Palace Wildlife, Part II

The Palace complex features a dozen or more interconnected lakes, canals and other waterways. Half the water in Iraq must be here. The largest of the lakes, however, is the one that surrounds the Al Faw Palace. Big enough to go water skiing on, it must have been some recreation spot back in the day.

Saddam Hussein's cronys who built this place also stocked the lake with a unique breed of very large, very aggressive fish. Specially bred, I'm told, they're called "Saddam Bass" though they appear to most off us to be some kind of carp. They range in size from the young about the size of your hand to monster adults the size of a human's leg. The larger ones are surprisingly large.


When you come to a particular spot along the bridge, the bass come running. That's because every day, around breakfast, lunch and dinner, the Americans come. Like Pavlovian dogs, the bass know what that means. I don't know if fish salivate. Maybe they blow bubbles instead. Either way, these fish are clearly excited.

A few of my friends - two contractors and an Air Force gal - feeding the Saddam Bass. Passers-by bring a variety of food for the fish - mostly cereal and bread. Like the geese of the Al Faw palace, the Saddam bass will eat just about anything.

The fish slowly circle, eyeing their benefactors on the bridge above. Occasionally, they poke their heads above the water and make a gasping sound, as if pleading for the succulent morsels of waffle bits, Corn Pops and Count Chocula. As excited as they become, you would think it nothing short of ambrosia that awaited them.


The food is thrown into the abyss and for a brief moment there is a tense, suspended air about the lake. Within a second, however, the still waters of the lake are transformed:

Leaping, darting, thrashing and biting, the Saddam bass tear into the precious few drops of food. The scions of a dictator's hubris, they are remoresless, brutal and violent. Breaching from the waters over the backs of slower fish, or shoving their way through the crowd like a grandma on a shopping spree, the fish zero in on the food.


The frenzy reaches its climax and the thrashing of the water is loud and constant. A lone goldfish - a foot long and sluggish - is swamped by the more aggressive Saddam bass, who push him, struggling, to the bottom, like the fat kid with glasses who perpetually receives the tormenting blows of a bully. The scene is so primitive, so viscerally brutal that first-time viewers are taken aback and stunned by the suddenness by which the placid lake is transformed into a scene from a horror movie. Pirannahs, one would think, might go hungry here.

Indeed, the very nature of Saddam's rule makes one wonder just what exactly these fish were eating before the Americans arrived. Did Saddam - whose favorite movie, by the way, was "The Godfather" perhaps feed these fish himself? Seeing the brutal carnage, one can imagine Saddam standing over a trembling, terrified minion who had displeased him. One imagines Saddam holding out a cigar cutter and asking for the man to stick out his fingers.

Haunting, disturbing perhaps, but that's the image that one of my friends called up upon seeing the Saddam bass for the first time. We laughed at the picture, but then the more we thought about it, it really didn't seem that improbable.

Either way, these fish are one of the most unusual and entertaining things in this dismal, dust-filled oven known as Baghdad. And as this diversion runs its course, we turn our backs on this acquatic "Lord of the Flies" and go back to work.

Random photos, Part III

Once again a few random photos...

Why does Saddam's architecture always look like a bad set design from a Conan the Barbarian movie?

A close-up over the window. This looks like a quote. Probably from Saddam, since nobody else is worth quoting in Iraq, apparently.

What in the world could be cooler than a concrete swan?

Except, perhaps, a concrete chicken...

This is the abandoned mosque on base. Something blew it up between the first time I went by it in October and now. Most likely a rocket, and it was probably months back, since we've had I think two rockets on the entire base in the last two months. Good work Jihad Joe. I think if you blow up a mosque you pretty much ruin your chances of getting into paradise.

The Rhino Runner making its morning trip. I've done this a few times, and fortunately, it was a quiet ride.

When we just drive around the compound, however, we use more conventional transportation: a Ford Ranger or Ford Explorer. The next few pictures are from a trip we made to another base also in the compound.

If you don't have access to a vehicle, there are bus lines.

The roads are pretty poor where they are actual roads. They're constantly working on them, and we often have to take a detour through sand. Fortunately, they've finished this section here.

But they aren't going to make progress if the Pakistani guy is sleeping on the job. To quote Blazing Saddles, "It can't be more than 114!" Actually, I checked about an hour later. It was 113, but that thermometer was in the shade.

Our truck, by the way can cool the air down with its A/C unit down to about 105 before it gives up.

Oh, those nice folks in the Army safety office really know how to give you nice happy thoughts. This sign reads: "Narrow Roads + Fast Driving = Death!" Thanks. Happy happy, joy joy!

On the other side of the wall, there's a billboard for the Iraqis, which is at least more inviting. Beautiful blue skies and clouds and a green blob of Iraq. I'm sure it probably says something like "Calling in the tip line and reporting evil men will make Iraq a happy place again. With fairies dancing and lollypop trees!"

A bunch of MRAP Vehicles. These are some mean SUVs. They crush lollypop trees.

Wind + ubiquitous trash + miles of barbed wire = a fenceline strangely reminiscent of a Mexican border town.

I say, anyone for tea?


Sorry, no time for it. These guys are about to go down IED alley with nothing but up-armored Chevy Suburbans. The next time you hear some politician going nuts about how much contractors make in Iraq, ask them if they'd like to put their faith in an up-armored suburban. When your gun turret is an open hatchback, you know you've got some serious intestinal fortitude to ride in one of these things.

One Week left!

I'm now down to one week until I depart Iraq!

Lots to talk about, and lots to do. But my boss has already parcelled out my work to other folks (I do not have a replacement, a tacit nod to the success we're having and the drawdown of the surge). The good news is that I will now have time to do stuff outside of work, and catch up on all of the many topics I've long wanted to address on this blog.

Because my work is so sensitive, I knew there wouldn't be much about it that I could discuss in a public forum, so I didn't know how much interesting happenings I could find to put on the blog. I thought that I would be pressed to find enough to write about. On the contrary, there is always lots to write about and just not enough time.

I'm going to try to catch up in the next few days with some of the things I've really wanted to address. So check the site frequently.

Iraqi Soccer, cheerleaders and the Civil War

It's been very quiet in recent days. So quiet, in fact, that one would hardly think there's a war on. At least around these parts. Nonetheless, that doesn't mean the place has gotten entirely safe. Forget the insurgency, an entirely new danger faces us: Iraqi Soccer.

Last night, the Iraqi national Soccer team faced its biggest challenge yet. The team, whose dramatic rise to greatness despite the war and violence, faced a team that on paper should have destroyed them: China. And as they have done so often before, the Iraqi team rose to the challenge and defeated the Chinese in a stunning upset.

I was at work at the time this happened, and the first I knew was when an Army Sergeant came into the office.

"I nearly got shot this morning," he said.

"Really?" I asked. "Where were you."

I thought he'd been on a patrol in West Rashid or Karkh.

"In my trailer. Sleeping."

Yes folks, Iraqis know how to throw a party. In perfect East Houston fashion, their ubiquitous way of celebrating victory or weddings or just about anything is to raise their guns in the air and fire away. Thus, somewhere probably a mile beyond our wall, some excited Iraqi soccer fan stuck an AK-47 into the air and let loose a torrent of metallic exuberation. Miles away, the sergeant was sleeping in his room when a loud slapping sound echoed across the room. He woke up briefly, decided he imagined it, and went back to sleep.

Unfortunately, another soldier not far away was not so lucky, and got a bullet through his shoulder. Not a life-threatening wound this time, but stray rounds have been known to kill. There was one at the gym a few months back. A guy sleeping in a tent. One soldier was hit on a treadmill and another in the shower. Fortunately those two lived.

But, so far as I know, the minor wound in the shoulder was all we got courtesy of the Iraqi soccer team. Nonetheless, the MPs took precautions and went trailer to trailer to ask if there were any injuries. That was when they woke up the Sergeant in our story. He answered the door, said that they were fine, then turned on his lights. Little chunks of the ceiling were strewn across the room, and there, in perfect condition, a sharply-pointed brass 7.62 round lay on the floor. It was this he later showed to me at work.

It was rather bizzarre that the bullet was not deformed. Normally, when a bullet strikes something - anything - it changes shape from a point to a kind of mushroom-like shape. That's what happened to the bullet that Maj. Q, my boss found, earlier this week.

"I walk the exact same route home every day, without fail," he said. "And then, yesterday afternoon, as I walked home, I found this."

He produced another round - also a 7.62 AK-47 round. Although this was flat and mashed, with the brass jacket pealed away to expose the silvery lead beneath it. Maj. Q said he was going to try to get it home to show his kids.

"Not much of a war story," I said. "You need to spice it up. Tell them that you dodged it."

"That wouldn't be true," he said.

"Of course it's true," I replied. "You just dodged it by 6 hours."

He thought this was funny and put it into our growing quote book.

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Why do I always miss the cheerleaders?

This is becoming a major annoyance for me, and is seriously hurting my morale. I arrived in country about two days after the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders were here. I saw pictures, but it's not the same thing. And then, the Washington Redskins Cheerleaders arrived, and I was at work and couldn't get away. Leaving for lunch, I was barely out the door as they climbed aboard their bus and drove off.

Earlier this week, it was a new batch. I think it was the Philadelphia Eagles cheerleaders. The guy who told me about it wasn't quite sure. He seemed to recall every detail but that. Anyway, they came to visit us at midnight, which was great because the night shift always gets short shrift. Unfortunately, I arrived at work 30 minutes past midnight, and well, they were gone.

Yesterday, however, I arrived at lunch to see several very nice looking young women in the dinining facility. Wearing matching black outfits, they were signing autographs. I stopped by the table on my way out and discovered that they were in fact the dance team for the Seattle Supersonics. They gave me an autographed picture, but their performance wasn't until 8 p.m. that night. When I'm sleeping of course. And on another base down the road.

Typical

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So, knowing I couldn't make the dancers' performance, I walked over to the MWR center to go use the Internet. Out of curiosity, I poked my head into the little movie theater we have here. The movie - which was just about halfway through - was "Gods and Generals." It's a very historically accurate - if slow developing Civil War drama, and I've seen it many times. I dropped onto a couch - it's been two months since I sat on a couch - and watched the last part of it.

The most intense part of the movie encompasses the Battle of Fredricksburg, which was fought between the Union and Confederate Armies from Dec. 11-15, 1862, and the Battle of Chancellorsville, which followed it.

It was interesting, as I sat there with the other soldiers, wondering who in the room would have been fighting on the opposite sides. One guy, based on his accent alone, would probably have been wearing a blue uniform. I myself, and a few others, would probably have been wearing grey. And we would have stood there in rows and loaded and fired muskets at each other. But that was the past, and today we wore the same uniform and serve in the same army.

The other thing that struck me, while watching this, was how vast a difference in the nature of war had occurred, and how little perspective Americans have about it. At Chancellorsville, the Union Army had in one battle in one small town in Virginia almost as many soldiers as the U.S. Army has today in the entire country of Iraq. The Confederates, whose forces were half as large, actually won both battles.

And the total casualties in those two battles (less than a week of fighting) were actually greater than all of the casualties in Iraq. After five years of fighting here, 4,000 Americans have died. In those two battles alone, 5,000 Americans died. And those were just two of dozens of brutal battles in that war.

It is true, as Robert E. Lee said at Fredricksburg, that "war is so terrible." But the scope and nature have changed dramatically. Back then, 2 out of every 100 Americans died in a war. Today, that number is barely 1 in 100,000.

An interesting, statistic. But in the interest of leaving on a happy, optimistic note, as good as that is, it's getting even better today. Whatever you're seeing reported in the news about the vast improvements of the surge, let me just add this: It's better than anybody is reporting. In fact, I've noticed about a month or two lag in media coverage. So if they're saying back home that things are getting better, let me just assure you that things are getting incredibly better. Not perfect, of course, but far better than I myself (an optimist, even) would have ever predicted nine months ago, when I arrived.

Even then, attacks were headed down, as the effects of the surge and some new counter-insurgency strategies began to take hold. But the drop in violence - as big in terms of qualitative, as much as quantitative, violence - has been stunning to behold. And there came that Eureka moment when the Iraqi Army actually realized that all that painstaking training their American counterparts had given them works. Suddenly, rather than going into battle hesitantly and fearful, they started going into battle ready to rock and roll.

The writing is on the wall, and though the terrorists will continue to attack, and continue to kill (mostly innocent Iraqis who get in their way), they no longer have the ability to control the outcome of the fight.

So, with my time here coming to a close in just over two weeks, I can look back with immense pride on what we've accomplished. The great majority of the credit, of course, goes to those hard warriors who load up, sector up and get out into the thick of it every day. If I've done something to help them do their job better - or give them the tools they need to do so - then that was my mission, and that's what I will wear with pride for the rest of my life.

27 days left!

Getting close...

Middle Eastern Night at the MWR

The MWR is where soldiers and others on base go to relax, sit on real, authentic couches, use computers, play pool and watch television. Although the television's almost always tuned into wrestling, so I don't think you could call it relaxing. MWR stands for Morale, Welfare and Recreation, and every base has one of these places that ostensibly gives us a chance to unwind and take our minds off the war.

Not that you really have much opportunity to use one when you're on a 12-hour shift like me. Generally, if I'm not working, I'm sleeping or working out. But I do get over there to do a few things on the Internet that I can't do at work - such as writing on this blog, for instance, or watching videos on Youtube.

They've also got a host of activities going on over here all the time. There are volleyball tournaments, for example - Woe be unto anyone who challenges the Tongans. There are horseshoe stakes too - I'd love to play, but who wants to put their hands on a steel horseshoe when the ambient air temperature is 115? They also have evening events, from Karaoke to dancing. There's a salsa night and a country and western night. But the other evening, when I came by to check for an email I was awaiting, I stumbled upon "Middle Eastern Night."

I've always been of the opinion that the more traditional, the more authentic a form of music is, the more vibrant, exciting and lively it is. It's a product of evolution, not marketing, and I think that there's something special about it. When I was living Southwest Texas just after college, I used to go to a lot of Tejano dances in little dance halls in places like Uvalde or Crystal City. Places where the only Anglo folks in the whole crowd were me, my date and the Sheriff. But the music was fun, and no one cared.

I'm also a big fan of the blues, and folks like Muddy Waters or Robert Johnson. Rock and Roll in its early days still had some of that buzz, that vibe, that energy. Jerry Lee Lewis was fun. Chuck Berry made you want to get up and dance. And it sounded real, uncontrived. Not like the crap they put out these days.

The same is true of older country - the kind of Bob Wills, Ernest Tubb, Lefty Frizzell type of stuff - which is so much more fun and full of soul than "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy." Bottom line, if you need to do a poll or ask a focus group to tell you what good is, then you're not playing good music. And the music doesn't have to be old or dated, to have this energy. It just has to be true.

So as I came into the MWR the other night, I was greeted with the fun, exciting beat of the latest - but authentic - hits of the Arab music scene. Mostly the work of Egyptian pop stars - I watch them on MTV Arabia at the barber shop - it's got that unique beat, pulse and rhythmic singing that just makes you think of the Middle East, the desert, caravans and that kind of thing.

So I found myself typing away at the computer, matching time with my keystrokes t0 the beat of the songs. After a while, I finished what I was doing and came out into the main room to watch. There on the dance floor was an odd mix of people. Two obviously Middle Eastern women - probably translators - were the center of attention. One, wearing a short sun dress and high heels, was probably the best-looking woman I've seen in Iraq, or at least the best one outside of the Australian Air Force. The other wore tight jeans and a white blouse. Dancing to the beat, they raised their arms, lifted their heels and swayed around. You could almost imagine them in belly dancer outfits like some scene out of Lawrence of Arabia. Gathered around these women were an odd assortment of U.S. soldiers wearing their Army PT shirts and shorts, male translators wearing 1970s-looking button down shirts and Iraqi soldiers, who kind of hung off at the side of the room watching, not sure if they wanted to go into such debauchery as actually dancing within 10 feet of a woman.

The Egyptians and Lebanese men, of course, didn't care, and they were out on the dance floor in all their uncoordinated glory, having a good time. The dancing, of course, was tame by modern Western standards, and most of the time, the men and women didn't even touch. The one exception was when they gathered together in a line and danced together, kicking their feet out and yelling. Kind of like an Arabic version of the Cotton-Eyed Joe. My Arabic is limited, but I think I heard something like "Bull Shit!"

It was a fun time, and everyone was happy. These are good times. Our base hasn't been hit by a rocket in nearly two months (they used to hit us twice a week) and everyone here seems to have a bit more of a spring in their steps. Of course, there's still work going on outside the wire, and all these people had long hours ahead of them - pouring over captured enemy documents and translating their contents for the Americans and their allies - but tonight they could relax, let their hair down, and do what people all over the world all like to do - have a good time.

DUMBO MUST DIE!

The whole palace compound here is full of some pretty strange art. There are these life-sized stone chickens over by one of the buildings, but there's a photography ban over there, and I can't show them. Over in another palace, with a similar ban, there's a large bas relief of a kind of sylized Iraqi eagle and a battle scene.

But the weirdest piece of art is on a small side building along the lake. I call the piece "Dumbo Must Die!" Picturing an idealized Arab hunting scene, it shows several brave, courageous, tough Iraqi warriors taking down what is obviously merely a baby elephant. Worse than that, the elephant's already on the ground, his legs crumpled. Not only have they clearly exhibited manly prowess by taking down the most helpless and cuddly of pachyderms, but one of the hunters - with evident glee - is in the process of stabbing poor little Dumbo in the eye with a spear.

To give you perspective, this building has two large reliefs. The first is the ancient hunting scene, which one must assume was to tout traditional Arab fighting skill of the past. The second, is a modern counterpoint, which features the brave Iraqi soldier of the 1980s, charging into war against the Iranians. Led by a soldier who has just fired off a Rocket-Propelled Grenade, and exhorted by another who is wielding an AK-47 in one hand and shaking his fist, they charge off against the modern equivalent of dumbo.

It all looks kind of silly and hokey, and becomes a parody of the great virtues it's trying to portray, kind of like really bad art deco of farm and factory scenes in an old post office.

Today, after my shift was over at work, I went fishing in the lake with a buddy of mine, a Marine Captain from Montana named Chris. We stopped by the Dumbo palace and took a few photos.


Chris and I posing with the life-sized Iraqi soldiers. Just above the first, kneeling soldier, you can barely see the depiction of a Mi-17 helicopter. Ironically, about 20 minutes before we took this photo, we were buzzed by just such a helicopter - part of the new Iraqi Air Force.


Strangely enough, almost all of these soldiers bear a strong resemblance to Saddam Hussein.

DUMBO MUST DIE!