*enter todays date here*

My white socks now come back brown from running in the water and mud in the morning.

One of the niceties they provide us is free laundry. We put it all into a laundry bag, they weigh it and then we get it back in about 48 hours. You can inventory it with them if you want to go thru that hassle, but it’s just easier to weigh it and get back pretty much what you’ve given them. I’ve lost a pair of Army running shorts and the inevitable sock, but other than that they’re really good. The laundry service is contracted thru KBR by TCN’s (third country nationals). Usually they’re Filipino’s or from Pakistan, it’s a huge business for them. All of the larger bases do this.

A normal day is getting up about 4:30 and going for a run. I run with another guy down the way if he’s available, but I’ve run by myself and enjoy the solitude of the morning. Its dark out and we wear reflective vests. I’ve been out when the alarm goes off and it’s no fun sitting in a bunker all sweaty waiting for the all clear to sound. I do take along my ID card, just in case. I usually skip breakfast and I’m at my desk around 0730. It’s a nine hour time difference to Mpls (CST) so when I hit my desk its 10:30pm at home. (There you go, Susanne, sorry for being so late...)

We have two major presentations during the day, called Battle Update Assessments. The BUA is presented to Brig Gen H. It’s the war as it happened in the last 12 hours. We have convoys up and down our supply routes, movement of assets and many other items of interest that are briefed to her in this huge cavernous room. It's ringed with display screens and staffed 24 hours by JOC (Joint Operations Center) personnel. I try and attend the afternoon briefing; both are simulcast to most of our units in the field. Our world revolves around those two briefings and comments made by her or her staff can send us scrambling for information. People here habitually spin out of control trying to stay ahead of the CG, she’s bright and nobody wants to be singled out during the BUA for a question that she asks. We want to anticipate what she’s looking for and try to be prepared before she asks for it. The BUA is about 45 minutes long wrapped up in 150+ power point slides. The BUA lists combat actions and weapons caches found and changes to boundaries or plans for reduction in forces or operations going on or ending. It has lots of information of interest to us.

Our group, the ISF cell, has a permanent slice of her week where we brief her on the state of the Iraqi’s and keep her up to speed on their concepts and training. I get a chance to go out and visit a lot of these sites, but some of them are so remote that its tough to get to them, so if we can, we’ll use her star to get a ride.

Side story - I had a real problem with this at Ft. McCoy. We mobilized with another unit and they had a 1-star mobilizing with them and these two damn majors were going around “dropping the star” to get things done. “You know that BG Watshisname would really like it done this way, blah, blah” I guess I only hate it when I can’t use it…

So on this latest trip, we talked her into visiting one of our remote sites and fly/convoyed out to meet them. The site houses a small number of U.S. forces training Iraqi's. We work closely with them to help them out.

So here’s a picture (sorry for quality) of our CG with her Command Sergeant Major. She is the senior Logistician on the battlefield talking to one of the Iraqi Colonels responsible for the site. We directly support the Iraqi tranporters, that transport Iraqi supplies up and down the supply routes. We’re working with them as they start up.

Incidently, the CSM pictured is the leader of the gun truck group I took a ride with last time, I think my brother called him Rambo. I didn’t get to convoy with him this time, they met us down there. He’s responsible for her safety on the road, whenever she convoys. It was a good trip, she saw the things we wanted her to see and she'll help convince those that need to be persuaded.

That's about it, another day here.

Love to all, best wishes and stay safe with those snowy roads back home.

/Tim

p.s. Interesting to see Canada swing a bit right, wassup with that? I'll bet they're doing it just to see Al Gore have a stroke.

Road trip

Ok, I had fun. I was out convoy riding with Rambo’s team on a Sunday afternoon. I'm sure glad I wasn’t a lone journalist driving around Baghdad knocking on terrorist’s door. My travel companions and I drove up-armored HMVWW’s with .50 cal machine guns mounted on turrets.

It most definitely was a different perspective. Can you picture Mogadishu with white people? That’s how it struck me, such a poor country. And yet, there are road-side stands and people standing around talking in small villages. Lots of kids…so many kids and nice to know that even on the ground they wave at you, except for that one that threw the rock, but the gunner got a clean shot on him, so that worked out too.

0700 mission brief. They’re all business as we get the latest intelligence report on the roads we’ll be traveling. Rambo’s team has gone out now about a dozen times, so they’re in a routine and the kidding is flying back and forth, someone got lost once, someone’s been using too many pen flares to warn away drivers. Very loose but professional.

They gave me three seats to fill. It’s me and then one of the specialists I know so she could decipher the technical talk. Then, I invited a Major from a separate command. His people work at the depot we’re going to visit and because it’s so hard to get up there they usually jump at the chance to visit. If, that is, they can fly. Nobody flies there, it’s too romote. At first he said yes, but he didn’t show yesterday morning. I had no notice, either, I could have filled it with people that wanted to go.

He’d sent me an email asking if I knew they’d had 3 IED’s within the last two weeks in that area. I didn’t know that, but Rambo’s team did, even knew where they were. Turns out one was successful, one of the contractors had died just that last Friday. They hadn’t had a memorial, they didn’t know if they were going to either. Those guys get taken care of by their companies and they usually don’t have services like we do.

But during the mission brief, I get a chance to tell them more about our trip and why we’re going.

The U.S. leaves when the ISF is self-sufficient. That means the ISF can fight the insurgency on their own and resupply themselves when they’re out of something, like water, food, ammo, parts, coats, hats, shoes, socks, supplies, everything and anything that keeps their army running day to day. Our part is to build a system they’ll use and get them to use it.

Our team decided to pick a class of supply and force them to use it correctly. That’s not actually true, because that implies we’re forcing them to use the system that the US uses. We’re looking for a system that will survive after we leave, something that works for them. Currently, we re-supply them in a pinch, and that’s been happening a lot. We put them on missions and don’t let them fail. They know that, they’ve gotten use to it and now we have to wean them off the teat. So, off I go to this depot to get a tour and see if it will support our requirements. Its run by U.S. contractors but this entire system will be turned over to the Iraqi’s at some point.

It turned out to be a non-eventful trip, the depot is perfect, but I was extremely interested in the trip itself and the perspective from the ground. The one major theme that struck me, was our control of the roads.

We control the roads. And when I say that, I mean that when our convoys drive down the roads, everybody else gets off, the civilian traffic pulls over. The IED’s are on the sides of the roads and in the medians, so we drive down the middle. From half a mile down the road, you can see cars pulling over to get out of our way. Want to know how we trained them to do that? We shoot at them. It’s called escalation of force.

Without giving away too many details, the first thing we do is wave at them to get off the roads. If that doesn’t work, we show them our weapons. If that doesn’t work, we fire a flare at them. If that doesn’t work we fire warning shots into the ground in front of their vehicle. If that doesn’t work, we assume intent and are free to blast them. It doesn’t take too long for the word to get out that we open fire with .50 cal machine guns which go thru engine blocks and I’ll be damned, they stop. Everybody pulls over, the whole countryside is trained.

It’s a little different driving up behind people. Most of them pull over, but you’ll catch the odd truck driver lumbering along half-asleep who jerks his vehicle off the road with a start, or the guy carrying furniture that’s piled way to high and not tied down too good and you see him hitting the sides of the road and almost loosing loads and feeling bad. Half of me think it’s a little harsh. The other half hears how many IED’s get emplaced and have killed our guys every day. The population is starting to turn bad guys in and we hear about that at least a couple of times a week. Its still a very dangerous place and our safety is ahead of anybodies feelings. We will leave here, but it will be safely. They'll just have to be patient.

I can say that since the referendum overall attacks are down and I hope it stays down. Here's a picture with the crew, hope it posts. It was a unique experience, going to have to try it again.

Best wishes from Iraq.

Prepping

I’m gone on Sunday, going to hit the road. I should have pictures when I return. Safe travels to all of us.

Sheesh, kids these days...

Out and back…safe! Woo hoo!

I flew out on Friday morning. I usually try to grab the jump seat up front by the gunners. It’s a colder flight up there but I love the door gunner’s view out the window and I can watch the countryside go by for the trip. I dress warm because early morning flights can be 40 degrees and then the wind on top of that, so brr.

These door gunners are mostly kids (I am SO old) and barely out of their teens. The Blackhawk flights are really bus rides in the flying world; they’re regular and hence a bit boring for the crews. It’s a starting point in the aviation world for a lot of them. It’s a very necessary mission, but you can almost see the pilots groan when they land and there's 15 of us waiting to get on the two birds, some with huge duffle bags to move. It’s a bus ride.

So the bus flies along just above tree top level and I stare out the door watching the kids run out to wave at us. There are always kids on the ground waving. Kids the world over are the same. Adults will look up and stare at the miracle of something so ungainly flying, but the kids will unabashedly take off their jackets, swing them wild and wave their hearts out. The kid’s wave and the door gunners are supposed to wave back, that’s their secondary job. It’s an implied mission for them.

My gunner isn’t waving back, so I rap him on the shoulder and point down, do the wavy sign thing and he just smiles. The helicopter banks a little bit and I’m trying to look back and I think I see something flash by the window and I look up and there’s that gunner smiling and looking out the window to the back. I can see a group of kids running behind us, but I can’t see what they’re doing. In a second we’re past them. The door gunner reaches behind him and grabs something else, talks into the mike, the plane swerves and another package goes sailing out the door. All our necks crane back and watch the kids scramble after the falling object. I look behind the gunner and there’s a box of teddy bears, must be a dozen of them all wrapped tight in plastic. I look up at the gunner and he’s grinning like the 19 year old kid I know he is. I smile back and we both feel pretty good. I’ll even bet he’s got younger brothers and sisters at home… Sometimes it’s fun to be young, you know?

Check out this link: http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=34329

This picture has been making the rounds of the internet and finally made the front page of Stars & Stripes. It’s a great story about a great American. I think the link to Stars & Stripes is also worth saving, lots of good stories in there.

Quick post, more to come, thank you for visiting!

Jan update

We’re all thru with the holidays over here and buckled down for January and the rest of the year. All of the decorations have been taken down and the last of the pogey bait has been eaten or given away. We’re back into our daily cycle and started running again, working out and back into the PT groove. So far, all my New Years resolutions are holding strong, so glad one of them included staying away from bars and no vodka.

The good news is that we’re into 2006 which is the year we get to come home, so yay!

My sincerest condolences to the family of Major Anderson from Des Moines who was killed in this last helicopter accident. So far it looks like weather brought it down and not hostile activity. I know he left a couple of small children. We’re having a memorial here on Thursday, it will be well attended.

I am truly amazed when I fly that we’re not shot at more, that’s really telling. We fly the same helicopters he was on and they’re extremely reliable and sturdy. They all fly in pairs for security and safety reasons and we have gunners out the sides of the doors. I’ve never seen them fire a hostile shot, nor have I ever been in a bird that’s been shot at. We fly over most of Baghdad and there are plenty of places for a good rifleman to take pot shots at us without being caught, but so far we haven’t. I guess that’s why they let us fly because it’s infrequent and that’s good.

The fight’s now being shifted to the borders and we’re sealing them off from incoming insurgents and dealing with other pockets around the country. Very good news. The other information we’re getting on the ground is that we’re meeting with insurgent leaders who are breaking away from the more militant groups. Some are being pulled into the political process and out of the fight so even better news. Safer every day, that’s the dream. We still have mortar attacks here on this post, Mortar-itaville. There was one in mid December that landed not too far from where I stay and hurt 10. That’s the closest they’ve come so far.

I have a lot of travel scheduled for this month and I’ve already been out on three trips so far. My big one is going to be by convoy and we’re still putting the details on that together. That one’s going to be interesting…

Remember I was talking about stupidity? Our General has her own Rapid Response force which is comprised of the Senior Sgt in the command and his “volunteers”. We all just shake our heads at this because it’s a grown man with his own little group of killers and they take off and drive around the country whenever they feel the “itch” in up-armored HMMWV's. We weren’t in country for more than a month and this group got put together and drove out the front gate. Nobody disputes that there might be a use for them at some time, but they drove out without (as far as we know) taking anyone with them who was a veteran of convoy movements. There should have been at least one veteran per vehicle but there wasn’t even a veteran in the convoy, all of them were cherries. The first time out they got hit by a Vehicle IED and one of the kids got hurt. Nothing serious, but they got lucky that time.

There’s all kinds of rules of engagement we use over here on what happens if convoy's are hit by small arms fire, IED’s, RPG’s or even how to meet other convoys coming at you so you don’t shoot them up. Friendly fire is the most dangerous and so very deadly over here, many of the accidents are from each other. Or, it could be the Iraqi’s now, they're on the roads convoying as well. Convoy’s practice a lot on how to drive the roads and for that group to just drive off the base and into the war was stupid, and not something a leader with his years of experience should have done.

But since then, our little gun truck unit has been up and down the convoy routes, getting lost in the back streets of Baghdad as well as all the way up north to the Syrian border and back. If nothing else, they are brazen. I think they’ve been out enough now that we’ve got some confidence about riding with them. I have to get to this one location and the only means I have is thru them. I’m hoping that’ll be sometime in the next couple of weeks, so we’ll get that scheduled.

If Paul could see this, he would laugh. He’s out and about in the economy every single day and he knows VERY well how to travel the country. Air travel to me is very safe now but the first couple of times the pucker factor is damn high. I think it’ll be the same on the convoys but have to get the first one under my belt before we get comfortable with it. For sure, the camera’s going along.

I haven't heard from Paul since before Christmas, I'm hoping he's staying dry. Rainy season here, with lots of mud. The desert turns to clay and clogs up the boots. It's not very pretty but no doubt the killers out in the field have it even worse than we do, so here's hoping they have clean and dry living all the time.

Hello to everyone and Happy New Year!

Best wishes from Iraq