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.

More Al Faw Photos

More Photos of Al Faw Palace

The top of the dome - detail

The chandelier, viewed from the Third Floor.

In addition to the big chandelier, there are dozens of smaller ones - each of which would be the impressive centerpiece of a wealthy American mansion. These are just in the hallway.

A banister on the second floor.

One of the stairs. Notice the massive chandelier that runs down the middle of the stairs from the third floor to the first.

One of the 16 massive marble columns in the main rotunda area.



"Saddam is the greatest...dirka...dirka..." Notice the missing letters. I expect they're on Ebay by now.

This is a throne given to Saddam Hussein as a gift by Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian terrorist who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. At least Al Gore never paid people to hijack airplanes...would have required too many carbon offsets.

(Notice in the middle is a model of the Dome of the Rock, the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jeruselem. You can also see the stains from all the Sweaty GIs who have taken a break from the rigors of war by kicking back on the deposed dictator's throne.)

Hi Mom!

Dodge City

Movin’ On Up…

When I first got to Baghdad, I was living in a place called “Tent City” – a dreary, depressing collection of long, green tents. There are actual beds in these tents, though they’re really poor quality, with smelly, rumpled mattresses. It reminds me of my time living in a crumbling, 65-year-old non-airconditioned dorm at Texas A&M, where our mattresses had tags on them, reading: “Property of the Texas Department of Corrections.”

You know you’re in Texas if your college students are getting hand-me-downs from your prisons.

But I digress…

Tent City

Tent City is filled with large gravel-like rocks, which makes walking difficult, at times, but which I hear is a much better alternative to sand once the Iraqi rainy season arrives. Other parts of Camp Victory, such as the areas around Saddam’s old Bath Party buildings, have sidewalks.

Tent City is basically a temporary refuge until the soldier in question can secure more permanent berthing. Unfortunately, the walkways inside most of that berthing are not all that much better.

Fortunately, all the while I was gone on emergency leave, my name slowly climbed up the waiting list for permanent housing. So, shortly after my arrival back in Baghdad, I got the news that I was approved to move into…a trailer!

Dodge City

People get very creative with their names over here. And basically, whoever gets here first gets to name things, and they basically stay that way forever. Thus, the wide variety of names of bases. There’s the obvious patriotic ones – Victory, Liberty. And then there are some that probably don’t help us in the PR department when translated into Arabic, like Camp Slayer. Not sure if it’s named after a person or a bad 1980s hair band, but either way, it’s not the best of names.

Highway routes across the country have their own names, which avoids using Iraqi road names, confuses possible enemies, and allows for a ton of creativity. In one area, the routes are named after football teams: Route Packers. Route Titans, etc. In another region, they’re named after beers. Route Bud Light. Route Strohs, Route Amstel. In yet another part of the country, the earliest troops seemed to name them after their girlfriends: Route Amy, Route Vanessa. Route Shaniqua. (And no, I’m not kidding).

Here on Victory, the massive permanent housing at least got a cool name, which in a way, kind of fits: Dodge City.

It’s just like the old west town that inspired the name. People strut around, with pistols slung on their hips, or rifles over their shoulders. The streets are wide, dusty, and full of potholes. And the Filipino women at the laundry drop-off sometimes wear body armor as they chat in Tagalog.

O.K., so maybe that didn’t happen in the old west, but you get my point. Dodge City fits, in a way that "Boardwalk" or "Highland Park" wouldn't.

Downtown Dodge City North. My home.

O.K., O.K., I admit it’s not much to look at. But in a nice, sweltering, stifling, rock tripping, uncomfortable, hacking-up-dust-hairballs-all-day-long kind of way, it’s got it's own subtle charms.

It even has all the amenities: shower trailers, latrine trailers. All hidden behind massive concrete walls. It’s a good thing there aren’t any Germans with spraypaint and sledgehammers around, because I’d never get any sleep if there were.

Like Tent City, there are rocks everywhere, but because it’s a much larger place, most of the ground is still sand. Still, big mounds of dirt are pre-positioned everywhere, so they can be spread out as needed once all of this sand turns into soup.

Dodge City North has one big landmark, a 30-40 foot something that I call the “Termite Mound.” A relic of Saddam’s time, I have not the faintest idea what this building was, or what purpose it had. About the closest I can guess is, it’s some kind of massive bird house.

Whatever it was, it is an architectural disaster so immense that it alone – forget about Weapons of Mass Destruction – justified the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the destruction of Saddam’s regime. I mean, look at this thing. Can a person who will authorize construction of something so hideous be entrusted with the lives, welfare and taste of 25 million Iraqis?

Of course, now that I think about it, the same thing could be said of the Austin City Hall, and nobody’s rolling into that town with a bunch of tanks, guns and airplanes, shooting the place up. Although I must admit, the idea is strangely tantalizing to this particular Aggie.

The one thing good to say about this building is that someone before me has stamped it with a sign of true culture, which hopefully will survive and endure past our departure and leave the Iraqis with something to add to their museums:

A subtle hint of culture amidst the chaos, dust and backwardness of Baghdad:

Within Dodge City North – and Dodge City South is about the same, just no termite mound – the trailers are aligned in precise rows, perfectly arranged so that not a single one of them – or not mine at least – is within a minute’s walk of a latrine. Getting up to go at night can be an annoyance. Trudging through loose rocks in your flip-flops makes it worse. Having stray bullets land on your doorstep (as they did to a friend of mine) when the Iraqi soccer team wins a match can be even more tedious. And sometimes, when the base is on higher alert, you’re supposed to put on your body armor for the trip.

With all those headaches, I think I could make a killing by selling chamber pots.

Row of trailers in Dodge City.
Note the BBQ grill on the left.

My own particular trailer is nothing special. There are three rooms, each with separate doors. Each room is about 13x13, has two beds, and two wardrobes. Otherwise, there is nothing in them.

At the moment, I have no roommate, so I get the trailer to myself. Normally, I’d prefer to have company, but since I mostly work at night, and usually sleep in the late afternoon and evening, it’s probably a good thing.

I went to the base exchange and bought myself a folding chair, and found a small, fold-up computer table. With those little additions, I’m happy. Some folks go all out, and have carpet, televisions, lamps and other amenities. But as I spend almost all of my time working or sleeping, I don’t really see what the point would be.


It’s not much, but it works, and I’m not complaining. I’ve lived in better, but I’ve also lived in worse. It’s just one of those things one has to accept over here. After all, I didn’t expect to live in a palace.

…But as it turns out, I do get to at least work in one.

But I’ll save that story for next time.

Mention on Capitol Crowd blog

I recently got a write-up on the new Capitol Crowd blog. It's a pretty cool honor. This is a new blog, but it has a lot of potential for the Austin political wonkworld.

Thanks again to Annette in Rep. Chisum's office for the write-up.

http://capitolcrowd.blogspot.com/

A Feeble Attack on Hope

Unless the media has done a dramatic reversal in the last few weeks, it probably still isn't telling you about all the good things going on in Iraq. Al Anbar province, which was once a hotbed of violence (remember Fallujah?) is now relatively quiet.

Even Baghdad is improving significantly, although it has a long way to go. We're just winding up the end of Ramadan, and it's been a lot better than it was last year. At that time, Iraq was still reeling from the bombing of the Samarra Golden Mosque, which inflamed passions - exactly what Al Qaeda wanted it to do.

Across the country, there have been widespread stories of tribes joining forces against Al Qaeda, and against the insurgency. Despite death threats, ordinary Iraqis are taking to the streets to battle insurgents as part of a kind of neighborhood crime watch (one can almost picture an Iraqi "McGruff the Crime Dog.").

As I returned to Baghdad earlier this month, the headline in the Stars and Stripes read, "Iraq death toll lowest in 14 months." Military casualties are down. Civilian casualties are down.

That isn't to say the war is won. Far from it. But it is a hugely positive trend that puts us in the best position we've been in for a couple of years.

But, of course, there are people who don't want that progress to continue, and no, I don't mean the Democrats. Last night, this group of folks decided to make a Ramadan statement - in my opinion, it was a desperate effort to get on CNN. As far as I know it, they didn't make the big splash they wanted, but they did make the AP:

Iraq: Attacks Kills 2 Soldiers
By KIM CURTIS – 1 hour ago
BAGHDAD (AP) —
Two members of the U.S.-led coalition force were killed and 40 others were
wounded in an attack at Camp Victory, a sprawling base near Baghdad's airport
that houses the headquarters of U.S. forces in Iraq, the military said
Thursday.

Those wounded in the rocket or mortar attack included two "third
country nationals," meaning they were neither American nor Iraqis. Most troops
stationed at Camp Victory are American but other coalition soldiers are based
there. No further details on the attack were immediately released.
Camp

Victory and other U.S. bases in Iraq have frequently come under fire, but
attacks with such a large number of casualties are rare.

On Sept. 11, one person was killed and 11 were wounded in a rocket attack. The U.S. military said a 240 mm rocket provided to Shiite extremists by Iran was used in that attack.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gkx-3oYeFwuWKCusr2jrojs98w8wD8S6UIR80

For me, the news didn't come from any wire service, but in a more dramatic way. It came as I was sleeping in my trailer last night:

"Whump." A deep, indescribable sound. Not like the high-pitched, treble-like Hollywood explosions, which are all gas, flames and show. But a dark, bass-like, earthy sound, which you felt travelling both through the air and the ground simultaneously.

I woke up. I had earplugs in my ears, as it happened, since my neighbors had been playing their T.V. too loud at 3 p.m. when I had gone to sleep. I checked the clock. It was near 9 p.m.

"Whump, whump."

I sat up. In Baghdad, you hear explosions not all the time, but fairly frequently. They're not all bad, because sometimes it's our soldiers finding hidden weapons or IEDs and blowing them up in a controlled setting. Often, you never know, and go about your own business as blithely uncaring as a stroll through a field in Texas during dove season, when the neighbors are shooting shotguns off in every direction.

You know when they're close and when they aren't. These were not close close, but I could tell they were on base somewhere. Perhaps a half mile away, perhaps farther. Certainly, not as large and not as close as the one I heard on Sep. 11. Of course, I had heard that one passing over my tent, and could guess where it was coming from and going to. Here, I had no such idea. It could be aimed at a specific point, fired wildly in hope of a lucky shot, or it could be a creeping barrage that could move away from me or towards me.

"Whump..."

I groggily sat up. I switched my flashlight on by my bed and let it shine on the wall. Then, still half asleep, I reached under my bed for my body armor, and pulled it out. I put it on, then fell back on the bed, still dog-tired after a very long day. Then I grabbed my helmet and put that on.

And then, with a calm, unconcern which I guess I should find odd, but don't, I went back to sleep. Or at least rested there, knowing that wearing my body armor in my trailer - which is surrounded by concrete barriers - is about as safe as I could be.

I guess the bunkers nearby are safer, but in order to get to them, you have to cross open ground. That is not recommended during a barrage. The bunkers are meant for people who are out walking, biking, or going to the latrines, who just happen to be caught outside when an attack by indirect fire comes in suddenly.

So I stayed in my trailer. After only a couple of minutes, the barrage was over. I later found out that I had slept through the first five minutes of it, and only woke up after a few rounds came closer to my location. Not hearing an all-clear call on the loudspeakers - sometimes it can be hard inside a building - I waited for a few minutes, then took off my armor, rolled it off the bed, and went back to sleep.

Oddly enough, I experienced both of the attacks mentioned in the story above, and for the entire 18 days I was back in the U.S., nothing significant happened at Victory. The one from Sep. 11, I already wrote about in an earlier post. As for the news story, as far as I know, it's fairly accurate in the details.

To someone uninitiated, it sounds pretty hairy, perhaps, but that's not the way to look at it. We have a massive base here - larger than many small towns back home. The enemy hides in a metropolis that surrounds us on three sides and can hide anywhere. And yet, this is the best they can do? A sudden, cowardly strike, after which they certainly jumped into their bondo-colored 1978 Datsuns in a style reminiscent of the "Dukes of Hazzard" and high-tailed it before the Americans could come and introduce them to the martyric wonders of a Hellfire missle. The 300 Spartans, these are not.

Their attacks are only somewhat coordinated, and when it comes down to it, whether or not they're successful - and how successful - relies mostly on luck. As one civilian contractor put it to a female Air Force Sergeant rattled by the experience - "You could step out into the street and get hit by a General's car."

This place reminds me a lot of a college campus. Put in that context, and equated to Virginia Tech, if you spread out the VT casualties over an entire year, it is actually more dangerous than Victory. In that context, the wimpy, pathetic attempt at creating an End-of-Ramadan spectacular seems puny. Tragic as the death of two people and the wounding of others seems, put in the context of the larger mission, it will not derail the successes we are starting to see here.

But that's not the image the media wants to sell. They, like dogmatic adherents to some ancient cult of moon worship, refuse to see the objective reality in a clear, sober, scientific way. They want this to be Vietnam, even though the truth is, we'd have to stay in Iraq for the rest of my life and 30 years beyond it (at current casualty rates) and we still wouldn't catch up to that war.

The truth is, great things are going on here, and American troops continue to do their work every day despite the insurgency. Each day we are joined by more and more Iraqi Police, and while some of them may not live up to ideal standards, the majority - joined each day by volunteer groups of civilians - are fighting alongside us and making big contributions.

More and more Iraqis are starting to get a disease called Hope. It is a strange illness. The symptoms may ebb and flow, but given the right conditions, the germ will flourish. It can also be a highly contagious one, with potentially surprising results.

We've seen such hope before, and been disappointed. It sprang up in 2005 after the elections, only to be stripped away by one random act of violence in Samarra - an act of ill fortune, one might almost say, as it was totally in contrast to all of the trends. But those trends, while delayed, can returned cloaked with the mantle of inevitability if hope spreads far enough.

Already, we're seeing the seeds. Samarra was bombed again this year. The result? Practically nothing. Whereas fearful Iraqis in 2005 mistook Samarra for the beginnings of Civil War, we saw a different result this year. Realistic, righteously angry Iraqis today recognize such attacks for what they are: A desperate gamble by a group of child-murdering, head-chopping, evil thugs, who would sacrifice their own kind, spilling Arabic blood by the truckload - in order to prevent the spread of the one thing that can defeat them more than all the weapons of any army.

The spreading, benevolent virus of hope.

Views of Victory, Part I

A Blackhawk Helicopter flies over a Palm Grove at Camp Victory.

For today's post, I will include some of my photos of Camp Victory. Obviously, I can't photograph some stuff, like security points, special areas and the bastard son of Bigfoot and Elvis. But lots of other stuff is fair game.

A little word about Victory. Prior to the 2003 war, the area now comprising Camp Victory was a massive base area for the Ba'ath Party of Saddam Hussein, featuring palaces, private lakes, and all sorts of amenities. Some of those amenities were destroyed, some are neglected, and some we use. Most of our housing and dining facilities are portable buildings, but some, like the Recreation Center below, are old Baathist buildings that we have appropriated.

Looking from Dodge City to the West. The concrete barriers protect the buildings from mortar fire, since most of the damage from mortars is from shrapnel blowing outwards.

A Street Scene. Note the red "Ogaf" sign (It says Ogaf below Stop).

Not all streets are this deserted, but I don't like to take too many pictures of people. It makes them skittish.


Mural on concrete barriers. There are several common types of concrete barriers. Jersey Barriers are relatively low, and just keep cars out. These here are Texas Barriers, which are a little taller. These murals were painted by a medical unit, and feature the names of all the soldiers in that unit deployed over the last several years.

Palm Tree. For those who don't know.

Recreation Center.

Recreation Center front door. The sandbags are to protect the windows from shrapnel should a mortar round come by for a little recreation. Don't know where they drug the couch from. It was probably in one of Saddam's henchmen's batchelor pads.


Sign at Rec Center.


Detail from Rec. Center Ceiling.



Dome in Rec Center. The Building is slightly larger than the average American house, but the dome feature is cool. Not sure what this building was either.



Detail of Rec. Center Dome. The hole at the right used to look as nice as the jeweled-looking
window to the left.

A Look inside the Rec. Center.

Horseshoe Pits.

Not Sure What this was, but I thought the bas relief was kind of cool.

Two Worlds

I pause at work and rub my hands. Suddenly, I feel a sharp pain in my left middle finger. I look at it again. Oh yes, I think, after only a second’s pause. The source of the pain is well-known to me. Two weeks ago, I was clearing brush, when the spine of a yucca plant stuck straight through my working gloves, into my finger at the joint. It was painful at the time, but even after two weeks, it still hurts a little.

It’s strange now, this odd anger and resentment that I bear for a plant that is now weeks behind me and separated by an entire universe, it seems.

When I arrived in Baghdad on Sep. 11, I was eager to go, in the right mindset. Situational awareness, they call it, and it’s a critical tool for survival over here. Being aware of everything around you, constantly keeping one eye open for threats, one ear attuned to sounds. They say that the most dangerous times for a soldier over here are the first few weeks after he arrives and the last few weeks before he leaves – when he lets down his guard.

I had spent almost two months preparing myself, and felt I was as ready as I would ever be.
But hardly had I arrived when unforeseen circumstances brought me back to the U.S. For two weeks, I was thrown back into the civilian world. My mindset, my mission, all of that went out of the window. Suddenly, I learned, there are worse things than war.

On my second day of work, I got a simple message from the Red Cross. It stated, “Father very ill. Actually dying.”

A phone call confirmed the worst. Thus began a marathon journey for me back home, a hectic period of attending to crucial matters there, and an agonizingly-slow return trip back to Iraq.
Almost everything in military bureaucracy is inefficient. Fortunately, emergency leave – which I was taking – is the one exception. It’s like they wave a magic wand and every protocol and strip of red tape is banished. I got the news at 9:30 a.m. By 2 p.m. I was on a flight out of country. In between, I had to pack and store my gear, check in my weapons, and get to the airport.

Fortunately, my command gave me an enlisted soldier as a driver. Specialist E., who had picked me up at the airport the day before, drove me from point to point, and finally back to the airport. It wasn’t always easy. While I was checking on my flight inside the tent that serves as a terminal, a tow truck suddenly appeared out of nowhere to tow our vehicle – with all my gear in it. Suddenly, Specialist E. was running down the road, his M-16 in one hand, chasing after the purloining parasite. I jogged somewhat behind him, tired, beat down, and bitter.

Fortunately, the truck wasn’t taken far, and after about 20 minutes of haranguing the Air Force folks, he got the truck back. Air Force personnel in normal situations can very often be major jerks. But when they’re not only Air Force, but Air Force tow truck drivers, you can only imagine.

My gear rescued, I finished my check-in. The gear is necessary because you can’t fly in or out of Baghdad without body armor and a Kevlar helmet. After waiting in a VIP tent with an Army Colonel and a very fuzzy and loud FoxNews on the T.V., I heard my name called over the PA. I donned my protective gear, lifted my rucksack to my shoulders, and grabbed my small backpack.

Oddly enough, I was to fly out on a Japanese Air Force C-130. As I walked up to the baby-blue aircraft, I took a quick look at the big red meatball painted on the side. I kept thinking that somewhere, my great uncle, who fought the Japs in WWII, is twitching in his grave.

I must say that it was a much better flight out than the one I had going in a few days earlier. This time, there were only about seven or eight people on the plane. Besides the crew, there were only one or two Japanese, plus a few Europeans and Americans. I was the only military person aboard. So, with pretty much open seating, I grabbed a seat next to a gorgeous American woman with dark black hair and deep, almost oriental eyes…who nonetheless proceeded to completely ignore me. I guess dirty, smelly (after all, I had just chased a tow truck for a half mile) military people were just not her type.

She wore a blue floor-mat looking thing that seems to have passed for body armor for whichever cheapo contractor company she works for. It had two pouches – front and back – for the armor plating which was supposed to stop rifle rounds. But as she sat down on her seat, she pulled open the flap and pulled out not armor plating, but a copy of Cosmopolitan magazine. Then she grabbed her little hand-held fan and cooled herself down.

Damn contractors, I thought.

She even appeared loathe to wear her dinky blue helmet until the crew chief of the airplane came back and told her to do so in broken English.

“Must be wearing the equipments,” he said. Or something like that.


Whereas I had flown into Kuwait on a charter jet, which landed at a Kuwaiti Air Force Base, I flew out in civilian clothes through the Kuwait City International Airport. The airport itself is very nice – built to western standards. Or maybe 1970s western standards, because travelers are allowed to smoke throughout the terminal. I had thought Frankfurt was bad, but at least there, they have to stand next to machines which suck the smoke out of the air. In Kuwait, they stand everywhere – old Arab men in their “man-dresses” and younger Arab kids in what passes for hip-hop clothing. The smoke was everywhere. It was like standing inside George Burns’ lung.

Overall, Kuwait is very nice and modern. It’s always been a rich country – that’s why Saddam wanted it so badly in 1990. You would think that there would be a lot of damage from the Iraqi occupation and the Gulf War, but that isn’t the case. Almost everything that was damaged has been rebuilt. Oddly enough, the most visible signs of the war are at bases housing U.S. troops, such as airbases where U.S. aircraft sit next to concrete fighter hangars with massive holes blown through their roofs. The Iraqi fighter planes we bombed in 1991 are long gone, but the hangars are still there – some sort of patched, others unchanged.

All the Kuwaitis drive new cars. On the highways, you rarely see vehicles over 10 years old. This is partly because Kuwaitis are rich, and partly because the Iraqi Army stole just about all the cars they could get their hands on before retreating. In contrast to the desert where I had spent most of my time in the country, Kuwait City is a nice city of shopping malls and clean buildings. Kind of like Phoenix – with mosques.

The flight out of Kuwait to Frankfurt – and the next leg to Dallas – were on Lufthansa, which for me was a special treat, as I am perfectly fluent in German. Or at least I used to be. I’ve slipped a little. I drove the stewardesses nuts, I’m sure, by hitting them with a torrent of talk, trying to get in a little practice. I made a few mistakes – I used Abhangigkeit (dependence) instead of Gelegenheit (opportunity), but I recovered quickly.

I bought the latest novel by a writer I’d never heard of on the Frankfurt Airport, seeing me reading it, the stewardess was eager to talk about it. The writer, Frank Schaetzing, is apparently the best-selling author in Germany, sort of the Tom Clancy of Schnitzelland. Since I hadn’t been back in 9 years, I’d never heard of him, but the stewardess had read several of his books, and raved about him. The story, oddly enough, starts off in Kuwait during the Gulf War, and follows a Hamburg-based female private detective tracking down a former mercenary from the Gulf War who is tracking down and killing the fellow mercenaries who betrayed him and left him for dead. It’s pretty good so far, and only once did I have to ask the stewardess to translate a word. I had guessed from context that it was some kind of box or bag, and her translation was “treasure chest.”


Being home in Texas, back in the civilian world, was strange. At first, it didn’t hit me, because I was so caught up with dealing with my father’s passing. But as I got ready to return, I realized sharply the difference in the two worlds I was transiting through.

For two months, I had been surrounded by people who know exactly what their mission is, and do it without questioning. Discipline, respect, dignity and pride abounded.

Suddenly, I was back in airports and restaurants with the undisciplined, the unmotivated, the disrespectful. Naturally, it was a bit of a culture shock.

To the limited extent I was able to visit with friends, that too was great, but there were too many friends, and too little time. So much of my time back home was spent helping my mother out at the farm or tending to urgent personal business. Add to that the fact that my cell phone – with my entire address book – was sitting in the bottom of a duffle bag in a shipping container in a Baghdad parking lot, and I was woefully out-of-touch.

Before I knew it, my short leave was over, and I was once again Iraq-bound.

The trip back was eventful. The flight to Kuwait was fairly easy, but things got messy after that. The Army picked us at the airport and put us on a couple of busses to a Kuwaiti Air Force Base. En route, my bus blew a tire.

Rather than stand there on the side of a highway in Kuwait, they transferred us all to the second bus – along with our gear. The rest of the ride was cramped, but I was ready to keep moving.
Movement, however, was not what the Army had in mind. Instead, I got another lesson – as if I needed one – into the crucial meaning of the Army term “Hurry Up and Wait.”

1:15 a.m. Arrive at Ali Al Salem Air Force Base. I was hoping to check in for the night, but then I was told to prepare to fly out as soon as a flight was available. Rushing over to get my body armor out of the storage facility, I was geared up and ready to go when they gave me the news about the flight:

3 a.m. No space available on first flight.

“Come back at 4,” the Air Force guy said.

I sat on what appeared to be recycled airport terminal furniture inside a tent that was about 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Outside, it was about 40 degrees Celsius.

4 a.m. No space available.

“Report back here at 6:30.”

The movie on the T.V. in the tent was “Back to the Future.” Then they played “I, Robot.” Now, it’s “Transformers.” I had to go outside and sweat in the heat just to avoid the murderous assault on my good taste.

And so it went. For the next day and a half, they kept stringing me along, mostly in spans of four hours or less – precluding almost entirely the idea of sleep. Each time, I was led to believe that it was only a matter of time before I’d be on a flight. Finally, I got some inside info that the next flight was booked and I skipped one of the roll calls. At the next one, I learned nothing had changed, but it allowed me to put together a space of five hours to sleep.

As I’ve learned on so many occasions, you need to catch sleep whenever you can. Sometimes you can’t. At Ali Al Salem, there is a constant rotation of people going in and out. Living in transient tents, you close your eyes only to have a new batch of people enter your tent, open up every zipper or Velcro thing they have, and talk loudly about how the Army, Navy and Air Force are screwing them (the Marines screw people too, but Marines simply say, “Thank you, Marine Corps for screwing my life up. Please, sir, beat me again!”).

Actually the best sleep I ever got during the whole 40 hour ordeal was a 1-hour stint, lying on the dusty, hard concrete on the flight line of a Kuwaiti Air Force base, leaned up against my backpack. Somehow, that one hour rejuvenated me more than four or five hours on a lumpy, sand- and sweat-smelling mattress at another Kuwaiti Air Force base.

Finally, I arrived in Baghdad, touching down at BIAP (Baghdad International Airport) in the early morning. Stepping out the back of the C-130, the brutally-hot wash from the propellers burning me, hiking fast across the tarmac in my body armor and Kevlar helmet, with a pair of Blackhawk Helicopters streaking across the sky above, I thought how strange and surreal it was. Here I was, at the same place I had stood just over a month ago. Arriving into a war zone amid imposing signs of American power and control.

But between then and now stood a great chasm, a great void. I had been through some tough times, and I’d been through some simple, quiet, thoughtful moments. I had stood on the farm back home, looking up at the heavens, contemplating the crystal-clear, star-filled sky of Southwest Texas, and thinking back to the dreary, pollution-filled skies of Baghdad. I had walked in the depth of night from my workshop on the farm to the house, and had thought back to the bleak, pitch-black walk from my sandbag-lined tent to the showers back in Iraq.

Now, having returned, my perception of the surreal continued. As I returned to work, I rubbed my hands and felt the sharp pain in my finger. A painful, true reminder that yes, this had really happened. That yes, I had transited between these two worlds of mine. That these two lives that I’ve been living are not separate from each other – one a dream and one a reality – but in fact were separate threads of one ongoing existence. That in one exists James Aalan Bernsen, the guitar player, or consultant, or…farm worker, and in the other exists LTJG Bernsen, the Naval officer who’s never even been on a ship, but trudges around every day in this dusty, smelly place.

I get this feeling every day. How strange and odd it is that the two worlds should go on simultaneously, not the one waiting in stasis until I return to it, but moving on without me, as if my presence were entirely unnecessary.

I got it just yesterday, as I walked across the base, looking for an internet café so I could email my sister to ask her to check my mail. As I’m trudging through the sand and busted concrete, I hear the sounds of a gun battle in the distance – off to the East, towards downtown. I pick up my ears and judge it to be two to three miles. And then I put it out of my mind to concentrate on the greater worry: Is AT&T still charging me for my cell phone that I cancelled?

Both worlds do go on, I guess, though right now I have to live in this one, and keep my focus, keep my discipline – keep my situational awareness. Doing my job in this world, ultimately, is what will earn me a right to go back to the other one.