Live Fire with Chuck Holton

What did Saddam have to do with 9/11?

As we traveled around Iraq, we were shown plenty of ways that the United States is working to make Iraq a stable democratic nation in the midst of a chaotic region. The belief is that this stability will, in the long run, remove much of the incentive for terrorism by introducing economic stability to these people, which will ripple out to the rest of the Arab world. I think I’m starting to understand. Our government made a decision to stop simply reacting to terrorist events, which has been the defacto policy for the last several decades, and instead focus on planting a seed of prosperity in a region that could have tons of potential, if not for a history of corruption, brutality and a sort of national self-immolation.

This is a long-term strategy, to be sure. And there are thousands of years of negative precedent to at least try and work around, if not overcome.

It’s not a pretty choice. It doesn’t cater to the American attention-deficit disorder, (television), and it will be costly, both in lives and dollars.

The alternative, however, is even less appealing, I think. It’s to continue the cycle of action and reaction, revenge and retaliation, pretty much forever. It’s a slow downward spiral. It is also the natural thing to do. It is what Israel and Palestine have done for decades.

It’s not natural to sacrifice one’s resources on behalf of someone who is not in your tribe or family. Americans, however, have chosen to do so many times, sometimes hesitantly, and rarely unanimously, but this path has made us a leader among nations.

On some level, American culture understands that sacrificing for the good of another country ultimately benefits the United States on a deeper level. It’s a very biblical concept: Give and you shall receive.

And that’s what most of the soldiers we talked to in Iraq believe about this war. We are here in Iraq for reasons which perhaps don’t seem to directly be related to our own national security. Maybe there was some confusion at the start as to just why we were taking on this responsibility. Of course, once we got here, we realized that Saddam was an ABSOLUTE MURDEROUS WACKO and would have been the Hitler of our era if given enough time. Unfortunately, we didn’t see this in 1990, and he was allowed to murder upwards of a quarter million of his own people in that decade. But now nobody apart from criminals and cowards mourns the passing of his reign.

Just to give you an idea of how despicable this man was – we saw scores of palaces that this man had built, 68 of them in Tikrit alone. Now, any one of these palaces would have put the white house to shame, and Saddam didn’t live in Tikrit year round, just for maybe a month or two each year. So the sixty-eight palaces were largely empty much of the time. They are opulent to a sickening degree, especially when you think that Saddam built many of them with funds which were meant to bring food to the Iraqi people. The workers, we were told, were paid the equivalent of $1.50 a week. Once the palaces were built, the people of Tikrit were told that if they even so much as looked at one of them, they would be executed. For this reason, there is little accurate information available today about just what the palaces were used for. The one I slept in, it is said, was built for Saddam’s mother. It’s about the size of the U.S. Capitol building. Others were for Uday and Qusay’s concubines, which were reportedly “recruited” in this manner: Qusay would go to the local college while classes were in session. He would “shop” the campus, seeing cute co-eds that looked appealing and with a snap of his fingers, add to his bevy of concubines. Gives a whole new meaning to a “full ride” scholarship, does it not?

There was also a private zoo. Apparently when U.S. soldiers took over the palace compound in Tikrit in 2003, it wasn’t unusual to come across a rhino or elk wandering the grounds. Saddam had a private hunting preserve inside the city of Baghdad. It is said that in many of the “secret” bunkers discovered after the war, there are mass graves nearby which hold the remains of the workers who built the bunker. Nice guy, huh?

Despite all of this, some people still cling to the argument that all of this was none of our affair. It’s amazing how similar that argument is to that given by many isolationists in the opening stages of World War II. Pearl Harbor changed that. 9/11 should have too. Many people fail to see the link between 9/11 and Iraq. Here it is:

All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

The U.S. military is not involved in conquering Iraq. We are trying to take a nation that has been mortally wounded and revive it again. We aren’t trying to make it as good as it was before we took over the country, or even as good as it was before the Mad Dictator came to power. We’re planting in Iraq the seeds of democracy – watering it with the blood of selfless men and the charity of our people, and aggressively pursuing every weed that dares to rear its spiny head amidst the rows. Given enough time and care, this new country will flourish, and go on to feed life back into a place that has been desolate for a very long time.

I recall the story of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. In it, the White Witch has cast a spell over the land, making it always winter and never Christmas. In the same way, the Mad Dictator burned this land with the heat of his insatiable ego, making it a place of brutal perpetual summer and never the Fourth of July.

It’s interesting to sit down and speak with some of the commanders of Task Force Liberty about the methods we’re using to accomplish this gargantuan task of changing the worldview of an entire culture. One method is to focus on the next generation – the children, by building modern schools and youth centers, and by going out of our way to interact positively with the children whenever possible.

One of the ways the soldiers do this is by passing out candy, school supplies, soccer balls and other trinkets to the children on a regular basis. In Samarra, the children would come running to our convoy every time we left the gates of our compound. The kids would smile and wave and give us two thumbs up as we passed. Interestingly, the adults were more reserved on the city streets, often scowling and turning away, but when we drove through the back alleys, the same people would throw open their back gates and wave and smile broadly. When I commented on this peculiarity, the Captain whom I was riding with said that the adults must be careful on the streets because the insurgents will do violence to anyone they perceive to be friendly to the American forces. In the back alleys, though, the people don’t worry about being seen.

One day as we traveled around the city, stopping to visit the various humanitarian projects that the U.S. has going there (we’ve completed more than 150 of these in Samarra alone in the last 9 months – wonder why you don’t hear that on the news?) the children would come running, and form a dancing, waving mob behind the Humvees, shouting “Mista! Mista!” (Mister! Mister!) at the soldiers as they distributed toys and soccer balls. It was obvious that the kids knew that good things happened when the Americans showed up.

On one helicopter flight between Baquba and Baghdad, I watched the door gunner tossing soccer balls out as we flew over remote Iraqi villages and farms. At first, I thought, “That’s awesome!” But then I had to laugh when I imagined that perhaps this wasn’t the best method of winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi farmers; getting beaned with a soccer ball going 150 knots might not feel too good. Imagine having one of these “smart ball bombs” come bouncing through the front door of your little mud hut unexpectedly and ricochet around your kitchen/living room/bedroom. It’s got to be unsettling enough for these desert people, who live without most of what we would consider to be essentials of daily life, to have screaming black monsters the size of their house go thundering just overhead at nearly 200 miles per hour. Having a brand new soccer ball go whizzing by your head and crash into your chicken coop probably doesn’t help.

So maybe we should rethink the whole soccer-bombing campaign idea. Sure, it’s better to give than to receive, especially when you are talking about high velocity projectiles. But it may be more effective to keep our charity on the ground.

The Lebanese have a death wish.

Get this. Today I saw a young man riding a wheelie on his motorbike, going
about 60 mph, without a helmet, with his friend on the back of the bike,
smoking a cigarette, in heavy traffic on the freeway south of Beirut. That
pretty much sums up my fourteen hours in Lebanon.
I rented a car when I arrived so that I could drive around and check out
some sites that appear in my upcoming book, Task Force Valor – Allah’s Fire,
which is set in Lebanon. I was very happy to get this opportunity, because
it’s really difficult writing about a place that you haven’t been to.

The first ten Lebanese people I met could best be described as surly. The
customs guys, the other people in line at baggage claim, etcetera.
Fortunately, the guy at the Hertz rent-a-car desk was pretty nice. He made
me a good deal on a one-day rental when all the other car companies I asked
just gave me surly looks and grunted that they did not do one day rentals.

After I got the rental car, I headed south on the freeway. It was a
madhouse. It was like a real-life version of a game my kids have on the
computer – “crazy taxi.” I’ve driven in downtown DC, though, so I was up to
the challenge of driving here. But people here are meaner drivers. They
seem to go out of their way to get mad at you, cut you off, or stop in the
middle of the freeway to have a conversation with someone stopped on the
other side. (yes, I saw this.)

The Bible says to “Pray without ceasing,” and I’d like to say that describes
my behavior in the car on the way to Sidon. But to be brutally honest, my
conversations were more like, “Oh, Lord, please keep me safe and.WHAT A
FREAKING IDIOT! DID YOU SEE THAT GUY? Uh.Sorry, Lord, anyway, please don’t
let anyone WOAH! COMING AWFUL FAST THERE, SNAPPERHEAD!”

Anyway, God was gracious, as usual, and got me safely to Sidon. There, I
realized that I was in an area that was potentially unfriendly to Americans,
so I decided to keep a low profile. It was getting dark, so I parked the
car near the souks in old town Sidon, right near the water. People were
strolling along the water, sitting and smoking their Hooka pipes and sipping
coffee. Then, I nonchalantly got out of the car and.everyone on the street
stopped what they were doing and stared at me. I felt like a nun in a biker
bar. So I smiled as innocently as possible, got back in my car and drove
away. Whew. Close one. I decided to drive east toward the mountains. I
didn’t know exactly where I was going, except it’s pretty easy to find the
freeway again since its right by the coast. Downtown Sidon’s traffic was
unbelievable, and twice I drove through green lights and had cars run the
red and go careening past right in front of me. More fervent,
expletive-laced prayers commenced. I headed uphill, and the road I was on
got steadily narrower and narrower until I rounded a bend and almost took
out the guard shack. Well, not really. I saw it in time to stop, but then
realized that anywhere in South Lebanon with a military checkpoint was
probably not someplace I wanted to be, so I turned did a J-turn and got the
heck out of there.

Later on I stopped at a Kentucky Fried Chicken back in Sidon. I asked the
guy behind the counter what the guard shack was for. He proceeded to tell
me that I had been about to enter the Ayn Al Hilwah Palestinian Refugee
camp.

“Can I go in there?” I asked.

“You shouldn’t.” The guy said.

“Why, would the guards arrest me?”

“No, they would kill you.”

“Oh.”

As I was trying to get back to the freeway, I “found” two more entrances to
the camp, similarly guarded by soldiers and fortified bunkers. Once, I got
turned around, and passed some soldiers on a corner who looked at me
intently as I passed. A moment later I noticed that there was suddenly no
traffic to be seen anywhere. I was alone on the road. For some reason,
this didn’t make me feel very good. So I turned around again and
high-tailed it out of there.

I headed back to Beirut. 30 kilometers later, I was engaged in what seemed
to be a game of vehicular roller derby in the city center. As it turns out,
the drivers in Sidon are the minor leagues compared to Beirut. I simply
could not believe the recklessness displayed by drivers in Beirut.
Absolutely insane. It was like Grand Theft Auto – Beirut.

I remembered in my research about Beirut that there are some neighborhoods
that an American might not feel welcome in. The trouble is, I couldn’t
remember which neighborhoods were the friendly ones and which weren’t.
Hamra, it turns out, is perhaps one to avoid. So say the soldiers stationed
on every corner. Sabra is also not very nice, unless you happen to be
Palestinian, which I am not. I think I saw most of the city, and it is a
testament to God’s power and grace that I didn’t get squashed by a large
freight truck careening through a red light, or sideswiped by a big Mercedes
trying to muscle it’s way in front of me. It’s equally amazing that I
didn’t nail one of the many motor scooters that would dart out into traffic
without lights at random intervals.

I wonder if all those years of civil war did something to the national
culture in Beirut. It seems like the people here would find Russian
Roulette boring. I saw pre-teen girls sitting in the windows of speeding
cars as the driver whipped in and out of traffic at 11:30 at night. The
girls looked like they didn’t have a care in the world. I got honked at and
cussed out by a driver who almost hit me when he ran a red light as I was
going through on green. I got yelled at again by a pedestrian who almost
became a permanently embedded in my front bumper when he darted out from
between two parked cars as I was driving by. As if I should have watched
out for him. Everyone smokes, even some pre-teen children that I saw
running around on the cornice at midnight.

Maybe all those years of bombings and shootings gave this country a “to heck
with it,” culture. But whatever caused it, after four hours of driving
around in it, I was ready to leave. I found a hotel, got three hours of
sleep and a shower, then returned my car to the airport. I almost kissed
the Hertz guy when I he told me I could get my damage deposit back.

Wait until you hear about my latest exciting adventure.

This afternoon I decided to head into town to do some shopping. Brian was
down at the pool, so I went by myself. The taxi driver dropped me off in
Fahaheel, a suburb of Kuwait city. The souvenir hunting commenced.

A couple of hours later I was laden with shopping bags full of aromatic
Turkish coffee, red and white Arabic headdresses, and baby burquas. When I
first showed up, there weren’t many people around, and some of the stores
were still closed for the afternoon siesta, or whatever they call it in
Kuwait. I’m betting they don’t call it a siesta. Same difference.

Anyway, since there weren’t many people around, I was able to snap some
pictures without being accosted by a sheet-draped Kuwaiti prince wannabe, as
happened last time we visited that area. Which was a good thing, since I
was alone this time.

Awhile later, I passed a barber shop. That got me thinking, Hey, I need a
haircut. Bet they’re cheap here. The barber was just finishing up with one
gentleman, and other than that the shop was empty. I figured I’d just pop
in and get a quick haircut. That’s when the fun began.

It didn’t take long to figure out that the only English letters that the
barber was familiar with were the letters O and K. That’s all he said to
me. Ever. “Okay!” He’d nod and sort of smirk, as if to say. “I’m ready
for you now. And it’s obvious you have no idea what you are getting
yourself into.”

I smiled back. Half of me was thinking, Seems like a friendly fellow. I
guess. I mean, he said ‘Okay!” so he must be okay, right? Right? The
other half of me wasn’t so sure. But I approached the chair anyway.

I could tell that the man didn’t speak English, so I did what all saavy
travelers learn to do in such situations, I spoke very slow and very loud.
“MAKE MY HAIR SHORTER, PLEASE.” I figured it’d be hard to mess up
instructions like that. “OKAY!” the man answered and smiled broadly. But
it wasn’t the kind of smile that would make you feel at ease. It was kind
of a “shut up and sit down” smile.

He started on my face. I hadn’t shaved for two days, so maybe he thought it
needed a trim, too. No problem. Actually, I was thinking, Cool! A
full-service shave and haircut, just like the old days!

After he lathered up my face REALLY well, the barber produced a straight
razor. It was at that moment that I had an uncanny thought. Some people
over here don’t like Americans very much. Maybe it would have been a good
idea to find out if this guy is one of them before I let him go at my neck
with a straight razor. I gulped.

But the barber didn’t hurt me. In fact, I thought he did a great job of
shaving my beard without cutting me hardly at all. When he was done, I
realized that he’d left me with a Saddam-Hussein moustache. I understand
that in this culture the only men who are completely clean shaven are those
who, shall we say, are a little light in the loafers. So I didn’t complain
about the Saddam-stache. I took it as a compliment.

Then the man proceeded to lather my face up all over again. Then he shaved
me again, too. I don’t know if he forgot or was just being thorough, but I
wasn’t about to argue with a non-english speaking Arab who was holding a
straight razor to my throat.

Once he’d shaved my face the second time, he dabbed some kind of cold cream
on my face, and then things really got weird. He proceeded to give me a
thirty minute facial. I am not exaggerating. He massaged my face for half
an hour with no fewer than seven different creams, lotions and exfoliants.
At one point I looked like Gene Simmons from KISS. At another I felt like
my eyes were glued shut. When I could get one open, I half expected to see
the old men outside the shop snickering into their Turkish coffee, but they
looked like this happened all the time.

Then the barber pulled out a spool of dental floss. My eyes widened as he
approached. He’s not going to.no.he wouldn’t!

Well, he didn’t. What he did do was even weirder. He stretched the dental
floss out between his fingers and started scraping my face with it. That
was when this thought crossed my mind.

Chuck Holton, you are insane.

So far I’d been there almost an hour, and the guy hadn’t yet touched my
hair.

Then he took a spray bottle and squirted water in my face, and wiped it with
a towel. Then he did it a second time. I was coming up for air the third
time when I saw him pull a paper towel off the wall and squirt water on it.
That he gently laid over my face.

Nothing happened. This is where I was expecting to hear the people from the
AL Jazeera version of Candid camera jump out from behind the mirror.
Instead, I heard the barber fire up a hair dryer. Then he pointed it at the
hanky covering my face and blasted it with hot air until it was dry. What
that was for, I’ll never know.

Then psychobarber splashed some kind of liquid on my face that almost made
me scream like Mcauley Culkin. Then he FINALLY started on my hair.

He put some gel in his hands, then rubbed it thoroughly through my hair.
Then he blasted me with the hair dryer for about four seconds and abruptly
whipped the towel off of my torso.

“Okay!” he declared. We were done. My hair never actually got cut, but it
was worth the experience.

I got up, smiled and gave him twice what he asked for the service (which was
about $3.), thankful that he wasn’t an American hater. He was just nuts.
He smiled again, and turned to his next victim. I thought about warning the
poor sap what he was in for, but he didn’t speak English.

I left feeling like a new man – a Mediterranean metrosexual. Ladies
everywhere noticed the healthy glow off of my newly-exfoliated skin. Well,
at least I think they noticed. It’s hard to tell when they are all dressed
up like ninja curtains. Next door to psychobarber was a butcher shop with
goat carcasses hanging in the window.

I guess it could have been worse.

Deja-something.

We?ve had some really amazing coincidences happen to us over here that demonstrate just how small the world is. For example:

When we first arrived in Tikrit, and walked into the PAO office at FOB Danger, Brian looked at a sign on the wall that said, ?welcome to the 22nd MPAD? and said, ?Hey, that?s my old unit!? About that time, a bunch of people stood up from their desks and said, ?Brian Sanders!?!?

Later that day we were standing on the front steps of the palace in Tikrit, waiting for the 9/11 comemoration ceremony to start. I was talking to General Taludo, the commander of the 42nd infantry, when I noticed someone behind him wearing a Ranger scroll on his right shoulder. A second look, and I walked off while the General was in the middle of a sentence, and said, ?Gallagher!? It was now-command sergeant major Gallagher, who had served with me in the 3rd Ranger battalion for the entire time I was there. I later apologized for dissing the General like that, and he graciously forgave me.

A couple of days later in Samarra, I walked into the company Tactical Operations Center and ran into another guy who had been in my company at 3rd Ranger Bn.

In the chow hall a few days later at FOB Warhorse, I met a captain who asked me where I was from. When I said ?Beckley, West Virginia,? he said, ?NO WAY! ME TOO!? Further discussion revealed that I have met his mother, who is the TSA officer at the Beckley Airport. How about that.

The next day in the chow hall in Baghdad, Brian saw a female captain whom he served with in Panama years ago.

This morning at the chapel service on Camp Victory, the man who preached for the protestant service was Chaplain Peterson, whom I had met at Fort Bragg last year when I spoke to his unit before they deployed. When I went and shook his hand, he told me that after I?d left Fort Bragg he found out that I was good friends with his sister and brother-in-law, Meg and Kurt Pfuhl in LaCrosse, Wisconsin.

Unbelievable.

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Thursday, 9/15/05

We’ve seen so much in the last few days that it’s hard to know where to begin. Perhaps an apology is in order – for those of you following the blog, I’m sorry I haven’t been able to update it more often. You’ll know why in a moment.

Let’s start with today and work backwards. I am currently writing from a large hall inside one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces in Tikrit. The place is amazing. There are over 65 palaces in a large compound situated along the Tigris river. I am in the largest of them, a palace that it’s said the Mad Dictator built for his aged mother. It’s about the size of the U.S. Capitol building and almost as nice. Everything is marble, and the doors and walls are gilded with verses from the Quran. The 25-foot ceilings are carved with incredibly ornate murals and more flowery Arabic script, and hung with chandeliers dripping with millions of small crystals. What’s strange is that this place has been transformed into a military compound, so the outside of the building is stacked with sandbags and concertina wire. Communications cables run everywhere, and there are air conditioners and generators humming away outside at all hours. Oh, and the toilets don’t work very well, so there are port-a-potties strategically placed around the outside of the building.

This place has the feel of a world war two military headquarters somewhere in an exotic European castle. It’s surreal. It makes me smile to think of Ol’ Saddam rotting in an Iraqi jail while the ridiculously opulent monuments to his ego on the Tigris are being enjoyed by honorable men and women from the U.S. Armed forces. We were here on September 11, and got to attend a moving 9/11 memorial ceremony attended by members of the 42nd infantry division who were present at Ground Zero during that awful day in 2001. Then we got to interview some of them, and hear the conviction in their voices as they spoke about why they are here. I was especially proud to hear them talk about wanting to share real freedom with the Iraqi people so that they would be able to understand why we value it so much. These are noble men.

I sometimes wonder if there are many people left in our country who understand the concept of nobility and honor, but being here restores my confidence.

We’ve had a chance to check out some of the other palaces here – this place would make a great tourist destination. There are ponds, pools and baths, as well as ancient ruins all on this compound. In fact, one of the world’s oldest Christian churches is here, a sixth-century Syrian Orthodox church and monastery. The ruins are partially buried beneath a thirteenth-century mosque, which was renovated more recently by Saddam Hussein. It’s still cool, though, to touch the stones that were likely laid by the faithful over fifteen hundred years ago.

There is one palace that was bombed during the invasion – the part facing the river is pancaked, and the entire thing is now off limits. On either side of the front door, however, are two statues of Saddam, one in soldier’s regalia and the other – get this – as Nebuchadnezzar. Apparently the Mad Dictator fancied himself a modern-day reincarnation of the Babylonian ruler. I’d say he’s closer to a modern-day Louis XIV. Think the palace at Versailles and you get the picture. What a nut case.

It’s really striking to come straight from the trash-strewn streets of Samarra, where we were yesterday, to the marble halls of Saddam’s palace. He’ll probably never realize that if he had just put his people first, he’d probably still be in power.

There are palaces here for Saddam, for his sons, their concubines, and guests. Lavish and opulent are complete understatements. What really strikes me, however, is that to one of the poor waifs on the rubble-strewn streets of Samarra, my new house in West Virginia would probably seem almost as grand as these palaces – beyond their comprehension, anyway. I guess before I point the finger at Saddam, I’d better make sure that I remove the log cabin from my own eye. 

Well, anyway, it’s pretty cool to be sleeping in Saddam’s Mama’s house. Definitely don’t get to do that every day.

Last night we slept in an air-conditioned CHU (pronounced “choo”), which stands for “containerized housing unit,” which is what most of our troops stay in on the various Forward Operating Bases around Iraq. I went to bed pretty early this morning, having stayed up late sitting in the Tactical Operations Center (TOC) of the unit we were visiting in Samarra. It was busy there, and while I sat watching a movie on one of the flat-panel screens on the wall, I listened as some of the unit’s snipers observed two men get out of a vehicle on a bridge and begin emplacing an IED. We listened to the radio chatter as the snipers described the men’s actions, then engaged them with rifle fire. The now-wounded Anti-Iraqi Forces (AIF) fled, but as the night progressed, the snipers tracked them down and arrested them, finding quite a bit of bomb-making material in their vehicle. Another IED attack thwarted. It felt pretty good to know that at least that roadside bomb wouldn’t be taking any American lives. And those bombers wouldn’t kill again.

The longer I’m over here, the more I realize that the people at home (including myself until I saw for myself) really have no idea what is going on in Iraq. News, by its very nature, reports the out-of-the-ordinary. The ordinary is not news. You never hear how many IED’s are found and diffused safely, but according to the Explosives Ordnance Detatchment (EOD) people I interviewed, probably 99 of 100 IED’s are unsuccessful. You don’t hear about the bombs that don’t go off. You don’t even hear about the AIF that are killed are captured each day, unless we net a ton in one operation.

More than that, you don’t hear about the young men who live under near constant threat of death for 12 months at a time, who display a sort of grim humor as they patrol through the city while shut inside non-air-conditioned Humvees in temps that reach more than 120 degrees. You don’t hear about the professionalism, if not outright compassion that they continue to display to the people of Iraq, even after losing close friends to an IED or mortar attack. You don’t see the children who come running from their homes as a convoy passes to wave and flash the thumbs’ up sign.

But I’ve seen all these things in the last couple of days – and it helps me to better understand the bigger picture. We might not have correctly justified our entry into Iraq in the eyes of the world, or at least articulated the reasons behind it, but I’m starting to see that a stable Iraq is coming, if we stick it out. The men I met this week on the bleeding edge of this battle see it – the people of this wounded and abused nation need a hand up, and once they regain their feet, they’ll be a prosperous nation that will stabilize this region. It might take ten years and trillions of dollars, but that will be shorter and cheaper than simply adopting a reactionary stance toward terrorism. We’ve started down this road, clearing the weeds, plowing new earth, and planting the seeds of a new nation. Now we simply have to be patient, continuing to nourish the fragile garden and pull out the noxious weeds until it comes to fruition – and then we will have defeated terrorism, to what extent it can ever be defeated.

I’ve heard it from the Iraqis I’ve met in the street – they are coming to understand that while this is still a difficult time, when Coalition forces are present, good things happen. When insurgents show up, bad things happen. The Iraqi people still fear the insurgents because of those bad things, but their hope of a future good is taking root, and soon the hope will overcome the fear.

It always does.

Today we’re in [censored] with task force [censored]. Things are fine here, though it sort of sounds like the opening day of hunting season in Damascus, MD. We are safe, and got a good four hours or so of sleep last night after arriving on a late-night blackhawk flight from [censored]. Today we’ll be heading into [censored] and taking a look at some of the hottest areas in the country. Nothing to worry about, though. We have body armor. I’m kind of glad that we finally got to a place where we have to wear it – I’ve been lugging the stuff around for a week.

I have lots more to share, but very, very limited email capability way out here. I’d like to tell you more, but for security purposes I cannot. I’ve probably said too much already.

After my last post, I never actually got to sleep. We had to report to the busses that would take us to the airfield at 0130. the ride to the airfield took over an hour – and I was amazed at the amount of traffic that was still on the roads after 2am. Many of the vehicles we saw were either military or police, though. We took all our luggage and had it tagged and inspected at the airfield – outside in a dusty (everything is dusty!) lot edged with port-a-potties and concrete barricades. There were about fifty journalists there waiting to enter Iraq. We stood around getting to know each other, finding out who was from where and practicing the old Army standard of “hurry up and wait.”

Our plane didn’t take off until well after sunrise. I was very excited to actually be riding in a C-130 again – for the first time since about 1991. The sounds and smells took me back to my time in the Rangers, but this time, I didn’t miss it like I thought I would. It was fun, sitting on our body armor because we were going into a hot airfield in Baghdad, feeling the plane bob and weave violently as we came in for landing…but I didn’t get the feeling that I wished I was still in the Army. This way is much more fun.

Then with a jolt we were down. Since the C-130 doesn’t have any windows to speak of, the landing took me by surprise, and I realized that though I’ve flown in hundreds of C-130’s, I’ve rarely landed in one.

Pretty soon the rear door groaned open and we waited for the large forklift to roll up and remove the palletized luggage. Then we journalists filed off in two lines to the rear of the aircraft, bathed in the Jet-wash of the still-running engines. More memories. I love the smell of JP-8 aircraft fuel. To me, it smells like adventure.

Most of the journalists hurriedly strapped on their body armor and helmets before deplaning. I didn’t hear any incoming rounds, so I didn’t see any reason to do so, and carried mine off under one arm. The heat was already stifling. We moved off the tarmac, got a quick briefing from a 4-foot black female specialist who really liked to say “hooah?” and then retrieved our bags.

This is where the day started to deteriorate. My elation with actually being on the ground in Iraq quickly wore off as we realized that there was nobody there to pick us up. Hundreds of troops milled around the depot – both coming and going, but our contact didn’t show. We waited. We sweated. I wandered around until I found a phone and tried unsuccessfully to reach our point of contact. It was 10am, and I was told he wouldn’t be in the office until at least 2 pm.

This was when the lack of sleep started to catch up with us. We hadn’t had any real food since the night before, either. As the sun got higher in the sky, the temp climbed past 100, then past 110. It was brutal. We were waiting in the shade of an outdoor shelter, but pretty soon it started to feel like its tin roof was simply magnifying the heat.

We weighed our options. Waiting where we were until 1400 wasn’t one of them. We could either go inside one of the tents nearby (which was VERY dirty and had no place to lie down, though it was air conditioned somewhat.) or we could try to make our way to a nearby base (camp striker) and find some temporary quarters where we could take a nap. At first, we settled on the former, but after another hour I knew that we needed to go somewhere to actually sleep, so we decided to make for camp striker.

That was easier said than done. There is a bus that comes once an hour, but the exact time is sketchy. This means that one must wait outside in the blistering heat until it comes. Fortunately, Brian happened to wander outside and see the bus pulling up, so we hustled out there, only to find that there were about 60 people and their gear waiting to board a bus built for only about 40. Thankfully, though, this is the Army, and it never heeds recommended capacities when it comes to transportation. So we got all of us and our gear on the bus. Not much later, we rolled into camp striker.

It didn’t take us very long to find a few empty cots in one of the transient tents. It had air conditioning, but the temp outside had climbed to around 120, and the struggling air conditioners in our tent could only keep it around 95 inside. We weren’t complaining, though, and we stripped down to our shorts and flopped on dirty green army cots, exhausted. I slept for about an hour, then got up and went to find a phone and call our POC again.

I still couldn’t get through, but I did leave a message. Then I went next door to the striker chapel, and introduced myself to the chaplains. They were very cordial, and fed me Gatorade and let me relax awhile there, after I donated a case of my books to them, which I am coming to loathe for their weight. I can’t wait to get rid of the rest of them.

It took until 5pm before I finally made contact with our POC, who was livid when he found out that whoever he had thought was coming to meet us had dropped the ball. A few quick phone calls later, and a nice Lithuanian Captain showed up to get us. Don’t ask me why they sent a Lithuanian captain, but we weren’t complaining by this point. And he has a really cool name: Ulo Isberg. You gotta love that. He was very friendly and extremely helpful, and he whisked us away to camp liberty, which is much nicer than camp striker in terms of accommodations. He took us to the chow hall to get some real food, and got us some nicer tents with concrete floors and better air conditioning. Our tent has about forty cots in it, but there are only two other men sleeping here besides brian and I. Oh, and Tom, a reporter from the Philadelphia Enquirer who has been with us since Kuwait. He’s heading the same direction we are, so we’ve all taken to looking out for each other.

Our new tent even has wireless internet access, except I’m not using it because it’s $30 a day, and doesn’t have enough bandwidth to skype on, so it’s not worth it.

It’s been really neat being able to text message Connie and some other friends and family from over here. Technology sure is amazing. Connie sent an email asking if I was wearing my body armor, and I had to laugh, because at the time I was sitting in an air-conditioned tent watching a Nicholas cage movie on a big screen tv.

Just because it’s a combat zone doesn’t mean it’s all combat. Oh, there are signs of it everywhere – pockmarks in the concrete wall surrounding the base from RPG’s, crumbled aircraft bunkers that took direct hits from smart bombs when we first took over, etc, but so far, this doesn’t feel like the front. It feels like the rear staging area, though I suppose with cowardly insurgents about, anything is possible.

I’m also amazed at the number of armed civilians around. I’m starting to think that KBR is a country, not a company. A very good percentage of the people we dealt with today were employees of KBR – some of them clearly playing tactical military roles, others simply service jobs. Many of them are former military anyway, and we heard several stories of the riches that can be had working in Iraq as a civilian. Or Kuwait, for that matter.

We will probably leave early tomorrow for points north. Keep praying!

Well, I didn’t do much at all today – nothing exciting anyway. Mostly I
just holed up in the hotel room in my PT shorts and worked on my upcoming
book. Sorry to disappoint you, but that’s about it. We went to the pizza
place here at the hotel for supper – it was really pretty good. I had a
white pizza with some kind of hoity-toity Italian cheese, topped off with -
you guessed it – hot dogs. Go figure. After you’ve been here a day or two,
you start to realize just how expensive everything is. I paid almost seven
dollars for a bottle of water today. Yow.

We went over to the KBR office to pick up our passports, and were issued our
“callsign,” for our trip into Iraq. I can’t tell you what it is or somebody
would cut off my fingers or something. Feels pretty high speed, though. In
the process we found out that the lady doing our paperwork was a believer.
Actually, in talking to the staff here at the hotel, almost all of whom are
philipino, it turns out that most of them are brothers and sisters. Very
cool. We felt sorry for them, though, because although they are paid very
well here, some of them have spouses and families which they support back in
the phillipines, but they don’t get to see them except perhaps once every
year or year and a half. Pretty sad. I asked one girl what she did during
holidays like Christmas, and she answered, “stay in my room and cry.”

I may not be able to blog again for awhile – we will be moving soon. I’ll
get back online as soon as I can.

NOTE: I’m posting lots more pictures on my Flickr online photo gallery.

I’m fascinated by different cultures. I love going to different countries
and seeing how they do things differently than we do. Sometimes it’s
exotic, other times compelling. And sometimes, it just plain weird.

As I posted before, today was mostly all misery and hardship. It got to
where just lifting that ice-cold drink to my lips was exhausting. And some
of the condensation dripped on my leg. It was horrible.

Anyway, tonight we took a cab into town to find some excitement. There’s a
new mall in Fahaheel, and we wanted to check out their extensive food court,
which consists of a cinnabon, a burger king, a pizza hut, and a waffle hut.
Then there’s two oriental places. One of them, however, had a guy who was
making what looked like tortillas on what looked like an upside down wok.
When I first walked up he was making a burrito-like sandwich out of one of
them, (the tortillas, not the wok) and on it he put cheese, tomatoes,
lettuce, (I’m thinking, that looks healthy!) and then he topped it off with
a large serving of French fries, then rolled them up into it like a burrito.
I saw that and decided one thing for sure:

I gotta get me one of those.

But the guy was a good salesman, so by the time I got finished, my burrito
also contained curry chicken, green peppers, onions, black olives, sesame
seeds, and some kind of dark green sauce that would take the paint off your
car. I was served this delectable delight on a fine Styrofoam plate with a
large dollop of hummus for dipping. Actually, it wasn’t too bad and tasted
kinda like the Mexican food I had in Alaska last year.

After that culinary adventure (during which I noticed that most of the
people in the mall had stopped what they were doing and were looking at me
like they didn’t REALLY believe I was going to eat THAT.), we moseyed around
the mall. Most of the shops sold a staggering array of women’s clothing -
from the lacy naughties on up to formal dresses. Brian wondered aloud why
there were so many women in these stores who were covered from head to toe
in what looked very much like black curtains. Including gloves and scarves
and in some cases, dark sunglasses. At least we assumed they were women. I
did happen to catch a glimpse of one of their toenails as a clutch of them
sashayed past us, and the toenail looked vaguely female. Anyway, we
wondered if they were in the habit of wearing those frilly fancy clothes
that they were buying UNDER the black curtains, or what. I suppose if
that’s the case, it doesn’t matter if they were female or not. Well, not to
me, anyway. Whatever a person does in the privacy of their own curtains is
between them and the curtains.

Another interesting thing we noticed was that some of the younger girls were
in the habit of wearing the Burqua headdress, but dressing like Brittany
Spears from the shoulders down. This truly confounds me. It’s like saying,
“I’m too conservative to let you see my hair, but how ’bout this tush?” Go
figure. Her daddy’s probably thinking, “those &%$@ Western movies!”
(which, surprisingly is the exact same thing that most American fathers are
thinking.)

Anyway, we moved on to another part of the mall, and found ourselves in a
place where my keen intuition immediately smelled something fishy. Further
investigation revealed that the cause was approximately ten thousand fish,
being sold with or without their fins (a nice man with a cleaver would
happily whack the poor fishes’ extremities off if you so desired). Some of
the fish looked really quite tasty, but as we had just eaten, we decided to
move on. Actually, we practically ran for the exit. There, we were
accosted by about thirty laborers all wearing identical red overalls. They
all wanted a picture with my digital camera and I. They were very friendly,
and smelled marginally better than the fish.

Brian decided to get some cash out. He said, “What’s the exchange rate?” as
he punched his pin number into the ATM. “Three to one,” I said. Well, he
took me to mean three dinars to one dollar, which wasn’t quite correct.
When the ATM finished spitting out twenty dinar notes, I said, “What are you
going to do with all that money?” Brian gave me a quizzical look and said,
“why, it’s only sixty bucks worth.”

A few frantic phone calls later, and Brian was just barely able to keep from
having his home repossessed by the bank, and his wife agreed to let him back
in the door only if he was accompanied by a very large Kuwaiti Diamond.

Well, not really. But it did cause a bit of consternation on Brian’s part.
It eventually worked out okay, though. Brian should be out of debtor’s
prison before his youngest graduates college.

After that we left the mall and walked down the street a bit. It was a cool
shopping district, and I stopped at a pharmacy and purchased a box of
painkillers, or at least the pharmacist nodded and grinned fiercely when I
pointed at my head and said, “Ow! Hurts!” The Arabic writing on the box
looked like a stick man being eaten by a shark, and there were two English
words that I found reassuring: “Oral route.” So, we’ll see if my headache
goes away.

As we left the pharmacy, the Muzzein started it’s call. Nobody seemed to
notice but us. But I thought the sound was cool, and reminded me of a stick
man playing an Arabic-style instrument of some kind while being eaten by a
shark. So I whipped out my video camera and handed it to Brian and said,
“get some of this.”

That’s when the real fun began.

Around us was a fairly large contingent of the ubiquitous black curtains,
some of them following their husbands around. One of the men, upon seeing
us with the camera rolling, got pretty upset. He ran up to us and started
yelling, “Picture, no! Kuwaiti women, no!”

I’m thinking, “what’s the problem, buddy, you’ve got them all covered up!”
But apparently there was a problem. The man got more and more upset, and
when he started pulling at us and grabbing for the camera, I turned to Brian
and said, “time to go, man.”

Brian concurred with my astute observation. We turned and walked away
briskly. I didn’t think it’d take much to outrun a man in a white dress,
but the guy was persistent. He followed us for about two blocks. When he
started calling to other men on the street, I had the feeling things were
going to get worse in a hurry. So I turned back to the man and said, “Sir,
I’m sorry, but we didn’t mean to take pictures of your family.”

To make a long story longer, the man demanded that we “clean” the camera of
the offensive footage. So, I opened up the video camera and did so. But he
still wasn’t happy. Then he wanted Brian to destroy the disposable still
camera in his pocket. We tried for quite some time to explain that the
camera would not have taken very clear pictures of his woman since it never
left Brian’s pocket. But he wouldn’t be dissuaded. Finally, we decided
that it wasn’t worth ruining Kuwaiti-American relations over an unused
disposable camera, so we gave it to him, and he left. Interestingly enough,
afterwards, another Kuwaiti man came over and begged us not to let this
experience color our view of Kuwaitis. “these are just our habits,” he
explained. “please forget this day ever happened.”

But actually, it was the highlight of my day. I think it is a great lesson
in another culture.

Note to self – never photograph the curtains.

Don’t forget to check out my Flickr online photo gallery for more of this: