Last Post from Iraq

This will be my last post from Iraq. I travel to Kuwait next week for a short stay and then I’ll be back in the states by the end of this month. It’s September 7th and my calendar has a whole bunch of X’s on it, marking off the days. It looks like the departure date is unstoppable.

This is BG Halstead and the award I received. Sorry about the goofy look, I’m not sure what I was thinking about there. I’ve never received an award that I thought I deserved. I’ve always felt that I was just doing my job. I worked with a great group of people here, totally dedicated to the mission, life and profession and I was much honored to accept it from her. I’ll be watching her career as she rockets up the ranks. She’s been selected for her second star and going from here to head up the Ordinance Branch. She’s very well thought of, very professional and she truly cares for her soldiers.

I’ve been to Baghdad twice since coming back from Kirkuk. The last time I flew back in a beautiful sunset. I’ve been here thru 4 seasons now and it’s starting to cool down. Most of the countryside is a resilient green. The date trees and shrubs and grasses can survive in this brutal environment, even covered with dust. Temperatures are staying below 110 and once they get below 100, fall will be upon them.

I was thinking about this tour and what I’ve learned and all the people I’ve met and experiences I’ve had. I’ve been very lucky to have seen most of the country. I’ve been places that I wouldn’t mind coming back to as a tourist, but maybe in a couple of years.

I planned on writing a deeply philosophical perspective on Iraq on whether my political views had changed, but I don’t believe I can keep it impartial. I’ve met many groups of this conflict, from the coalition forces fighting the day to day battles, to the Iraqi citizens and military who really just want to raise their children in a safe environment. I’ve met truly outstanding soldiers and people from Great Britain, Australia, Italy, Poland and Korea and thank them for standing with us.

I also realize that I’m very tired. The new guys are here to replace us and they’re brimming with the enthusiasm and energy I think we showed as we came into theater last year. We’re in right seat/left seat training now and watch as they assume the duties we’ve been doing for the past year. I wish them well. They have a huge job ahead of them and I’ll be watching their progress from afar and wishing them the best. Whatever my political views are, they’ll have my support.

And, thank you, to all of you, for your support. Your cards and books, gifts, food, thoughts, well wishes and emails from friends and family alike have made this a wonderful life experience. I ask for your continued support for all our soldiers throughout the world. Please get involved however you can and send a card or box or note to someone serving. It is the highlight of the day and special gifts are remembered for a long time. Your support of our troops is felt down the line and reminds us that we belong to a great nation.

Thank you all, once again. I’m coming home.

MC, back to Balad

This was my last day and these are some of the officers of the Regiment that came over to say good-bye. They’re a good group of people and it was nice to be able to get them all together and thank them for their work and for taking care of us. I didn’t get to say good-bye to all of them, Major Saad wasn’t there and he was one of my favorites. He’s the one with heart problems; I don’t think he’ll live much past this year. He has small children; I hope they’ll be OK.

I’ve been working with the new MiTT but I’m worried about them. There are 10 of them and they’re getting totally thrown into the fire. We came in with a distinct advantage having been in country for 6+ months and at least we understood the concepts of support before we had to live them. They have to work quickly to understand where to get fuel, how to get munitions, the minutia they’ll need to survive. They’re rank heavy which means they have high level officers and NCO’s. I suppose they feel the rank is necessary to work at division level, but there’s too many chiefs in this group and not enough indians. They also sent one female, a MSG who seemed pretty sharp but could be an issue down the road.

They signed for their three HMMWV’s but had to use Majors as gunners for the turrets. That’s not a very efficient use of rank but they’re on their own out here and dependent on each other to both train and travel around. In truth, they’ve had some training for this, but it’s been from the states, actors dressed up who jump out at you from behind a tree with a sign that says, ‘insurgent, shoot me’. Its different here, more dangerous. It’s worse now than when I first got here.

They have their first long distance mission tonight with the Iraqi’s. They’ll be going about 250 Km south into some dangerous country and I hope they don’t run into trouble. We gave them a week of RIP/TOA (Relief in Place/Transfer of Authority) training and they got all the information we could cram into them, all the memory sticks and continuity books they could carry. I hope some of it sticks. I know after the convoy this week they’ll be seasoned but that’ll be a harrowing journey for them.

I caught two of the Major’s coming to blows on the third day and they had to be separated. They were coming out of a meeting and apparently didn’t agree on something. That won’t go over well if the Iraqi’s see them, so they were warned to work out the differences. They’re in close quarters and the egos will have to be checked, plus it’s hot here and they’re newly formed performing a challenging mission in a foreign country.

They scared me pretty bad on the day I left. I was their first passenger during their run outside the gate. It was a short ride, only 20 Km to the airfield to catch my plane, but I just didn’t feel safe in their hands. But, they got me there safely and I made my flight back to Balad. I would ask that if you prayed for me before that you not stop just because I return home. Don’t forget the soldiers taking our places. I won’t.

I’m back in Balad and ran outside twice already, woo hoo! I stepped outside early this morning for my run and relived the differences between the two bases. Balad has jets taking off, ambulances in the distance, helicopters coming in at all hours and convoys raising dust compared to the relative quiet of Kirkuk. Balad gets mortared almost every day; K-1 didn’t have a single attack while I was there. I mingled daily with thousands of Iraqi Soldiers and ate with them in their mess hall. In Balad, an Iraqi soldier is a novelty.

I’ve already got a new mission. I’m going to work with all the different MTR’s in the country and try to get them grouped together one last time before our unit leave. It’s totally a PR mission and if it doesn’t come together, no problem. If it happens, it’ll be fun, but looks like I’ll be traveling right up until the end. I suppose that’s better than lying in my bunk, reading a book and looking at the clock...tick

Best wishes from Iraq.

New MiTT arrives

Sunday night, Kirkuk Iraq. It hit 122 in the shade today…

I was sitting out back just now finishing up my cigar. I haven’t had one in a while and thought I’d better get one in before the world changes tomorrow. The new MiTT comes in tonight, we’ll go get them around 1am when their flight lands. There are 10 of them. They're fresh from the States having been in country for about 3 weeks training.

I spent most of this morning with Col Maud, this’ll be the last time I get him to myself and both of us just kind of talked about the changes coming up for him, me, my team and the new guys coming in.

Yesterday he brought in a box of dates for me, and a huge bottle of Laban. It was a joke between us. When I first got here we were making small talk and I found out he was a part time farmer. The only crop I knew Iraq had for sure were dates and since I had expressed an interest in them, he promised to bring some in when they were in season. He laughed pretty hard when I told him I didn’t like dates, that I was just making small talk. He promised to bring some in anyways, for me to try.

There was a group of officers in his office and we all sat around while the heathen (me) tried dates and Laban, served cold. Laban is a drink made from yogurt and milk and sometimes a dash of salt. Everyone else gobbled up dates and chugged the drink. I think it’s their version of milk and cookies but the drink was really bad, sour, and I only took a sip from the tall glass. He produced another bottle and I took my dates back to the compound where the rest of my crew tried them. Nobody liked the drink, the terps polished off the bottle; I think there’s still some dates left.

The Col’s putting a dinner together for the new crew and us for Wednesday night. These two and a half months have gone by really fast and again, I envy the teams that get to spend the whole tour here on these kinds of missions. It’s an amazing opportunity and the best thing the U.S. Military can possibly do to help this country. I’ve been preparing briefings for the new team and trying to keep the information at very high levels. There’s so much detail here that they can be overwhelmed and retain nothing, but some of the figures are pretty amazing. This unit has conducted 23 missions with 13 of them totally independent of CF. That means the IA did all the planning and execution and we supported them as needed, except convoying with them. They convoyed over 4300 miles in two months across the upper quarter of some pretty dangerous country in support of Iraqi units. That’s the key part; Iraqi’s helping Iraqi’s. That’s the ticket of how we get out of here.

I’m very proud of what they’ve done. I went over some of those numbers with Col Maud and we talked about how professional the unit was, how capable the officers were and what an asset the MTR was going to be to the Division. I told him that the new MiTT would be taking on an even greater supportive role and would look to him to lead the Regiment. He’s the one that’s going to set the pace and the new MiTT’s would only be there to smooth over speed bumps. We had a good talk and I’ll miss the work that we did here. I think we’ve earned their trust in the short time we’ve been here and I'll miss many of the officers, they're good people.

We have a tight schedule for the next week. The new MiTT’s will be inundated with briefings about operations, supply systems, payroll and personnel, sectarian violence, Iraqi Army politics, IED's, FOB life, dangerous routes and much more. The first thing I’ll do in the morning is take the new MiTT Chief over to meet Col Maud and that’s the last time I’ll be in the lead. From then on it will fall to the new team to assume their duties for the next year and start building their own trust with the IA Officers and soldiers.

My team starts heading back as early as Thursday, I’ll only stay for a couple days after that. The new MiTT chief is an LTC like me and he’ll want to set his own style with the Regiment. That’s OK with me, that’s how this system works and I’m proud to have been able to do a small part while I was here.

Best wishes from Iraq

What the

This is the ‘whatthe’ guy, as in “What the…?!?”. That’s what the CF call him and I’m sure we’re just being ugly Americans by not asking the local population what he’s famous for, but we were so eager to get down the streets and shopping that nobody took the time to ask. He makes a great picture, though.

I was in As Sulaymaniyah on the eastern border of Iraq for a mission to deliver cargo to an IA Brigade. We took our Iraqi counterparts downtown to visit this great city for a couple of hours and let Iraqi’s mix with Kurds. I would have never guessed I was in the same country.

Iraq is governed by either Iraqi Army or Iraqi police and they fight constantly amongst themselves, one being Shi’a and the other being Sunni. This province is governed by Kurds and patrolled by Peshmerga. They ‘loosely’ consider themselves Iraqi’s.

We got to meet the commanding General (a Kurd) of the unit we were delivering cargo to. We spent a good hour with him and he treated us like royalty. Of all the factions in Iraq, the Kurds have been our best friends even though the promises the U.S. made to them to overthrow Saddam went unfulfilled.

One of the interpreters on this trip (Al, also a Kurd) was 9 when this happened. He remembers leaflets dropping from U.S. planes that encouraged them to rise up against Saddam. They did and the U.S. never arrived, the Kurds were crushed. They ran for the border and Al told me about stepping on dead bodies as Saddam’s helicopters fired at them. He had some pretty graphic accounts that no 9 year old should have to remember. This was the time the world saw the pictures of dead Kurds killed by mustard gas in Halabja, Saddam's WMD. I asked him why they were still our friends and he didn’t have a good answer for me, just that Kurds were very western oriented and liked the U.S. I was glad we had him along, mainly because he speaks both Arabic and Kurd.

We crossed thru Peshmerga controlled checkpoints and the interpreters took off their body armor. There hasn’t been an attack in this area all year, mainly because Iraqi Police and Iraqi Army are not in control here. People without papers are not allowed in or shot and automobile registrations are collected and returned only when the vehicle leaves. Al had to act as a translator for both me and my Iraqi Colonel because the General spoke Kurdish, not Arabic. My Colonel doesn’t speak Kurd.

I’m enclosing some pictures of the trip; the place was remarkably unlike anything I’ve seen in Iraq. The countryside reminded me of the rolling hills of South Dakota, like the badlands with prairie grass and no trees, mountains in the distance. Stores were open and bustling and we walked safely down market streets. We had kids following us. I had people take their picture with me. I had old men come up and show me military photographs of them and shake my hand. All of the citizens were either dressed western or in traditional Kurdish tunics. I walked thru a great park with manicured grass, at the end of which was a very nice hotel. I asked the front desk clerk if he spoke English and he said, “of course, why wouldn’t I”? Room rates were $78/night which included breakfast and went up from there. It is one of those places that you know will be commercialized by the west in a couple of years, the safest place inside a war torn country. Your trip will include a nice hotel and shopping with the locals, dates and fresh vegetables in season. The airport was nearby; we rode around safely in taxi’s. Someone will charge thousands…

It was tough driving back to Kirkuk with their daily car bombs, dirty streets and abject poverty. It’s no wonder the Kurds guard their borders so ferociously, I wish they'd take over the rest of the country.

Best wishes from Iraq.
____________________________________________________

Saddam Hussein launched chemical attacks against 40 Kurdish villages and thousands of innocent civilians in 1987-88, using them as testing grounds. The worst of these attacks devastated the city of Halabja on March 16, 1988.
Iraqi soldiers in protective gear returned to Halabja to study the effectiveness of their weapons and attacks. They divided the city into grids, determining the number and location of the dead and extent of injury. Halabja helped Saddam Hussein gauge the ability of his chemical agents to kill, maim, and terrorize population centers. 5,000 civilians, many of them women, children, and the elderly, died within hours of the attack. 10,000 more were blinded, maimed, disfigured, or otherwise severely and irreversibly debilitated. Thousands died of horrific complications, debilitating diseases, and birth defects in the years after.

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/rls/18714.htm

Eela KMTB

Breakfast was a treat. It was chai tea, bread, fruit and this green gruel. I think it was some grain concoction meant to stick to your ribs to get you to lunch. I hadn’t eaten breakfast in the IA DFAC yet, I was limiting my visits to just lunch. I was told lunch was their biggest meal and the one they took the most care preparing, so I had steered clear of breakfast and dinner. It was bad; I’ll be sticking to lunch from now on.

Two of their most senior officers had cornered me the morning of our mission and wanted to talk, so we sat together for breakfast. Col Maud was still gone on leave and I cursed him, this was a big trip.

It was probably the most dangerous and difficult mission they’ve been sent on. The distance was 300+ kilometers and down south into very dangerous territory. The two officers told me they wanted coalition forces to go with them on the trip, as guntruck escorts. This would be their second independent mission without Coalition Forces (CF) but the first one going this far south. They reasoned that even Bagdad had been given back to the CF to patrol and this was just too dangerous for IA on the road by themselves.

This was a blow to me, really, we’d been training them for some time, and they knew what had to be done and how to do it and had excellent leadership to get them thru it. They had never turned down a mission before and I had faith in them. This last minute request was out of character. Both officers were highly respected and included the Kurd who the day before had called them, in effect, ineffectual as a unit. That’s not what he actually said, he called them all Shia, but that’s what it means. This was my Infantry officer and the rest of the officers hated him, but he happened to be united with this other IA Major whom I highly respected. This had to be taken seriously. We got thru breakfast and went back to the office to talk it thru.

I think their biggest fear was returning with civilian trucks. They’re being issued a whole bunch of Silverado trucks and the distant station was waiting for them to pick them up. Putting them inside convoy’s create 1) a very long convoy difficult to protect, and 2) target’s of opportunity, for bandits. They told me that convoy’s like these under the control of CF are hardly every hit (true) because we can call in so much support to protect them. When they go on their own, insurgents notice and shoot them up or bandits will cull one of them from the herd. So, we ditched the 15 extra civilian vehicles and just concentrated on filling up the trucks with cargo. As we discussed it, the mission was training and anything we brought back from the distant station makes it a successful mission. It was a difficult day, but they agreed to go on their own.

Turns out they were hit twice by IED’s on the way down. Both were within an hour of each other but to their credit, they did all the right things. They pulled into a safe haven; they left the disabled vehicle with a guard for the return trip and continued the mission. I was sitting in the Operations Room when they called in the second IED strike. They headed back to the safe haven where they’d left the first vehicle. All of this is happening in the middle of a 6 hour convoy trip in the dead of night. There are all kinds of responses you can give them, but we try to let them work thru the problem. We quietly started calling nearby coalition units to see if they’d be available to provide emergency support.

There was a time I’d thought we’d have to rally our coalition team and drive down to pick them up, but Allah be praised, they put their heads together and cannibalized some parts to make one whole HMMWV and got at least one of them back on the road. They picked up the second HMMWV on the return trip and towed it back. They did what they had to do and what an Army expects of them. They got back into those vehicles in the middle of the night in a very dangerous country and completed the mission.

They brought back two of the pickups. They arrived in camp the next morning at 1:30am. Iraqi’s returning from missions honk horns and wake everybody up; I think it’s a cultural thing. Horns honk, headlights flashing, the new pickups had cop lights on top with a piercing siren. It was a huge spectacle. Everyone came out of the barracks and you had 500 Jundee in various stages of dress jumping up and down cheering, waving, and crawling over the new equipment. It felt really good to be a part of them.

I had my super flashlight with me and took Col Maud (finally returned, bout damn time) to see the HMMWV that got hammered by the IED. I and about 200 Jundee crowded around it. It must have been loaded with ball bearings, it had taken out both front tires. There were minor injuries to the occupants; the guy in the front seat had hearing loss which we hope is temporary but it could have been much worse. Given the two IED’s and all the cargo they returned with, I’m calling it a VERY successful mission. It’s even more successful since they completed it themselves and did what they had to do. This will be a tremendous morale boost for the entire unit.

My General called just after and we had a nice conversation. I received my yearly review for the OIF tour and she had some nice things to say about me and the team here. That felt really good, but not as good as seeing that convoy come thru the gate at 1:30 in the morning with horns honking, sirens wailing and everyone safe. I’ll keep that image with me for a long time. We’re doing the right thing here, I’m convinced of that.

I’m getting close to finishing up. I’ve been in contact with the new team and they’ll be here inside of two weeks. I’ll be going back to Balad for the rest of my tour. We have lots to do before I go, more later.

Best wishes from Iraq.

Kurd control

Col Muad went home for leave. He’s killing me; I can’t believe he left his unit here like this.

I fought pretty hard to keep him. When I first arrived he wasn’t here, he was at Law school in Bagdad. He’s the Regimental Commander, a full Colonel and my counterpart in training. It’s rare for someone to get into those schools so when they offered it to him, he grabbed it. In the meantime I met the junior officers and bonded with them. Col Muad eventually returned and I got the chance to meet him. He stayed for a couple of days and then left again to go back to school with the promise on his death bed that this was the last time, promise, En’Shalla, when this year was over he’d be here full time, this was finals and he had to take them or it’d be a wasted year. College students...

A couple of days after that, the unit got a phone call from Col Muad imploring them to get LTC Murphy to intervene with the coalition forces. Bagdad was going to replace him with another Colonel from down south. The replacement was Kurd and the story went that Col Muad wanted to be closer to his family in the south (Arab) and the Kurdish Col wanted a northern post (Kurdish), hence a match made in heaven. Not so, claimed Col Muad and the officers of the MTR. The Jundee threatened to demonstrate and go AWOL, we almost had a small riot going. So I went to bat for him. Bagdad has more drama and intrigue than any soap opera, I swear.

Col Muad has been with the unit since the first Jundee arrived and is portrayed as a father figure. The rumors got worse and Col Muad came back to quell them. In the meantime, I’d been putting all this into my daily reports and they go up pretty high. When Col Muad returned, he told me that some U.S. General had talked to an Iraqi General in Bagdad and got them to keep Col Muad as the commander. LTC Murphy was a hero. I was hailed, crisis averted...but not the end.

This is the fault line of the Kurds in the north and the Arabs in the south. For some time (count 500 years) the two have never gotten along. But we look beyond that and make them work together wherever we can. Our Regiment doesn’t have any Kurds in it and when we return from a mission thru the gates, if there are no coalition forces with them they’re hassled and searched. I’ve been down there once to help get them thru and I think its only because the CF is here that open warfare hasn’t broken out. The Regiment is the only unit on post without any Kurds in it and they’ve already told me they don’t know what will happen to the unit when the coalition leaves.

Then we got the war hero. This officer showed up the other day that previously had been a Captain, was carrying orders for Major and now wore the rank of LTC. He told Col Muad that one of the Generals had promoted him and that the paperwork would be following. So he took the position of XO, 2nd in command of the Regiment and the first Kurd assigned. As we see it, since they couldn’t get rid of Col Muad thru Bagdad, they placed this guy here to work from the inside.

He’s not making friends. He brought over 3 personal body guards that go wherever he goes. The first time I met him he belted on his sidearm. I guess that’s fair, I wear mine everywhere but somehow I feel safer than he apparently does. He’s also infantry and infantry officers are not always suited to lead service and support units or transportation units, especially when his vision is to make sure the unit can march in precision and fall into formation correctly. I don’t think he gives a rip how many missions they’ve run in the past 2 months. I going to hope his vision is deeper than that, but there’s definite resentment from the other officers as this new guy makes his mark.

Now here’s my conflict. The Kurds overall are more friendly with U.S. forces that either the Sunni’s or Shia’s and the Kurds have provided more support over the years to U.S. forces than either of the other two tribes. I've also already bonded with the officers of the Regiment and really believe they’re doing a good job. Our Kurdish XO hasn’t been the friendliest to any of them and has no desire to get to know them. Col Muad leaves us to deal with this guy and the whole place is in an uproar while he's gone.

We’re trying though. I brought in all the missions the MTR conducted and he and I sat down and went over them. We talked about future missions. I think he thawed a bit when he realized how much the Regiment has already accomplished. I know he wants to make his mark like all new leaders, but its an issue. I put a phone call into Col Muad to get his ass back here before he loses his job for good. We'll work it thru, day by day.

That’s the latest from up north. Weather is July-ish today, 113 degrees. No humidity though, doesn’t feel higher than 108.

Best wishes from Iraq.

Riot control

I carve out a good ½ hour for myself at the end of the day. I go sit out back on our veranda, light up a Cuban and pop a near-beer...a little bit of heaven. We have a thermometer there and anything under 100 is comfortable to me now. Last night it was 94 and felt a bit chilly. If it’s dark and the moon is out, it’s really very pleasant. I’m not sure how that’s going to feel when we get back to Ft. McCoy in September, but looking forward to finding out.

My Arabic is getting better, but as soon as I think I’m getting a decent vocabulary, I have an interpreter tell me something different and I’m all confused again. They already know not to speak native tongues to me; no Kurdish slang, no Turkman, they’re under strict orders to just give me generic Arabic that everyone can understand. We have 4 full time Terps and another 8 that come in during the day. Each of them has their own favorite sayings.

I was practicing Arabic last night at our convoy launch and picked up a couple of stalkers. I was walking up and down the convoy (rottle) making sure everything was battened down and I asked these two young Jundee to ask me what time it was? Then, every 10 minutes or so, one of them ran up with a big grin to ask me what time it was. That got old, real quick, but at least I can tell time.

I can sit now with the Commander or his staff and drink Chai without an interpreter present and we can make small talk, albeit with a lot of arm waving. Concepts are still hard to discuss. I found out that two of the officers speak better English than they’d let on, so we’ve been practicing on each other. It’s language by immersion which is always the best way to learn. I do wish I would have been here for the entire year. It’s been a little over 5 weeks now.

We sent the convoy out for a long mission last night. Our sleep cycle is hosed for the next 3-4 days until they come back but that’s the easy part. I worry about our troops and the Regiment on the road. They only travel at night so every 2-3 hours I set my alarm and go check on them. We’re in contact thru radio’s (both Iraqi and CF) and I’ll go monitor the traffic that’s come in. Both sides have staffs there all night just in case something happens. They have GPS systems in the convoys and we can track their progress.

Last night they reported two incidents. The first one was just as they were leaving the main city and only a half hour into the movement. There was a dead animal with wires coming out of its body on the side of the road. That’s a fairly old TTP these days (tactic, technique or procedure) because the CF used to stop to drag the dead animal off the road and it’d explode. We like a clean country, you know. We don’t do that anymore. Then we started calling EOD to come and deactivate it. The enemy changed their tactics and the dead animal was used as a decoy with the explosive under it, targeting the EOD. So we don’t do that anymore, either. Now when we call EOD they either blow it up from a distance or blow it up from a distance. EOD is just too valuable. If it doesn’t blow, they’ll push it off the road with a dozer or robot or something. We can stay ahead of them using technology, but it’s a short learning cycle for them and we’re constantly adjusting our TTP’s.

The other incident was a fight in the convoy by two Jundee. The Regiment is carrying Jundee for a school and planned to drop them off at a FOB along the way. These two guys had been up all day, in the hot sun and had missed chow at the DFAC because they were doing something else. Long story short, they got into a fight in the back of this large open cargo truck and someone fired off a burst from an AK-47 to get their attention. It worked, but it got our attention too and everyone had to stop and get control of the situation. It’s a little unnerving to our guys when they do this and we try to get them to use other methods. We could limit their ammo to only critical people but that’s a last resort, we want them to be able to defend themselves if they have to. Their police routinely fire into the air to get people’s attention so this wasn’t a big deal to the Iraqi’s. We don’t like it and try to get them to use other methods.

I had Chai with Col Ali this evening and we compared notes about the day. He told me that the base commander, a 1-star general had summoned him this morning to ask him why he hadn’t been informed that the Regiment was convoying. Col Ali had to remind him that both he and LTC Murphy had been over to see him about 4 days ago, in fact he wrote it down in his book and nodded and smiled all the while. Col Ali and I laughed at that one; he wrote it all down and told no one. That was why they struggled to provide support for the Jundee’s that came in, they were supposed to feed and house them. Generals…

Col Ali and I were talking about the enthusiasm of the Regiment and how everyone’s excited to run missions, morale is high; we haven’t had massive AWOL’s or problems and the Regiment looks really, really good. He’s an outstanding commander and has years of experience in transportation. The Jundee adore him like a father and the Army is lucky to have him. He told me that when they go on missions with CF in the lead, there’s helicopter gunship support and we pave the way into FOB’s to get fuel, water, etc. If they run into problems they have us to fall back on and the danger is minimized because they know that if they get hurt, the coalition can have a medevac there in minutes. I reminded him that once the coalition leaves, the danger should go down and it would all be relative…it should be easier to drive down the roads even without all the bells and whistles that the CF’s bring. The interpreter, who I’ve really come to trust, didn’t even translate. He said it would get worse and the only reason it’s as secure as it is today (relatively) is because of the coalition presence. Then he translated and the Col agreed, they’re all worried what’s going to happen when we leave this country behind. They really are good people. They just want to make a good living and feed their family, not so different than any American I know.

So the convoy arrived safely today and I just got off the phone with them, they’re loading up cargo now. They’ll start their round-about return mission this evening. Its all bulk cargo from there on back, and they'll be free of the Jundee’s hanging out the back of the trucks waving at the citizens. Kids... More to follow; let’s hope they arrive home safely.

Best wishes from Iraq.

This picture is too good not to share.

This is payday in Iraq. As one of my special friends observed, when was the last time you were paid with a stack of money wrapped in ribbon delivered in a plastic bag? This is one of those photo’s that will get framed for my desk and remind me of the Iraqi Army. It was taken just after the pay arrived. From here, it went out to the compound and paid the soldiers of the unit. Our Army used to do it the same way, before checking and ultimately direct deposit.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars used to be sent out to American units for Pay Day. The Pay Master duties usually fell to the youngest LT. We’d dress up in our finest Army uniform and SGT’s would conduct inspections of barracks and soldiers. We’d stand in formation and then line up for payments, counted out by the Lieutenant and counted back to him to make sure it was correct. This was a very formal event and we practiced how to report to the Lieutenant. If you wanted some Italian Lira, you had to tell the Pay Master before he counted out the money so he could re-compute the amount before you got it. This was before calculators, k? That was a lot of responsibility and woe befall the LT who came up short at the end of the day. It's very similiar here on Pay Day.

Happy 4th of July! Please seek out a parade, a band shell and fireworks and attend in my stead. I will be with you next year.

Best wishes from Iraq.

My brother

I was talking to Mo (Mohammad) last night; he’s one of our full time interpreters. We had gotten up around midnight to let the convoy in our IA gate. He’s invaluable to me; he’s the best of the group. He told me last night he still keeps in contact with the previous MiTT chief we replaced. Before they left, they had asked him if he was going to stay on for the new team (us) and he told them he’d see how well the new team treated him. He’s still here, so I guess we passed. Either that or he’s pulling my leg to get a raise. We’re still feeling each other out, but he’s worth his weight in whatever he’s getting paid.

I think we found the outer radius of our convoy operations for these MTR’s. We had two vehicles break down on our 3 day mission and both were towed back by recovery vehicles. It originally had been 4 days with multiple stops, then Baghdad got ugly and we decided on more stops in between which would have made it 6 days and it just got to be too much, I cut out an entire leg. As it happened, 3 days on the road for them showed a lot of the problems they’re going to encounter as they’re turned over to IA Division control, not even counting the vehicle breakdowns.

First of all, I cannot believe how terribly they’re treated by their own Army. We have a hard time taking IA convoys onto CF bases and usually can’t do it without a lot of prior planning. Showing up at a CF base at 2 in the morning with an IA convoy toting armed gun trucks is usually frowned upon and usually denied just because of how jittery everyone is around the Iraqi’s Some places make them stack arms and go without their weapons to get into DFac’s to eat or just to drive around the base. Everyone here still remembers the DFAC that was blown up in Mosul in December 2005 by a suicide bomber in an IA uniform and no commander wants to be the nice guy that could potentially bring disaster on his watch. It’s a valid concern but it’s tough on us. We look for IA bases situated next to CF bases and then split off, letting the Iraqi’s take care of Iraqi’s while we hunker down on the CF side.

We found one and called them up to alert them. It was late, but I spoke with the MiTT and we had a workable plan on the table to let the IA support them. As the convoy returned home, though, I found out they made our IA troops sleep outside on the ground and didn’t feed them or give them water. There are a number of problems here, first of all was my workable plan shot all to hell.

The host IA unit didn’t take these soldiers under their wing and support them. For whatever reason, they don’t or won’t. Second, our IA leaders need to be more forceful in taking care of the Jundee under their care and they need to get in the mode of demanding support if it’s not provided. They consider it a loss of face to ask for help, even for their own soldiers and won’t ask. These are junior officers but officers nonetheless and they need to understand how important it is to look out for the troops under their control.

Third, our Division needs to get involved and work this at the Army level so that everyone understands what to do when one unit travels into adjoining battlespace. The Commanders at all levels need to recognize them and support them. I haven’t comprehended yet how deep this secular division is, but even in the Army and the same religion, there’s this sense of turf. I see it a lot now and I’m perplexed how to get them over it. We’re bringing it up at our meeting with the MTR and Division next week, I don’t think anyone has a good plan to get over it.

Speaking of secret warehouses… A couple of days ago I visited with the Brigade Commander here on post. There are 3 brigades in the Division and we met the 2 star in charge of this one (U.S. Brigade Commanders are usually a Colonel). After about 15 minutes of pleasantries he asked if the MTR could go north to their warehouse and bring back materiel for the Brigade. I had no idea what warehouse he was talking about.

Working with COSCOM, MNSTC-I and MoD for all these months has helped me understand where all the warehouses are and all the equipment for their military. I’ve never heard MoD or anyone talk about these so now I’m curious what they are and what’s in them? I’m thinking I’ve found the lost WMD, but I could be mistaken. I’m probably not that curious to go look, but it’s interesting to speculate nonetheless. I’ve since been told they’re staging warehouses for when the Kurds break off from Iraq, but that’s speculation, too. They’re too far north for this unit to go visit; I’ll have to wait for the breaking news from MSN.

Best wishes from Iraq.

Pawns

Here's a picture of our last convoy heading out the door for a mission. The IA have purchased a lot of U.S. HMWWV's and definately a way for our economy to recoup some of the war costs. When they buy stuff, the mantra is 'Buy American'.

Our mission is to get this unit out on the road and trained to function as a transportation and support unit. It’s a dangerous mission but very necessary and the key piece to the logistics function of the IA. This piece allows the IA to function autonomously. The Iraqi Army can patrol the streets all they want, but if they can’t get fuel or food or water or clothes or ammunition to the Jundee in the field, they’ll never be independent, they’ll always rely on the coalition for support. If the MTR’s provide independence, we can go home. That’s the plan, anyways. This unit and the others like it across the country have a lot of visibility and each of the Divisions have one Motorized Transportation Regiment (MTR).

When I got here, I started calling around looking for missions and knew this guy (who knew a guy, who knew a guy) that handled medical supplies for the IA out of Baghdad. Talking to him, we organized a trip down to their warehouse to pick up a boatload of Med supplies. I didn’t go on this first trip but they returned successfully with great fanfare. The medical personnel divided up the supplies to the Division and because the 3 brigades of the division are in 3 different locations, we organized a follow-on mission to one of the brigades co-located at division headquarters. Long story short, I went on the second mission and found out how badly my IA soldiers had been treated on the first trip, being turned away by the very IA Division they support while trying to get fuel (CF provided it across the street), but how well they were received on this second trip when they showed up with cargo. I guess it has something to do with demonstrating your worth, but I wasn’t too happy about it and talked to the MiTT’s from the Division. Note - The CF has MiTT’s all over the place, at every level of the IA and we provide parallel planning to make sure that stuff like this doesn’t happen, or shouldn’t.

The Division gave us 16 motorcycles to bring back for the 2nd Brigade (I'm expecting the first casualty shortly) and 700 uniforms for us, one for everybody in the unit and apparently a gift from the Division. I have to write about the Kurds secret warehouses up north, don’t let me forget.

The Division was ecstatic to receive the supplies and the MTR was hailed. It was a great accomplishment for them and all returned safely. I wish I could take credit for their training but the MiTT we replaced did a fantastic job. Since they’re safely back in the states, I’ll acknowledge Major McGurk and his team for their fantastic accomplishment preparing the MTR for transportation and supply operations, a job well done. Our mission now is to take them to the Regimental level and conduct movements on the road, which we’re doing.

There is a criteria for accepting missions. As a priority, we ensure that the mission tests their skills in convoy operations, transportation, supply operations and cargo handling. We also ensure that they only go out for valued cargo to transport. We’re not going to send them (or us) out on the road just to drive around; it’s too dangerous.

In the middle of all this, I get an email from one of our GO’s (General Officer-US) who wanted to talk about the MTR and the successes they’ve had. He came in Friday. You have to understand what a goat rope we go thru for a GO visit, its spin city. It shouldn’t be, but they’re a distinguished visitor based on rank and you end up preparing power point presentations to review your operations and let them know what’s going on.

He came in with 9 people (they travel in packs) and blind sided me with their plan to accelerate the transition of this unit to the IA division. The original plan was to train them to the date marked on the wall and then give them to the Division, independent of CF. He wants to move that date “left”, to accelerate the transition.

He works for the gaining IA unit and I work for the MTR under another GO and what this does is put me in the middle to admit that they’d be ready by the earlier date (they will be) and that I should suggest to my GO to move the date left. Tricky business, this working with Generals is. You do your best to protect the turf of your own GO, but the spin begins and by the time I crafted my email to my boss (part of this post), two of their emails had already gone out praising our unit and suggesting what a great idea it would be to accelerate the transition. I’ve been battling those emails all day, but it’s a loosing battle and looks like the stampede is about to begin.

My worry is that the IA Division commander is going to parcel out this unit to each of the Brigades and let them use them as they see fit. That would destroy the integrity of the unit and all the hard work they’ve accomplished. But if that’s the case, then so be it. The Iraqi Army is free to use Iraqi units as they see fit and if that accelerates the departure of the CF from this theater, then that’s what we do. I just need to get over the personal issues of the officers I’ve met and worked with and trust in them like they trust in themselves. En’shalla, whatever happens will happen.

I’m being booted from the manifest for today’s trip. It’s a trip down south to drop off IA soldiers from one base to another but my emails indicate otherwise. They want the transition plan put together so the Generals can brief each other. It’s also a better idea for me if I work with the MTR staff on what exactly this early transition does to them and start getting them prepared to work with a higher headquarters.

Otherwise, all is well. It’s a great environment and we have a good team. We picked up 3 new interpreter’s yesterday and we’re breaking them in. They’re locals who are hired by a U.S. contracting agency vetted for security, communication skills, etc. I worked with one of them yesterday. He’s a little nervous around us yet, but he should be fine.

Puppies are getting bigger, still two of them left.

Best wishes from Iraq.

Tadji Run

I worry like an old lady. Thank goodness everyone returned safely.

We had a mission that left on Saturday and came back this morning (Tuesday) pulling into our gate safely around 6 am. They were driving all night to get here because of the distance and the necessity to stay off the roads during the day. We spent this morning unloading cargo which will then be further transported by our team to other units in our area. I’m working those follow-on missions now while this crew gets some needed shut eye.

This really is a small country. While my team’s mission is to transport cargo, everyone is too busy fighting their own war to get missions for us, so a large part of my job is to set up the missions. Eventually that’ll be an Iraqi responsibility but we’re still in training mode and any mission we can get for them is less time practicing in the motor pool and more time on the road.

I spent my first 9 months here making these kinds of contacts, so I got on email and started asking. I hit a big one with the National Depot looking to send 32 pallets our way, a perfect size for my group based on the size of trucks that we have. We don’t have long haul carriers (flatbeds) because when they created this “army”, they didn’t want to give the Iraqi’s an expeditionary capability (re: Iran/Iraq war) so they kept all the warehouses and depots close to the center of the country, away from the borders and kept the trucks medium sized. Unfortunately, there are legitimate reasons for going out to the borders and we’re living with the consequences. One of them being trucks too “small” to make long distance convoys economical and efficient.

I find this mission from the Depot and I’m working with them to go pick it up. I send out an email stating when we’d be coming to get it (big mistake) and while I’m cc’ing the world another group from a closer point jump in and claim my mission. (Country too small comment) Hey! They say they can come in earlier and want the mission. So I think, fine…one team, one fight, blah, blah and I let the mission go. In the meantime another mission had popped up and I grabbed it. This one was a bit simpler with a basic out and back so we ran this one and they just got back this morning. It worked out well.

It was almost 9 full trucks of medical supplies which will go to the Brigades in our area. It was a good training mission with valid cargo to make the trip worthwhile and everyone came back safely and really pumped up. The Iraqi’s were especially pumped up; this was their first major trip, this was a very visible mission and they got great response from CF people along the route and all the players they met. Unfortunately they were treated better by the CF than they were by the IA. It’s a strange culture and there’s a lot of ‘don’t be pissing in my backyard’ mentality by the IA, so a unit like the MTR that has to traverse battlespace can sometimes run into those attitudes. But they did well and shrugged it off.

I have other missions in the works, requests have been coming in and the work is starting to pile up. Some of them are dangerous runs and for each of those I’ll go over to speak with the IA leadership and see what they think as well as ask our team. The Iraqi’s have accepted every single mission, without hesitation. It then falls to us to decide if the mission is valid training and the cargo justifies traveling these dangerous roads. If those two criteria are met, we’ll take the mission. Right now I’m booked into mid July.

I’m still worried about my favorite officer, Major S. He’s been going into the hospital at night for oxygen and chest pains. I’m sure in the states he’d get an angioplasty or cardiogram or something, but all he gets here is aspirin. I’ve learned he’s their best officer and I think the world of him. My language skills are approaching the point where his bad English and my broken Arabic can get us thru independent conversations without the interpreter. If he’s on station I’ll not hesitate to go see him. I’ll check on him when he comes in the morning and then scold him for coming to work and not staying home to rest. But while the convoy was out of the gate on mission this weekend, he was here worrying about them as much as I was.

Before the convoy left on Saturday, we had the standard briefing by the Convoy Commander, an IA lieutenant. It’s the last chance to make sure everyone has water, food and ammo, gear for the trip, strip maps in case anyone gets lost and other necessities. They brief the route and speed and what happens in the event of an accident, flat tire, ambush, etc, one last chance to get everyone focused on the mission.

When they were all done, Major S. came forward and got them all to take a knee in a semi-circle around him and talked to them about the mission, how important it was, how proud he was of all of them, how grateful the Brigades would be to get these needed supplies, just talking to them to get them in the right mindset for a mission like this, a very dangerous mission where the bad guys get more bang for their buck blowing up these unarmored vehicles. These guys go out with even less armor than us, in fact we are forbidden to travel in vehicles they happily jumped into and drove more than 500 miles on this mission. You could see they worshipped him and held him in exceptionally high regard and I didn’t need an interpreter to tell me that. He’s one of their gifted ones and I’ll be heartbroken if one of these mornings he doesn’t come in.

I’ve spent the last couple of days lining up the next months worth of missions. I’m going to get my chance to ride along on a couple of them, probably the easier milk runs to meet some of the Commanders and help with the hand-over. I’m looking forward to more than just this paperwork. I’ll get the chance to practice my Arabic and I’ve also been promised to learn all their swear words. What is it about learning another language where you don’t feel truly comfortable speaking it unless you can swear like a sailor?

Best wish to everyone!

Female MiTT's?

It’s Friday morning and the water’s been off since Tuesday. It’s not just the base; it’s upstream at the pumping station that apparently has a 1950’s era transformer that blew. They’re trying to rewire it and the prognosis last night was 48 hours. It affects a wide swath including the local city. I’ll check later to see if the CF can offer any assistance, but we’re told its just getting the parts and rewiring.

Our IA has plenty of bottled water for now, good to go for drinking and cooking. We had to get them to increase the allotment to the soldiers here, they were limited to two bottles of water per day and they had to get it out of the DFAC and only then when the DFAC was open. They sometimes need prodding even with 117 degrees yesterday. The trick is to get them to be proactive without us looking over their shoulder. They did fill up their water tankers (non-potable) and use it to hose down anyone that wanted a shower outside; I should start bringing my camera everywhere I go.

It doesn’t always feel as hot as it says. I take a quiet hour at the end of the day to sit out back as the sun goes down and smoke a cigar (sorry girls, they’re Cuban and too good to pass up) and have a near-beer. It drops into the 90’s and gets nice. I’ve really come to enjoy the mornings and evenings here, I could easily get accustomed to hot weather like this instead of battling snow.

I got in late last night, about 2:30am after taking 3 of our soldiers in for their R&R flight, 3 left and 3 came back. They fly them down to Kuwait to go home. Friday is our “lite” day. The IA take Friday’s as their holy day, our Sunday, so we adjust to them. We have a back-brief this afternoon for our movement this weekend. We’ll man the radios 24 hours from when they leave until they pull back into the gate, and since this is their first major move as a unit, the back brief this afternoon to the Regimental Cdr (and us) will be detailed to say the least, can’t afford to have any missed detail overlooked as they head out into dangerous country.

I got a couple of emails to address, the first one from my favorite big brother Pat who reminded me that even though I grew up on a farm and claim I can drive anything, he really can. And he’s right, he’s driving an 18 wheeler and transfer cases are nothing new to him. I bow to his superior knowledge, as I always have. His son Paul just completed his second tour here with the 3ACR and I think Pat is more proud of him that he is. Much love to him and all the family.

The other email came from incoming replacements for the MiTT’s here in country. That’s good and bad, in that Google hits for MiTT’s are picking up this site and I was trying to stay a bit under the military radar. His question was pretty generic about what we do here and probably a subject that I should be addressing since it wasn’t clear to him from my posts, so instead of answering him directly, I’ll post it here.

His first question was about female MiTT members. Bad idea.

They tried it once; the 1st MTR had a female LTC in charge and there was an alleged assault on her. I have no official knowledge of this, never spoke to her, but she was apparently pushed to the ground by the Regimental CDR who tried to kiss her. That’s all second hand, can neither confirm nor deny, etc, etc., but its an additional issue with groups like us who are out in remote locations away from the larger bases. It’s not just the Iraqi Army; it’s living this close in small teams with females in general.

I know it’s done with Civil Affairs team, Water purification teams and lots of areas where U.S. forces are co-ed. It’s just outright a pain in the ass on top of everything else that goes on here to have to police the young troops with hormones gone wild. I know U.S. military females are professional and can do anything males can do and many times better, but we live and work so very close and it’s just hard on everyone to have the distractions that come with working and living with both sexes. It’s already being done and we should be like the Israeli’s where this isn’t a big deal, but it’s still somebody’s daughter that you have to call if something goes wrong. Maybe I have too many daughters myself, maybe its because I was one of "those” boys and remember those days. God got his revenge on me with four daughters, that’s for sure.

I do walk and drive around the post with just an interpreter and when I go to some of the sites where their English is good I don’t even take an interpreter. I’m treated extremely well. But I’m under no illusion that it’s not dangerous here and that there hasn’t been infiltration of these units by bad guys. Bad guys don’t always mean Al Qaeda, either; it could just mean someone who’d like to shoot ranking officers, Iraqi or U.S. We’re armed and aware of our surroundings, but to mix in females with all the daily dangers and issues already here is just a bit much. I know we’ll do it eventually and they’ll be very successful, but its just one more daily issue to combat and one that I'd rather read about when I’m gone.

We’re planning a shower run into the CF base maybe later on tonight. Best wishes from Iraq

How dry I am

We have no water today. We had none this morning and its still off and it's after 1PM. Good thing I was a slug and hit the snooze alarm this morning and didn’t work out, I’d be stinking all day. It’s been on and off for the past week, not sure what’s going on with it. The other night two of the guys warmed up some water on the stove and took a sponge bath. We can brush our teeth and shave with bottled water. The toilets don’t flush and that’s going to be a problem shortly.

I went over to the base engineer’s office this morning and they said he’d gone off post to see if he could help. He’s at the source in a small town up stream that's affecting Kirkuk, surrounding areas and this base. Kirkuk got hit pretty badly yesterday with IED's, something like 7 of them. It could be related, I'm not sure. My IA officers were pretty excited we got Zarqawi so that was encouraging. We had another incident on post of an Arab harassing a Kurd, just words flying back and forth and that's not good, our guard is up.

I get the biggest kick out of talking with these officers here. I was in to see one of the younger Captains yesterday and he has a button under his desk to ring for help. I think I already wrote about this but I didn’t realize how widespread this is in their culture. I couldn’t help but poke fun at his button and he took it good naturedly.

This morning we planned Kraz training for them and I stopped into the Regimental HQ to see who would be going out with me to watch. They were all smoking and joking in the XO’s office, it would seem that Armies are the same the world over. I had an interpreter with me, so we sat for a bit and talked about upcoming missions. The XO yelled out the door to the door guard and I ask them for the word for “buzzer”.

My most valuable phrase is 'how do you say'? From there I can pantomime anything I want, so I ask, “how do you say buzzer?” The Captain was in there and he busts out laughing because he knows I’m going to poke him. It turns out none of them have a buzzer that works (batteries dead, go figure) so they all turn on him. That was fun; my Arabic is getting a bit better, there’s nothing like the old immersion technique to either learn it or look out the window.

The morning flew by, we stopped to watch them drive Kraz’s and try not to break the clutches. I saw 5 of our crew out there helping them, but they were standing off to the side and I asked them if they knew how to drive the Kraz and of course they said no, so how could they train them? I asked the leader to let my guys drive so everyone got a chance to grind some gears. Its a terrible vehicle and they’d much rather drive the U.S. vehicles; I can’t fault them on that. The majority of their vehicles are U.S. and maybe we shouldn’t be forcing them to learn these, they broke 8 clutches in the past 2 weeks. Training is certainly the cause of this, but there’s a reason the Russians gifted these to the Iraqi’s, I would have driven them off a cliff a long time ago.

Guests cancelled again, they’ll try and come tomorrow, en’shalla.

Best wishes from Iraq.

Kraz Trucks

The funny smell here in the morning is the refinery, it’s distinctive and hits you as you walk out the door. It’s like that farmer’s response to people wrinkling their noses at the smell of manure who says, ‘smells like money’. You get used to it.

Our four visitors didn’t make this morning; I received the news as I called back to my HQ. Their transport fell thru due to weather, full flights, re-missioning, change in the winds, who knows pick one. They’ll try again tomorrow. It affects all of us here because the Iraqi’s are alerted and they get prepared, we have to arrange convoy transport to get them from the US side to our side, we have to prepare billets for them to sleep, meals, etc. It’s definitely a different perspective because I use to be the one coming in to visit and now I’m the host. You start asking questions like, do they really need to visit or are they just taking a vacation. I do like it away from the flagpole and out working with a fun mission.

We’re planning a move for this weekend and I’m just praying it’ll all go well. It’s the longest trip they’ve made so far and we’re spending this week getting ready for it. We have to dig for all our missions while we’re in training mode because we have no oversight from the unit that will eventually manage us. Normally, these transportation regiments (Old Russian term, the CF kept it for continuity) are a division asset. Each division gets an MTR and controls them for movements and missions and provides them support. Since we’re training them, we have to come up with the missions. My fingers have been flying across the keyboard looking for cargo to transport and I’m getting good responses. The bad news is that some of these missions are on the outer boundary of our range. These are long trips and we have to choose our vehicles wisely which means ruling out the non-U.S. vehicles.

Vehicles are not the major problem in transport units like these, it’s the parts necessary to keep them running. We have a large mix of vehicles with the biggest group being U.S. cargo trucks. We also have Russian Kraz 5 ton’s with 8 gears which are absolutely the worse. They kept complaining about them and breaking them and then had one of our convoy’s torpedo’d because the clutch broke even before it got out the gate. That’s the big problem with them, breaking the clutch and usually because they’re in the wrong gear. I took one of my NCO’s out and him and I went down to the Motor pool to see how bad they really were to drive. I grew up on a farm and pride myself on being able to drive most anything, so I hopped in and tried my luck.

Its eight gears but a strange design. It’s an H design so one to four is similar to US, but then you have to flick the switch on the shifter and go back to gear 1 for gear 5. Five to eight is then the same as one to four. If you can follow that, it’s a pain to start off in 1 because it’s such a low gear, so they’ve been starting off in 5 and breaking the clutches popping it to get it rolling. It’s a heavy cargo truck, so starting in 5 is tearing them up, in fact the Maintenance team just called to refuse to work on them anymore. I’ll have to go down there and find out how to reconcile that.

On the road we’ll stick with the U.S. Five tons to keep everything mechanically sound. There’s plenty enough trouble on the road without worrying about break downs.

So we’re planning for that and everything else seems to be going smoothly. We’ll do the next 4-5 missions with them as a group and then we’ll back away and start letting them do this on their own.

We’re usually at the front and back of the convoy’s and smooth the way for them with coalition forces. We call in to traverse the different battle space of the different units and check in with them to ensure that all is well. It’s a huge support requirement for the U.S. forces but they go thru this every day with hundreds of convoys on the road. They’re helping us walk thru our procedures. I was told that a past mission went awry because they didn’t use CF guys and took a route they found out later had been marked “black”. They saw some action and got shot at. We’ll follow the procedures on this one. I won’t be able to travel on this one, there are limited seats and I’ll stay back with the operations team and monitor and pace. Please wish them safe travels, Ma’salama.

I’m in a cycle now and loving it. I try to spend a lot of time with the MTR and their soldiers. They must be getting used to me because they’ve stopped bringing out the tea when I show up. It used to be 4-5 times a day they’d bring in the tea, now I get a can of juice if I want it, maybe a bottle of water. I usually decline. I’m working closely with Major S who's one of the senior officers of the Regiment. He’s the most gregarious of the group and knows more English than the rest. He’s the one who checked into a hospital with chest pains the other day and they told him to go home and take it easy. He still comes to work every day, en’shalla.

We had soldiers who missed some training last week; they threw them into jail for 10 days. They had one of the officers go AWOL and he showed up today, so I have to go see what they’re going to do with him. I was told they’ll just not pay him for the month, but that doesn’t make sense. I’m more worried about where he went as opposed to why, we include the officers in very sensitive conversations and need to ensure he’s a “good guy”.

Best wishes from Iraq

Wildlife

Here's some of the wildlife I was talking about earlier. These are two of the puppies left over from a litter of five that have been hanging around our area. Mom hasn't taken them out of the compound yet even though she takes off for a couple of hours each day. Dad comes around once in a while and while they're all "tame", they're very dirty and we don't do much with them except watch the puppies nip on Mom's ear and try not to feed them.

There's lots of dogs around here and yesterday morning we woke up the compound with all the dogs barking while we ran. Many of them have the short cropped ears and almost look like dingo's or coyote's got mixed in with the domestic's.

Power loss

I should never write when I’m pissed off, but I’m finding I don’t have a lot of time during the day anymore. I’ll slug this down and maybe edit it later. Or, not.

Power went out last night. It had been going off and on all day and went off last night for good around 9 PM. I knew they were putting in some construction on the other side of the base, en’shalla, I didn’t think anything of it. I found out this morning that it was only us; the rest of the base was fine.

There are two coalition groups here. The other CF group is responsible for standing up the base defense, life support, medical clinics, etc while we concentrate on their largest tenant, the MTR. This base is Kurd dominated while our group is Arab. That’s important to understand in a minute. After I found out it was just us, I went over to our partnered forces and asked them, what the hey? Some of them are Air Force, but at least we speak the same language and are on the same team, or so I thought.

The senior guy and I jump into a truck and go to visit the Base Engineer who’s working on the issue. We discuss it for 40 minutes including diagrams and he tells us he knew about this last night at 10 but would not/could not do anything. He calls in all his inspectors and electricians and then we caravan over to one of the transformers which tripped. Short story made longer (2 hours later), they reboot the system and badda bing, power. Now there’s no way to convince my Iraqi Colonel that it wasn’t simply directed at him to piss him off. He’s already complained that the base defense unit is disrespectful to his officers and soldiers as they come in the front gate. It’s a Kurd v. Arab issues and this just doesn’t help.

An hour later, I’m called over to a meeting on exactly this topic with the base defense commander and my Colonel. They want to talk about getting along better and I think that’s good start. They’ve been brought together by this Air Force Captain who’s one of the MP’s responsible for training the base defense unit. What I find out is, besides better relations, they want our two portable guard shacks guarding our area. They want to move them to a temporary construction site but they wanted to make sure I was OK with it first. Ahh, so, enlightenment and I decide it might be a good idea to go out and look at them.

The whole gaggle of us walk over to the shacks. On the way over I pull my Iraqi Colonel aside and ask him what he thinks and he says, En’shalla which is really not a big help because he’s not going to commit either way. However, I can see training value for our jundee that have to go there every night in shifts and practice this basic of all military operations, posting a guard. The Sergeants maintain the roster and instill discipline; it’s a good military task for us.

I decide that this Air Force Captain should have his guards sit in Waz jeeps at the temporary gate and moreover, they’re ready to move on short notice in case they have to react or something. Makes sense to me, makes sense to everyone, so I make a big production out of announcing that we’d like to keep the guard shacks for its training value if that’s OK with everyone?

This prick Captain says no, actually, they’re on my books and if that’s your decision I’ll come back tonight and just take them.

Ohh, I got pissed because I didn’t know that part and I asked him why the HELL did he go thru this effort talking with the Iraqi’s, bringing them all together if he’d already made up his mind? Especially if they were his already! I got set up and told him so and unloaded on him. This was on top of the SUV that my previous crew had at their disposal but was returned to the Base conveniently the day I arrived, nothing left for me to drive around. I let that one go, but this one made me mad. I had been told to watch out for them and now this prick pulls something like this.

So here is the rest of the story, let me tie it together with the Kurds v. Arabs.

I’m finding out we’re on a fault line. Northern Iraq is under Kurdish control while the middle and southern parts are Arab. There’s a difference which I’m still learning but if you read the story a couple of days ago about the 11 students killed last week, they spared 3 of the people on the bus who could prove they were Kurdish. Similar atrocities against the Kurds happen in the south, sectarian violence is definitely on the rise across the country.

This base is the southern edge of Kurdish control and has changed hands a number of times over the years. Saddam sent Arabs north to push the Kurds out of this area in the 90’s. When the new government came to power, they encouraged the Kurds to come back south and reclaim some of the land. Both transactions were bloody. Now as the new government is being formed, the census will determine the representation of this area, so it’s important to both parties that one of them, Kurds or Arabs, control this area. Last man standing will be the representative party so there’s a lot of pushing going on which in this culture, means killing.

The unit I’m training is Arab because they were formed in the south and moved up here. The rest of the base is Kurdish. There’s no love lost between the senior officers and thousands of troops stationed here, either Arab or Kurdish. We don’t feel we’re in any direct danger, but we do have plans in case we’re caught in a cross fire. It’s important for me to make sure all the coalition forces are speaking the same language as we address the Iraqi’s and I feel this Air Force guy blind-sided me on this issue. Oh yeah, they leave next month, so they could give a shit which is the reason he pissed me off so bad.

These days fly by. I got a run in this morning but we had some dogs chase us. They were more puppies then anything and ran away when we turned on them. We run in pairs here, we’re totally on an Iraqi base. I’m making great friends with the Iraqi Officers I’m working with; they’re hard working and want to be successful. One of the senior officers in particular I’ve bonded with but he had chest pains last night and went into the local clinic. He’s back at work today, very different than if that happened to us in the states.

We’re short Iraqi officers and NCO’s which makes it difficult to train. We were talking to one of the Company Commanders last night looking for July’s training schedule which he does all by himself. When we tried to make the point about letting his section officers create the training schedule while he provides oversight, he replied that there were no section leaders. Hmm, point taken. One more item for the SITREP to go forward.

I’m floating in Chai tea, I’ve had more tea this week then I’ve had in years.

Best wishes from Iraq.

What was I thinking?

After the first great Iraqi Army lunch the other day and not experiencing any "issues", I went back today with some of the other Iraqi Officers with great expectations wondering what would the menu be? I'll be damned, it was the same menu as the day before...I'm such an American.

CPX

VERY interesting day, they’ve been waiting for us…

This CPX was the culmination of months of training and was designed to show off the unit and staff for the incoming crew.

Usually, the MTR’s train at the company level which means that sections train independently as a transportation unit. The cargo trucks interspersed with gun trucks that go out as a team and each vehicle has an assignment to accomplish in the event of an incident. These battle drills are practiced over and over here on base so that when they get hit on the roads they’re not standing around like tourists. We got the briefing last night on the plan for today and it went very well. They move as a unit, they know what to do when the “IED” went off and they had some casualties they had to address while providing security and getting the downed vehicle hooked up to another vehicle. They did a good job with that. They took small arms fire and drove thru the kill zone.

The main training effort wasn’t just one company conducting a single mission, this was multiple companies commanded by the Operations section who juggled transportation movement requests that came at them every two hours. They had to configure the request and use available assets to fill, figure out how many trucks were available, what cargo could fit on the trucks, drivers, dispatches, etc. This was 9 missions with convoys leaving every two hours or so (jaunt around the base and thru the kill zones takes about an hour) and they couldn’t use the same crews twice. This was really a test larger than just a single mission, this tested the Regiment as a whole. This would have challenged a US transportation unit, so it was a solid demonstration of their capabilities and well done.

The Iraqi’s do not want to be embarrassed in front of the Americans, so they put their strongest players into the key leadership positions: radioman, convoy commanders, operations officer are all used over and over, nobody else had gotten the chance to learn (or fail). This put soldiers who’ve never had the chance to be in charge…in charge.

Our army does the same thing but we do it on the fly, we’ll “kill” the senior leader in charge and turn to the second in command and ask them what they’re going to do. It’s very good training at all levels and really very advanced training. The operations center was a bee hive as the radio operator relayed significant acts (SIGACTS) to the Ops team and they kept track of convoys as they passed “checkpoints” in the training and encountered an incident. It was well done and far exceeded where I thought their training was. The ultimate step will be independent operations on Iraqi roads and this training went a long way proving they’re capable of missions like that in the near future.

I even ended up being part of the play. The outgoing commander and I attempted to drive thru a checkpoint but were stopped at gunpoint, searched and segregated while they searched the vehicle (they found the fake IED in the trunk) and then were processed as the criminals we are. Excellent training and very thorough.

For lunch, I ate in the DFAC with the Iraqi officers. The food was good, it was a large serving of rice covered in a tomato based gravy with baked chicken on the side, actually quite good. They had some baked bread that was as good as anything I’ve had in a long while. I haven’t gotten sick yet so that’s a good omen. The team here said to eat at lunch because they take more care with the noon meal.

I’ve been around to meet all of the leaders on this base. I’ve had enough Chai tea to keep me awake for a while. They serve it in small demitasse cups with the bottom third of the cup filled with sugar. You stir the sugar into the tea; it’s a very sweet and not unrefreshing treat that's pretty good. They don’t seem to have a problem stopping whatever they’re doing to kick back and drink Chai tea with you. John (guy I’m replacing) finally had to put his foot down and decline the offers for tea because they would spend the afternoon drinking Chai. Certainly a different culture...

Best wishes from Iraq!

Day 1 - FOB life

I’ve arrived and I’ll be damned if there isn’t a war still going on. I’ve been so sheltered and have absolutely been a rear-echelon-MF (RIMF is a term going back as far as WWI, maybe before). I sure am going to miss the creature comforts I thought were so mediocre where I came from.

I came in late last night on a C-130. We’d been delayed taking off from Balad because of a crash of a drone on the runway. These drones are remote controlled by an operator on the ground so there’s no telling if it was a mechanical failure or the operator just flew it into the ground. We got here about 1AM and I performed the inevitable bag drag to meet my contact. That’s one thing I will never do again (I wish, I have plenty more bag drags before I’m thru here) and that’s to enlist the copious aid of bag porters. When I get out of here, from now on, I’m going to pay bell hops to carry everything including my fanny pack. I’m going to tip generously too.

I met three of the guntruck crews last night as they came to pick me up. There’s two FOB’s here (Forward Operating Base) with the airfield in the middle and of course the FOB I’m on is the other one. So to traverse the space they need to convoy between the two even though it’s just a few short miles. That means gun trucks with a minimum of three crews with .50 cal’s, NVG’s, jamming devices, the whole bit. I’ve been to places like Tadji where everyone throws their body armor in the back seat of an open Toyota truck and we drive away, but not here. It’s full body armor and headset/mike’s to communicate with the team as we drive. It’s late but there’s still friendly chatter going on with the crew. They’re leaving in less than 2 weeks, so their spirits are pretty high. We go thru security check points in and out of both FOB’s and finally reach their compound. I find out their FOB is totally Iraqi. The Coalition FOB has the airfield. We’ve gone thru two Iraqi Army checkpoints and the guys were all appreciative that the IA guards were awake and alert.

My group has their own compound inside the Iraqi area and they have to unlock the gate to get into it. They lock the gate for the night behind them when all the vehicles are inside.

Even though it’s late, I get a quick tour. It’s an Iraqi building, so the bathrooms are Eastern style (squatting, no toilets) but at least there’s showers in the building. He shows me the kitchen where they cook all their food and I ask him about the Mess Hall, if anyone eats there and he says no, they have too much dysentery (!). So, they draw rations from the local U.S. unit and take turns cooking at night for themselves. This is going to be interesting but he says they’re well stocked and even pull steaks as needed. Now to me, that’s good news because I haven’t had a rare steak since I’ve been here, so I’m looking forward to that. The bad news is that everyone here has lost weight because they don’t always take time to eat. With a Mess Hall, you can stop in, eat and leave but they don’t do that here, they’ll work late and grab a muffin.

I got up early this morning to get a head start and take a look around during the morning hours. I asked last night if they run PT up here and they do, so that’s good, at least I’ll be able to keep running. I leaned they always run in pairs.

My room is good, I have my PC plugged into an internet cable in my room, but so far it doesn’t connect to anything. I’ll have to wait until the rest of them get up so I can get a proper orientation. I’ve been rummaging around and been outside and I hope it doesn’t get as hot as it did yesterday. The official temp yesterday was 115 and with the wind blowing it felt like a hair drying blowing in your face. I’m north of Balad so I’m hoping for a 5 degree kickback from the temp.

(afternoon)

I attended my first meeting and was very impressed with the crew, very professional and very dedicated to doing the right things training the Iraqi’s. They’ve been planning a CPX (combat practice exercise) for tomorrow and they briefed the operation to all of us. It looks like an excellent plan and tests the Iraqi’s while they’re inside this compound conduct missions and battle drills. If they’re successful, it will validate the teams to go out on the road and conduct independent missions without coalition soldiers riding shotgun.

That’s the name of the game, to train the Iraqi’s to do it themselves and this crew is ahead of the other training teams in country by a good couple of months. Some on this crew have already been out on 150+ missions with the Iraqi’s and we need to get them off the road and let the Iraqi’s run the missions themselves. That’s end game and tomorrow’s exercise will give them validation and confidence. I’m looking forward to participating. (fyi – battle drills can be: react to enemy fire, react to enemy IED, react to a mechanical breakdown, react to a medical emergency, etc. As they practice these over and over, they become second nature in case something really happens out on the road).

I don’t have a pillow up here; I should have brought mine from Balad, damn. We’re going to make a PX run later on and it’s on my list. Other than that, I have everything I need for the next couple of months. I even have air conditioning in the room, but I just stepped outside into 110 degrees and it feels like an oven. Tomorrow’s going to be a scorcher. But otherwise, so far, so good.

Best wishes from Iraq.

FOB Warrior

I leave Wed, May 31 for FOB (Forward Operating Base) Warror and will be there for two months. My new address is on the right here but mail will take 2+ weeks to get there. I'm hoping I have internet capability because I plan to unhook the camera again. I hope everyone had a wonderful Memorial Day holiday weekend. Best wishes from Iraq.

Going north...

Welp, it looks like its going to happen. I’ll be moving from here (Balad, LSA Anaconda) to go up north and join a MiTT.

I’m pretty excited about it, so first let me tell all the people I owe emails to that I’ll put as much news into this as I can, and then we can go from there. I’ve been really bad responding lately to emails, so if I write it out just once it’ll probably be coherent. Suffice it to say, it’s pretty busy here.

There are two groups here, the killers who go out and kick in the doors making the towns safer because of their presence (Paul) and then our embedded soldiers (MiTT’s) that work and live with the Iraqi soldiers and teach them soldier skills. Both jobs are huge and both expose the Iraqi’s to all of our best traits as Americans. It also exposes us to the Iraqi’s so that we can understand what they need to do to be successful, the kinds of training they need as well as the tools.

MiTT stands for Military Transition Team. They live with them, eat their food, train them, work with them and sleep in the same areas as they do, mostly. This is much like the Green Berets did in Vietnam. There are hundreds of US teams here in Iraq and they’re embedded at every level to include the Iraqi Divisions, Brigades, and Battalions of the Army. There’s Air Force MiTT’s that are teaching them how to fly their C-130’s and Huey helicopters. There’s BiTT’s which are Border Transition Teams, SPiTT’s for Special Police, LiTT’s for Logistical transition teams, thousands of different US soldiers and police embedded with the Iraqi infrastructure.

Standing up these forces is a daunting task. The police forces in the west are struggling to stand up enough police because a) it’s a dangerous place and police get shot, and b) they can’t pass the literacy test. There’s plenty of brave Iraqi’s that have applied, they just need to be able to read and write. So each of these teams are tailored to the mission and vary between 12-20 U.S. soldiers. They’re issued their own vehicles, weapons, supplies…everything they need to get the job done.

I’m joining one of the Motorized Transportation Regiments, also called an MTR. This is a regimental sized unit (just a bit bigger than a U.S. Battalion, about 300-400 Iraqi’s) headed by an Iraqi Colonel who’s responsible for transportation, maintenance and support to the division in his area. This unit provides the trucks and fuel tankers, major mechanical support, supply, etc. This is a brand new unit training to be logisticians, or more correctly, transporters.

Because the elections are coming and we need to get out of here, we’re accelerating all of the units that still need to be stood up. Most of this unit just graduated from basic training except for the officers. There’s plenty of training that we can do without really getting them out and into the fight for a while. They won’t be cut over to the Division until this fall, so we have them to train as we need.

There's a gap in their coverage because the MiTT that was supposed to be assigned aren’t shifting in early (they’re coming from the States) so we have to cover that gap. I’m very familiar with Iraqi logistics which was one of the reasons I’m going. We’ll fill it in with me and 2 Sergeants from this unit and some soldiers from the 101st stationed up north, a hodge podge of logisticians that can hold the fort for two months. We’ll be going up there around the 1st of June.

The north in a relatively safe area compared to Ramadi or Fallujah and I’ll be there for about two months. The good news is that it should be cooler by 5-10 degrees over these next summer months. The time is going to fly by because there’s so much to learn when I get there. They traditionally stay with these units for 1 year terms. When I get back I’ll have less than a month to go and I’ll be a short timer. I’ll be so short I can repel off a dime. I’ll be a two digit midget.

So that’s the news. I’ve got a lot of paperwork to get done before we go in a couple of weeks, we’re already starting to plan the redeployment back to Ft. McCoy.

Stop sending packages, I won't have a new address and probably won’t have time to get an address. I’m going to take my laptop with me and I believe there’s connectivity, so the emails can probably continue. We shall see.

More later! Best wishes from Iraq!

Limo's in the back...

These two cars are reputed to be high level limo’s used by Saddam’s staff but they didn’t survive the war too well. I spent two days in Bagdad last week and two Iraqi's I worked with in the Green Zone showed these to me.

Travel sure screws up your schedule though, it’s like taking two days off in the middle of your work week and going to Chicago for meetings, everything gets out of whack. Then we had some people up from Kuwait and we helped them get around camp. It was great to see them, but company is just as tiring here as it is at home, I guess I’m settled into a routine.

Wonderful news from my business partner, Diann, who’s now a “Glammy”. Her daughter Sally gave birth to Alexandra Kailee, born 5-12-06, 7 lbs, 6 oz and 20 ¾” LONG! My GAWD, she can practically slam dunk NOW. Best wishes to both Sally and Jason, she looks beautiful.

Taji Trip

Great trip yesterday, first time I’ve been out since I got back from leave. It felt good to get out of this office. The fields have been greening up and looked pretty good from the air. The two pilots we had were both about 23 years old. I’m not sure why that scared me, but they did a nice job and didn’t hit anything.

Taji itself is really safe as a whole, but the front gates (heavily guarded/fortified) get rammed by VB-suicide bombers more and more lately as well as a lot of IED’s are going off on the roads near by. We’re tons safer in our vehicles than we were just last year but there’s definitely more IED’s and the overall injured/killed rate has been going up. It's been a tough couple of months since the election for our kids over here.

There’s lots of Iraqi’s on Taji. It’s a warehouse facility which we visit often. We work side by side with them but we’re starting to struggle. Some of them just up and quit when they want to and usually its payday. There’s no contract to stay in like our military so when they decide to leave, they just...leave. It’s being addressed on the American side at a pretty high level. It’s hard to train them and then see them take off. We’ve also run into problems (nationwide) where soldiers/police leave because they don’t feel any nationalism to fight in a province they don't live in. Then, they resurface next month enlisting in their home town units. It’s an issue.

We were looking at medical supplies. This is the last class of supply that’s a black hole to my group and it's support to the IA. The U.S. has combat medics embedded with them and any soldier hurt in the field has immediate care until a medevac arrives. The Iraqi’s don’t have Medevac capability (unless they’re training with us) so their next level of care is the local hospital. We went to see how much equipment they have in the warehouse, get some pictures and work with the guys on site to see if they needed any of our help. It’s 1 U.S. Sergeant and 3-4 Iraqi’s that distribute to the whole country. It’s probably not enough support when we leave but good enough for now. Lots of bandages, litters, but no controlled substances. That's handled at a higher level which cuts down on the pilferage.

I had a bit of a scare while we were there, we were in the PX walking thru and this huge BOOM went off that moved the shelving, the signs came off their chains suspended from ceiling and everyone just froze and looked at each other! A SECOND one, even louder than the first when off and we all dashed for the door and the cement bunkers. This one sounded closer and they always come in three’s (they can get three off before counter battery zeros in) and nobody wanted to be around to see where it landed. We were RUNNING for the door when the third one went off and then the BigVoice comes on and says, “controlled detonation, controlled detonation”. Damn. That meant somebody was getting rid of excess munitions and thank you very much for telling us AFTER you blow them up, how about a little warning?? They were getting phone calls from around the base on that, lots of irate people and I’m sure a couple of new heart attack victims. :)

Water- A couple of years ago I was reading about the Army's first tour in Iraq during the War. There was an article about U.S. forces taking truck loads of bottled water from the states and how expensive it was to bring it over here. They were spending millions of dollars and it wasn’t because they couldn’t get water anywhere else, we know how to transport water, we've been doing so for decades. In the past we’d drink out of water buffaloes (tanks pulled behind trucks) or we’d use lister bags (canvas bags suspended from a tree). Both were certified “suitable for drinking” but tasted really bad and they were buying bottled water because the soldiers weren't drinking the other. But if you’re thirsty, you’ll drink it. Anyways, I’m happy to report that we've solved that issue by building bottled water plants here in country. We now have pallets and pallets of locally produced bottled water and it doesn’t taste bad, either. These are being turned over to the Iraqi’s, another example of your tax dollars at work.

Dates- Iraq used to be the 3rd largest producer of Dates in the world but that’s slipped over time. We’ve agreed to spray herbicide/insecticide on the trees to jump start the Date farmers and the only speed bump is the information campaign to the local farmers and mayors. They want to make sure that the terrorists don’t poison a town and blame it on the Coalition spraying. No good deed goes unpunished around here.

I hope everyone is well, best wishes from Iraq!

Flowering bugs

It hit 100 degrees again here this afternoon.

There are bushes here that have been flowering from all the heavy rains. They’re planted along the sidewalks and I run past them in the morning (65 degrees). They grow fairly tall and I duck under them as I run, they’re not unlike flowering lilac bushes at home, just not as huge. I shy away from touching any part of them because I don’t know what kind of bugs are in them. I’ve never had a problem with bugs or crawlies, but you know how you’ll walk to a lilac bush and sweep the leaves with your hands or pick the flowers? You don’t do that here, or at least I don’t. It’s the difference between growing up in the Midwest v. a desert environment, I guess; I just don’t know what’s in the bushes. And it’s not on my list of things to do to go rummage around in the bushes to see what’s in them.

They do look nice though, they’re pink flowering dessert plants that’ll bloom until it gets terribly hot. They’re around the castles and buildings and I imagine somebody planted them and cocked his green thumb and patted himself on the back for their beauty. I, however, miss the greenhouses with a hundred varieties of perennials, bushes, shrubs that you just insert into the dirt and walk away from. I miss the greening in the spring, the new sprouts, the trees.

Different subject – We still have a lot of injuries and deaths over here, but they’ve gone down dramatically because we’ve up-armored everything. The HMMWV’s are so heavily armored now that many of them have remote gun turret's on top, the gunner can sit inside his cab and swivel the turret and watch outside using optics or night vision sights. They can see further down the road than somebody on top with binoculars, its very state of the art equipment (and expensive). Gunners riding up on top in the turret were getting their arms, heads and upper bodies hurt because of the blast radius from the IED, but everybody else inside the truck were just getting shook up. The IED’s were not being as effective as they were in the past. But then, EFP’s came to the theater.

EFP’s are explosive formed projectiles. We haven’t seen too many of these because it takes some skill to put them together, but suffice it to say that traditional IED’s were like a shotgun blast that usually just rocked the truck a bit, EFP’s were like slugs, they’d punch a hole thru the armor and do a lot of damage. I bring this up because we’re up-armoring everything now, including the civilian trucks that make up the convoy. They have blast “grates” around the cabs of the truck and windows and they look like vehicles right out of Road Warrior. The Iraqi Army has adopted a lot of these techniques as well; they’re targets out there just like we are. EFP’s really need to be aimed so they’re not as effective with convoys running 55 MPH down the road. We’re also now able to prematurely detonate most of the IED’s out there with electronics so again, the numbers are dropping. It’s a good news story.

We really are planning on how to reduce our size here in country; it’s a big push from everyone involved. Some of the planning meetings I get to attend are figuring out how to support the Army if the CSS side is reduced. We provide combat service support (food/water/fuel) to more than just the Army, the Army makes up only about 60% of who we support.

All is well here. People have crested the mid point of the tour and starting to think about the last 4-5 months. The weather has been pretty nice, the heat still feels good and we’re not in Kuwait. I traveled again thru Kuwait coming and going from leave and still think it’s a hole, no saving grace but the oil. It’ll hit 140 degrees there at the height of the summer, that’s not fit for man or beast. Half of our unit is down there and we make up missions to get them to come here and visit, just to get them out of that desolation. All sand, not even flowering plants, just scorpions and camel spiders.

Thanks for all the emails and notes I’ve gotten from everyone, nice to keep in contact and stay in touch.

Best wishes from Iraq!

A break from Iraq

Happy Easter!

I’ve been shirking my duties, sorry for not writing but just getting off leave and back into the swing of the job. I have two computers on my desk for secure and non-secure email and both were full up. I would have liked to mass delete them all and start fresh but you know that never works. Sorry to everyone who's been sending me emails and I haven't answered, I'm going thru work emails first.

I had a wonderful time on leave, it went WAY too fast. I ended up planning all my activities around meals and put back on a good 10 pounds. Heaven. I brought my running shoes home with me and got a couple of runs in (Kelsey even got me out to run with her once, she kicked my butt) but gave up on that after a couple of visits to Wendy’s. What’s in those Frosty malts anyways? I think they put addictive chemicals in those. I had some really good meals which just reminded me of how wonderful the United States is with all the choices, all of the opportunities we have. We truly are blessed, it’s a great country.

There are two U.S. ports they use for the R&R program, Atlanta and Dallas. I flew into Dallas and as we’re taxiing in, two of the airport fire trucks create a waterfall that the plane taxi’s under. I thought that was awesome. Then, inside, there’s a group of VFW members and off duty police/firemen that show up every day to meet this plane (there’s one R&R plane a day) and shake our hand as we get off. They hand over phone cards or stand by with free cell phones for us to use. It’s a nice touch, really made us feel special. There were VFW guys standing by with vans to whisk anyone to another terminal and I jumped in with a couple of others (we’re all in fatigues). He had a cooler inside and offered us all a beer...only in Texas, eh?

All in all, I had a great time off. There was one thing that bothered me though and that was watching the news. They spent about 6 seconds one day covering the deaths of two soldiers in Iraq. It’s quite a difference from all the time we spend going over daily accident reports and incidents or shootings or the daily plans and missions that we attend to. It seemed so wrong to reduce the lives of those two soldiers to just 6 seconds and I thought about the families and hope they know how very important they were to us and how much time we spend trying to reduce the number of deaths any way we can. It reminded me of old news footage from Vietnam and how those deaths started to be treated towards the end of the war. They’re not just a number to us; somehow I hope the families know that.

Attacks are up across the country and that’s not good. We can point directly to the Iraqi leadership who struggle to decide simple matters and created this vacuum of power. Those that have stood up to lead in the past have been killed and to their credit we know how difficult a situation it is. We’re hearing that normal Iraqi’s are just lying low and staying out of the fight. The success of the Marines on the western side of the country have been pushing bad guys towards us in the center and back east towards Iran. Our base has been getting hit a lot; they were hit on one day with seven separate attacks while I was gone. I had planned on taking some trips to outlying posts but will have to see now if they’ll allow travel like that.

They said it got to 99 degrees yesterday. It’s currently 84 (11 am) with a high today of 94. It’s only April and I’m dreading thinking about July. The good news is that it’s downhill from here and we start planning already for the next unit to come in and take over for us in late summer.

We’ve been told that when the “good idea” fairy comes around now that we should smack her. We won’t have time to start anything new and anything we have in the pipeline going forward now is to be planned out and completed, or documented for our replacements. We are reducing our footprint here. We probably hit the highest number of troops on the ground during our rotation and there’ll be less coalition soldiers coming now for the future. That’s the plan anyways. We're running out of time because we have to have this country ship shape by our elections. That sure is the wrong attitude, but it's the reality.

Thank you to everyone for changing your schedules while I was home to see me and supporting us, it was a treat to see everyone.

Love to all and best wishes...back in Iraq.