End of the Adventure

The adventure is over. I'm back at home again, readjusting to life in the real world. Life is definitely good.

My stay in Kuwait was pretty quiet. It felt really great to turn in my body armor for the last time. That's forty pounds of gear that I will NOT miss. I chilled most of the day Wednesday: read a book, took a nap (when was the last time I took a nap??), hit the gym, and made sure I had everything ready to go that evening. Then we headed out to the airport. The place was packed, and so was our flight. I wanted to turn in some of my miles for a business class upgrade, but United was having none of that - all seats were taken. We loaded up and left right on time.

Sometimes I can sleep okay on planes, other times not. This was one of the "nots". Even with a bulkhead to lean against, I just could not get into la-la land. I'd been wondering about our route, what with the volcano in Iceland still spewing ash, but we followed our normal path up over eastern Europe, north of the UK, and just south of Iceland. I talked with one of the stewards who said that they had to move their flight path well to the south the previous week: over the Mediterranean and Spain, but that now the ash was blowing north into the Arctic, so the airlines could resume their normal routes.

We landed early Thursday morning at Dulles. Processing through immigration was quick and efficient, if impersonal. Dulles must be a miserable place to work, though, because not one of the workers I've encountered on several trips through there over the past year and a half has been remotely cheerful or friendly. Passengers, to them, are just a pain in the ass who must be tolerated and processed as fast as possible. Once through customs, I was met by my "limo" driver, PJ, and taken up to Winchester. Damn, it was good to be back in the US of A again! It was a beautiful morning: cool, clear, with green grass and blue skies, and very little traffic going our way. PJ was a lot of fun to talk with and we jabbered about all kinds of stuff the whole way. We arrived at the hotel in Winchester early, before a room was ready, so I parked my bags behind the counter and headed over to IHOP for breakfast. Oh my gosh, the pancakes, eggs, and sausage were to die for ... at least after DFAC pancakes, eggs, and sausage. (The coffee, no: it was more like colored water). I was a happy man.

The rest of the day was for readjustment. I was pretty worn out after the flight, so I had a nice afternoon doze, went for a jog, and hit a Mexican restaurant (run by real Mexicans) for dinner. Excellent! I hit the rack early, and was up and wide awake by 4 in the morning ... which was 11 by my body clock, so I couldn't decide whether I was up too early or had slept in!

The bus came and picked us up at the hotel a bit after 7. There were quite a few of us returning from Iraq, Afghanistan, and even some from Haiti. (Yes, the Corps of Engineers is very active in Haiti rebuilding). We had a full classroom for the outprocessing, but they have it down to a fine art now. We were poked and prodded, had blood drawn, and questioned about whether we had any suicidal or homicidal thoughts ("not now, but if I miss my flight this afternoon, I certainly will have some"). I turned in my duffel bag full of gear that they gave me a year ago and that stayed in the bag the whole time. Finally everything was done and we were loaded back onto the bus and returned to the hotels. My second "limo" driver, Pat, showed up and off we went to Dulles. Pat's an interesting lady and we had a wonderful time talking all the way down to the airport.

Dulles on a Friday afternoon was pretty much what you'd expect: a madhouse. Remember what I said about how friendly their workers are? You can double it on a Friday afternoon. And you can double the time you think you'll spend in there, since it's far more crowded than you think it is. I made it to my gate with five minutes to spare. And, of course, my flight was packed and they were looking for volunteers to bump. Not this guy, not today!! The flight to Atlanta went off on schedule. At 5:15 we flew directly over Asheville, and I could see my studio and all the old familiar places. I wanted to just put on a parachute and jump out right there - hey, save some time, right? Atlanta was just as crowded and nuts as Dulles. Again, I made it to my gate with five minutes to spare, and off we went, right back in the direction I'd just come from.

As soon as I got off the plane in Asheville, I headed out to the parking lot. Janis had brought the dogs. I could see them out in the parking lot as I approached and they knew something was up. They've learned that when they go to the airport, they're either picking Daddy up or dropping him off, and if he's not with them right then, that means they're picking him up. So their heads were up, they were looking around, and they were excited. I whistled at them and here they came, two little hairy rockets at full speed, followed closely by Janis. You couldn't ask for a better homecoming.

So my Iraq adventure is over. I'm getting readjusted to life at home now, and thinking about what comes next. I'll write up some final thoughts on Iraq in another post, but for now, I'm just going to chill. And enjoy being home.

Skip Has Left The Building

I'm on my way home! The past couple of days have been busy: finishing the turnover, getting stuff checked off my checkout list, throwing stuff away, and mailing one final box of things home (remember that old sweatshirt that I said I was going to throw away? I lied.) Yesterday I packed my bags and said a final goodbye to my friends and co-workers.

Yesterday was also my birthday. Many thanks to all of you who sent birthday wishes on email and Facebook - they were all greatly appreciated. I got the best birthday present ever: clearance to go home!

Early this morning the support team took me to the airport. I got myself checked in and manifested on the flight, then headed over to the Green Bean coffee shop for a last cappuccino in Baghdad.

Just after lunch, they called our flight. We put on our body armor, grabbed our carry-on bags, and went through the scanners (yes, the military uses scanners, too, but at least we don't have to take our boots off). Then we lined up and walked out to the waiting C-130. It was hot … not as hot as the day I arrived back in September 2008, but pretty warm nonetheless. Still, when I'm on my way out, I can put up with a lot. On one of these military cargo planes, you really want to get way up front, or way in back to have a little legroom and avoid the worst of being crammed in like sardines. C-130's don't have "seats", they have four rows of long nylon netting, and passengers are jammed in, side-by-side, in rows facing each other. Unfortunately, everybody else on this flight knew the "front or back" rule, too, and despite my best efforts, I wound up jammed in the middle with a bunch of burly soldiers all around me. Oh, well, when I'm on my way home ...

I put together a playlist of "going home" songs on my iPod, and as the pilots started the engines, I put on my headphones and cranked it up. It started out kinda slow with James Taylor singing "Carolina On My Mind". Just when Hootie and the Blowfish sang "Sha na na na, I'm going home" the plane started moving. A few minutes later, with Ten Years After's joyful yowp "Going home to my baby" in my ears, our plane rotated its nose and launched into the air. I write a pretty good soundtrack to my life.

On military air, though, you're never 100% sure where you're going until you get there. So when we landed and they opened the cargo doors, I was a happy man when I saw we were, indeed, in Kuwait. We then did the normal bus ride from the parking area to the processing tents, then checked in with all the various check-in places. I went to the IBA warehouse and turned in my body armor - no more wearing a 40-pound jacket! Then we went to retrieve our bags. You know how your bags come out on a conveyor belt at civilian terminals? We can only dream. Here, they deliver the pallet, with all your bags strapped down under heavy netting, to a dirt lot across the dirt street from the processing tent. You gotta remove the netting and unload all the bags yourself. And when one of your bags is a green duffel bag, which is identical to about 50 other green duffel bags, finding it can take a while.

But I did, and settled myself in to the Corps of Engineers' trailer. A couple of us got to talking about food, somebody said something about McDonald's french fries, and next thing ya know, that's where we're headed. DFAC french fries are just not in the same universe as McDonald's, and after three months with the crummy stuff, we had to go for the gold. Those of you who've gone through Ali Al Salem airbase after months in-country will know exactly what I'm talking about.

So now I have a Big Mac sitting like lead in my stomach. I had a shower to wash off several pounds of Baghdad and Kuwaiti dirt. For tonight, I have a cot with a worn-out piece of foam for a mattress, in a cubicle next to the duty TV that goes all night. Do I care? Hey, I'm on my way home: I can put up with a lot!

Recommended Reading

I've found a few interesting things on "the internets" and on paper lately. Here are some -


There's a blog called Ephphatha Poetry that had a tremendous posting on Thursday. Called "Imagine if the Tea Party was Black", it does just that: it imagines what the reaction would be if blacks were the ones descending on Washington armed with semiautomatic rifles. By coming at Tea Party tactics from outside the box, it provides a very different and enlightening perspective.


Soldiers' Angels Germany is a nonprofit (501 (c)3) organization that provides support to wounded soldiers being treated at Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany. Their post from Monday, "The True Heart of the American Soldier", is a gut-wrencher. So are many of their other articles.

The financial implosion that we are just beginning to emerge from is a very confusing thing, at best, to try to understand. While trying to make some sense out of it, I stumbled on Paul Krugman, an op-ed contributor for the New York Times. His columns explain in clear English what's going on. He also writes about where his disagreements with other economists are, and why, and in a respectful manner (as long as they have a leg to stand on). Paul also has a blog where he posts his shorter, more off-the-cuff remarks.

Some of my friends on the political far right have been raising a ruckus about Saul Alinsky. He was a community organizer, beginning in the 1930's (when it was a very, very bad time to be a community organizer) and continuing right up until his death in 1972. Alinsky wrote a book, Rules for Radicals, after the debacle of the 1968 Democratic presidential convention in Chicago. My friends have been saying, in effect, "Read this book by this communist! He was Barack and Hillary's biggest influence! You'll see how evil they are!" Well, I'm reading the book, and I have to say it's brilliant. It's Machiavelli for the common man. It's also about as evil as an automotive shop manual. Now the comparison to a shop manual is not really a reach. Alinsky's book describes a set of techniques and approaches to creating a grass-roots movement for those who have little or no political power. These techniques and approaches can, and are, being used by both sides of the political spectrum. As I read through the book, I see beautifully-written passages that perfectly describe things done by the Tea Party, George Bush, Bill Clinton, the Taliban, Fox News, the Huffington Post - it doesn't matter which side of the political spectrum they're on, they're using Alinsky's tools. Especially the extremists.

And now for a lighter note. We have a rather large library of paperbacks that have collected here over the years. While browsing through it a few days ago, I came across a compilation of a particular line of DC Comics that I used to read as a kid back in the 60's. I'm getting the biggest kick out of finding issues that I remember reading 40+ years ago. And as an artist, I'm really amazed at the sophistication of the artwork. Each page is skillfully laid out to guide your eye from one panel to the other, without your being aware of it. Each drawing is connected to every one around it, and each page is its own concept. The "action" pages, where tanks are shooting and planes are blowing up, are drawn very differently than "quiet" pages. You could teach a whole semester's worth of composition from these old comics. Maybe that's where my interest in narrative art came from ... whaddaya think?

Thoughts on the Status of Iraq

I'm down now to just a short time remaining in-country. I've made a big mental shift in the last couple of days - no longer am I an active part of our effort in Iraq. It's something in my past already ... even though there are still a few action items to get done in the next 48 hours. Joyce, my replacement, has taken "my" projects and is running with them. She doesn't even include me on the cc line in emails anymore. At least until something comes along that throws her for a loop, then she's back here and asking lots of questions. Which is the way it should be.

I've been thinking about how things have changed during my time in-country. Iraq now is a far, far different place than it was 18 months ago, when I first arrived at the Embassy. At that time, US forces controlled the International Zone. Security around the IZ was tight and, within it, we had free rein to go from compound to compound, even walking if we wanted. Outside of the IZ was a different story. The insurgency was already dying down, but it was still very strong and very active. We heard car bombs, mortars, and automatic rifle fire from out there pretty frequently. Rockets and mortars were launched at the IZ with some regularity - usually Thursday evenings so the insurgents could brag about it at Friday prayers. Coalition forces were still in charge of running most of the provinces, while trying to build Iraqi capabilities to run their own governments, ministries, utilities, and other services. The army and police forces were not very effective (I'm being generous here). Utilities (power, water, sewage) were in very bad shape, where they existed at all. If we went outside the IZ or other controlled areas, we drove aggressively, blocking traffic, driving the wrong way down streets or even on the sidewalks, and Iraqis had to get out of our way or get run over, wrecked, or shot.

Now it's very different. There are still bombs, mortars, and rockets, but we saw more in a typical day 18 months ago than we see in a week now. Most attacks are targeted against specific Iraqi individuals for political or criminal reasons. American forces are not attacked very often, and most of those are just because they're targets of opportunity. The IZ is controlled by Iraqi forces, not Americans, and it does not feel nearly as safe anymore. Out in town, we don't drive against the traffic, we merge with it. Iraqis are in charge of all their provinces. The army is an effective security force and actually has the respect of most of the people. Police forces are a different matter - they're still seen as sectarian and corrupt. Speaking of corruption, it's unbelievably rampant in all areas of the government. Corruption is the single biggest issue that's holding this country back. If they could reduce it, Iraq's economy could take off. People here want to work, not shoot at each other.

But shooting at each other is a way of life. There have been some nasty bombings in the past couple of weeks. These seem to be intended to try to resurrect the violent sectarianism of a few years ago. If that's the insurgents' only goal, they will fail. Iraqis are tired of all that divisiveness just for the sake of it. On the other hand, they will take up arms again if they feel their lives and well-being are affected. Unfortunately, the ongoing power struggle over the election results could cause serious problems. One of the reasons the Sunni insurgency took off was because many Sunnis felt they were being shut out of the new political structure (they were, partly because of their own boycott of the '05 elections) and also because they believed the Shiites were taking revenge on them for many decades of oppressive Sunni rule. They had nothing to lose by fighting back. Right now, they have a ray of hope with Allawi's political party slightly ahead in the election results. But the current Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has started a recount process in the Baghdad area to try to take some of Allawis votes away, and Allawi has started another recount process in another area of the country to take away some of Maliki's votes. So the election comes down to a knife-edge between the two parties. Remember the big dispute we had over the Florida election results in 2000? That was a cake-walk compared to what's going on here. We, at least, have a history of following the rule of law to settle disputes. Iraqis don't. Unless Maliki and Allawi can figure out a way to resolve this with minimal bloodshed, there could be a very serious schism in another couple of months.

Having said that, I've also seen the Iraqis go right to a precipice and actually over it time and again, only to come to some sort of arrangement that allows everybody to walk away with their pride intact. Will they do it again this time? That's always the million-dollar question.

Still, my sense is that Iraq will continue to muddle forward. The mood here is vastly different than 18 months ago. There are still serious tensions and disagreements, and still threats of violence, but I don't get the feeling that people really want to go back to the bad old days. Iraqi "muddling forward" won't look anything like what we would like to see, but it'll work for them, and that's what will matter. In this country, there are good solutions, bad solutions, and Iraqi solutions. The only one with a chance is the Iraqi solution.

A Bit of This 'n' That

You've been reading that we're drawing down in Iraq. I've been saying it, too. Let me give you a visual. Here is the group I worked with last summer, when we were still in the International Zone. This gaggle of folks oversaw Army Corps of Engineers construction and capacity development projects all around the country.

I'm somewhere in the middle. And if some of the faces look a little loopy, it's because I deliberately made them unrecognizable.

Here's what was left of that group as of two weeks ago. Since then, three of these people have left and two more of us (me included) will leave in the next week.

Recently, I came across an interesting blog on the Graphic Design Degrees site. They have a lot of links to other blogs and sites - for example, 100 interior design blogs, 100 web tools (painting applications, color analyzer, sweater pattern generator (this aimed at my niece, who has her own blog on knitting and a shop on etsy), notes on the psychology of color, links to comic strips, all kinds of stuff. I could go to that site and waste all kinds of time. Wait a minute, I did already.

Yesterday, I mailed my "keeper" junk home. Now my room is cluttered with the "take with me" pile, the "throwaway" pile, and the "giveaway" pile. Stuff keeps migrating back and forth between all three. My goal is to have a very small "take with me" pile ... but since I'm a bit of a packrat, the damn thing keeps growing. Do I really need to keep that big, heavy, very frayed 15-year-old sweatshirt from Bosnia any longer? (YES! ... well, ...) You get my point.

It's another beautiful day here in Paradise: no wind, no dust, blue skies, nice warm temperatures. And pollen. A bunch of people in the office have been knocked on their collective butts the past two days with clogged sinuses and watery eyes. People who've never had problems with allergies before will have them here. Last year I had a bit of trouble with it, but for some reason it hasn't bothered me this year. Knock on wood.

So now I need to go get some stuff checked off my check-out checkoff list. A couple of useless interviews, turn in my cell phone, things like that. Joyce, the proud recipient of all my projects, is happily working away in the next cubicle, trying to figure out what the hell I've done for the past six months and what needs to be done now. She's taking over at a time of big transition, when one project is just finishing up and three projects are all about to be launched within days of each other. So she's flailing around a bit, and I let her flail some and then give her a few pointers, and off she goes. She'll do fine. The projects will do fine. My work here is done!

Almost.

Into the Home Stretch

It's been a busy few days since my last post. Yes, you guys back in the States have this thing called a "weekend", but we don't. Saturday and Sunday are just two more days to work 10 hours.

We held an evaluation board on Friday to determine which contractor, out of three, would get a contract to help one of the provinces develop a master plan for economic growth. It was a very interesting exercise. We had to go through each of the proposals beforehand, noting what we thought were strengths and weaknesses, and determining how well the proposal matched what we needed. Then on Friday, we got together in one room to hash it all out. With four people doing the evaluations, we had four very different sets of notes, and it was actually fun to kick our ideas back and forth and eventually come to a consensus. It was very clear to us which one should get the contract. What was most interesting to me was how well some of the proposals answered our concerns, and how poorly others did. Especially the "poorly" part: you would think that companies that routinely get multi-million-dollar contracts would be able to put out a high-quality, very in-depth proposal, but that is not necessarily the case.

Once the board was done, I had the honors of preparing the report. Worked on it all day Saturday and most of the day Sunday before finally getting it out to the other board members for review and comments. But this 12-page report was my swan song: the last major task I had to do here in Iraq. Everything now has gone over to my replacement, Joyce.

So now I'm starting my wrapup and checkout tasks. Yesterday, I went over to the medical center and got my post-deployment health assessment done. (Still breathing, not inclined to kill myself or anybody else - good to go). This morning, I took my two big gorilla boxes (plastic trunks) and several smaller boxes over to the Post Office and mailed them home. I've got my checkout sheet and need to get some signatures on it this week. And I need to clean a bunch of crap out of my room. We've been watching that volcano in Iceland. The flight route between Dulles and Kuwait passes right by Iceland and through the ash cloud over Europe. However, they must be diverting to the south, since the planes are still flying - yay!

Seven and a wakeup before I leave Baghdad.

A Little More Cheer, Please

I walked out of my barracks this morning into a fabulously beautiful day. No dust at all, no wind, brilliantly blue sky, sparrows chirping, perfect short-sleeve temperatures. Wonderful way to start the workday! Strolled into the office and brewed up a pot of Peet's coffee. Checked my email and found a really nice thank-you note from the president of a company that just finished one of my projects. Looked on a couple of news sites and didn't see much in the way of mass stupidity. Saw a report that the Dow is just over 11,000 again, which is exactly where it was when I first arrived in Baghdad 18 months ago. (Heck, if I'd known that my presence in Iraq was what kept the Dow below 11,000, I'd have left a long time ago!)

So things are going very well right now. I've been working for six months to get a number of new projects launched. The contract for one of them will be awarded within the next couple of days. It's to provide assistance to an Iraqi university to bring their curriculum in line with American accreditation standards. This is a really big deal for Iraqi education: many schools are working hard to rebuild the reputation that Iraqi higher education had many years ago. The American education system is recognized as one of the best in the world, so these schools want to show that they can meet our standards. While a lot of universities here are talking about it, this is the first project in all of Iraq to actually do something. The contractor that we've selected is a good one and has a very effective plan. At the end of this project, the university will not be accredited (that's a multi-year effort), but they'll know what they need to do and will already be started down that road.

We're going to award another contract in a week to help a province develop a master plan for economic development. This one, I think, will pay huge dividends. The economy there is in the toilet: years of neglect and war have pretty much destroyed their industries, unemployment is somewhere around 40%, and they're not getting much help from anybody. But their governor is working extremely hard to turn things around and his staff is very motivated and eager. They just need some assistance in figuring out the best way forward. We have three proposals from contractors with urban planning experience to help the province develop a master plan. We're going to do the evaluation board tomorrow to determine which of the three will get the contract, but I'm really excited about what's going to come out of this. The province is going to get a heckuva good road map and a lot of assistance in lifting themselves up by their bootstraps. A better local economy means more jobs and less reason for people to shoot and bomb.

There's one more project that'll be awarded before the end of the month. We're going to bring on some training specialists to develop a bunch of training courses for one of the Iraqi ministries. They have a lot of unskilled workers who need to be trained on basic operations and maintenance. Things like, "if you change the oil in the diesel generator every once in a while, it'll last a lot longer". Many of these workers are former Sons of Iraq, the militia forces who used to fight coalition troops until we hired them to fight Al Qaeda. All they really want to do is have a steady productive job and take care of their families. This project will give them some new skills that are a bit more useful than carrying an AK47. Our project won't train them all - what we're doing is creating the courses and the Ministry will continue using them once we're done. So this is another project that I've really been excited about.

I'm not going to get to see any of these projects develop, though. My part has been to bring them to contract award. I'm handing them off to somebody else who will get to see them come to fruition. I'll just see a signed contract and then, in ELEVEN DAYS, I'll get on the plane and fly out of Baghdad for the last time. My time here is about done!

So it's a beautiful day in Baghdad, my projects are doing well, and I'm a happy man!

More Insanity

This is getting ridiculous. I really don't like making posts about political matters, but sometimes I just have to. Yesterday's post was on that wacko Jon Voight and his question of whether Obama is pushing the US towards civil war. (The answer, of course, is that Obama isn't, but Voight and his far-right wingnuts are). Just now I read a news article saying that some Tea Partiers in Oklahoma want to form a militia. I ask, FOR WHAT?? What do you need a "militia" for when you've got the National Guard? What are you going to do, shoot any Federale who wanders into town? And did you ever notice it's always the right-wing who starts grabbing their guns and waving the flag at the same time? Do they have any concept that this nation is founded on a concept called "democracy", where you decide your course of action by the ballot and not by guns? This is insanity.

Back in the early days of the Bush administration, I saw them running this country right off the tracks. I was not very vocal then because I thought, these guys can't be serious. I was wrong: they were very serious, and screwed this country up something fierce. Now I see even worse insanity coming from the right wing again. I've already been accused of being over the top on this issue, but this news story warrants it. I'll say it again:

If you believe that guns and militias are the way to make things happen in the United States of America, you are going against every principle that this country has ever stood for. You are trampling the Constitution that you say you value. By using threats of force, you are nothing but a terrorist. You are un-American. And you are a traitor to your own country.

If you don't like what the Administration and Congress are doing, fine. Lobby them. Protest. Organize. Nominate your own candidates and work to get them elected. If you don't like a law that's in place now, file a lawsuit. That's the way we do things in this country: through the rule of law and peaceful means.

People in the Germany in the 1930's didn't stand up to the Nazis when the brown-shirt thugs began their campaign of terror. We shouldn't stand for it in our country now.

Jon Voight

A friend of mine, who is of the ultra-conservative mindbent (yes, I have friends on both ends of the spectrum) posted an admiring note on Facebook on Jon Voight. Voight has been back in the news with a scathing open letter to President Obama, accusing the President of orchestrating a great lie upon the American people. The letter is really disgusting. And it pissed me off to no end. Here's my reply to that Facebook post:

Jon Voight is utterly and completely off-base. His letter is nothing but misrepresentations, outright lies, and outrageous and unfounded accusations. During the Bush years, Voight was staunchly in the camp that believed that to criticize the President, particularly in a time of war, was to criticize the country and was therefore unpatriotic. From an interview with Bill O’Reilly in 2008: “When I hear people saying quite unthinkable things about our President, when I see our President defaced, which is defacing our country – he’s the leader of our country, he’s the leader of the free world – my heart is very heavy.” Except now we have a different President, one he doesn’t agree with, so Voight feels free to say unthinkable things about our President, and deface our President, and therefore deface our country.

Voight bothers me for a much deeper reason. He accused President Obama of creating a civil war. (Actually, he phrased it as a rhetorical question in an interview with the Washington Times). Nobody in the Administration – or Congress, or anywhere else in the government – had ever brought up a “civil war” until Voight did. He, himself, has raised the spector of violent conflict within the people of our own country.

The last I checked, inciting violence is a crime. As Americans, if we don’t like our politicians, we bitch about them and then vote them out of office. We don’t advocate civil war. Advocating war among ourselves is not only un-American, but it’s treason. So Jon Voight is, therefore, a liar, a hypocrite, un-American, and treasonous.

If you don’t like what Obama and your other elected officials are doing, fine. Work to elect somebody else. Do it peacefully. Respect the fact that others have different opinions, and just because they’re different doesn’t mean they’re not patriotic Americans just like you.

In his letter, Voight states “We can weed out the liars and agitators”. Look in the mirror, Mr. Voight.

Video of a Baghdad Attack

This is a rare event: two blog posts in a single day. Since posting my comments earlier, I found some discussions about the now-infamous Wikileaks video of an aerial attack in Baghdad in 2007 that killed a number of Iraqi men, among them a photographer and driver for Reuters. The video, entitled Collateral Murder, is on virtually every news site and probably has been shown on most TV news shows as well by now. I'm not going to post it as everybody else already has.

I watched the video yesterday. It's very disturbing, in and of itself. You see and hear aircrews discussing the men on the ground, getting cleared to fire, shooting at the group, and then discussing the results afterward. You see living men get killed. And the discussion sounds cold and heartless.

But there is much more to the story than the Wikileaks video provides. It seems to me that Wikileaks is pursuing a sensationalist approach, or at least has an agenda to pursue. Just the title, Collateral Murder, shows that they are not a neutral arbiter of facts. As the video unfolds, Wikileaks edits, zooms in, and repeats sections to make their points. However, they do not mention, do not show, or ignore other aspects that undermine their "murder" allegation.

When I first watched the video, I could see how the Apache pilots could have thought that the photographer was carrying a weapon rather than a camera. And when he stuck his head around the corner to shoot a picture, it certainly looked like he was aiming something. Remember that there was a firefight going on in that area at that very moment, that had been going on for some time, and American troops were receiving fire. In a situation like that, if somebody aimed something towards our own troops, my presumption would have been "weapon", not "camera".

I thought the attack on the van was wrong. I saw no indication that they were doing anything other than removing the wounded for treatment. Wikileaks made a big deal of the children being in the van, but I never saw them until Wiki zoomed in late in the video (at about 16 minutes), and even then all I could see was an unidentified "something" moving around in the front passenger seat. Slow-motion replay was not an option to the Apache pilots, who had to make a decision in real-time, in the heat of a battle.

I've found two very informative postings about this video. One is by Anthony Martinez, a former Army sergeant whose job during the surge entailed watching this type of video feed from UAVs and giving (or witholding) clearance to fire. As he points out, this wasn't just a group of photographers and observers standing around innocently: early in the video, at 3:45-4:00, two men are clearly seen carrying an RPG and a rifle of some sort. Wikileaks ignored their presence, but it shows that the Reuters photographer and driver joined a group of men, at least two of whom were armed, and chose to stay with them. Anthony's viewpoint is that the initial attack on the group was understandable. The second attack, the one on the van that arrived to remove the wounded, was not.

The second posting is an online Q&A led by David Finkel. David was a Washington Post reporter who was embedded with the Army unit that was on the ground that day. Soldiers from his unit were the ones who arrived on the ground towards the end of the video. David also notes that one of the men killed had an RPG and another was armed. David brings a very well-considered viewpoint to the discussion that needs to be heard.

Although the news reports focused on deaths of the Reuters photographer and driver, I note that David Schlesinger, the Editor-in-Chief for Reuters, has not called the incident "murder", as Wikileaks did. David noted that this is an example of the dangers faced by reporters in wartime.

Wikileaks and many others have cited the language of the pilots and ground controllers as examples of their inhumanity. Well, this is WAR. One of the things you do in war is dehumanize your opponent. (You don't think so? Listen to Republicans talk about Democrats, and Democrats talk about Republicans, and they're not even shooting at each other. Not yet, at any rate.) British sailors were "Limeys". Germans were "Krauts". Japanese were "Japs" or "Nips". Viet Cong were "gooks". Arabs were "rag-heads". One of the ways you deal with the fact that you're killing people is to strip them of their humanity first. Then when they're shooting at you or your compatriots, it's easy to call them "bastards" and shoot them back. But if Americans are such heartless goons, please explain to me the soldier seen running with the wounded child to get him/her to treatment. Wikileaks ignored that event.

Finally, I see that Wikileaks is trying to raise funds for more exposures of American malfeasance, particularly in Afghanistan. I wonder, though, why they don't run exposures of the other side? Where are their exposures of how the Taliban hides behind women and children, often deliberately putting them in harm's way for propaganda purposes? Where are their exposures of how Sunni and Shiite militias are, right now, bombing restaurants filled with innocent people, or murdering their opponents and their families in cold blood? Where are their exposures of Afghan or Iraqi government corruption that siphons off up to 70% of any budget? (Yes, you read that right, up to 70%).

Wikileaks call this event "murder". It was not. It was an unfortunate event in a stupidly-conceived war. If they want to claim murder, they'll find many more examples of it if they turn their lenses to the extremists. Not American soldiers.

Winding Down

Three weeks from today, I'll be in Kuwait, on my way home for the final time. I've started the transition here in the office by transferring responsibilities for my projects over to my replacement, Joyce. She is taking the lead on all of them and I'm providing her with the history, backstory, files, and guidance. Sometimes it's a bit difficult for me. Something will come in, a question or action item, and I want to just jump in and do it. And I have, a few times, but that's not fair to Joyce. So I keep telling myself "take a deep breath ... step away from the projects ... let them go ...."

There has been a discussion raging at the next desk for the past half hour, arguing over where some responsibilities should reside. This discussion has really been going on since last summer. Our high honchos back in the states have been trying to slash my organization's expenses, but they haven't really understood what we were required to do. So over the past nine months, they've managed, bit by bit, to whack away almost all of our support contractors. And they tried to whack away most of our responsibilities. The problem is that some of the responsibilities they whacked were actually written-in-stone requirements, and the support contractors they whacked were the only ones who knew how to execute those requirements. So now they're beginning to find out that these functions still need to be done, but nobody can do them. Ooops! Their intention is to dump them right back on us, only without the support we need. Wrong answer, but it very well could be the one that's imposed.

I went crazy working on this last September, and again around the first of the year. Now here it is again. Same arguments, same lack of understanding at the HQ level, same same same. But this time, I'm just shaking my head, thinking "take a deep breath ... step away from the arguments ... let them go ... "

Meanwhile, back at the ranch ... er, my room ... I've started the sorting process. It's amazing how much junk you pick up over the course of a year. I've got the throw-it-away pile, the give-it-away pile, the ship-it-home pile, and the take-it-with-me pile. The ship-it-home pile is the most important right now. I've gotta figure out what I really want to keep and then get it in the mail sometime in the next week or so. Since I'm a bit of a packrat, that's not as easy as it sounds. Do I really need to keep a year's worth of Art in America magazines? Especially since I haven't read them since they were new? No. So why were they in the send-it-home pile? Good question. So I took a deep breath last night and carted them all off to the library. (Really. As if anybody else besides me is the least bit interested. They're not, but it goes against my religion to throw away a perfectly good magazine or book.)

The weather is shifting into early-summer mode. The days are very warm now, in the upper 80's. I thought this morning that we might get some rain (ugh) but that seems to have blown over. Since it's just about lunchtime now, I'm going to go for a plod around the compound. (Some people run, some people jog ... I plod.) So if you'll excuse me, I'm going to take a deep breath ... step away from my desk ... let it go ...

New Painting

The DVD Seller

Oil on panel, 16"x12"

This afternoon was my "weekend". I did this small painting from some photos that I took last summer of a kid who sold bootleg DVDs on the street near our compound in the IZ. He was a hustler, too: always had something that he was sure that you needed. And he always had this worried, slightly desperate look on his face. Of course, if you had to make a living selling bootleg DVD's on the streets in Baghdad, you'd probably be worried and slightly desperate, too.

Thoughts on a Kindle

Well, I'm finally over my 9-day bout with Saddam's Revenge. The bug, whatever it was, is gone, and good riddance to it. I'm able to go jogging again, and yesterday I hit the gym for the first time in a week and a half. Today I'm a little stiff and sore ... but it's a good stiff and sore.

The rain has gone, too, and the mud is pretty much dried out. Our weather has been alternating between cool enough for jackets and being a bit warm. Yeah, that's really specific, huh? Okay, to be more accurate, it's ranged from the upper 60's to mid-80's at the height of the day. Today is supposed to be in the upper 70's, and we're looking at 90 by Sunday. In other words, pretty perfect. As long as we don't get rain, that is.

For some reason, we're in a "conserve water" mode. I don't know why. The vehicle wash racks have been closed, so we're driving around in beat-up filthy Suburbans that look like they haven't been washed in months. Actually, they haven't been washed in months. It's getting to the stage where you want to change into your dirty clothes before climbing into the truck.

A bit over a year ago, my wife bought me a Kindle. It was a pretty cool little gadget. I could carry around a ton of books without carrying around a ton of weight. It was pretty easy to operate and the screen was easy on the eyes. No flicker, like you get from computer screens. I became a Kindle advocate and got into lots of conversations with strangers about this little "iPod-for-books".

But on my last trip back to Iraq, something on the Kindle's screen went wrong, and the top inch or so doesn't work anymore. That meant that every time I turned the page, a couple of lines went missing. I figured out a workaround and was able to finish the book I was reading, but then was faced with the question, do I get a replacement, or no?

I decided, no. The Kindle is a neat little thing, but it is not for me. Yes, it can carry around hundreds of books, but I don't need hundreds of books, I only read one or two at a time. More importantly, to me the Luddite, is that I feel a sense of technology inserting itself between me and the writer without any value added. When I'm reading a book on paper, I feel a direct connection - it's as if the author is speaking directly to me, personally. On the Kindle, there was a sense of (insert robotic voice here) "I will process this publication for your perusal" (end robotic voice) and I did not feel that direct connection anymore. Maybe it's related, but when I'm reading on a computer, or to a less extent the Kindle, I feel a bit rushed. There is no time for contemplation. Time is money. With a paper book, I can take my time.

Then there are the practical aspects. When I finish a really good book on the Kindle, I can't just hand it to somebody and say "hey, you gotta read this". Nope, the book is only on my Kindle, and the only way they can read it is to (a) borrow my Kindle (no way) or (b) buy it themselves. And although you can carry around a lot of books in a Kindle without increasing your baggage load, but you also have to carry around a charger. So in my luggage, I had chargers for my laptop, cellphone, and Kindle.

The final straw was in thinking about electronic obsolesence. Mine was a first-generation Kindle; the second-generation has been out for a while and the third-generation is probably well along in development. And Kindles and iPads and other e-readers don't have the same electronic formats, meaning a book on one machine is not compatible with other machines. So what happens when the format you use is no longer supported? You have to upgrade, buy replacements, or lose them. Remember 8-tracks? They went away and were replaced by cassettes. So those of us who went through that transition had to duplicate their 8-track collection on the new format. Then cassettes went away and were replaced by CD's. And now CD's are being replaced by a whole slew of digital file formats, which will probably be replaced again in a few years. Applying this line of thought to the Kindle, well, I have a whole bunch of books that I bought that (a) must use a special gizmo to read, but (b) that gizmo is broken, and (c) it will be replaced by some incompatible format in the future anyway. Meanwhile, a book on paper printed 500 years ago is just as readable today as it was then.

So I'm not going to replace my broken Kindle. Paper or plastic? Paper, please.

Life in the Mud Pit

Rain. We've had three days of rain. It's clear today, which is good, but the rain means that it's muddy again. I'm hoping that maybe this'll be the last bout with rain and mud that I have to deal with before heading home.

"Heading home": what a wonderful concept! I've been deployed for 18 months and have one more to go. It's looking better and better. I'm already starting to look around my room at things, thinking "okay, that's going in my shipment home, this is going in my giveaway pile, that's going in the throw-away pile ..." Very cool!

What is NOT cool is that I'm on Day 8 of a bout with an intestinal virus. Just when I think it's going away, it comes back with a vengeance. Yesterday, I went over to sick call to have it checked out. They don't know what this bug is, either, but are doing some tests to try to figure it out. (Hint: I am really really glad that I'm not the one to have to do those tests!) The virus came from eating at a new sandwich shop run by locals on the base. The docs said that I was not the first one who had problems after eating there, either. Surprisingly, they said the food joints causing the most trouble were the Taco Bell, Burger King, and the Mediterranean restaurant. Just because it says "Taco Bell" here doesn't mean it meets US health standards. So if you're here at Victory Base, or know somebody at Victory, tell 'em to stick with the DFACs.

The LA Times has an interesting article about Iraqi immigrants living in El Cajon, California. El Cajon is just east of San Diego. Most of the Iraqis that I work with seem to want to go to the States, thinking that we live in a paradise. Well, compared to Iraq, we do. But coming to the US as an immigrant is much harder than it appears, as immigrants for 400 years have been finding out. Trying to establish yourself during a recession is worse.

Somebody from Japan keeps trying to leave comments on this blog. Unfortunately, they come across in kanji characters. I'll be happy to post the comments if they're in English.

A Bit of This 'n' That

Things have been moving along their own unpredictable path since my last post. (Actually, since long before my last post, but I had to have some sort of lead-in line, didn't I?) We have some rather large organizational changes that are supposed to happen on April 1st. That's one week away, and you would think that we would know what those changes would be by now. You would be wrong. We are probably sending a lot of our contractors home by then, but maybe not. A large part of my branch's mission might shift to another organization on base. Or maybe back to a group in the States. Or maybe it won't be done at all. Or maybe we'll continue to do it after all. My guess is that they might get around to making a decision, oh, late on the 31st. Or maybe not.

So what do we do, when faced with organizational indecision? Compare notes, share the latest rumor (which will be completely contradicted by the next rumor), and continue to plug away.

Long time readers (all 3 of you) may remember that we went through a similar drill last August and September. It was not fun. I spent my days madly writing and re-writing PowerPoint briefs to educate the decision-makers on requirements, options, and recommendations. Most of that input was ignored. This time, at least, I've not been involved in those discussions at all. Which is fine with me: those who are making the decisions will have to live with the consequences. They've been clearly told what those consequences will be, but I guess they don't believe it. What can you do?

Last Sunday, a few of us went to a new sandwich place here on base. It's run by Iraqis and had just opened up. I had a really delicious sandwich, but it gave me a stomach virus that has, shall we say, left me a few pounds lighter than normal. Quick: where's that scale? Maybe the dreaded DFAC isn't so bad after all!

The weather here is gradually warming and drying. We've had a cool spell, with temperatures in the 70's. At least it's been dry. But now we're looking at some rain and even cooler temperatures over the next three days. Aack! Rain means at least five days of mud. I can do without that ... but it ain't my choice, is it?

I saw an article last night about a Sikh who was just commissioned as an Army dentist. Very cool! Sikhism is a monotheistic religion from the Punjab region of northern India. It isn't Muslim nor Hindu, it's completely different. For the past 26 years or so, no Sikhs have been accepted into the services because, for religious reasons, they do not shave nor cut their hair, and they wear turbans. Finally, the Army has gone out on a limb and accepted two Sikhs into their ranks as doctors. I think this is a very positive step and wish these two men, and the Army, all the best in the world.

The Shrine Down The Hall

The New York Times has a beautiful photo essay about the cost of war. Titled The Shrine Down The Hall, it looks at the untouched bedrooms of soldiers who did not come home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Go see it.

Memorial Service

We had a very moving memorial service today for one of our security force people. Robbie was a young Brit who spent 15 years in the Royal Marines. He was an accomplished triathlete, very sharp, a "by the book" team leader. He was also a husband and a father to three young children, one of whom he helped bring into the world just a few weeks ago. Robbie was killed last week by a roadside bomb while on a mission to a project site.

Unfortunately, his is not the only hit that our security forces have taken recently while at, or en route to, project sites. A week prior to Robbie's death, a member of a different team to the north was killed by a sniper. A few days ago, two security guys lost their legs to another roadside bomb.

That spate of incidents is extremely unusual. It's not uncommon now for us to go for weeks with little activity, and there have been surprisingly few injuries or deaths over the past year or so. It's easy to forget that we're still in a war zone. We have a Burger King and a Cinnabon on the base, and there are salsa dance classes, yoga, and college classes. The national and international newspapers only talk about the ongoing election process, which is a bit of a zoo. I don't recall seeing anything more than a brief one-liner about any of our forces being hurt or killed, and never anything about a US civilian, and especially never anything about contractors. If your only exposure to what's happening on the ground in Iraq is the media, you'd think that we're sitting here on our bases, twiddling our thumbs, waiting to go home.

But traveling around Iraq is still dangerous. The number of bombs and mortar attacks and so forth is way down, but not eliminated, and there are a few trouble areas where shitty things happen a bit more often. All three incidents that I mentioned were in these trouble areas. Our security guys, Robbie included, knew the dangers and the risks and willingly took them.

Why? Well, that's a good question. A skeptic might say it's for the money or the adrenaline rush. That might come into play for some people. Everybody has a lot of reasons why they're here. Most of the military members are ordered here; some volunteer. All the civilians and contractors are here because we volunteered. Money is probably part of the reason; career advancement may be another. Maybe I'm an idealist, but I think most of us are here primarily for other reasons: the opportunity to contribute to something bigger than ourselves, to participate in something vitally important, to do something that not many other people can do or are willing to do. I think that's especially true for those who put their lives on the line and go outside the wire on a regular basis.

I didn't know Robbie, but I heard about him from his buddies. Robbie was a level-headed, very dedicated guy. You have to be to survive 15 years in the Royal Marines, and Rambos don't last long in the real world. So as a level-headed guy, Robbie certainly wasn't here just for the money. He was here for something else, bigger than him. And he accepted the risks.

When I first arrived, I wanted to get off the bases as much as possible. I've been lucky enough to have made some trips around the country. But I've also gained an appreciation for what it takes to do those trips, and especially for the security forces that take me where I need to go. Every one of those men and women has been extremely professional. I owe it to them to make sure that my trips are absolutely necessary.

On the other hand, our very business requires us to go outside the wire. You can't run construction projects if you never see the sites. And we're not building things, or (in my case) running training and development programs, just because we want to. These are projects that will help make Iraq stronger and more able to stand on their own feet. The sooner they do that, the sooner the level of violence will drop, and the sooner we can all go home. And then maybe one day, in a generation or two, Iraq might actually be a fully-functioning member of the world community.

So that's what Robbie was doing here: helping this place get back on its feet. He knew the risks, just as we all do. But we have to take them if we're going to succeed. Tomorrow morning, Robbie's teammates will go back out again, taking construction managers and others to project sites or meetings in the Green Zone, or any one of a number of other places. The mission goes on.

Jambo!

Jambo, rafiki! I'm practicing my Swahili here. We have a lot of Ugandans on this base serving as guards at the DFACs, the BXs, MWR facilities, and a zillion and one other places. They present a rather fierce appearance when you walk up to them: stern-looking young men armed with AK-47s. Actually, as long as you're behaving yourself, they're the nicest guys in the world. "Jambo" (prounounced "JAHM-bo") means "hi"; "rafiki" (pronounced "ra-fee-kee") means "friend". My Swahili is limited to the very basics: hello, how are you, I am fine, have a good night. But evidently there aren't a lot of soldiers, civilians, or contractors around here who even know that much, so whenever I say "jambo", it always gets a reaction: a big smile, and a hearty "jamBO!" back at me.

Oh, and for those of us of a certain background, a key phrase is "Nguvu jamachie", which means "sea power"!

I've had a pretty busy week of nothing much happening. Most of my projects have been at stages where I'm waiting on somebody else to do something, so I've been working away at another task that requires painstaking attention to detail, repetitive searching of databases, and will result in virtually nothing of any importance. Guess how excited I am about this task? You got it.

Just in the past few days, though, we have had something develop that's kinda cool. One of my new projects was to provide training to workers in an Iraqi governmental organization. However, it was pretty much dead due to funding limitations, two changed deadlines, and the impossibility of getting it on contract using our normal procedures. Yesterday, we had a "get-r-done" meeting with the head of our contracting shop, our lawyer, and me, and we figured out a rather creative way to do the contract. We also learned yesterday that the focus of the training is shifting. It had been aimed at taking workers at the very basic levels - we're talking valve turners and concrete mixers - and giving them a slightly better understanding of their jobs. However, now the organization is getting several thousand new employees from the Sons of Iraq. These are the Sunnis who used to be the insurgents in Baghdad and Anbar, but came over to our side in exchange for a paycheck and the promise of full-time jobs later on. Well, now is the "later on" time and the Iraqi government is finally living up to their word. So now the task is to take several thousand Sons of Iraq, whose only job skills are using automated weapons, and teaching them how to be valve turners and concrete mixers. Or maybe taking the existing valve turners and concrete mixers and teaching them how to teach the new guys. That hasn't been determined yet. Whatever the case, my nearly-dead project suddenly has a new life. I'm much happier, too: I really don't like shutting down worthwhile projects, and I was getting to be a grumpy bastard after shutting down three.

On to another topic. The USO has been bringing more music acts through here lately. Last night, several of us went to see a concert by Bad Company. As I discovered, though, there are two Bad Company's. One consists of three of the original members; the other is Bad Company Featuring Brian Howe. Howe was the lead singer for eight years during the band's heyday, but they eventually kicked him out for being an asshole. So the group we got last night was the latter one. They didn't do a bad job, really. The lead guitarist's amp blew up during the first song. Since you can't have a rock concert without a screaming guitar, there was a 30-minute wait while somebody ran over to the Army band and borrowed an amp from them. But the patch job didn't provide the volume that the music demanded. The bass was thumping, the drums were loud, but the guitar was really hard to hear. Very well-played, from the little I could pick out. And the lead singer really was an asshole. If he was in my band, he wouldn't have lasted two days, much less eight years. I say that based on his attitude on stage, the way he treated his bandmates, and the types of "jokes" he was cracking, which were very demeaning. However, their last song was "Bad Company" and Howe dedicated it to all the soldiers who were no longer with us, saying that they are the real Bad Company. Very very cool.

A Good News Story

It's the day after the Iraqi elections and the initial reports are pretty positive. Despite a lot of rocket and mortar attacks (over 100 in Baghdad alone), the turnout was pretty heavy. Not only that, it looks like the attacks pissed off the normal Iraqis so much, they went to the polls just to spite the insurgents, even if they hadn't intended to vote! Good for them! I haven't seen much in the way of accusations of vote fraud, at least not yet, and that is also good news. There's an excellent article in the New York Times today about it, and another on NPR. Seems like all the other "news" sites I checked were more concerned about the Academy Awards and had only lightweight reporting on Iraq. I'm not really sure what that says about American priorities, except that I don't like it.

Here at Victory Base, it was a quiet day. We kept hearing some muffled "booms" in the morning, but it turned out to be just a crane that was moving some empty shipping containers on the other side of the compound. Our weather is warming up and so I went for a jog at lunch time. Last night, I even got to watch the first third of the Atlanta race, too. All in all, a pretty good day.

Friday Follies

Last night, a group of us went out to dinner at a DFAC over on the other side of the base where our offices used to be. Friday night is seafood night and this particular DFAC is known for its crab legs. As well it should be! Unlike our own culinary catastrophe, this one cooks crab legs up so they're just right, and then they pile them on your plate. All-you-can-eat, all-free crab legs. It's almost enough to make you want to sign up for a tour in Iraq. Almost.

Then we went over to one of the Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR) facilities for Salsa Night. Yes, here in a war zone, they have salsa night. They had a salsa class before everything got started. No, your intrepid reporter did not get up and stomp around like Lurch: he stayed on the sidelines. Salsa has a few steps to memorize and, as Janis will tell you, I have no memory. One of our group did try to teach me a little merenge, which was more my style: not quite as complicated as the two-step, it was more like "one, one, one, one ..."

Then the band started up. There's a real Army band on post and they so salsa/merenge, and they're good. It was great to hear live music again. And the dance floor came alive. All the latinos/latinas were out there moving like they'd been doing it their whole lives. Lots of palefaces, including several of our group, were out there doing their Lurch impressions. One of the most memorable dancers (NOT from our group) was one Army woman. She must be a senior Army reserve officer because she was way older than even me. Now soldiers aren't authorized civilian clothes on base, so when they want to dress casual, they wear their PT gear. So here was this senior Army lady, in shapeless Army black PT shorts, a shapeless Army grey T-shirt ... and gold high heels. Yes. I kid you not. She could move pretty well, but I could not get over those gold high heels on a senior Army officer.

Today was somebody's worst day. This morning, just before I went in to work, a couple of our security contractors parked their armored Land Cruiser, hopped out, and as they walked away, the Toyota quietly rolled backwards, then over the edge and SPLASH ... right into the canal. Took a great big tow truck, a team of riggers, two fire trucks, and three hours to get the now-ruined Land Cruiser back out. (It's just a little water, you say? You haven't seen Iraqi water!) There's probably a guy packing his bags tonight for his flight out tomorrow. Poor guy - it could have happened to anybody here.

More on Iraqi Elections

We're getting down to the last few days before the critically-important elections in Iraq. There are some good articles in the news lately. Today, there's a New York Times article on a Shiite candidate for office. He used to be the #2 guy to Muqtada al-Sadr, who led an extremely violent Shiite faction during the worst of the fighting. This gent has tons of blood on his hands, but the Shiite-led election commission is perfectly happy to have him run for, and probably win, a seat in Parliament. Meanwhile, as described in another New York Times article, they've kicked 515 mostly Sunni candidates off the ballots. The claim is that they had ties to the Ba'ath party. However, that's like kicking somebody off the ballots in Russia because they once had ties to the Communist party. The Shia are using every means at their disposal to rig the elections to their benefit. That's normally just politics, but here in Iraq, politics have blood consequences. If the Sunnis feel like they've been robbed, then there's no doubt in my mind that there will be violence. The question is: how much? Nobody really knows at this point.

Meanwhile, Iran is steadily increasing its clout. They send books to libraries and blankets to the poor and build good will. We build libraries, housing, power plants, sewer systems, fresh water systems, schools, markets, roads, and thousands of other projects worth billions of dollars and are derided as hated occupiers. Although Iran is wielding more influence over Shia politicians, they both take pains to keep it quiet. Iraq and Iran have a long and turbulent history and the people's memories of the war in the 80's, which left a million dead, is still pretty fresh.

One of the dangers of an increasing Iranian influence is that Sunni-led nations like Saudi Arabia will step up their efforts to arm and support Iraqi Sunnis. They're already involved to some extent (not officially: there is no Saudi embassy in Iraq) and are stirring the pot.

Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) is, of course, taking advantage of the situation. Al Qaeda is associated with Sunnis and is using the spector of a Shiite takeover of government to try to build its base. Most people don't buy into AQI's extremist views, but if they feel disenfranchised, then there could very well be an increase in AQI support and violence. They launched a nasty, triple-suicide bomb attack in Baquba yesterday that killed over 30 people. We'll see more in the next few days.

So where does that leave us right now? Watching, waiting, and pretty much holed up on our bases. We've already got a pretty low profile, but now the US military and civilian organizations have virtually eliminated our presence outside the wire. We do not want to give any impression that we're doing anything to influence the elections.

Unlike American elections, the outcome of Sunday's voting won't be known for quite a while. I'm hearing maybe the 18th. Since Iraq has a parliamentary style of government, they'll have to form coalitions for the government to function. Since this is Iraq, it'll take forever and will be very, very messy.

I'm due to leave here at the end of April. They might have something in place by then.

Iraqi Elections

Elections in Iraq are just five days away. This is a huge event - probably even bigger than the last round of elections a year ago. In the last elections, the US played an important (and largely invisible) role in getting the ballots out, the polling stations set up, and security arranged. This time, it's the Iraqis who are doing it.

Politics in Iraq is a blood sport. If you want an image of an Iraqi politician, think of Tony Soprano. Saddam Hussein was just Tony Soprano on steriods. With him gone, there are now thousands of Tonys all around the country, each doing whatever is necessary to advance his or her interests. And if that means rubbing out a rival, or an associate of a rival, well, many of them wouldn't think twice. It's just politics. Nothing personal. (Well, except here in Iraq, everything is personal).

Over the past year, I've seen a change from a general insurgency to specifically targeted attacks. A police chief will be shot by a sniper. A sheikh will have a sticky bomb put on his car. A family member of a particular family will be kidnapped. All of these attacks are designed for a very specific audience. Yes, there are occasional large-scale bombings that damage or destroy a whole ministry. In fact, I think we're over-due for another one, since it's been several weeks since the last. They're a bit like earthquakes: the longer the time between incidents, the bigger they're gonna be.

From the point of view of an American sitting on a base, I don't worry too much about bombs. Most are targeted against Iraqis. If there's an attack on western civilians, security forces, or the military, it's usually as a target of opportunity. At least, that's true here in the Victory Base area; some other bases (particularly up north in the Mosul area) get mortar or rocket attacks fairly regularly. Even there, though, the attacks are somewhat desultory. The focus is clearly on other Iraqis, not Americans.

The Sunnis largely boycotted the first elections several years ago and they're still paying the price. They participated in the second round of elections last year and began to recover (politically) somewhat. But now I see the same sectarian divisions rearing their heads. About 400 candidates, mostly Sunni, were disqualified from this round of elections. The election boards who disqualified them were (a) almost all Shia and (b) operating in secret. There seems to be another purge of "Baathists" going on ("Baathists" these days is a synonym for Sunnis) and it includes top personnel in ministries, the Army, and police. So the Shia seem to be working hard at keeping the Sunnis marginalized. Well, we all know how well that worked out before: that's what threw gasoline on the insurgency. Will that happen again this time? That's the million-dollar question.

There are several minefields that we're trying to get through. One is the election, which is being driven by sectarianism. I complain about the extreme partisanship between the Democrats and Republicans; that's nothing compared to Shia/Sunni/Kurd divisions. Another is security in general. Another is getting this economy off the ground - but to do that, they will have to adopt internationally-recognized ethical standards. (Actually, this is a huge cultural difference: what we see as bribery, for example, they see as just a normal business payment).

Regardless, our drawdown is still on track. We're on a bit of a hold for now, until things stabilize after the election, and then we'll kick it in gear again.

I've got just under two months left. And I'm ready to go.

Genie Maples, Artist

A Life Gone Lacy

Oil on canvas, 36"x36"

Have you ever watched somebody slowly get better and better at what they do, maybe for years, and then suddenly something seems to click and they take off like a rocket? My friend Genie Maples is one such person. Her studio is down the hall from mine. When she moved in, she was painting large, vibrant, colorful, sometimes jolting abstract paintings. I've watched her work gradually get better and stronger since then. She is a very intuitive painter and works from some deep, non-verbal, but very powerful source. It seemed to me that immersion in our artists' community in Asheville's River Arts District gave her exposure to new ways of thinking about, and making, her paintings. She gained a lot of experience and understanding of her process, the technical and formal aspects of paint on canvas, and most importantly, how to connect her feelings and intuition with the expressive power of paint. So for the past few years, her work has gradually gotten better and better.

Over the past six to nine months, it's like she's hit afterburner. In my own opinion, her paintings have gotten much more sophisticated, sensitive, complex, and powerful. Her newest group of paintings, from which the image above is taken, just blows me away. She's going off in a different direction now and I, for one, am amazed. It's kinda like, "This is one of Genie's paintings? Our little girl has hit the big time?"

Yes, she has. Take a look at her web site and see. Genie's an artist to watch - she's going places.

A Poorly-Aimed Bill

Representative Bernie Sanders (D-VT) will soon introduce the "Stop Outsourcing Our Security Act" in Congress. The act would prohibit the use of private contractors for military, security, law enforcement, intelligence, and armed rescue functions. I think this bill is unnecessary and counterproductive. Below is an email that I just sent to my Congressman, Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC):

Dear Congressman:

I am one of your constituents who is currently working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Baghdad, Iraq. Rep. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) will soon introduce the "Stop Outsourcing Our Security Act". The act would prohibit the use of private contractors for military, security, law enforcement, intelligence, and armed rescue functions.

After having been in Iraq for 17 months now and counting, I see this Act as misguided. There are still lots of very valid reasons for using private security guards.

Here at Victory Base, we use Ugandan and others as guards at entry points all over the base. They're armed because this is still a war zone. If they were gone, then we'd have to bring several hundred more junior soldiers to pull various kinds of guard duty just for this base, and several thousand for the theater. There are guards at the gates, at the entry points for most buildings and offices, and escorting local and third-country nationals doing construction and other work. Trust me, this kind of guard duty is a waste of a trained U.S. Army soldier.

When I move around the country to our offices and job sites, I am taken by a private security firm who's under contract to the Corps. These guys are experienced, skilled, and professional - they're not maniacal killers as the press likes to portray them. Their mission is to get me from point A to point B and back again without any trouble, and they do that well. If we had to rely on US troops to get our job done, we'd need about another 500 soldiers just in Iraq; maybe double that in Afghanistan. And that's just for the Corps.

Politically, there is a huge difference between an Army soldier and a civilian security guard in the local community. Imagine if a foreign leader - the Prime Minister of Iraq, say - came to Washington with a contingent of armed Iraqi soldiers in Strykers and HummVees to escort him around. Americans would go nuts. The same thing happens here in Iraq: our heavy-handed (by necessity) military presence leaves a sour taste in most Iraqi's mouths. Private security firms, like those we use and those that escort Embassy officials, are lower-profile, using cars and trucks that are usually modified civilian vehicles, and the security guards may even be in coat and tie if the occasion demands it. A small group of up-armored Ford Excursions makes much less of an impact than a train of huge MRAPs.

Proponents of the legislation point to the disparity between what contractors make and what soldiers make. Private security contractors, at least those from western countries, do make a lot more than military members. The Ugandans make far, far less. But pay is only a small part of it. If we need more contractors, we hire them, and they're on the job within weeks. When we don't need them, we cut them loose, and we're gradually doing that now. We can't hire and fire soldiers that quickly. It takes one to two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to recruit, train, and deploy one soldier. Then they're with us for a period of years.

The differences in missions are what set contractors and soldiers apart. Soldiers are part of the government and their mission is to execute government policies. Contractors are there to provide support: food services, transportation, maintenance, and self-defense security among them. Take away the contractors and you'll have either a much bigger military presence, or else a reduced military effectiveness. And as our military leaders, from Mr. Gates on down, have made clear, our military is already over-stretched and over-stressed.

We're moving toward a more realistic balance of contractors now. The Bush mindset of privatizing everything is gone, thank God. But there is still a need for contractors in a war zone, so this bill makes no sense. It removes a valuable tool from our toolchest based on misperceptions of things that happened years ago.

Regards,

Skip Rohde

Marine Corps Combat Artist

All of the services have a combat artist program. A couple of years ago, while I was working on the "Meditation on War" series, I tried to do some work with them. It never happened. The Army, Navy, and Air Force had their funding zeroed out, while the Marine Corps had an artist on active duty. I never found out who that was, but today I did. His name is Kris Battles. He's a talented, skilled, and trained painter and sculptor who is currently deployed to the operations in Haiti. Take a look at his blog and his web site. The guy is good.

Changes

Never volunteer to work in a contingency environment if you can't deal with changes. You may go into the office in the morning doing one thing, and come out in the evening doing something entirely different. It's certainly going on in my world.

Two of my projects have been cancelled in the past week. The reason is that the Embassy changed the required completion dates. Where we had been planning on a 1-year period for these projects, from the end of March this year to the end of March next year, suddenly the Embassy moved the required completion dates up to the end of December. That meant that two of mine were no longer viable - there wasn't enough time available to do the required work. So with two whacks of the ax, two projects were gone. More may follow.

One of the killed projects was my biggest - a huge effort to provide training to Iraqi provincial governments all around the country. We've been working on developing this thing for nine months. It was extremely complex. The ground rules that we were given were vague, amounting to little more than "provide training to any provincial government on any kind of subject they need, anywhere they need it, any time they need it." Figuring out how to do that took a lot of work. We were just a couple of days from putting it out for bids when it was cut.

On the one hand, it's very frustrating to see nine months' worth of work thrown out like that. My predecessors put heart and soul into it, and then I picked up the ball and pushed it as hard as I could. This was a project that could have had a very positive impact on the ability of local governments to do things like get the roads paved, provide electricity and water, and pay the salaries of school teachers. All to no avail.

On the other hand, they just made my life a lot easier. Managing that program would've been a nightmare.

I'm seeing a very different mentality from US leadership now. They're definitely shifting into a "no more" mindset. For the past several years, fueled by huge amounts of money that Congress allocated, the Embassy and the Corps have been working feverishly to build infrastructure (schools, water, sewers, roads, hospitals, you name it) all over the country. We're now in the end game. By August, we will be down to 50,000 military left in Iraq, none of them (officially) "combat troops". (We will have "advisors", who look remarkably like "combat troops" - the difference is in their mission). And by December, 2011, they'll all be gone. Meanwhile, we're drawing down, too. Our projects are wrapping up. We have just a few left on the drawing board, mine included. But now I'm seeing our leaders thinking that we should close things down even quicker. Starting new projects doesn't close things down quicker. So, of my seven programs, two are now cancelled, I think two more are in danger of being cancelled, one may not go forward for other reasons, one is about to wrap up, and one is safe.

It's a lot of fun being on the front end of things, starting programs and projects left and right. Wrapping things up and shutting things down isn't near as much fun.

But for now, I still have five active programs that I believe in.

Two New Paintings

Here are a couple of small paintings that I did last Sunday - our holiday. I went up on the roof of our barracks and spent a few happy hours slopping paint around. Both of these are 12"x16", in oil on linen board.

Abu Ghraib Wall

Just to the north of our barracks is the wall that separates the base from Abu Ghraib. The infamous prison is a few miles west of here.

Abu Ghraib Afternoon

As the sun set, this was the view looking out to the west, along the wall.

Flying Things

There's a lot of stuff in the air here. Besides dust, I mean. Birds and bugs and machines. It makes for some interesting experiences.

Early in the morning, right around sunrise, our compound is the gathering place for thousands of crows. Literally thousands of them. You see 'em flying in from wherever the spent the night and they converge on top of us. They'll go for the radio antennae, or settle on the barbed wire on top of the walls, or perch on top of the streetlights. Mostly they fly back and forth, pushing and jostling in the air and for landing spots. They're a noisy bunch, too: cawing at each other and raising quite a racket. After a bit of ruckus, they'll settle on the wire fence. Long rows of crows, all lined up next to each other, all facing into our compound. Then it gets quiet, just an occasional squawk. Seems like they're getting their marching orders from their command sergeant major.

Crow Sergeant Major: "Blackie! Take your squad and check out the dumpster behind the DFAC. Report back to me."
Blackie: "Yowp!"
Crow Sergeant Major: "Yellowbeak! You get your boys and recon the fire station."
Yellowbeak: "Aawk! How come we never get to do the DFAC?"
Crow Sergeant Major: "Shaddap! Squawker! Your squad's got the north canal. Get goin'!"
Squawker: "Aaarp!"

Then all the crows scatter for their work day. Not all at once: one leaves, then two and four, and within just a minute or so, the thousands of crows are gone. And the next morning, they do it again.

We have a lot of pigeons here, too. They don't seem too bright. They'll come flying in right about the time all the crows arrive, only where the crows are pushing and shoving each other, the pigeons are more like "Pardon me! 'Scuse me! Sorry, sir!" They're all flustered, trying to get out of the crows' way, ducking for cover. Then, of course, they make the same mistake the next morning. Well, duh: if you don't want to get into a shoving match with the crows, then don't show up over our compound at sunrise. But there they are, every morning. "Scuse me! I'm sorry!"

I get a kick out of the sparrows. At least I think they're sparrows: little bitty mouse-brown birds, all chirpy and alert. We don't have a sparrow-tree on our compound - maybe because of the crows - but I've seen sparrow-trees on other parts of the base. Sparrows like to congregate at sunset. They'll have hundreds of them in one tree. And they don't just amble in, either. They'll come screaming in at high speed, slam on their brakes just inches from the leaves, and disappear skidding into the tree. Where crows have the morning mission brief, sparrows have Happy Hour!! which is properly spelled in caps and with exclamation points. Happy Hour!! is very festive - you can see the whole tree vibrating as the birds hop from branch to branch, chirping with all their friends, telling tall tales about their exploits that day. They're just as noisy as the crows, but high-pitched and excited. "Whoopee! It's Happy Hour!! Let's get naked!"

We have a rather surprising type of bird here, too. Seagulls. Yes, you read that right. Seagulls. Damned if I know why they're here, but they are. I see them congregate around shallow ponds of stagnant muck as far as they can get from humans. Sometimes I see them circling in the air in some updraft, going round and round, not doing anything in particular. When they're on the ground, they just stand there, not doing anything in particular there, either. They're the wallflower of the bird world.

We also have a lot of flies. Iraqi flies are the most aggressive, persistent, and annoying flies I've ever encountered. Brush it away and it comes right back. If it decides that it likes your eye, it's going to land right by your eye come hell or high water. Moving to a different area will do nothing to dissuade it: it'll follow you around until it friggin' lands on your eye. Period. I guess life as an Iraqi fly is hard, so they have to be even hardier to survive.

Speaking of bugs, right around sunset, the gnats come out. I don't know if they're really gnats, or mosquitoes, or whatever. They don't bite me, they just swarm in different areas, going round and round, maybe following me as I walk, but not really landing and biting. They're annoying, but not for long, because just a few minutes after they show up, the bats do, too.

I like watching the bats. They're very quick, zipping around, changing direction inside their own length. They never present any kind of trouble to humans - it's really hard for a bat to eat a human - but they munch right down on the gnats and whatever other bugs are unfortunate enough to be airborne at sunset. They're quiet, too, since their built-in sonar systems are pitched way too high for us to hear.

What we can hear, and way too loudly, are the commercial airliners on final approach to the airport. They pass directly over our building, a few hundred feet up. Sometimes, I swear that they're trying to land on our roof. I can walk outside and do a visual inspection of the plane's landing gear as they fly by. Inside our office, sometimes the whole building shakes. I am not a fan of living under final approach, but so far, none have fallen out of the sky, so I guess we're safe.

But I like the helicopters. They're the reminder that we're not in Kansas anymore. Helicopters always fly in pairs. We see Blackhawks, the CH-46's from the Marines, and occasionally the Embassy's blue birds. As they fly over the base at night, the helos will have their lights on. As they pass over the perimeter, though, the lights go out. No running lights. Just the sound, which you can't really pinpoint. This is an extremely active base for helicopters. Go to the BX and there are two landing zones nearby, one of which is often being used. Right down the road is another landing zone. Cross the canal, and there's another. I don't ride in helos anymore, more's the pity - I always got a kick out of it. Sure would be fun to get one more ride before I leave here in April.

We have several blimps around the base, too. These have various kinds of bad-guy detectors on them. I like the blimps. They don't move around, they don't make any noise, they just float in the air and do their job. Cool.

Finally, there are the Predators. You can often hear them when it's quiet outside. Sounds like somebody's little model airplane off in the distance. Which it is, sorta. Sometimes you can even spot them, cruising slowly along at a few thousand feet. Predators have more bad-guy detectors on them, and ways to track the bad guys, and maybe even ways to hit at them, too. I really like the Predators!

In the Groove

Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever get caught up! Holy moly. While I was home having a good time, a lot of people were moving at warp speed here. Some evil trolls were trying to take money from my projects, some were trying to kill them off, some were making changes to the ground rules governing all our projects, a few were just monkeying around, deadlines were adjusted, tempers flared, and a few things actually got done as they were supposed to be done. I've got action items out the wazoo, all of which had to be done yesterday. Or last week.

So what can you do? You just do a triage on everything in the "in" box, pick the ones that need to get done first, and push the others to the back, often with a song-and-dance to try to keep somebody happy. I'll be pulling a lot of late nights for a while. At least it's not permanent - I do know that much.

I went to a meeting at the Embassy yesterday to discuss all my capacity development projects. It was a good meeting and I think we're all, more or less, on the same page. Some of the evil trolls mentioned earlier live and work at the Embassy, but we were all able to make nice and come to agreements on what we really wanted to get done. It was very encouraging, actually. I've spent today in a mad rush to try to answer a lot of issues that were finally decided yesterday (or at least the decision process was set in motion). As a follow-up, we've got a visitor here to work on some key documents with us bright and early tomorrow morning. We'll get that item nailed down by lunch time and we'll be making tracks by mid-afternoon. I'm pretty stoked about it.

Yesterday was the first time that I'd been in the International Zone since we packed up and moved back in July/August. The IZ felt much more like a unfriendly bunker than it used to. There were more checkpoints everywhere, all manned by Iraqi Army or Iraqi police. More heavy armor: one checkpoint had a frickin' tank sitting there, with it's barrel literally right in our faces. When US troops manned the IZ checkpoints, there wasn't that much of a visible presence and we could move in and out pretty quickly. Not now. Traffic is backed up and they search vehicles, even ours. I also noticed that they're using bomb-sniffing dogs, which is a big deal. Iraqis don't like dogs, considering them unclean. The last time I went through an IZ checkpoint, they used these little electronic wands to "sniff" vehicles. The problem with the wands is that they're completely useless. The Iraqis are finally wising up to that, after all these car bombs in the city, and now they're getting more bomb-sniffing dogs. Dogs: good. Wands: bad.

The weather on the east coast is affecting what we do here. We rely on our reach-back capabilities, most of which are in the Washington area, but others scattered across the eastern half of the country. And almost all of them are shut down. So this afternoon I got a frantic call from one of my contacts at the Embassy, needing an important financial report right now. Well, I can't provide it from here anymore, that comes from our reachback, so we'll get it for him tomorrow morning ... oh, wait, there's nobody at reachback today ... uh, bummer, dude.

We're having our own weather considerations here. We got a boatload of rain the other day. One day of rain means five days of mud, so we're on day 3 of mud recovery operations. Two more to go. In the States, you have things like grass and trees and drains that generally get rid of all that water pretty quickly. Not here - there's no real plant life around the base to suck up all that moisture so it sits in the top two inches of this rock-hard dirt and turns it into nasty gray stuff that gets in your boots and pants. Yes, I know, I'm whining. Deal with it!

On the positive side, my body clock seems to be adjusting pretty quickly. I take half a melatonin tablet before going to bed, and then if/when I wake up at 2:30 in the morning, I take the other half. At least, that's what I did the first three or four days. Now it's tapering off and I'm more or less on Baghdad time. I like melatonin. It's a natural chemical that your body produces to put you to sleep anyway, and I don't have any adverse effects like with Ambien - I felt like a zombie after taking that stuff. Might even be able to go off the melatonin tonight. We'll see.

I put in my redeployment package today. "Redeployment" means "going home". I'll be leaving here a little earlier than I'd thought: will be gone the last week in April. The countdown has begun. I've got a lot of work to do before then, but at least the end is in sight.

Starting the Final Push

I'm back in Baghdad again, starting my final stint in the country. The R&R trip was just what I needed: a break from the grind, a re-acquaintance with home, and a reminder of what's important.

The trip took 36 hours from home to barracks. The flight from Asheville to Charlotte was delayed a half hour due to weather. The flight from Charlotte to Dulles was delayed a half hour due to weather. The flight from Dulles to Kuwait was delayed 2 1/2 hours due to really bad weather: snow was coming down so hard that they had to de-ice the plane, and we were at the end of a very long line of planes. I had a window seat, which meant that I had something to lean against so I could sleep once we were in the air. Unfortunately, once I woke up, there was nothing to look at: there were solid clouds all the way from Dulles to southern Iraq. It only cleared up as we entered Kuwaiti airspace and by then it was dark. Bummer.

Ali Al Salem airbase was the same old same old. We showed up at 4 a.m. to turn in our bags, then had roll call at 6 a.m., loaded up onto the bus, and were delivered to the C130. This time I got smart. To get a good seat on a C130, you want to be either in the very front or the very back, where you can stretch your legs a bit. Otherwise, you're sitting sideways, jammed in like sardines, knee-to-knee with the poor slob across from you, with your carry-on carried in your lap. Oh, and you're wearing 40 pounds of body armor and helmet. So this time, I positioned myself at the very front. It worked out well, as I was able to stretch and move a little bit.

The flight to Baghdad takes about an hour and a half. We offloaded and went through the usual arrival drills. A guy from my command picked me up and took me back to the barracks. A shower, shave, change of clothes, and a bite of lunch, and I was a new man.

The evil trolls have been busy while I was gone, chipping away at the funding for my programs or causing delays or generally making mischief. I have a good bit of remedial action that needs to be taken quickly. But that's pretty much par for the course.

I feel a bit different this time back. I'm not as personally invested in these projects as I was three weeks ago - there's a distance there, so I can look at the projects a bit more dispassionately. That, I think, is a good thing. Maybe it's the fact that I had a breather and can look at the projects with new eyes. Or maybe it's the fact that I'm entering my final three-month stretch. Whatever the case, I hear a lot of noise and rumblings from On High, from the people we're doing these projects for, and from other related organizations, and I'm not taking it personally, as I might have just a few weeks ago. You want this project done? Let me run it. You want to cancel it? Okay, fine: here's the impact, now make the decision.

I turned in my notice yesterday that I will leave here when my term ends during the first week in May. It felt like a load began to be shifted off my shoulders.

So. Here I am. I still have a lot that I want to accomplish. I want to push my projects further along, and I want to find a good caretaker to turn them over to. Time to get to work.