Christmas

The weather here has grown surprisingly cold. Maybe not for some of the soldiers, but certainly for me, a Texas native for whom 65 degrees is chilly. Actually, the weather here now is fairly close to typical Texas Chrismas - bitter chill at night followed by mild, rather pleasant afternoons.

Walking to work at night or to breakfast in the morning, the chill can bite right through your clothes. I have a jacket and a fleece coat, but somedays when it's too hot to wear them on my afternoon commute, I have to leave them in my locker. And the next morning, I really freeze.

I had actually laughed when they gave me this stuff. "I'm going to the desert, right?" I said. I even turned down a second Gore-Tex jacket that they were going to give me. I didn't think I'd need two. Now I wish I hadn't.

The cold is bad enough, and fortunately, it's not too windy most days, but when the wind comes, it can really blow. There's also the "rainy season" coming up, a time when our sea of sand transforms into a sea of mud. Or so I'm told. So far we've only had a light drizzle - perhaps two times in the nearly four months I've been here. Just enough to give the sand a crunchy feel.

It didn't last long, but for a moment, I could almost close my eyes and imagine it was snow. Trudging to chow one morning, I amused myself by singing, "I'm dreaming of a taaaannn Christmas..."

Of course, "White Christmas" has a huge relevance to soldiers, and I thought about that a lot this week. But more about that later...

* * *

There aren't too many outward signs that Christmas is here. There are no malls, no crowds, no pushy parents and screaming kids. Just a bleak landscape with sparse trees and bitter cold nights.

Of course, the first Christmas - the one that this whole season's about - happened in a land not too far distant from this place - say the distance from San Antonio to El Paso. I'm sure the three wise men, heading to Bethlehem must have passed through Baghdad. It's really the only way "Eastern Kings" could have come.

There are a few signs though, and in this dreary place, which seems more and more like a prison every day, you get the ocasional spalshes of color. On the route between work and home, for example, is the headquarters for the U.S. Army chaplains. There they have a few blow-up Christmas decorations, which look dramatically out of place:

(Note the Humvees in the background.)

It's easy to think sometimes that the troops have been forgotten here. And perhaps if you listened to the elite, and listened to the media - which is strangely silent now that things are going so well - you might get that impression.

But there are a lot of Great Americans every day who remind us that we are not forgotten, and not unappreciated. All throughout the year, they're sending gifts, sending cards and sending prayers, and let me tell you, the troops over here know it.

One of the many signs of support from companies,

unions and schools that are hung in chow halls,

recreation centers and anywhere else soldiers gather.

Another message of support.

Not only that, but they send us stuff. Tons and tons of stuff.

I'm pretty fortunate. I've got lots of great friends and they're sending me a lot of stuff. In fact, it's probably too much. That which I can't use, of course, I give away to other soldiers.

There's a lot of that going on here, and because of it, almost nothing goes to waste. If you send some cookies to a soldier, whatever non-crumbs make it over, they typically get eaten by somebody. It may not be your cousin from Dallas who you sent it to. It may be one of his platoon buddies. Or a Brit or Austrialian. Or it may be a soldier from Armenia, for whom Christmas might bring back memories of his parents celebrating quietly behind curtains - to avoid the eyes of the KGB.

In my unit, the Multi-National Corps Iraq, the stuff we don't use goes out in the hallway of the palace on a table we refer to as the "Wal-Mart" table. Food, toiletries, books, magazines, flip-flops - you name it. Someone sent three large boxes of popcorn. The donors are often regular Americans, not rich, who want to do something to help. But they're also people who have been successful, who have not forgotten the troops either. Some record company sent a ton of CDs. That Tae-Bo guy from all the infomercials sent dozens of backpacks crammed with all sorts of goodies - obviously at great expense.

Some of these people come to visit. The Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders were here a few months back. So were the Washington Redskins Cheerleaders. And even comedian Carlos Mencia, with his dimminuative sidekick.

A close-up of the Wal-Mart table.

In the picture, you see the table after it's been cleaned off by a wave of soldiers.

Soldiers rush in to pick up backpacks filled with goodies from the Tae-Bo guy.

All these generic gifts are great, but it's something even more special to a soldier to get something with his name on it. Sure, it's great that people haven't forgotten the troops, but it's also good to know every now and then that they haven't forgotten you.

A lot of people have sent me stuff, and I'm grateful to all of them.

To the office of my old boss, State Rep. Dianne Delisi - who sent me her old Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazines. Passing them out after I've read them to a bunch of soldiers from Fort Hood, you'd have thought I was handing them bars of gold.

To my sister who sent me tons of goodies, none of which was quite as special as the hand-written notes from my neice and the "good-luck" bracelet she made me. To my Aunt from Floresville, Texas, who sent me molasses cookies made just the way that my great-aunt made when I was a kid. To my friends Keith and Linda who sent a box so big I practically had to fill out an Army Risk Management form to be allowed to carry it home.

Even people I've never met have sent me stuff. Folks who are friends of a friend. Folks who read this blog. One family in College Station packed up four boxes of goodies, including home-made cookies - along with photographs of their small children having fun making those exact cookies. They also sent a photo of their kids watching the Texas Aggie Band marching in a parade.

These little touches of home are great, and if I feel overwhelmed by all the stuff, I have no hesitation to put some of it out on the table. Not everybody here has people back home sending them stuff, and if I can help those folks, so much the better.

It's Christmas eve right now, but you wouldn't quite notice. There's some gunfire off in the distance, but I'm not sure if that's a battle, or some Iraqis still celebrating over their soccer team's recent win. Hopefully the latter. Either way, I plan to go home and celebrate a little in my trailer, which is strung with lights by my neighbor. My celebration, of course, will be solitary and simple, but that's how it goes. It will likely consist of an hour or so of guitar playing, followed by the watching of the DVD of the old stop-motion "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Raindeer" movie, which my sister sent me.

* * *

One last note. I mentioned "White Christmas." For those who don't know, Bing Crosby wrote and recorded that one back during another time of war. In World War II, thousands of Americans were deployed in Africa, Europe, and spread throughout the many distant and lonely islands of the South Pacific. When "White Christmas" came out, no one ever dreamed that it would become the biggest musical hit of all time.

But for thousands of Americans, far from home, who listened to it over crackling radios and found themselves "dreaming of a white Christmas" it hit home. It did because it brought back to them the nostalgia of Christmas past, and the bitter-sweet pangs of the Christmas they were missing. But more importantly, it's a song of hope. For those Americans across the world, it reminded them that Christmas - and all it stands for - goes on. That the one thing that most unites our country - Christians and non-Christians alike - remains the same.

So tonight, as I struggle out of bed and trudge to work in the cold Baghdad night, I'll be dreaming of a white Christmas too. Not that I've ever had a white Christmas in Texas, but that's not the point. What I'll be dreaming of is Christmas as I knew it. Christmas as it was when I was a child. Christmas as it will be when I go home. Christmas in all its gaudy sparkle, but also Christmas in its most pure - most holy essence. Christmas in the heart, the redemption and promise that it represents.

White, tan, whatever. Christmas will always be Christmas, and that's good enough for me.

Merry Christmas, Folks!

Prayer

I want to talk today about prayer.

War tends to make believers out of anybody, because when it comes down to it, faith makes you stronger. It puts courage in your heart, determination in your mind, strength in your limbs. It empties you of cares and worries, and pours in peace and solemnity. The arrows and slings may come at you, and yes, they may take yout body down – but around your spirit, faith builds a bulwark that they can never penetrate.

Faith however, is just a word, if not moved by the reflection of prayer, and it is often prayer which sets our hearts at ease and stirs our blood to action.

Like most Americans, I was born a Christian – a Catholic, specifically. But while a man might inherit his religion, he cannot inherit his faith. It is something he must discover on his own, and all the priests and all the evangelists will avail him nothing if his heart does not reach out and find the pathway to God of its own free will.

As a young man, I didn’t realize this, and found in time that I was speaking the prayers and pronouncements in church as a pantomime might act out a character. Originally ascribing this to the rote memorization of Catholic doctrine and creed, I soon came to see that it was something more, and that mere muscle-memory prayer was, in fact, no prayer at all.

Although I never left my faith, I began to question it. Not in a negative, destructive way, but in a probing way, seeking for a greater understanding. That God exists, I never had any doubt. His nature, his goals for man, and questions like that, however, I wanted to understand fully. College introduced me to philosophy and after I graduated, I began to study it extensively. I found a lot of arguments about man, eternity and the nature of the universe. Those arguing against God I found lacking, intellectually. Athiests are the world's greatest liars. They deny faith exists, and then claim that they know for absolute certainty that God does not exist. Yet how can one believe what one cannot empirically prove - unless one accepts it on faith?

Agnostics at least - those who don't know if God exists, but refuse to rule Him out - are intellectually honest. But even then, as one philosopher said, "If you believe and God does not exist, you have lost nothing. If you disbelieve and he does exist, you have lost everything."

The more I learned intellectually through my brain, and the more I perceived the world with my heart, I only grew stronger in my faith. And when things are going bad, I always turned to it. In time, I discovered that faith in God - together with faith in myself - can make anything possible.

I know not everybody is as strong a believer these days, but it would be a vain, vacuous existence to live life based on the whim of random events. Whether you believe in God or not, we all need prayer. A life in which we don’t reflect, in which we don’t put aside all our problems and turn to a single point in the universe on which to focus our dreams, hopes and aspirations – is not a life worth bearing. The proof of that is best shown when a group of soldiers goes into a firefight or is hit with a mortar attack. Though there may be athiests among the eventual survivors when the attack begins, there is almost never one left when it's over.

* * *

A lot of folks tell me they're praying for me. People I've known for years and those I hardly know. At my dad's funeral, a lady approached me and gave me a small cross to take with me. The woman was familiar, but I couldn't place her and probably hadn't seen her in 20 years. Nonetheless, she took the time, the effort - and the compassion - to pray and to think of me. Many others have done the same. Some who have read my writings here, but who have never met me in person have prayed for me.

First off, I must say how much I appreciate and am humbled by that. And though I am grateful for those words and thoughts, it would be wrong for me to ask them to do no more.

Because the truth is, there are a lot more folks here who need those prayers much more than I do, and it would be a shame to forget them.

My life is one of vague dangers - things that can come out of the blue. The rocket that hit my trailer while I wasn't there. The random bullets raining down from an attack a mile away, which killed two people in the last week on base. These are dangers, to be sure, and it is when I think of these that I am grateful for the prayers.

But there are hundreds of Americans - brave men all - who daily strap on their body armor, climb into a Humvee - and venture out into the unknown, to battle the enemy. The soldier in the patrol, who walks warily down the streets of Baghdad, Samarra, Mosul or Fallujah, moving steadily in a zig-zag pattern to disrupt enemy snipers. The young female soldier delivering school books or candy to kids, who never knows whether or not a vehicle-borne IED is coming around the corner. The men kicking in the doors when they know a terrorist is on the other side. The men in the Explosive Ordinance Detail, defusing an IED remotely, hoping that another isn't hidden right next to their highly-exposed vehicle.

And not only Americans, but our brave allies, who are fighting alongside us to bring peace and freedom to this land. These soldiers are not mere window-dressing for political purposes, as many would suggest. They are fighting and dying. Poles who patrol in troubled Diwaniyah province, Brits who face danger in Basra. Koreans who protect the minority Kurds from sectarian warfare. Georgians, Romanians, El Salvadorans...and yes, Iraqis too, in great numbers and growing every day.

These are the people who need your prayers, and a lot of them need those prayers far, far more than I. They all have families, friends and dreams and want nothing more than to return safely to them.

If there is one thing I can ask of those who know me, and those who pray for me, is that you take a little extra time to remember these people too. As you pray for me, pray again for the thousands who have no one to pray for them. Pray for those who see the greatest danger. Pray for those who have families back home, and who have so very much to lose.

Pray for them all. And pray they return safe.

Immigration Book Published

For those who don't know, the reason I write is because I have an existance other than that over here. Since a good number of my readers are folks who do not know me personally, I'll briefly explain. For the full story you can check out my first post:
http://aalan94.blogspot.com/2007/08/word-about-myself.html

I studied journalism at Texas A&M and after graduating became a newspaper reporter. From there, I got into politics, mostly on the Texas state level. I've bounced around a number of jobs, but one of the more fulfilling was working for a conservative insider newsletter for the Texas political crowd. In that job, I researched a lot of issues related to public policy. In 2005, I started a research project on the costs of illegal immigration. I pitched it to our foundation's president and he got the ball rolling to do a book.

At long last, the publishing date has arrived for "Immigration and the American Future" the latest, most comprehensive study of immigration and the costs to the U.S. Economy. Among the chapters in this wide-ranging study is one on the costs of illegal immigration to Texas, and yes, you guessed it, it was written by none other than me.

The chapter I wrote was the result of a six-month study I led while working at the Lone Star Report - Texas' most well-respected conservative newsletter. It was a project that I absolutely could not have done without the efforts of Will Lutz and Christine DeLoma, who contributed greatly. Although I've been published in many formats over the years - over 3,000 articles over the course of my career in journalism - this is the first time I've ever been published in a book.

The book is available at Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Immigration-American-Future-David-Hartman/dp/0972061665

But since the book was written under the auspices of Chronicles Magazine, I recommend anyone who wants it to go to their site:
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?page_id=387

Here's a great immigration-related blog that mentions the book. And they even provide a link to this blog:

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/071112_caplan.htm

I haven't had the chance to read any of the other chapters in the book, but because this is a product of Chronicles Magazine and the writers are the experts in their field, I imagine it's going to add significantly to the debate over immigration in America. As for my article, you can get a preview by going here:

http://www.lonestarfoundation.org/The%20Cost%20of%20Illegal%20Immigration%20to%20Texas%20-%20Exec%20Summary.doc

Mosque Study

Today, I post a photographic study of a mosque here on Camp Victory. This mosque once served Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party leadership. Today, it sits empty and silent in a corner of the Abu Guhraib Palace Complex.

Thanksgiving in Iraq

The holidays can really sneak up on you over here. There are none of the traditional warnings that you get back home. Halloween had a few: trinkets and such in the base exchange, and a ghost hanging from a pole by the abandoned mosque. But when you get as engrossed in your work as I have, you kind of tune it out.

It was my upcoming birthday that reminded me Thanksgiving was around the corner, since they frequently coincide. So I told my mother to expect a phone call on the big day, and on Friday morning (my time), I sat down at a phone and dialed up Lackland Air Force Base. They patched me through to home...

Now, everybody has their own special way of celebrating Thanksgiving, and each one is unique for reasons that we can never really put into words. When you're not there, you realize even more sharply what it is you're missing. It's not the turkey or the brightly-colored tablecloths, it's the little things.

We cook our turkey in oil in a pot over a gas burner. It's a complex, precise process conducted by men - which means that there are a thousand disasters just waiting to happen. The cook is usually my Uncle Ralph. The assistant cooks, whose job it is to tell him how he should 'a done it, consist of four or five brothers and cousins who stand around holding cans of beer, which in South Texas is a liquid which apparently generates wisdom and experience to all who imbibe it, since they are never short on volunteering their turkey-cooking suggestions.

It would probably be easier to cook the turkey indoors. Since my sister married a professional chef 10 years ago, it would also probably make more sense to get him to do it. But tradition is tradition. So the big silver pot is it. In goes the turkey with a chorus of fizzles, pops and crackles. Dogs stand wide-eyed at the big bird and cautiously approach the pot before a splash of hot oil or a human hand deters them from investigating any further.

There is usually a big crowd at the farm, as both my mom's side of the family and my dad's shows up, turning a normally empty field into a parking lot. Kids trapped in the cities year-round have enormous fun running around the farm, riding along on the tractor, or playing on the hay bales, where they jump from bale to bale along long rows along the fenceline. Occasionally, a football game springs up, which usually involves stationary adults not too excited about running tossing the ball to a crowd of kids, who seem to have passion for nothing but. Other adults toss horse shoes, and the clank and ring of the shoes on iron posts is one of my fondest memories.

Inside, we have a large open room in our 94-year-old farmhouse. Setting a table the length of the room, there is usually seating for up to 30 people. The kitchen table is jammed with an assortment of stuffing, corn, fruits, vegetables, ham, turkey and numerous pies. The pecan pies are often made from the harvest of the nearly 90 pecan trees growing right here on our farm.

For each face that sits around the table, I could tell a dozen stories. One uncle, who grew up in inner-city Houston, tells hilarious jokes, taking on a voice that sounds kind of like Dallas Mavericks coach Avery Johnson. His brother tells only scatalogical and sexual jokes and finds a way to take any thing you say out of context by saying, "I knew a girl like that." My cousins on the other side, who are a walking "You know you're a redneck if" jokes, add in their repertoir of humor.

These are the memories I have of Thanksgiving back home, but of course, I'm not home now, and it's sometimes hard to imagine it all. Although the temperature falls down to the 40s during the night time now, it's still fairly warm out during the day. There's dust and blowing sand everywhere, and pollution on top of it. Sometimes you can't even make out the towers of the grand mosque downtown, or even the ones a mile away for that matter.

Nonetheless, on Thanksgiving Day my boss surprised me by letting me off early - only an eight hour shift instead of the usual 12. After making a run back to my trailer, I returned to the palace in time for the 11 a.m. Thanksgiving Day service in the rotunda. About 200 servicemembers attended. Most of the crowd was a sea of Army digital green cammo, and I stuck out, along with a few other Navy and Air Force guys, in my tan DCU uniform. After an invocation by the chaplain, we had some music by a civilian woman who sang "America the Beautiful" and some original songs. The highlight was the speech of a Vietnam vet who recovered from a near fatal injury to become a motivational speaker.

In the chow hall, they pulled out all of the stops. The line out of the building was long, but the food was worth the wait. There was turkey, dressing, and all the traditional favorites. The food was actually prepared and served by American officers, mostly chaplains, though the mix of Kuwaitis, Indians and Pakistanis who run the chow hall did everything else. They seemed a bit confused on their American holidays, though and served egg nog.

The room was filled with mostly Americans, but not entirely. I actually saw a soldier from Turkey eating turkey. There were Bulgarians, Lithuanians, Koreans, El Salvadorans, Tongans, Australians and Brits. Thanksgiving to them may not have nearly as much meaning, but the massive feast was a welcome change, I'm sure. The Ghanaians, particularly, seemed stunned by the outlay of food.

With the rest of the day off, I enjoyed myself. I went to the gym to exercise for a while, and then back home to read. But it was getting near 5 p.m. and my bed time, so I took it easy. After all, Thanksgiving may be finished in Iraq, but it was only just dawning back home, and I had an early morning appointment with the telephone.

...So as the operator at Lackland patched me through, I listened to the old familiar ring. After only a moment, my mother answered the phone. After some work, she put me through on speaker phone.

The table was set, and all the family was around. I said my general greeting to everybody, and my mom called off the roll call of who all was present. Cousins and their kids, some able to speak now, and others just crying infants. Aunts and uncles. Brothers and a sister. As each one was named, they would call out a greeting. When my sister was called out, I made a comment about the upcoming A&M/Texas football game, since we both went to A&M. She gave a "whoop" in response. When her daughter spoke up, I thanked her for the little good-luck bracelet she made for me and sent me with their last package. One aunt said she was worried because she heard about an attack. I told her not to worry, this place is as big as Houston, and that base was ten miles away or more.

Finally, when all that was done, everyone on the other end of the line grew silent. I wasn't sure what was going on until I heard my mom speak:

Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive. From your bounty, through Christ Our Lord, Amen.

On the other end of the phone, no one could see the tears welling up in my eyes. I don't get emotional too often. Before dad died, the last time I cried was Sep. 11, and the last time before that was when the A&M bonfire fell in 1999. But for some reason, hearing my mom say the blessing of the meal nearly broke me up.

That's when I realized that no amount of turkey, no amount of dressing or rolls or pie can really make the fourth Thursday in November a day of Thanksgiving. It is those special people, and those special moments, that make the day. That image in my mind of all those I know gathered around, praying over their food did more to make me homesick - but more to raise my spirts as well - than anything the Army could do to raise morale.

The reasons we fight over here burn up a lot of ink back home, but when it comes down to it, they're fairly simple. We fight the larger war on terror so that people back home can have things to be thankful for. We fight this war in particular, so that these people here can know a life of freedom and not live a nightmare of terror. On this Thanksgiving Day, I am thankful that I've shared so many great experiences in the past, which comfort and sustain me in the long days over here. I look forward to the end of my time here, when I can go back, and once again be among friends and family, and taste the companionship, as well as the food.

A Close Call

I'm sitting at breakfast when the alarm sounds.

"Incoming...incoming...incoming..."

This is the second time this has happened at breakfast. I stop and pull my chair back from the table. Best thing to do is to stay put, but you want to have contingency plans. I sit and wait for it.

"Whump...whump...boom!"

At the last one, the building shakes slightly. Still distant though.

"Boom...boom...boom..."

These last few bracket the building, but still a safe distance away. It's a scattered volley, not very accurate. But of course, we were between the two groups. Any one of those shots could have hit us.

I finish up and bus my tray. Outside, people are moving with a bit more hurry in their steps, as is usually the case after an attack. No visible damage. So I head to work to report in.

"Hey LT," Staff Sgt. Murray says, when I walk in. "I thought you were off."

"Just letting you know I'm alive," I say. We're supposed to report in after any such attack to make sure everyone is accounted for. Having done that, I headed back out of the building. As I did, I ran into Dave, a contractor I've known since Kuwait. He tells me a couple of rounds may have hit the trailer park where we both live.

"Hope they didn't hit your trailer," I tell him. As I walk away, an odd feeling strikes me. What if it hit mine?

The question would turn out to be eerily prescient...

I work 12-hour days most days, but on my "day off" I only work six. Finishing up around breakfast time, I usually have time to kill before meeting up with a friend from my unit back home for some chow. Isaac works a slightly longer shift than me, so I've got about 30-45 minutes to spare. Usually, I spend the time reading a book in the lobby of the palace, relaxing in Saddam's throne. But on this particular day, I didn't have a book with me. So I had decided to go home and read in my trailer until it was time to meet up with my friend.

At that point, you might say, fate intervened. Actually, it was my stomach.

Halfway out the palace door, I stopped myself. Man, I think. I am really hungry. So I change my plan. Rather than go all the way back to my trailer, and then all the way over to the dining facility, I decide to head to the chow hall and eat anyway. I could wait for my friend there.

The decision may have actually saved my life.

For while I was in the chow hall eating breakfast, and not sitting on my bed in my trailer reading a book, one of the mortars or rockets (I'm not saying which it was) fell apart from the rest of the group and struck the concrete barrier...five feet from my trailer. The round exploded, sending shrapnel in every direction. Had a person been standing there, they would almost certainly be dead.

Most of the blast was dissipated by the concrete wall - exactly what it's there for - but debris blew back towards the trailers behind it. One of them was mine. The same trailer that I would have been in, had I not gone to breakfast early.

By the time I arrived, the emergency personnel had come and gone, and in their place, the investigators scoured the scene. A line of yellow tape stretched across the walkway to the side of my trailer. My door was unlocked. Emergency personnel had used a crowbar to pop it and check inside - to make sure no one was home and injured. I opened it up and surveyed the scene.Two dozen small holes - most no bigger than a dime - were splayed across the upper part of the room. Sunlight flowed through them from them.

One piece of shrapnel had even crossed the room, narrowly missed my books, and punched through the wall on the other side. Something had struck the light fixture, and pieces of it lay broken on the floor. Amid them, a shattered fluorescent bulb. The front face of the air conditioner had been blown off by the mere concussion of the blast.

To my relief, I thought at first, I would have been perfectly fine had I been in there. All of the holes were towards the top of the wall. Had I been there, I would have likely been sitting on my bed reading, and all of the shards of metal would have passed above me.

But then I looked down and noticed something that gave me pause.

There, on a low part of the wall directly in line with the place I normally sit, something was lodged in the wall. I took a closer look. An inch-long, twisted chunk of steel was embedded in the wall. The fake wood paneling around it was singed from the heat. It narrowly missed my Texas A&M 12th-Man towel, which hangs at the head of my bed.

I pulled out my multi-tool and extracted it with the care of a surgeon.

Had I been there, I guess, nothing would have changed. The wall, perhaps, would have stopped the steaming-hot shard of steel then just as it had now. But the fact that this deadly piece of steel was in a direct line from the impact to where I would have been was startling. And sobering.

Outside, a couple of people suffered minor injuries, or so I heard. Most of them were further away. My suitemate, however, got the fright of his life. Or someone he knew did, at least. At the time of the attack, he was on his Voice over Internet Protocol phone with his fiancé. There was an audible explosion in the distance.

"Honey," he said. "I'm going to have to go now, there's an attack."

At that very moment, the line went dead. The round had exploded right outside our trailer. His room is in the same building as mine, but fortunately none of the shrapnel made it there. Still, he spent the next two hours frantically trying to find a phone to call home and soothe the nerves of his fiancé.

It had been a sobering experience, but when it all comes down to it, it changed nothing. The most dangerous moment in my life remains that time when I was an 18-year-old student pilot, caught in a thunderstorm while flying solo. And I've still never been more terrified in Iraq than I have been on I-35 in Austin, sandwiched between 18-wheelers on the lower level. Sure, this is different because it's deliberate. Somebody out there planned this thing for weeks, picked a time, picked a location - probably threatened a homeowner with death for not helping - and then shot his weapon at me.

Here on base, most days are quiet, deceptively peaceful. Of course, it's a strange thing that passes for peaceful here. Every day, you hear gunfire off in the distance as you walk to work or to the gym. It comes when a "pop pop pop pop" breaks the silence. It's never the constant fire of machine guns in the movies. Our soldiers are more disciplined than that, and the enemy's usually firing and running.

Sometimes when you hear the gunfire, you wonder if a stray round will come over and hit you as you walk. It happens, and it can kill. Other times, you're sleeping at night and a boom shakes you awake. You open your eyes and listen. Sometimes it's followed by another, but usually not.

The fact that it's nowhere near you doesn't stop you from being concerned. It could be an American Humvee that hit an IED. Or it could be an IED that a local citizen pointed out to us and we blew up with no incident. You never know.

The odds are overwhelmingly in your favor.The reason I don't worry all that much is the same reason I never play the lottery. Essentially, that's what this is - all one big inverse lottery. Sure, rather than the odds being millions to one, they're only in the thousands, but hey, that's pretty good, and I'll take them.

Despite all that, death and danger are not ever-present here at Camp Victory, and to portray it as so would be far from the truth. Certainly, for the folks who spend every day "outside the wire" that is another story. But even then, the vast majority of convoys go out and come back with absolutely no contact with the enemy. Small comfort, I'm sure, but comfort is in short supply in Iraq. The best you can do is hope...and pray. I'll have a little more to say about that next time.

* * *

Some of the holes in my wall. The pics are kind of limited. I'm deliberately not including any of the outside shots, for security reasons.

The crecent-shaped piece was kind of interesting. As I was cleaning up in the room, I found a small piece of metal that fit perfectly - like a jigsaw puzzle. It was white aluminum, and it took me a second to realize it was from the outside wall of the trailer, not from the shrapnel itself.

This is from the largest piece that entered the trailer - and the one that hit very close to my bed (about a foot below the picture). You can see the black scorch marks around it. Although all these pieces are relatively small - the ordnance that struck was on the smaller side - they went flying through two walls of my trailer like it was made of butter. Had this struck a person...well, let's just say that it's roughly the size of a Civil War Minne ball, and about twice the mass of your average AK-47 round.

And here it is. I call this my "steel badge of courage." And it beats the red one any day:

U.S. Navy Birthday Celebration

A few weeks ago - Oct. 13 to be precise - we celebrated the U.S. Navy's 232nd Birthday.

It was a Friday the 13, in 1775, when the Continental Congress - which had not yet declared independence, authorized the creation of a Navy for the coming struggle with England. The proclamation establishing the Navy was very short and to the point:

"Resolved, That a swift sailing vessel, to carry ten carriage guns, and a proportionable number of swivels, with eighty men, be fitted, with all possible despatch, for a cruise of three months, and that the commander be instructed to cruize eastward, for intercepting such transports as may be laden with warlike stores and other supplies for our enemies, and for such other purposes as the Congress shall direct.

"That a Committee of three be appointed to prepare an estimate of the expence, and lay the same before the Congress, and to contract with proper persons to fit out the vessel.

"Resolved, that another vessel be fitted out for the same purposes, and that the said committee report their opinion of a proper vessel, and also an estimate of the expence."

How far the Navy has come since the days of John Paul Jones, calling out to the captain of Serapis, "I have just begun to fight!" Today, the U.S. Navy is the unparalleled master of the seas. We have 12 aircraft carriers (we had dozens in WWII) and the next biggest navy has two or three. The next biggest navy that is hostile to us...has none. Or none that aren't rust-covered amusement parks, anyway.

But we're not just a force on the ocean, and I'm the living proof. In the three and a half years I've been in the Navy, I've never once set foot on a ship. In fact, for the first time in history, there are more sailors on the ground in Operation Iraqi Freedom than there are supporting it at sea. In all, there are 30,000 sailors here in Iraq.

So, as we gathered one damp, sticky evening in the Al Faw Palace, we honored the tradition - and the future of the U.S. Navy.

A 50-foot-tall U.S. flag hangs in the rotunda of the Al Faw Palace.

It was a simple ceremony. We gathered and sang "Anchors Aweigh," joined by quite a few Army soldiers who stumbled along with a print-out of the unfamiliar words, just like Sunday morning Baptists:

Stand Navy out to sea,
Fight our Battle Cry;
We'll never change our course,
So vicious foe steer shy-y-y-y.

Roll out the TNT,
Anchors Aweigh.
Sail on to Victory
And sink their bones to Davy Jones, Hooray!

Actually, there are two sets of lyrics to the song: one for the Navy as a whole, and one for the Naval Academy. And it's not "Anchors Away!" The word "aweigh" means "to weigh" and "weighing anchor" means to pull an anchor out of the water and suspend it at the bow of a ship - which looks much like something hung from a chain on an old-fashioned scale - hence the term.

The highest-ranking officer available - in this case an admiral - addressed the gathering:

And we actually listened to him.

There was even cake to be had:

The words "Honor, courage and commitment" are from the Sailor's Creed.

The admiral and the most junior Seaman present (right) cut the cake, with a little help from another officer, and the use of a borrowed sword from the Marines.

Joining us at the event were some of our coalition partners. Here I am standing in the cake line with a sailor from the Ukranian Navy. He's a pilot by training, and started in the Air Force before switching to the Navy to fly sub-hunter aircraft. Obviously, he's on a little different duty these days.

The blue and white striped shirts - which the navy personnel from all of the Former Soviet Union wear - are a tradition from the Russian Navy that predates the Soviet Union to the time of the Czars. Soviet sailors were so proud of their blue-and-white shirts that when they were pulled off the blockaided warships and thrown into the carnage of Stalingrad as regular foot soldiers, they wore their distinctive navy shirts into battle. The Ukraine, independent since the early 1990s, nonetheless kept this tradition.

And here's a coalition partner who wouldn't have been my mortal enemy 20 years ago. This guy is from the Royal Australian Navy. Small as it is, it's probably the most professional branch of the Australian military. Although in actual wartime, they've always been a kind of backup to the English Royal Navy, they acquitted themselves well in World War I and World War II.

Pictures of the Lake

In the center of this base is a massive lake, built by Saddam Hussein at the height of his arrogant self-worshiping architectural effusion. It's surrounded by various buildings - homes and recreation facilities for Ba'ath Party officials.


They're all in use to this day - by us - and even lower-level staff folks who work in cubicles...work in cubicles with marble floors.

At the heart of the lake, of course, is the Al Faw Palace (see my earlier post): Here's a picture from the back:





Here are a few pictures of the lake:


A small causeway behind the palace leads to a small island, which was likely the dockhouse for Iraq's most rich and evil.



Not sure what this was, but I thought it looked cool. There are helicopters flying around this place all the time. Someday, I'll donate a whole post to my best helicopter photos.


I have strong suspicions that the lost gold of Iraq is sunk in here somewhere. Or maybe some WMDs. From what I've heard, there are also supposedly some bodies in here - probably folks who displeased Saddam, and were invited to take a recreational swim with concrete flippers.


At this intersection, it is recommended that you follow the stop sign. Those pretty rails don't really do the trick by themselves.


Surprise, surprise. Another helicopter!


The road in places is just a causeway between the lake and canals or ponds, like this one, near Saddam's personal mosque.

If you think this is cool, in a couple of weeks, I'll introduce you to some of the lake's inhabitants.

A Day in the Life...

I've talked a lot about the basics of life in Baghdad, but the reader may find it odd that I don't talk about what I do, day-to-day. There's a reason for that, of course.

I just can't.

The nature of the work I do means that a lot of it I can't talk to with anyone. And even if I could, I certainly wouldn't put it out on the Internet. I could try all that, "I could tell you but I'd have to kill you" nonsense, but that would be a little extreme. If I were James Bond, I certainly wouldn't have a blog. Either way, it's best to keep it simple. As an intelligence officer, I work with information.

Not that much different than my old days as a journalist, only these days, I write the truth for a change. ;)

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First of all, let me say, I've worked a lot of tough jobs. In High School, I pretty much worked on the farm. One summer in college, I worked at a wholesale produce terminal on Zarzamora Street in San Antonio. I worked from 3 a.m. until noon six days a week, unloading 100 lbs. bags of potatoes or frozen crates of corn from freight trains and 18-wheelers and putting them on smaller trucks to haul to grocery stores and restaurants.

Working on political campaigns, I sometimes did 16, 17 and 18 hour days. But those were limited to the end stretch of the campaign, and you always knew that on a particular Tuesday, the entire thing would be over...for better or for worse.

But when it comes to long hours, my current schedule blows those out of the water.

I work from midnight to noon. Six days a week. On my "day off," I only work six hours. All together, that's 78 hours a week.

And like a campaign, there's almost always something going on. Even when there isn't anything critical, there's always some long-term project that needs attending to. At first, I thought this was insane. That I'd never get used to such a schedule. But before too long, it became natural. And in a wierd way, it makes my time over here go by faster.

I usually set my alarm clock for about 10:45 p.m. Already showered the afternoon before, I quickly shave and head out. It's nearly pitch black outside, and the area of the base I'm in is covered with waist-high Jersey barriers made of concrete. On the way to the DFAC (Dining Faciliy), there are numerous obstacles that rise up at you out of the darkness. There's a canal from an old irrigation system, with a small bridge across it. A road or two, with curbs on either side, a jog through a parking lot filled with Humvees and Up-Armored Suburbans, a path along a reed-filled, smelly canal, etc.

The base is almost entirely blacked-out most nights. Partly for security, partly because electric power is such a scarce commodity here. Although the Iraqis are now nearly operating at power levels equal to the pre-war period, there are still interrupions. And in a country with blazing summers, the needs are great.

What power we have comes almost entirely from generators. Generators require fuel. Fuel is too heavy to airlift. Therefore fuel must come in via convoy...and run the gauntlet of IEDs, small arms attacks and whatever else Joe Jihad wants to throw at them. And if you didn't guess, fuel trucks have a bad habit of burning when they get hit.

So conserving energy here is obviously not just a good idea. There are soldiers and Iraqi truck drivers who are risking their lives every day so I can plug in my laptop. Kind of humbling.

As for my late-night snack at the DFAC, it leaves a lot to be desired. Not that the food is bad, but it's not...right. I mean, I'm about to start a full day on the job, and I want breakfast. But at 11:15 p.m., they don't have breakfast. They have dinner.

It only gets worse six hours later when I get my "lunch" break. Because by that time, they're serving breakfast. Only my noon meal makes any dietary sense.

Walking around in the dark allows you to do some thinking. At first, you're just thinking about where the next hole or curb or tree is, but once you learn your way, it's not so bad. You can just continue on, seeing things at the last moment in the dim glow of Baghdad's lights reflecting off the dust clouds (the only kind of clouds we have, typically). You know exactly when you need to turn on your mini flashlight. In one part of my commute, there are a pair of Jersey barriers, with a chain strung between them, directly across my route. Usually, it's disconnected, lying on the ground. But I know the one time I don't look for it, it will be up, and will catch me right at the ankles.

I also like looking at the stars, when I can see them. It's not so easy. Although Baghdad's power is erratic and non-ubiquitous, it is a city of 5 million people, and it's always going to have a glow of some kind. Add to that the fact that the air, from ground level to about 1,000 feet is about 900,000 parts per million sand. Nothing shows this more clearly than when a car's headlights cross my path, and I can see the swirling sand like snow, dancing in the beams of light. Of course, I'm always thinking, "Great. I'm breathing that."

Sand of course, is not the worst thing you can breathe in. Fortunately, with the winds the way they are, we don't get much of the sewage smell that permeates many of the bad neighborhoods around town. But Iraqis - and the U.S. Army for that matter - don't believe in landfills. Instead, they burn their trash. On days when this happens, the smell of burning, rotting trash is putrid, acrid and it is everywhere.

As I said, I usually get a lunch break, right around dawn. I come outside into the still-dark night and walk back to the DFAC. Sometimes, when my timing is right, I catch the sound of the call to prayer echoing from the mosques across Baghdad. Five times a day, the call goes out, with the Imams singing their verses with modulating pitches - a musical tribute to Allah and a rejoinder to Muslims to turn their mind to God.

It's pretty in a way, I guess, and kind of strikes me as an ironic parallel to good old-fashioned Gregorian Chants, in which the Catholic church used to turn its adherents' minds to God. Of course, the Catholic Church never got Friar Tuck into a minaret 100 feet into the air and gave him a P.A. system that could carry for miles. Thankfully, they kept the priests earth-bound and instead used heavy bells to accomplish much the same thing. Nobody had to crawl up into the tower whose name wasn't Quasimodo.

When it comes to their singing, the Baghdad Imams are pretty good. Not Three Tenors quality, mind you, but O.K. for what they do. And I have to say that they beat the Imams of the mosques in Turkey hands down. That's the only other Muslim country I've spent time in, so I can't say. Of course, Baghdad, like Istanbul, has its share of history and claim to Muslim greatness. But in Istanbul, the women wear Ray Bans, skirts and high-heels, and in that kind of place, you just know that their religious piety just isn't quite as authentic any more. Kind of like a Taco Bell Islam. Of course, if that's the standard, I'm sure there must be some potential opera virtuosos hiding in the mud-brick huts of Afghanistan. Their calls to prayer could probably bring people to tears...if those people weren't too busy attending public stonings in the soccer stadium.

Back to Iraq, by the time lunch is finished, it is now daylight, and I head back to work. That is when I run the gauntlet...of military etiquette.

We call it "Salute Alley." A narrow path in which dozens of soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines will pass. And in this narrow bottleneck, you can't escape.

I used to assume most people knew everything I did - or at least everything I did when I was a civilian - about the military. But they don't, and as the naive questions of some friends back home indicate, they need lessons now and then.

Soldiers (I use this term generically) are supposed to salute superior officers at all times when they are outdoors (except when working or driving or other times when it would be impractical). The officers, being salued, must return the courtesy.

Now obviously, you can't do this at night because you can't see someone's rank insignia. But once daytime arrives, the game is on. Passing through Salute Alley, I find myself saluting virtually everyone. My hand rises to salute, snaps up, snaps down, then repeats. Again and again and again. Enlisted people don't salute other enlisted people. They have it easy. They only salute officers. Officers however, must return the salute of enlisted people and junior officers, and must furthermore salute all the officers above them. The only people you don't salute are those who are your exact same rank. For me, a Navy Lieutennant Junior Grade, that means Army, Air Force and Marine 1st Lieutennants. And there aren't a whole heck of a lot of those around.

By the time I pass through the gauntlet, my right arm is nearly sore. I find myself holding it up for whole groups of people, because it's just not possible to get every one of them.

Foreign soldiers are not required to salute, nor am I required to salute them. This almost always holds true, but the Tongans (my good friends from Kuwait) are here, and they seem to get a kick out of saluing American officers. I always return the salute, usually matching it with "Malu la ley" (Good morning) or "Fe fe aku" (How are you)." Since I've been in Baghdad, I've learned more Tongan than Arabic, and the Arabic I know mostly consists of phrases like "Put down the weapon" and "Where is the suicide bomber car?" which isn't exactly the best way to politely greet an Iraqi Mulazzem Awwal (1st Lieutennant).

Finally, my exhausting day over, I head to the chow hall for one last meal (lunch, which is my dinner) and then to my trailer. Every 2-3 days, I try to hit the gym for an hour. When I'm not doing that, I hit the computer lab or read a book. In all, I rarely have more than 3-4 hours of free time before I turn the lights out, draw the shades (actually, my camouflagued poncho, which substitutes for shades) and go to bed, around 5 p.m., for the end of another day in Baghdad.

Six hours later, the alarm rings, and I start it all over again.

A Note on Fear

There was another attack on the base today. Closer than previous attacks, but this time, no serious injuries and thankfully, no deaths.

It happened this morning, and I was in the chow hall eating. Suddenly, the siren went off "BRRR, BRRR, BRRR...Incoming, incoming, incoming." Everyone stopped eating. A few people got down off of their chairs and considered crawling under the table. That would have been silly. If a mortar or rocket hit our building and came through the roof - that little plastic table won't do you much good.

I didn't have my body armor with me. None of us did. Going outside to get to the bunkers was out of the question, as we were safer inside than out. So I continued to eat my french toast. After all, I was hungry, my lunch hour (breakfast is my lunch) was short, and I had to get back to work once the attack was over.

"Boom, boom, boom" I exchanged a glance with the guys around me. We guessed the location based on the sound. Boom was certainly closer than whump. But still a good distance off. After about six impacts, there were no more. A few minutes later, the all-clear sounded.

Something a friend of mine back home said has been running around my head for a couple of weeks. After I described an attack on the base, she said that my nonchalance really worried her.
Why, I wonder?

She seemed to have wanted me to have more fear about that particular event, or express more concern. The fact that I didn't kind of shocked her.

First of all, make no doubt about it. I am not some Bravado-filled, 18-year-old kid, who thinks nothing can happen to him. The kind who skateboards, skydives, or jumps his pickup - Dukes of Hazzard Style. Even so, there is a philosophy that only those who take risks can truly be said to live. Or as Friedrich Nietzsche, the late 19th Century Philosopher, said, "Live Dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius!"

Of course, Fred was always a bit of a shock jock, and almost everything he said must be taken with a grain of salt, as hyperbole. But he nonetheless had a point. Living your life based on fear, being - as one philosophy professor I read opined - "the ultimate couch potato" can hardly be said to be living much at all. When you reach old age and look back at your life, you need to have some achievements to point to that you can be proud of. Not that they all have to involve risk, but they have to be real, genuine. It can't be that you watched every episode of some T.V. show.

My own re-evaluation of my belief in "invincibility" came back several years ago when I was injured in a farming accident. I fractured three vertebrae in my back, and had I landed a little different, could have been paralyzed. It was the kind of moment that made me sit up and think. Or more accurately, lie there on my back, keep frantically pressing the little buzzer until the nurse came in to give me more morphine...and think.

But rather than pull in and avoid risk - avoid life - I decided to take a much more discerning view of it. Risk is one thing. Stupid risk is another. Don't avoid risk just out of fear. Accept it, grow comfortable with it, minimize it, but live your life. That's really the only thing you can do. Just as we were all at one point paranoid teenagers afraid to take the car out onto the interstate, we outgrew that fear, gained confidence and turned our 1980 Pontiacs up the on-ramp of life.

That is how you deal with fear. You figure out the dangers, improve yourself to avoid as many of them as you can, and you go out there, into the world, and face them.

I guess if you played semantics, you could make a distinction between different types of fears. There's healthy fear, paralyzing fear, and angst.

Angst, in the German, is kind of a general, all-around fear of life, the universe and everything. When you're afraid of the future, worried about the state of youth, global warming or the coming of the Great Pumpkin...that's angst.

There's really not much you can do about angst. It's beyond you, unreachable, inviolate. So you just live with it. For me, in college, I dealt with angst through poetry, and in fact, most of the romantic poets - Keats, Shelley, Byron and Coleridge, were all about angst. Beethoven was angst defined. The Fifth Symphony is a practical explosion of angst, mixed with a good dose of "Sturm und Drang" - Storm and Stress. In his Ninth (and last) Symphony, he turned the minor-chord angst into a passionate, major chord euphoria.

Angst can either eat you up or motivate you, as it did Beethoven. Sometimes it does both, as the Ninth shows so well.

Moving on to the more specific types of fear, we have what I call healthy fear and paralyzing fear. They're really the same kind of fear, met with different responses.

Healthy fear is learning a danger, developing a plan of action that minimizes it, staying cool under stress and implementing that plan. Paralyzing fear is just what the name implies. It's not meeting your fear, but surrendering to it.

Put simply, healthy fear is keeping an eye out as you walk around, looking for dangers, or mapping out in your mind the locations of all the bunkers, so you can find them even in the blackness of night. Paralyzing fear is just cowering. Hiding.

The first kind of fear is a vital instinct for survival that God or evolution (I tend to see the supposed conflict as irrelevant, since one is a cause and the other is a mechanism) put into us. Primative man knew that when he heard the saber-toothed tiger roar, it was time to pull out the spear or climb into a tree for protection.

The second kind of fear doesn't actually make you safer - but does exactly the oposite. Paralyzing fear leaves you numb, unresponsive, panicked. And panicking has never saved a single person in the history of mankind, unless by sheer luck.

The panicked man rolls up into a fetal ball, which is nice and convenient for the saber-toothed-tiger to chew on, and saves him the effort of chasing him down. The man with healthy fear is active, not passive, and lives more often than not.

Ultimately, healthy fear does not guarantee your survival, and panicking does not guarantee the opposite. But your odds are better when you keep your wits, turn your fear instinct into a positive fear response, and do your best to meet the challenge.

As we left the dining facility, dawn had come, and black smoke curled up into the sky in one direction. We walked in the direction of work and, coming around a corner, caught a glimpse of a sheet of flame rising up from beyond a building. Of the six or seven shots they sent over us, only one had hit anything substantive. We couldn't tell, but it looked like it may have been a parked car. For those there at the scene, fear - paralyzing fear - would have done them absolutely no good at all. For the rest of us, healthy fear - rethinking our emergency response plans, putting our noses back to the grindstone and getting to work - was the only real option.

Medals for the departing troops

As new folks like me move into our positions, others, who have been here, put in their times, and done thier jobs well will move on. Yesterday, on the balcony of the palace, we had a small ceremony for four departing members of our unit.

Members of our unit who will soon be departing,

and who received various medals for their service.

Our team.

(Two Navy personnel, one Airman, and the rest are all Army.)

Al Faw Palace

Al Faw Palace, Baghdad

Situated in the Southwest corner of Baghdad, sandwiched between the city and the airport, is a vast complex of buildings built by the Iraqi government. But these were no mere ministries, no place where the average Iraqi could visit and see his government in action. No, this place, known as the Abu Ghraib Palace complex (not to be confused with the prison) was restricted to an elite, the plundercrats of Ba'athist Iraq.

It was once a stunning Dictator's Disneyland. And today, it is the headquarters of the Multi-National Forces-Iraq.

It was ironic that I left my work at the ornate Texas Capitol, working every day amid splendid architecture and tourists to uproot myself to Iraq, and wound up...in a palace.

None of this I knew beforehand. Training for all contingencies, I spent months training in Humvees, shooting, and learning the special "tiger crouch" walk - a zig-zag pattern of movement designed to disrupt the aim of snipers. I planned for the worst, and ended up...here.

Not that I'll never need those skills from time to time. But the vast majority of my work is done indoors, in air conditioning, in what is more or less an office environment. Not that I'm complaining. I'm 35 years old and trained for a certain kind of work. I'm not an 18-year-old kid just out of school and full of piss and vinegar. But nonetheless, after all my training, it's a bit of a letdown.

So here I am, 6,000 miles from Austin, once again working in a place where tourists take photographs of the door hinges. Only these tourists, just like in Saddam's time, aren't the average Joe...or Abdul. They're almost all soldiers or contractors.

The two buildings - Al Faw and the Texas Capitol - are an interesting study in contrast. At 450,000 square feet, Al Faw is bigger than the Texas Capitol's 360,000, though the Iraqi building is much more square, than the Texas Capitol, which is elongated. The Texas Capitol has an ornate stone exterior and a relatively plain interior. Al Faw's exterior is dull sandstone, but its interior is filled with beautifully-polished marble and ornate designs.Overall, both buildings impress. But the Texas capitol does so with a tasteful, democratic grandeur. Al Faw does so in an excessive, jaw-dropping display of Oriental, authoritarian excess.

Al Faw Palace is one of eight built by Saddam Hussein during the mid 1990s as a luxury retreat for himself, his sons and leaders of the Bath Party. It's built on a vast complex of several palaces, arranged around a massive man-made lake, and several smaller lakes. At the same time that Saddam was complaining that his people were starving and Iraq was chronically short of water, he built this mammoth compound, consuming vast percentages of the Iraqi budget, and diverting immense sums of water that could have been used to irrigate crops.

It was upon seeing such things that Gen. Tommy Franks dismissed the United Nations "Oil for Food" program as "Oil for Palaces." The Palace, like many Saddam constructed, was built to honor great military victories. Dozens of these palaces exist. There's the "Victory over Iran" Palace, and the "Victory over America" Palace.

What?

That's right. To Saddam Hussein, the 1991 Gulf War was a victory for Iraq. Despite the fact that his army suffered a humiliating defeat and was expelled from Kuwait lost around 20,000-30,000 deaths in combat versus allied deaths of around 500, Saddam saw his own survival as proof that Iraq had won. As is so often the case with dictators, he was the state, and the state was him. As Louis XIV said, "L'État, c'est moi!"

Al Faw Palace was built to honor one of those "great" victories, in this case, the liberation of the Al Faw Peninsula in Southern Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. In 1986, a surprise Iranian attack led to a dramatic Iraqi defeat, and occupation of the Peninsula, which lies in Southern Iraq and juts out into the Persian Gulf. Humiliated by this reverse, Saddam massed 100,000 Republican Guard troops and launched a counter-offensive, supported by massive artillery barrages and chemical weapons, which caused immense casualties among the Iranian troops.Al Faw was reconquered, and Saddam considered it his greatest victory. He proclaimed a national holiday, and after the 1991 Gulf War, began work on the palace. When it was dedicated, it ostensibly claimed to be in honor of all the sacrifices made to win back Al Faw.

Writing at the entrance of the palace reads:

Peace on Faw in its defense

Peace on its land and its name

Peace on the honorable ones

Peace on the sacrificial blood.

However, despite these general platitudes, no names of the thousands of Iraqi soldiers who died are stenciled on its walls. Instead, it is Saddam's initials which are ever-present. It reminded me of Santa Anna's statement at the Alamo, when his generals urged he delay his attack to reduce the risk to his men. Santa Anna replied that he wanted his men to die, because only blood would consecrate his victory. After all, he added, "What are soldiers but so many chickens?"

This bridge connecting the palace and the mainland was hit by a U.S. precision-guided bomb. Another bridge remains intact.

A close-up picture.

The palace has a whopping 62 rooms, many are huge, ornate ballrooms, with lavish ornamentation and chandeliers. It includes 29 bathrooms, with ornate toilets painted in gold trim, and fixtures of gilded brass (most of which were long-ago "appropriated" by the ground troops who arrived in 2003 and are now replaced with more simple ones.The main hall has a massive dome - wider, but also shorter - than that in the Texas Capitol.

The rotunda area of the palace.

Another view inside the palace

The dome is ornately decorated with intricately-carved reliefs in geometric patterns, amid which one can see Saddam Hussein's initials, written in beautifully-scripted Arabic, everywhere.The centerpiece of this building, however, is the massive crystal chandelier which hangs from the center of the dome. With 234 lights, it fills the space, hanging down like a giant, luminescent inverted jellyfish.

The top of the dome, from which the chandelier hangs.

The chandelier. It is probably 25 feet tall.

And as opulent as it was, built at a staggering cost amid some of the world's worst poverty, the Al Faw Palace - one of Saddam's greatest and most notorious achievements - was not his only palace. It was hardly even his favorite. In fact, this Neuschwanstein of Baghdad was not even enough to get the dictator excited.

Saddam, it seems, only visited the place six or seven times.

Intricate designs fill the ceilings, even in the side hallways. These aren't just painted on, they're carved - or more likely, molded.