Busy week

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.