man? How pitiful is someone so filled with self-loathing that they strain to bask in the reflected glory of those of us who do risk our lives, who will go to war when told to do so, who live the Army Values? What does one really feel, when looking in the mirror, when they realize that this nation needed them and they were too selfish or cowardly or weak to answer the call? If they use that experience to become more judicious in their call for military action (or renounce military action totally), I say they have earned a measure of my respect. If they become old, selfish, embittered, and lonely souls, devoid of self-respect and the respect of others, I say they got what they deserve. I'll drink a beer and smoke a cigar with a pacifist any day of the week because their philosophy is consistent. I turn my back and feel contempt for the ones who act as cheerleaders for this administration who never served in uniform themselves. Their children will be the ones putting the pieces back together. And some of their children are going to die.

OUT

2007-08-21T10:08:00.001-07:00

More cool pictures

2007-08-21T09:53:00.000-07:00

Here are a few pictures I took this afternoon--more T-wall Art. Cool stuff. These were around a medical unit here on Camp Victory.

Got some real talented people that come through here.

I have lots of other pictures depicting the daily life of units here. Over the course of the next 8 months I'll post the interesting ones.

OUT

Mixed bag

2007-08-21T01:39:00.000-07:00

Hey guys! Not much going on here that doesn't happen on a daily basis. Spent this weekend working. Spent last week working. I'll definitely spend this week working. Like I said, Same thing going on.

So what I do in my own time is what keeps my mind sharp and keeps me loose. A few weeks ago we had some comedians do a show up on Camp Liberty. They were pretty good, the typical "blue" comedy you'd expect, but they were pretty funny. One of the jokes one dude dropped was that Kuwait isn't a country it's a button on a microwave. That's a fact. The birds down there hunker down in the shade during the day and their mouths are wide open, like they're gasping for air. It was a funny observation if you've been there and experienced it. When I went to get my hair cut it was so hot outside that they would hit you with a blow dryer that blew cool air in order to dry the sweat on your head. THAT is hot!

So when we were in Kuwait, like I said, it is just like being inside an oven, with a fan blowing hot air on you. There is no indoor plumbing in the transient tent areas--every drop of water used in the camp gets trucked in. So guess what that means--porta johns. Yep, plastic chemical toilets left out in the sun to simmer. They had these small hard-stand kind of toilets, but they stunk even worse than the porta johns. You go in there and you better don your M40 protective mask, and they didn't have lights. So anyway, you're in these porta johns just trying to get it done to minimize your time inside, and people would find the time to write some pretty entertaining graffiti. At Camp Buehring there is great appreciation for Chuck Norris. Not just his body of work on film or on television, but for the principles for which he stands: truth, justice, and The American Way. There is a website everyone who reads this blog should visit: http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com

Some of my favorite entries:

--Chuck Norris sleeps with a pillow under his gun;

--Chuck Norris is suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs;

--There is no chin behind Chuck Norris' beard. There is only another fist;

--CNN was originally created as the "Chuck Norris Network" to update Americans with on-the-spot ass-kicking in real time;

--Chuck Norris' calendar runs from 2 April to 31 March. No one fools Chuck Norris;

--Chuck Norris can lead a horse to water AND make it drink;

--Chuck Norris uses pepper spray to spice up his steaks;

--Chuck Norris is the only human being to display the Heisenberg uncertainty principle -- you can never know both exactly where and how quickly he will roundhouse-kick you in the face;

--Chuck Norris can hit you so hard that he can actually alter your DNA. Decades from now your descendants will occasionally clutch their heads and yell "What The Hell was That?"

Okay, last one...

--Chuck Norris once ate a whole cake before his friends could tell him there was a stripper in it.

NOPE!!! One more...

--How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could Chuck Norris? ...All of it.

When you're sitting in a plastic box that's so hot it could melt just trying to get 'er done and go back inside the tent, this stuff makes you laugh out loud. Check out the website.

The last thing I wanted to do today was show some pictures of what I call "T-wall art." T-walls are the concrete slabs that stand up and protect buildings, tents, and containerized housing units (CHU's) from shrapnel and small arms fire. It's not uncommon to see them decorated by units that come through here with unit crests and so on. Camp Buehring was fat with the painted ones. I've found some pretty good ones here that people ought to see, so here are a few:

Time for me to do other things. thanks for coming by.

One more thing...

2007-08-19T03:49:00.001-07:00

I was just about to sign off of my computer when I saw this entry on the Neiman Watchdog, from the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Amazing, must read stuff:

http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=background.view&backgroundid=00199

Read it. I couldn't agree with the guy more.

And on a completely different subject, here's another interesting piece:

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=roves_blind_spot

Cut and paste them into your browser. Have a great read, everyone.

Just Living The Dream

2007-08-19T02:24:00.000-07:00

Yeah.

That's right. Just living the dream here in Baghdad, Iraq.

This last week was really busy, hence the lack of posts. I had a lot of things to do. A lot happened last week; most notably the murder of about 500 Yezeri's up in the Tall Afar area in Northern Iraq. That is just nuts. When we were at Ft. Dix going through pre-deployment training we learned a little bit about them. Apparently, the Muslims don't like them at all because they consider them to be Satan worshippers. This goes back many hundreds of years. If I'm not mistaken, the Muslims wanted to impose Islam on these people, who didn't want it. They decided that they would worship everything that was the opposite way of Islam; if Allah was good in Islam and the devil was bad, to the Yezeris Allah was bad and the Devil was good. Or something like that. The upshot is that, though they are a very small minority and mostly keep to themselves, the Muslims really hate 'em. So I guess they blow 'em up. That was so messed up.

Going back to Ft. Dix for a minute...what a waste that training was for the most part. They trained us on Warrior Core Tasks and Warrior Core Drills and that was it. Nothing, save for a 4-day command post exercise at the end, related to what we are doing here and now in Iraq. They call themselves the premier mobilization and training post for reservists in the US. If they are, Good God. We have a soldier in the unit who used to work in their Mobilization Branch who would sit in on the briefings where the trainers would brief about how many soldiers they were training, and on what, etc. The briefings made it seem like all kinds of great stuff was going on. When he actually went through the training he was pretty stunned. He was like, "man, if this is the way it really is, the guys in charge are not getting the real deal on what's going on."

I did have one of our Public Affairs dudes, SSG Jon Soucy, capture me on film in one of the little mock Iraqi villages in the training areas. I looked like such a warrior (LOL!)

Anyway, I don't think they knew what the hell to do with us; we weren't the typical unit with the typical mission they were prepared to train, so there really was no program to train us for our jobs. We're fortunate that we have many, many people on this mission that are qualified to be doing what they are assigned to do. The learning curve for this place has been a little higher than we're comfortable with, but you suck it up and drive on through it. We have a lot of skilled people on this deployment, and it could be a lot worse. I tell my friends and family at home that the morale here is pretty high from what I can tell. That doesn't mean we're a bunch of "stay the course" block heads, though there are some of them. I think most people have a realistic sense of what the real deal is. I've had conversations with some people that are definitely conservatives who are pretty frustrated with the way this whole thing has been done. In fact, actually may have confirmed their worst fears about the way this war is being played.

First of all, it is ALL about the money, people. The contractors are here for one thing--the greenbacks. It's a little sick, really. The low-level folks, the worker bees, they work hard and do their jobs. The American ones (or maybe I should say, the native English-speakers) pretty much are here for the money, in my opinion. Why the hell else would you come here if you're not obligated to??? The others, the Asians, from India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, etc., those guys are pretty much treated like indentured servants. They get paid little, they company they work for holds their passports, and they are almost completely unable to switch jobs if they get here and the job sucks, or they can make a little money somewhere else, etc. If they want to go work for another place here on post, they can get sent home.

As an example, the guys who work in the DFACs here (Dining Facilities) are usually Indian or Pakistani. The ones that I know of make about $700.00 a MONTH. I know this because a service member who is a friend of mine is a naturalized American citizen from India and he's chatted with a few of them, and they told him. KBR, the subsidiary of Halliburton responsible for food service here, gets a lot of money to serve soldiers here. Yes, it is expensive to have six different flavors of ice cream at a given time in the DFAC. Yes, it is expensive to have 12 different kinds of cake. But Jesus, these guys are raking in the cash from us, the taxpayer. Disclosure: Okay, so here I'm paying very little if any tax, but my wife at home is, and I was a taxpayer for the three years following the "Mission Accomplished" moment, in addition to the preceding 21 years. Anyway, KBR is going to these third-world countries to hire these people, who can't leave, at next-to-nothing wages, and the Government allows it.

It would be nice if the security situation was so good here that you could actually hire local nationals who weren't thoroughly embittered toward us by what's happened over the last few years here. You know, I'm no economist, but that would definitely boost the economy in this country, instead of us having to buy poorly made Iraqi products that wear out or break and need to be replaced frequently. But unfortunately the oil was the only thing the crew in charge was focused on. In the last 4 years that bunch has been totally discredited, and with good reason. I'm getting off track--the people who work here from other countries, Third-Country Nationals (TCN's) are without a doubt being exploited. If we hadn't screwed up things by the numbers in the summer of 2003, I guarantee the war would have turned out completely different. Completely. The civilians sent here by DOD and State were political hacks and cronies who who didn't know their ass from a light socket when it came to the essential elements of running a government for people of a much different culture than ours.

This is turning into a rant and I better stop. Here's a picture of the lake around Al Faw Palace I took last night...maybe it will help me relax. I'll get back at it this week. See you later...

No title for this post...

2007-08-14T10:03:00.000-07:00

Hey guys! I'm back at it. Today in Baghdad it was a balmy 114 degrees. It actually does feel cool in the morning when it's, like, 92 or something. When the humidity is down and you're in the shade, a breeze will cool you off.

I read this morning on the Internet that Karl Rove is leaving this administration. I think that it's a dangerous decision because who is going to tell Bush what to do now? Cheney? Dear God...it's about time he left. The Democrats might come out of their defensive crouch now and start showing some moral courage on some of the issues, like NSA wiretaps or executive branch oversight. Grow some cajones, people. Stop quivering in the corner--the party is right on the issues. Now it's time to get right with the party members and the rest of the voters.

On to other things...I also saw on the web today that our hometown team--the Baltimore Ravens--crushed the Philadelphia Eagles in preseason play yesterday by the score of 29-3. Nice! I haven't seen that game replayed on AFN yet, even though I've seen the new Orleans game at least once and the Denver/San Francisco game twice. What's up with that? The Ravens are a Super Bowl team this year; Denver is going to choke like they always do. They'll start off 5-1 or 6-0, end the season 9-7 or 10-6, and lose in the first round. It happens every year. Yeah, I know the Ravens choked against the Colts last year; it ain't going to happen again. Two plays in that game--two blown plays by the Ravens--cost them the game. Hold Peyton manning to 15 points and you should win the game.

The Orioles stink, as usual. Man, if the Red Sox and Yankees fans didn't buy those tickets no one would. The real sad part of it is that the team has a lot of good young players and a few decent veterans; the problem is the idiot in charge of the team--Peter Angelos. It will be a long time before I go back to one of those games. My little one likes soccer anyway. And football. But baseball? If I'm not talking about it or getting excited about it, neither is he. I wish I was home right now...

You know, the job I do here could be a whole lot worse--I could be driving a truck between here and Mosul, or doing dismount walking patrols...things could be much worse. But there just isn't a whole lot to do other than read, do some professional development, and do my job, and sleep and eat. I have to be extremely careful about eating. The expression here is, "Get fit or get fat." They pile so much on your plate that you have to tell them," too much, too much" so they'll take some off. I'm trying a 12-week program of cardio, weight training, and diet modification. Wish me luck...I'm taking photos along the way to track my progress. If they are too disgusting I won't share them. If I'm buff at the end of 12 weeks I'll post those pictures. It keeps me motivated to set goals, because when people don't set personal goals and routines during a deployment they end up getting depressed. Then it becomes a VERY long deployment.

Well, time to shower and get ready for bed. Until next time...

Routine Weekend

2007-08-13T00:25:00.000-07:00

Hey folks,

Just getting back to the blog after two days of no network access. The truck that comes to clean out the porta johns backed into the overhead fiber optic cable and ripped it down Saturday morning. We didn't come back up until about 1500 Sunday.

There's just something poetic about being in this place and having our link to the outside world brought down like that.

I spent some of the offline time on Sunday reading a fascinating trip report written by a defense analyst in Washington named Anthony Cordesman. He is a guy who is on CNN sometimes explaining military tactics and terminology and what not, and commenting on military operations. Definitely a smart guy. He spent 8 days over here at the end of last month, and his trip report is available here for downloading:

http://www.csis.org/component/option,com_csis_pubs/task,view/id,3994/type,1/

I have to admit that when I was reading it I had to get up a few times and take a break. It is a little dry, and after 18 years in the military I am used to dry reading. However, I was able to read it in about an hour or two, probably less. The most striking part of the report to me is how he completely rips the administration's conduct of the whole war. He doesn't pull punches. He makes the statement that, "[T]he US is rightly seen as having gone to war for the wrong reasons, as having consistently mismanaged the 'peace' that followed and been largely responsible for the suffering of some 27 million Iraqis" by the world community. Amen, brother Tony. I recommend that anyone who sees this blog go and download the trip report.

A few of the other gems he drops in there:

-- it is "absurd" to think that the US does not have a direct moral and ethical responsibility for the immense suffering that is touching every ordinary Iraqi;

-- he calls the new US Embassy in Baghdad "an extraordinary monument to human folly even by the demanding standards of the Middle East;"

-- there have been plans or ideas put forth that the US forces can basically transition over to fighting Al-Qaida in Iraq and sealing or protecting the borders so the Iraqi Police, Iraqi Security Forces, and the Iraqi Army can deal with the insurgent and sectarian fight; Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) has made statements to that effect. Cordesman, concludes that, "[T]he idea that the US can somehow simply stand aside and deal with Al Qaida or the Sadr militia by relying largely on air power and Special Forces is equally absurd. The US could not target, it could not cover the country, it could not secure its bases, and it would lack the force numbers to act decisively without relying on Iraqi forces. Such concepts are little more than childish in practical military terms." Yes, that one was always a head-scratcher for me;

-- Iraq's international debt is crippling its ability to rebuild, ignoring for a moment all other challenges to infrastructure reconstruction;

-- "The current F-Troop in Washington--and the F-Troop that existed in Iraq during the key initial years of the occupation--has been replaced by the A-Team." For those of you as old as I am, you may remember a TV show called "F-Troop" about a bungling Cavalry unit in a frontier outpost in the Old West. They were morons; confused obtuse morons. They understood nothing about the culture, language, and mores of the native tribes of the area. Sounds VERY familiar;

-- and finally, as a result of the A-Team being on the ground, "professionalism has replaced the vacuous ideological reliance on hope that crippled much of the initial US effort." OUCH! So the CPA was a bunch of boobs and right-wing ideologues with an agenda. Who knew?

Time to get back to work here. Read the whole paper. It's very interesting, and it crisply written and clearly lists some of the challenges here. Yes, it is titled "The Tenuous Case for Strategic Patience in Iraq," but he makes a very compelling case not for "staying the course" but for changing course and taking responsibility for the catastrophe that has occurred here. Bye for now...

Working through this

2007-08-10T02:03:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone! I know that no one has even seen this site yet, but it seemed like the thing to say.

I'm still trying to get down with this blogging stuff. It's hard for me to get to the site through the network here, and when I try to go straight to it I'm blocked by the network Spetnazis. Oh well, I'll just have to get a little more creative and figure the stuff out. A family member showed me how to do this who is much more Internet savvy than I am. Anyway...now I think I'm getting it. That brings a smile to my face.

Weather here is hot, but hey, it's actually not too bad. It was 100 degrees this morning by 0800, but it felt okay. The humidity was down. A week ago the heat was just insane, and hey--I'm not one of the superheroes who leave the camp and go on dismount patrols in this weather. Those guys are the badasses. I just have a desk job in a climate controlled environment. It has been sunny almost every day we've been here, with a few days of just intense haze from the humidity and the dust (like in the pic below) . I'm getting a great tan on my neck and ears; unfortunately the rest of my body is as white as foot powder.

I have seen on the web that there's a lot of commotion about this soldier who was blogging for The New Republic. Yeah--it's amazing how the Weekly Standard got the scoop that this guy was supposedly stretching the truth or lying altogether. I haven't been outside the walls, but I've been around long enough to know that just about anything is possible here. Running over dogs with a Bradley? Playing with body parts of skeletons? Tasteless, absolutely, but that doesn't make it false. People in horrific situations come up with coping mechanisms when they get subjected to this stuff day after day. Just ask any cop or paramedic--you make light of some pretty disgusting stuff to try and keep it away and not have to think about it.

Anyway, I hope for the kid's sake he was being truthful and that it all comes out in the wash. But again, the chickenhawks on the Right always seem to be able to smell a fishy war story without ever having served in the military themselves.

That's probably why they disbelieve and why they try so hard to debunk stuff like that. They have no earthly idea what being in a war zone is like. When they do come here, if they leave BIAP at all, they go to the IZ (International Zone, a.k.a., the Green Zone) and nowhere else. I could probably walk around Baghdad like John McCain if I had a rifle company escorting me and an attack helicopter company flying overhead. The fact remains that for all the "progress" this surge is supposed to be making the security situation for American military personnel is unchanged. And oh, by the way, the Iraqis still do without power for at least 18 hours a day. Americans would go batsh** if that happened to them. Look how societal norms broke down in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. I really feel for the Iraqi people, who have suffered almost non-stop since 1979. It's no wonder that they cling to family and tribe identities when the government has been an instrument of oppression for so long. There are two generations of Iraqis that are growing up not even knowing what a government for the people is like AT ALL.

Okay, time to get back to work here. It's now 1440 here, so it's 0640 on the East Coast, where they are undergoing a "heat wave," as I understand. Well, I hope it all cools off for you. Talk to you later. Liberally yours,

Pat

First Post

2007-08-07T05:47:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone! Welcome to my blog. This is the first time I have tried this, so be patient with me as I go along with this. I have never tried to write a blog, but I feel like I am in a position to write and record some interesting stuff.

As my friends and family already know, I am a soldier serving in the United States Army in Iraq. I have been here long enough to form some observations, and as we go along I want to share them. My intent with this blog isn't to bitch, whine, and moan my way through a 12-month deployment; rather, it's to record my experiences in an online journal that others can read, too, and see what I see. If I have opinions to share, they are entirely my own. I don't pretend to represent the institution of the Army in what I say--just look at the title of my blog. I just want to bring my experiences (and how I feel about them) to the web so anyone can get one man's take on what is going on here. I have a unique opportunity to share my perspective and that's what I'll do.

Through my observations, my humor, and my pictures I hope you find my blog to be funny, interesting, and above all--entertaining. Some lofty aspirations...I'll do my best to live up to them. Goodbye for now; I'll be writing again soon. You can count on it.