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At first, I just barely noticed something soft on the roadway. Something out of the ordinary mix of commuting cars and pickups and occasional heavy vehicles that drone unceasingly across my view of the expressway outside my office.
In the days before elevators, I suppose the ninth floor would be a "high rise" structure, but now it's just another pile of bricks and glass that abut the highway leading downtown. As cube farms go, it could be worse. It's not one of those prairie dog communities, where just the heads of the curious can be seen popping up above the bland fabric walls. It's not a bull pen either, where the unmitigated click and clatter of modern business machines drowns out attempts at sustained critical thought. No, it's a long space, and the cubes are rarely more than three units away from the continuous bank of windows that line the north wall of the building.
The structure and organization is akin to a goat farm, where seniority and privilege gets you the best trash and a spot at the top of the heap, overlooking all the other goats, the kids relegated the safety of the interior. Cube farm livestock references aside, I gets me a window seat. From a transportation engineering perspective, it works out pretty well, as there are plenty of examples just outside that I can use when in search of a supporting illustration. There's the design and relationship of the freeway with adjacent ramps, frontage roads, railroad, local streets and parking lots. There's the use of bridges signage, signaling and lighting. There're utilities, landscaping, safety considerations and maintenance. There's wildlife crossing eight lanes of traffic.
The out of place soft thing is a goose, on the freeway, walking down the westbound HOV lane. A hood ornament in training. And I'm wondering - he can fly, so why bother with city traffic? As he waddled out of the rush of cars and leapt atop the median's concrete barrier, I noticed the top eight inches of so of a second goose, just on the other side of the barrier and just downstream of the first bird. Then a burst of pale yellow, as a gosling ran into the fast lane, had second thoughts, and ran back to the median, cheating death. The existence of non-flying youngsters could explain all the walking.
By this time, much of the department is at the window, watching the drama through binoculars. And at about this time, the first goose decides to hop off of the barrier, and complete his stroll across the freeway, something I'd be very hesitant to do myself without suitable traffic control devices in place. But, after a couple of false starts and heart stopping delays midstream, there was a live goose across the road, working his way up the Xenia Avenue off ramp.
The second goose had abandoned her brood in favor of following the drake and was looking for an opening in traffic when the first Golden Valley patrol car arrived on the scene. Then, with herding skill I only though possible by Australian bush pilots, he drove up real close and laid out a sqwaak on his siren, forcing the bird to flight - over the eastbound lanes to join her mate.
Then, in the company of another Golden Valley squad car and a State Trooper, the three public safety officers stopped all traffic in the westbound lanes while one of the cops waddled after the goslings, caught them both, and sequestered them in the caged rear seat of his car. The cops must have had some assistance from citizens in another of the neighbouring offices because the birds' release was in an open and partially flooded field just across the Interstate, where the parents had flown during the ruckus and where this wayward family had probably started their day.
Another job well done by Golden Valley's finest.
So it goes. What started as just a brief glance at something out of place resulted in about twenty minutes of misdirected effort. I must confess, though - the geese were not my first concern. No, Minneapolis drivers are predominantly idiots, and would more likely swerve into the side of an eighteen wheeler than whack a sky pig. I was just waiting for the pile up.
Read More......
2004-05-25
2004-03-03
03 March 2004
Baghdad
The problem with this place is that, no matter how fubar I think it is, they always come up with a way to make it more fu. This nonsense in Baghdad and Kerbala yesterday morning, especially. First off – I am absolutely an ignoramus in the ways of Islam, but…
Millions were gathering for the Ashura holy day, long since banned by Saddam. For one, it’s a Shi’a festival, and Saddam was Sunni. For two, one “colorful” aspect of this ritual is the self flagellation. In some groups, this involves the participant cutting the top of his own head, and then continuously beating himself with stick of sword to ensure continued bleeding.
Very messy.
As was traffic on the way to the Ministry for what will probably turn out to be my final coordination meeting with them. The drive that normally takes fifteen to twenty minutes took over ninety, as the entire city was disrupted by the parades and demonstrations of the devout. During one particularly interminable wait, I observed a group of easily five to ten thousand marchers, each tenth or so led by a bundle of banners and flags, then a group of elderly guys, then a hundred or two self flagellators, then a couple hundred supporters. Then the next tenth, then the next, literally as far as the eye could see.
Each mass of self flagellators strode to the rhythm of a truck full of speakers projecting the (to western ears) strange wailings of a priest, accompanied by a couple of large drums. The wailing ended in a THUMP every three or four seconds, and the devout would advance just one more step – simultaneously whacking themselves on the back with small cats-o-nine-tails. Left side. Right side. Thump. Thump.
This slow procession took up one side (three lanes) of the six lane road, naturally expanding it to four or five lanes on my side, as vehicles tried to cram their way forward (there’s hardly any pavement marking anyway, so who’s to say it wasn’t a five lane slab to start). We weren’t moving at all for way too long, the marchers seemed to have brought their own informally armed security, and Captain Barnhart had her hand on the safety of her pistol the entire time, ready to discharge the chambered cartridge and send some wayward Iraqi elsewhere.
While we were in this traffic jam from Allah, simultaneously in Baghdad and Kerbala, bad guys lobbed mortars into the million Muslim marches, killing at least a hundred and a half.
For three, this festival is the most important on the Shi’a calendar, and is almost always disrupted by violence. Coincidentally, the holiday is to remember the death of the Prophet’s grandson, who was martyred by bad guys hundred and hundreds of years ago.
As a result, three days of mourning was declared and all public offices are closed. By the time it’s done, my necessary contact in the Ministry will be on a money begging mission in Qatar, and my Sector Chief will be in the States, so my intended handover meetings between them will not occur, and (like I care much any more) the continuation of the process will falter.
Well, and on that cheerful note, the bastards are lobbing mortars and/or rockets at the palace again, and the Giant Voice has been activated.
I am so done here. Read More......
The problem with this place is that, no matter how fubar I think it is, they always come up with a way to make it more fu. This nonsense in Baghdad and Kerbala yesterday morning, especially. First off – I am absolutely an ignoramus in the ways of Islam, but…
Millions were gathering for the Ashura holy day, long since banned by Saddam. For one, it’s a Shi’a festival, and Saddam was Sunni. For two, one “colorful” aspect of this ritual is the self flagellation. In some groups, this involves the participant cutting the top of his own head, and then continuously beating himself with stick of sword to ensure continued bleeding.
Very messy.
As was traffic on the way to the Ministry for what will probably turn out to be my final coordination meeting with them. The drive that normally takes fifteen to twenty minutes took over ninety, as the entire city was disrupted by the parades and demonstrations of the devout. During one particularly interminable wait, I observed a group of easily five to ten thousand marchers, each tenth or so led by a bundle of banners and flags, then a group of elderly guys, then a hundred or two self flagellators, then a couple hundred supporters. Then the next tenth, then the next, literally as far as the eye could see.
Each mass of self flagellators strode to the rhythm of a truck full of speakers projecting the (to western ears) strange wailings of a priest, accompanied by a couple of large drums. The wailing ended in a THUMP every three or four seconds, and the devout would advance just one more step – simultaneously whacking themselves on the back with small cats-o-nine-tails. Left side. Right side. Thump. Thump.
This slow procession took up one side (three lanes) of the six lane road, naturally expanding it to four or five lanes on my side, as vehicles tried to cram their way forward (there’s hardly any pavement marking anyway, so who’s to say it wasn’t a five lane slab to start). We weren’t moving at all for way too long, the marchers seemed to have brought their own informally armed security, and Captain Barnhart had her hand on the safety of her pistol the entire time, ready to discharge the chambered cartridge and send some wayward Iraqi elsewhere.
While we were in this traffic jam from Allah, simultaneously in Baghdad and Kerbala, bad guys lobbed mortars into the million Muslim marches, killing at least a hundred and a half.
For three, this festival is the most important on the Shi’a calendar, and is almost always disrupted by violence. Coincidentally, the holiday is to remember the death of the Prophet’s grandson, who was martyred by bad guys hundred and hundreds of years ago.
As a result, three days of mourning was declared and all public offices are closed. By the time it’s done, my necessary contact in the Ministry will be on a money begging mission in Qatar, and my Sector Chief will be in the States, so my intended handover meetings between them will not occur, and (like I care much any more) the continuation of the process will falter.
Well, and on that cheerful note, the bastards are lobbing mortars and/or rockets at the palace again, and the Giant Voice has been activated.
I am so done here. Read More......
2004-02-27
27 February 2004
PART IV - WHO WOULD JESUS BOMB?
=====
Baghdad
My focus has changed inexorably.
I’m down to my last few weeks.
Last weekend saw the departure of the combat engineers who have been my friends and escorts since I arrived. They had been here about twice as long as originally ordered. This is a common hazard with overseas work, it seems, no matter the employer. They won’t be going straight back to Arkansas, but they’ll get there eventually, once they serve four to six weeks in Falluja pulling ordnance disposal duties (fairly light work, unless there’s an accidental discharge).
They asked me to join them at their going away drunk at the Al Rashid. And we did, for they bypassed the long and sobering lines at the bar in favor of bringing their own bottles, which seemed magically without bottom. These guys I will miss. Mostly lads, early twenties. The oldest was thirty-one. Reservist enlisted men. As quick to bitch as they were to laugh. Skillful and accomplished professionals. And really, how could I not like them – they were all buying motorcycles when they got stateside. Granted, the unanimous plan was for chromed out bar hoppers, but who was I to tell them the error of their ways.
I rarely have the same feeling about the officers. Too many of them are only so much management – large, bureaucratic, top heavy management.
Chuck left Baghdad this week as well. Pressure from home was more than his assignment here could bear, so he bugged out a few weeks early. Chuck’s departure marked the beginning of the end of we Ungrateful Whiners. Although three of us had left prior to Chuck, they were all replaced in due course. Chuck will not, nor will I, or anyone of the rest of us. The end of the Fellowship, if you’d like to think of it that way.
A rare fellowship, to be sure. This will be my twentieth season doing this work, and I have never been a part of such a group, with little prior contact or knowledge of one another, thrown into a bizarre and high pressure situation, and yet work so well together. The Whiners I’ll miss. Not enough to get me to re-up, but enough to compare all future alliances against. Well, there’s a little part of me that would re-up, but they would never meet my price of triple what they pay me now – plus weapons.
Many from our group will return. Both bachelors are eyeing the tremendous tax advantages of working overseas for 330 days in a year. Many more will return for just a couple of weeks about a month after we leave. Despite the best efforts of the scores of planners and bureaucrats walking the halls of the PMO, the contractors who will replace us won’t be announced until the week after we leave. As such, it will be another month before they get here. They’ll need some help in deciphering what we’ve done for the past five months. Good luck to them!
On this end, I've got fourteen days and a wakeup (as they say, but it’s not like I’m counting), and then fly back via Amman and Amsterdam to enjoy what's left of the Minnesota winter. I won't miss Baghdad.
I was at a going away bashment for the Senior Advisor for the Ministry of Water Resources two nights ago, hosted by the Minister of Water Resources, who asked me, "What is your favorite part of Iraq?" At this time, I'm not sure exactly where I went with the answer. I'm just glad I was sober enough to make up something in short order. Something like, “…blah, blah,.. people.. resource,… blah, blah,… opportunities,…”
How could I tell him that I’m still searching for a rhyme for “shithole”.
The appeal to this place is not what Iraq is, but what she was thirty years ago, and could become again – her potential. But today, the climate is unsuitable, there’s no rain, the predominant color is dirt, there’s little industry, the infrastructure is in tatters, let alone the fact that the CPA lifestyle is wholly unnatural, and there’s people trying to kill us.
What’s there not to like?
This limerick, for one. The meters way off, as well as the rhyme.
The palace sits beside the Tigris.
The mortars? Some day they may not miss.
If I weren’t in this shithole
I’d be eating fresh cannoli
And from afar the Mid-east I would dis. Read More......
=====
Baghdad
My focus has changed inexorably.
I’m down to my last few weeks.
Last weekend saw the departure of the combat engineers who have been my friends and escorts since I arrived. They had been here about twice as long as originally ordered. This is a common hazard with overseas work, it seems, no matter the employer. They won’t be going straight back to Arkansas, but they’ll get there eventually, once they serve four to six weeks in Falluja pulling ordnance disposal duties (fairly light work, unless there’s an accidental discharge).
They asked me to join them at their going away drunk at the Al Rashid. And we did, for they bypassed the long and sobering lines at the bar in favor of bringing their own bottles, which seemed magically without bottom. These guys I will miss. Mostly lads, early twenties. The oldest was thirty-one. Reservist enlisted men. As quick to bitch as they were to laugh. Skillful and accomplished professionals. And really, how could I not like them – they were all buying motorcycles when they got stateside. Granted, the unanimous plan was for chromed out bar hoppers, but who was I to tell them the error of their ways.
I rarely have the same feeling about the officers. Too many of them are only so much management – large, bureaucratic, top heavy management.
Chuck left Baghdad this week as well. Pressure from home was more than his assignment here could bear, so he bugged out a few weeks early. Chuck’s departure marked the beginning of the end of we Ungrateful Whiners. Although three of us had left prior to Chuck, they were all replaced in due course. Chuck will not, nor will I, or anyone of the rest of us. The end of the Fellowship, if you’d like to think of it that way.
A rare fellowship, to be sure. This will be my twentieth season doing this work, and I have never been a part of such a group, with little prior contact or knowledge of one another, thrown into a bizarre and high pressure situation, and yet work so well together. The Whiners I’ll miss. Not enough to get me to re-up, but enough to compare all future alliances against. Well, there’s a little part of me that would re-up, but they would never meet my price of triple what they pay me now – plus weapons.
Many from our group will return. Both bachelors are eyeing the tremendous tax advantages of working overseas for 330 days in a year. Many more will return for just a couple of weeks about a month after we leave. Despite the best efforts of the scores of planners and bureaucrats walking the halls of the PMO, the contractors who will replace us won’t be announced until the week after we leave. As such, it will be another month before they get here. They’ll need some help in deciphering what we’ve done for the past five months. Good luck to them!
On this end, I've got fourteen days and a wakeup (as they say, but it’s not like I’m counting), and then fly back via Amman and Amsterdam to enjoy what's left of the Minnesota winter. I won't miss Baghdad.
I was at a going away bashment for the Senior Advisor for the Ministry of Water Resources two nights ago, hosted by the Minister of Water Resources, who asked me, "What is your favorite part of Iraq?" At this time, I'm not sure exactly where I went with the answer. I'm just glad I was sober enough to make up something in short order. Something like, “…blah, blah,.. people.. resource,… blah, blah,… opportunities,…”
How could I tell him that I’m still searching for a rhyme for “shithole”.
The appeal to this place is not what Iraq is, but what she was thirty years ago, and could become again – her potential. But today, the climate is unsuitable, there’s no rain, the predominant color is dirt, there’s little industry, the infrastructure is in tatters, let alone the fact that the CPA lifestyle is wholly unnatural, and there’s people trying to kill us.
What’s there not to like?
This limerick, for one. The meters way off, as well as the rhyme.
The palace sits beside the Tigris.
The mortars? Some day they may not miss.
If I weren’t in this shithole
I’d be eating fresh cannoli
And from afar the Mid-east I would dis. Read More......
2004-02-16
Monday, 16 February 2004
1830 – Baghdad. Tom sees bananas. Tom likes bananas. Tom wants bananas. Tom wants to stop in the middle of Baghdad for bananas. Tom is an idiot. Tom outranks me by lots.
We were a bunch at the Ministry that morning, our usual herd having been joined by a pod of Italians and a couple from my office who needed to meet the Minister before I go CONUS. Four vehicles total, and we were a little short on shooters, but well within policy. I was driving one of our Durangos in the second position – Sergeant Hill as my machine gun wielding passenger, Tom and Bill in the back seat.
We take a different route back to the CPA from the Ministry. It is generally faster than squeezing through the “tunnel of death” at noon, reducing our exposure somewhat, but it still not a drive to the mall. Out of the Ministry, it’s an eighty mile an hour sprint about a kilometer to the expressway, which ends shortly after we complete the on merge. We can usually get through this first traffic signal quickly, since there’s not much traffic yet to the adjacent Olympic Village, but the subsequent signal is usually backed up, and it’s not uncommon for us to hop the median and bypass the stopped traffic.
None of the signals in Baghdad are operational just yet, but sometimes the traffic cops can get a handle on ordering the cars and trucks and stinky busses through the major intersections. Sometimes, the system collapses and gridlock ensues. These are bad times indeed, if we ever have to stop moving. Worst is when this lack of forward motion causes the troops to dismount and force a hole. It’s way rude, and makes us very bare.
But not this day, we just putter along, keeping an eye on the citizens and the rooftops. And traffic slowed even more, barely inching towards a major intersection.
The rain/slop had obscured our view through the first convoyed vehicle but, moving left in what I had of a lane, I could see the flashing lights atop a couple of Iraqi Police cars. One was in the outside lane in the opposite direction, sixty meters forward. One was in my inside lane, forty meter ahead, and the uniformed driver had exited and was running away from me towards the intersection.
I radioed this fore and aft and heightened my awareness.
We were not about to wait at this intersection for any ineffectual traffic cop, and directed the convoy over the right curb and onto the sidewalk, passing the queued cars and muscling our way into and through the intersection. The explosion occurred just then, but we weren’t about to stop and investigate. We forced our way forward.
About this time, Tom notices that there are bananas for sale in the middle of Baghdad. Vendors with their wares. Little shacks. Store fronts. Tables by the curb. And yes, they have some bananas. Tom wants some of them. “They’re really good”, he explains. “Can we stop and get some?”
I emit a low growl.
Traffic is creeping along. The stern voice of our mission leader comes over the radio, “I just saw a guy notice us and make a phone call.” Heads further up. Eyes darting. Maximum paranoia.
“You know, these bananas are really good. I’ve had some before and they’re real sweet but I don’t have any more and they’re hard to get. Can we stop and get some bananas?” I have no intension of stopping for any fruit, but the Fates sometimes get out of hand, and they block Baghdad traffic, weirdly, right in front of a curbside stand selling, golly, bananas.
Before I can lock the windows, Tom’s is open, and he’s working on a banana deal, which goes off well enough, but a fifty meter gap has developed behind the lead vehicle by the time the fruit is backing the van, and it’s Go Real Fast Time, as I eliminate the gap.
Three blocks later, a right turn and two blocks to the river road, and left and eighty miles an hour again. Then a quick left down an alley, a right on the road we just left, and two hundred meters to the checkpoint at the Fourteenth of July Bridge, south entrance to the Green Zone.
Safely home with Tom’s bananas. Read More......
We were a bunch at the Ministry that morning, our usual herd having been joined by a pod of Italians and a couple from my office who needed to meet the Minister before I go CONUS. Four vehicles total, and we were a little short on shooters, but well within policy. I was driving one of our Durangos in the second position – Sergeant Hill as my machine gun wielding passenger, Tom and Bill in the back seat.
We take a different route back to the CPA from the Ministry. It is generally faster than squeezing through the “tunnel of death” at noon, reducing our exposure somewhat, but it still not a drive to the mall. Out of the Ministry, it’s an eighty mile an hour sprint about a kilometer to the expressway, which ends shortly after we complete the on merge. We can usually get through this first traffic signal quickly, since there’s not much traffic yet to the adjacent Olympic Village, but the subsequent signal is usually backed up, and it’s not uncommon for us to hop the median and bypass the stopped traffic.
None of the signals in Baghdad are operational just yet, but sometimes the traffic cops can get a handle on ordering the cars and trucks and stinky busses through the major intersections. Sometimes, the system collapses and gridlock ensues. These are bad times indeed, if we ever have to stop moving. Worst is when this lack of forward motion causes the troops to dismount and force a hole. It’s way rude, and makes us very bare.
But not this day, we just putter along, keeping an eye on the citizens and the rooftops. And traffic slowed even more, barely inching towards a major intersection.
The rain/slop had obscured our view through the first convoyed vehicle but, moving left in what I had of a lane, I could see the flashing lights atop a couple of Iraqi Police cars. One was in the outside lane in the opposite direction, sixty meters forward. One was in my inside lane, forty meter ahead, and the uniformed driver had exited and was running away from me towards the intersection.
I radioed this fore and aft and heightened my awareness.
We were not about to wait at this intersection for any ineffectual traffic cop, and directed the convoy over the right curb and onto the sidewalk, passing the queued cars and muscling our way into and through the intersection. The explosion occurred just then, but we weren’t about to stop and investigate. We forced our way forward.
About this time, Tom notices that there are bananas for sale in the middle of Baghdad. Vendors with their wares. Little shacks. Store fronts. Tables by the curb. And yes, they have some bananas. Tom wants some of them. “They’re really good”, he explains. “Can we stop and get some?”
I emit a low growl.
Traffic is creeping along. The stern voice of our mission leader comes over the radio, “I just saw a guy notice us and make a phone call.” Heads further up. Eyes darting. Maximum paranoia.
“You know, these bananas are really good. I’ve had some before and they’re real sweet but I don’t have any more and they’re hard to get. Can we stop and get some bananas?” I have no intension of stopping for any fruit, but the Fates sometimes get out of hand, and they block Baghdad traffic, weirdly, right in front of a curbside stand selling, golly, bananas.
Before I can lock the windows, Tom’s is open, and he’s working on a banana deal, which goes off well enough, but a fifty meter gap has developed behind the lead vehicle by the time the fruit is backing the van, and it’s Go Real Fast Time, as I eliminate the gap.
Three blocks later, a right turn and two blocks to the river road, and left and eighty miles an hour again. Then a quick left down an alley, a right on the road we just left, and two hundred meters to the checkpoint at the Fourteenth of July Bridge, south entrance to the Green Zone.
Safely home with Tom’s bananas. Read More......
2004-02-06
Friday, February 06, 2004
09:30 РBaghdad. Tonight was a fete at the Green Zone Caf̩.
As the only place in the Green Zone where you can get a pizza, it does a brisk business. The pie is adequate as pies go. The crust is well textured and not too doughy, with a strong taste of yeast. The sauce is subtle, but not especially interesting. The toppings vary as much as do local conditions. You get what’s available and like it. The cheese pizza is a good bet.
The raison d’etre of this event is Charles, who has had enough, and is leaving Baghdad tomorrow. [It’s a bit more complex than that, but,…] This struck me as a mildly disturbing development, as Charles was one of the true believers. He told me shortly after his arrival at the end of November, and on multiple occasions since, that the success of our work in reconstructing Iraq affects the fate of the Western World.
To paraphrase my recollection, his belief is that terrorist elements (the proverbial “Evil”) would do what they could to disrupt the reconstruction process, primarily through maintaining an unsafe (ok, dangerous) atmosphere throughout Iraq. As a result, the CPA (and the contractors to follow) would have a difficult if not impossible time retaining qualified personnel. If the cost of good people increased markedly as the available quantity dropped precipitously, the process would falter.
If the process were to waver, support from the voters of the United States would also wane, and the result would be increased calls to pull out the military, which would lead to increased attacks against those who remained, be they troops or civilians, American or others. This would dump Iraq in a downward spiral. No. Not a spiral. That would imply a constant rate of fall. What if you took half a parabola and rotated the thing so you got a three dimensional shape, then traced a line down the interior of this shape, sort of spiralesque, but accelerating towards the narrow and infinite end of this shape. From the top, this line would be seen spinning and spinning at a faster rate, while from the side, the line would be falling faster and faster, bashing violently back and forth across the inside wall of the shape.
That’s what would happen to Iraq. And the money and effort we’re spending here would be like the eighteen billion coins you drop into one of those sort of conic charity boxes. It rotates near the top for a time, seemingly in a stable orbit, then it just spins out of control as it falls into the black box beneath the visible portion of the collection system to be spent on who knows what.
If this situation were to happen here, Charles surmises (and this is the big, important part), it would destabilize the rest of the globe, and Evil and his buddy, Terror, would gain a free hand to be naughty all over the “civilized” powers. If naught else, America’s failure to rebuild Iraq into a functional democracy would play a big role in the Evil recruitment videos for the next decade. Ultimately, this would mark the next great step in the inevitable fall of America as Superpower.
Of course, it could be that Charles is nuts. It could be that terrorism is just another scourge to be dealt with, like lite beer and reality television. This well could be the case, but he is our storied and infamous head of Public Affairs, and if he thinks his individual task is hopeless, that of convincing the public that what we’re doing is effective, and hopeless enough to leave two months into a six month stint, he might also think the greater task is hopeless.
I don’t yet know the results of what we’re doing here, but this geopolitical, demise of the Empire thing is a quandary, and I asked myself this question as I walked the deserted Green Zone streets back to my hooch:
What happens if we fail here – is that the end of civilization as we know it?
Does a dog have the Buddha nature? Read More......
As the only place in the Green Zone where you can get a pizza, it does a brisk business. The pie is adequate as pies go. The crust is well textured and not too doughy, with a strong taste of yeast. The sauce is subtle, but not especially interesting. The toppings vary as much as do local conditions. You get what’s available and like it. The cheese pizza is a good bet.
The raison d’etre of this event is Charles, who has had enough, and is leaving Baghdad tomorrow. [It’s a bit more complex than that, but,…] This struck me as a mildly disturbing development, as Charles was one of the true believers. He told me shortly after his arrival at the end of November, and on multiple occasions since, that the success of our work in reconstructing Iraq affects the fate of the Western World.
To paraphrase my recollection, his belief is that terrorist elements (the proverbial “Evil”) would do what they could to disrupt the reconstruction process, primarily through maintaining an unsafe (ok, dangerous) atmosphere throughout Iraq. As a result, the CPA (and the contractors to follow) would have a difficult if not impossible time retaining qualified personnel. If the cost of good people increased markedly as the available quantity dropped precipitously, the process would falter.
If the process were to waver, support from the voters of the United States would also wane, and the result would be increased calls to pull out the military, which would lead to increased attacks against those who remained, be they troops or civilians, American or others. This would dump Iraq in a downward spiral. No. Not a spiral. That would imply a constant rate of fall. What if you took half a parabola and rotated the thing so you got a three dimensional shape, then traced a line down the interior of this shape, sort of spiralesque, but accelerating towards the narrow and infinite end of this shape. From the top, this line would be seen spinning and spinning at a faster rate, while from the side, the line would be falling faster and faster, bashing violently back and forth across the inside wall of the shape.
That’s what would happen to Iraq. And the money and effort we’re spending here would be like the eighteen billion coins you drop into one of those sort of conic charity boxes. It rotates near the top for a time, seemingly in a stable orbit, then it just spins out of control as it falls into the black box beneath the visible portion of the collection system to be spent on who knows what.
If this situation were to happen here, Charles surmises (and this is the big, important part), it would destabilize the rest of the globe, and Evil and his buddy, Terror, would gain a free hand to be naughty all over the “civilized” powers. If naught else, America’s failure to rebuild Iraq into a functional democracy would play a big role in the Evil recruitment videos for the next decade. Ultimately, this would mark the next great step in the inevitable fall of America as Superpower.
Of course, it could be that Charles is nuts. It could be that terrorism is just another scourge to be dealt with, like lite beer and reality television. This well could be the case, but he is our storied and infamous head of Public Affairs, and if he thinks his individual task is hopeless, that of convincing the public that what we’re doing is effective, and hopeless enough to leave two months into a six month stint, he might also think the greater task is hopeless.
I don’t yet know the results of what we’re doing here, but this geopolitical, demise of the Empire thing is a quandary, and I asked myself this question as I walked the deserted Green Zone streets back to my hooch:
What happens if we fail here – is that the end of civilization as we know it?
Does a dog have the Buddha nature? Read More......
Friday, February 06, 2004
08:30 – Baghdad. Friday mornings are supposed to be our weekends here, but they rarely work out that way. Given a free weekend morning in the States, I might find myself at the home improvement center working on a solution to something or another, or at the range making noise, or slack on the couch watching cartoons. Those aren’t options in Baghdad. My free time here is generally spent reading, or writing, or working, or drinking. This Friday morning, I found myself at the office, having slept in as long as I could, or about an hour longer than usual. I read last night. I’ll write some today – some for work, some not. Tonight, some drinking.
Some Americans here aren’t so fortunate as I in this regard, as all duty personnel assigned to the Coalition Joint Task Force Number Seven (CJTF7) are prohibited from consuming alcoholic beverages (as well as fornication, but I think that one’s a health issue more than anything). The CJTF7 is most of the active military here. As such, soldiers can’t drink. Most soldiers that is. Those assigned directly to the CPA are not under the command of General Sanchez, and can get a snoot full whenever they’re off duty.
Civilians as well are immune from this policy. There’s a duty free shop at BIAP where one can purchase assorted spirits. There’re the bars at the Al Rashid for beers. Bechtel has a nice recreation center with a bar and pool table (you can play dart there, as well, until someone finds the others). Iraqi workers are more than happy to bring something back for you from one of the many Baghdad liquor stores. The really big wheels have access to the Hussains’ cache of really rare wines, but those wheels travel outside and far above my circle here. My circle is drawn in the dirt.
On Groundhog’s Night, we strayed to the local Chinese restaurant named, ever-appropriately, “Chinese Restaurant”. Despite making reservations (stopping by earlier and telling them, in broken English, to expect a crowd) for our Whiny dozen and a half, the crew there was overwhelmed. Out of a sense of disbelief, I’d guess. Eighteen dinners is probably a few days of business for them, an Iraqi and Chinese as partners, with four or five Chinese cooks. The economics may seem weird here at first, but not so much when you figure that each of us would pay twelve bucks for supper and sundries and a cook earns three for the day.
It’s not bad food at all, and a welcome respite from KBR’s Chicken Kiev. They serve a nice tomato-based hot and sour soup, good appetizers, and make their own egg noodles. Supper included a case each of Turkish Corona’s and Egyptian Heineken’s. And, because they like us (you be the judge), the manager bought us a bottle of whiskey. Last time he did this, it was a bottle of scotch. Scott’s Brand Scotch. Pure grain scotch, if I’m any judge of bad scotch.
This time, it was whiskey. Nancy Brand. “Fine Old Whiskey.” In a three quarter liter container intentionally reminiscent of a fifth of Black Label, was served fine old whiskey “from concentrate”. Nancy, if that was her real name, was pictured on the label – a skank Asian girl sitting, leather skirt, knees apart, black brassiere, drink hither look on her over made up eyes.
I switched to tea. Read More......
Some Americans here aren’t so fortunate as I in this regard, as all duty personnel assigned to the Coalition Joint Task Force Number Seven (CJTF7) are prohibited from consuming alcoholic beverages (as well as fornication, but I think that one’s a health issue more than anything). The CJTF7 is most of the active military here. As such, soldiers can’t drink. Most soldiers that is. Those assigned directly to the CPA are not under the command of General Sanchez, and can get a snoot full whenever they’re off duty.
Civilians as well are immune from this policy. There’s a duty free shop at BIAP where one can purchase assorted spirits. There’re the bars at the Al Rashid for beers. Bechtel has a nice recreation center with a bar and pool table (you can play dart there, as well, until someone finds the others). Iraqi workers are more than happy to bring something back for you from one of the many Baghdad liquor stores. The really big wheels have access to the Hussains’ cache of really rare wines, but those wheels travel outside and far above my circle here. My circle is drawn in the dirt.
On Groundhog’s Night, we strayed to the local Chinese restaurant named, ever-appropriately, “Chinese Restaurant”. Despite making reservations (stopping by earlier and telling them, in broken English, to expect a crowd) for our Whiny dozen and a half, the crew there was overwhelmed. Out of a sense of disbelief, I’d guess. Eighteen dinners is probably a few days of business for them, an Iraqi and Chinese as partners, with four or five Chinese cooks. The economics may seem weird here at first, but not so much when you figure that each of us would pay twelve bucks for supper and sundries and a cook earns three for the day.
It’s not bad food at all, and a welcome respite from KBR’s Chicken Kiev. They serve a nice tomato-based hot and sour soup, good appetizers, and make their own egg noodles. Supper included a case each of Turkish Corona’s and Egyptian Heineken’s. And, because they like us (you be the judge), the manager bought us a bottle of whiskey. Last time he did this, it was a bottle of scotch. Scott’s Brand Scotch. Pure grain scotch, if I’m any judge of bad scotch.
This time, it was whiskey. Nancy Brand. “Fine Old Whiskey.” In a three quarter liter container intentionally reminiscent of a fifth of Black Label, was served fine old whiskey “from concentrate”. Nancy, if that was her real name, was pictured on the label – a skank Asian girl sitting, leather skirt, knees apart, black brassiere, drink hither look on her over made up eyes.
I switched to tea. Read More......
2004-01-27
Tuesday, January 27, 2004
09:35 – Baghdad. A number of days back, my mission to see the pump stations at Razzaza was scrubbed by the detonation of an IED. We turned and fled.
A couple of days later, I was driving the return route from BIAP with Chuck, we came upon an intractable traffic jam, caused when an EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) team shut down the highway to deal with an IED they found on a bridge. After about twenty minutes of going seriously nowhere, the Iraqi’s started to turn their vehicles and bug out. First the small cars, then the larger and larger vehicles until there was enough room cleared on the slab to turn the articulated rigs one hundred eighty degrees and west, to head back down the eastbound lanes of the Qadisiya Expressway. There would be an on ramp just down the road that they could go the wrong way off and seek out an alternate route to wherever.
This left a mostly empty highway, populated by primarily Coalition vehicles. However, as much as I appreciated the opportunity to be out of doors, the disappearance of the Iraqi vehicles changed our security profile, leaving us rather exposed. After a quick confabulation, I four wheel drove our Durango through a break in the guardrail and followed a couple of Humvees through the severely rutted and brushy parkway, eventually losing our escort, getting just a little bit lost ourselves, and eventually finding the obscure truck entrance to the Green Zone downstream of the palace.
While still with our escort, we drove through one of the worst neighborhoods I’ve seen here. It was filled with crappy, cinderblock houses, seemingly dropped from the sky both in their randomness and condition. The rag clad residents stopped doing whatever little they may have been doing and stood to watch our small group drive by, find the road blocked, make a half dozen five point turns (even more turns for the Humvees, the pigs) and parade past them again. These hovel communities in Iraq piss me off to no end. This one in particular - just a mile from the palace and immediately adjacent to the expressway. There was no way that The Evil Puke could not have known the condition of his people.
What surprised me most was the ground clearance of these new Durangos. Mine handled the deep tank ruts and sharp edged irrigation ditches and spoil banks next to the highway with no problem. Then, when our makeshift escort went in a direction we weren’t prepared to follow, we ably hopped the twenty centimeter curb, did much of a u-turn on the median, then the down version of hopped off the curb and screeched back towards a piece of highway I knew, back end bouncing a little as the roar of the V-8 woke a couple of Iraqi cops napping under a shady tree. Maybe the performance capabilities will change after we get more than six hundred miles on the thing but, for a new truck with just a few visits by the dent fairy, it seems to perform like the adverts suggest.
The next day, a suicide bomber went to Allah via 500 kilograms of military explosives at the Green Zone gate that I was scheduled to use just an hour later. There was well over a hundred casualties, with over a score and a half of Iraqi’s dead. Our mission to the Ministry was scrubbed for the day.
One day later, we tried again for the Ministry, and were almost thwarted by a massive demonstration that caused us to pursue a tertiary route to our destination. We got there eventually, and even returned without incident.
The demonstration, it turns out, was attended by about 100,000 Iraqis (plus the tens of thousands attending by default, due to the lack of effective surface transportation and the tie up of the streets) in an estimated ten-mile (or two-mile, depending on the media) line of continuous protest. Theirs was a call for free and fair elections, as soon as possible. Soon come. What they fail to realize is that there will be elections when they will be in the best interests of the Coalition and no sooner.
Four missions in a row, though, redirected due to circumstances unanticipated and unavoidable. In this anarchic place and time, it’s best to keep flexible. In the words of the Infantry – improvise, adapt, overcome. Read More......
A couple of days later, I was driving the return route from BIAP with Chuck, we came upon an intractable traffic jam, caused when an EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) team shut down the highway to deal with an IED they found on a bridge. After about twenty minutes of going seriously nowhere, the Iraqi’s started to turn their vehicles and bug out. First the small cars, then the larger and larger vehicles until there was enough room cleared on the slab to turn the articulated rigs one hundred eighty degrees and west, to head back down the eastbound lanes of the Qadisiya Expressway. There would be an on ramp just down the road that they could go the wrong way off and seek out an alternate route to wherever.
This left a mostly empty highway, populated by primarily Coalition vehicles. However, as much as I appreciated the opportunity to be out of doors, the disappearance of the Iraqi vehicles changed our security profile, leaving us rather exposed. After a quick confabulation, I four wheel drove our Durango through a break in the guardrail and followed a couple of Humvees through the severely rutted and brushy parkway, eventually losing our escort, getting just a little bit lost ourselves, and eventually finding the obscure truck entrance to the Green Zone downstream of the palace.
While still with our escort, we drove through one of the worst neighborhoods I’ve seen here. It was filled with crappy, cinderblock houses, seemingly dropped from the sky both in their randomness and condition. The rag clad residents stopped doing whatever little they may have been doing and stood to watch our small group drive by, find the road blocked, make a half dozen five point turns (even more turns for the Humvees, the pigs) and parade past them again. These hovel communities in Iraq piss me off to no end. This one in particular - just a mile from the palace and immediately adjacent to the expressway. There was no way that The Evil Puke could not have known the condition of his people.
What surprised me most was the ground clearance of these new Durangos. Mine handled the deep tank ruts and sharp edged irrigation ditches and spoil banks next to the highway with no problem. Then, when our makeshift escort went in a direction we weren’t prepared to follow, we ably hopped the twenty centimeter curb, did much of a u-turn on the median, then the down version of hopped off the curb and screeched back towards a piece of highway I knew, back end bouncing a little as the roar of the V-8 woke a couple of Iraqi cops napping under a shady tree. Maybe the performance capabilities will change after we get more than six hundred miles on the thing but, for a new truck with just a few visits by the dent fairy, it seems to perform like the adverts suggest.
The next day, a suicide bomber went to Allah via 500 kilograms of military explosives at the Green Zone gate that I was scheduled to use just an hour later. There was well over a hundred casualties, with over a score and a half of Iraqi’s dead. Our mission to the Ministry was scrubbed for the day.
One day later, we tried again for the Ministry, and were almost thwarted by a massive demonstration that caused us to pursue a tertiary route to our destination. We got there eventually, and even returned without incident.
The demonstration, it turns out, was attended by about 100,000 Iraqis (plus the tens of thousands attending by default, due to the lack of effective surface transportation and the tie up of the streets) in an estimated ten-mile (or two-mile, depending on the media) line of continuous protest. Theirs was a call for free and fair elections, as soon as possible. Soon come. What they fail to realize is that there will be elections when they will be in the best interests of the Coalition and no sooner.
Four missions in a row, though, redirected due to circumstances unanticipated and unavoidable. In this anarchic place and time, it’s best to keep flexible. In the words of the Infantry – improvise, adapt, overcome. Read More......
2004-01-26
Monday, 26 January 2004
0930 - Baghdad. Through a variety of factors, including a combination of work and work, much of it the same old same old, I’ve got nothing imperative or particularly pithy to say. It’s like that weekend between the end of the playoffs and the Super Bowl, when there’s little to do but rehash. Therefore, barring an unanticipated burst of insight, the proverbial hash.
But first, the disclaimer:
Portions of the following have been circulating through the palace electro-mail over the past few weeks. As such, I can take credit for little more than readability. Some of it applies more to the more rural camps, but all of our accommodations are a bit underdeveloped. So, just in case you might like to experience a TDY (temporary duty) assignment in Iraq, here are some tips on preparation. Trust me. If you lived here, it would all seem funny for a little bit,… and then horribly sad.
1. Sleep on a cot in the garage.
2. Replace the garage door with a curtain.
3. Six hours after you go to sleep, have your wife or girlfriend whip open the curtain, shine a flashlight in your eyes and mumble, "Sorry, wrong cot."
4. Renovate your bathroom. Hang a green plastic sheet down from the middle of your bathtub and move the shower head down to chest level. Keep an inch of cold graywater on the floor. Stop cleaning the toilet. Pee on the floor. Remove the toilet paper. On random days, leave half a roll of paper towels next to the stool. For a more realistic experience, stop using your bathroom and use a neighbor's. Choose a neighbor who lives at least a quarter mile away.
5. When you take a shower, wear flip-flops and keep the lights off.
6. Every time there is a thunderstorm, go sit on a wobbly rocking chair and dump dirt on your head.
7. For that tactical generator smell, put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it on "HIGH".
8. Don't watch TV except for movies in the middle of the night. Have your family vote on which movie to watch and then show a different one.
9. To stimulate the proper ambient noise level, leave a lawnmower running in your living room 24 hours a day.
10. Have the paperboy give you a haircut.
11. Develop your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in your pantry or refrigerator. Serve some kind of meat in an unidentifiable sauce poured over noodles. Do this for every meal. Serve it in a brown plastic bag.
12. Set five alarm clocks to go off at random times during the night. When the fourth one goes off, jump out of bed and get to the shower as fast as you can. Use only cold water.
13. Use 1/2 scoop of coffee per pot and allow it to sit unplugged for five or six hours before drinking.
14. Invite 185 people you don't really like because of their strange hygiene habits to come and visit for a couple of months. Exchange clothes with them.
15. Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and lie under it to read books.
16. Raise the thresholds and lower the top sills of your front and back doors so that you either trip over the threshold or hit your head on the sill every time you pass through one of them.
17. Keep a roll of toilet paper on your nightstand and bring it to the bathroom with you. Bring your gun and flashlight.
18. Announce to your family that they have mail. Have them report to you as you stand outside your open garage door after supper and then say, "Sorry, it's for the other Smith".
19. Wash only 15 items of laundry per week and don’t dry them thoroughly. Roll up the semi-wet clothes in a ball. Place them in a cloth sack in the corner of the garage where the cat urinates. After a week, unroll them and without ironing or removing the mildew, proudly wear them to professional meetings and family gatherings. Pretend you don't know what you look like or how you smell. Enthusiastically repeat the process for another week.
20. For proper ambience, shoot a few bullet holes in the walls of your home.
21. Sandbag the floor of your car to protect from mine blast fragmentation. Put a big crack the windshield.
22. While traveling in your car, stop at each overpass and culvert and inspect them for remotely detonated explosives before proceeding.
23. Fire off 50 cherry bombs simultaneously in your driveway at 3:00 a.m. When startled neighbors appear, tell them all is well, you are just registering mortars. Tell them plastic will make an acceptable substitute for their shattered windows.
24. Drink your boxed milk and sodas warm.
25. Spread gravel throughout your house and yard. Sprinkle sand in your underwear drawer.
26. Before they come in, make your children empty their squirt guns into a clearing barrel you placed outside the front door.
27. Make your family dig a survivability position with overhead cover in the back yard.
28. When your 4 year-old asks for a stick of gum, have him find the exact stick and flavor he wants on the internet and print out the web page. Type up a Form 9 and staple the web page to the back. Submit the paperwork to your spouse for processing. After 2 weeks, give your son the gum.
29. Announce to your family that the dog is a vector for disease and shoot it. Throw the dog in a burn pit you dug in your neighbor's back yard.
30. Wait for the coldest/hottest day of the year and announce to your family that there will be no heat/air conditioning that day so you can perform much needed maintenance on the heater/air conditioner. Tell them you are doing this so they won't get cold/hot.
31. Spell phonetically. Change your accent daily.
32. Drive to the worst crime-infested place you can find. Go heavily armed and paranoid, wearing a flak jacket and a Kevlar helmet. Set up shop in a tent on a vacant lot. Speak in a foreign tongue. Announce to the residents that you are there to help them.
KBR is hiring. Read More......
But first, the disclaimer:
Portions of the following have been circulating through the palace electro-mail over the past few weeks. As such, I can take credit for little more than readability. Some of it applies more to the more rural camps, but all of our accommodations are a bit underdeveloped. So, just in case you might like to experience a TDY (temporary duty) assignment in Iraq, here are some tips on preparation. Trust me. If you lived here, it would all seem funny for a little bit,… and then horribly sad.
1. Sleep on a cot in the garage.
2. Replace the garage door with a curtain.
3. Six hours after you go to sleep, have your wife or girlfriend whip open the curtain, shine a flashlight in your eyes and mumble, "Sorry, wrong cot."
4. Renovate your bathroom. Hang a green plastic sheet down from the middle of your bathtub and move the shower head down to chest level. Keep an inch of cold graywater on the floor. Stop cleaning the toilet. Pee on the floor. Remove the toilet paper. On random days, leave half a roll of paper towels next to the stool. For a more realistic experience, stop using your bathroom and use a neighbor's. Choose a neighbor who lives at least a quarter mile away.
5. When you take a shower, wear flip-flops and keep the lights off.
6. Every time there is a thunderstorm, go sit on a wobbly rocking chair and dump dirt on your head.
7. For that tactical generator smell, put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it on "HIGH".
8. Don't watch TV except for movies in the middle of the night. Have your family vote on which movie to watch and then show a different one.
9. To stimulate the proper ambient noise level, leave a lawnmower running in your living room 24 hours a day.
10. Have the paperboy give you a haircut.
11. Develop your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in your pantry or refrigerator. Serve some kind of meat in an unidentifiable sauce poured over noodles. Do this for every meal. Serve it in a brown plastic bag.
12. Set five alarm clocks to go off at random times during the night. When the fourth one goes off, jump out of bed and get to the shower as fast as you can. Use only cold water.
13. Use 1/2 scoop of coffee per pot and allow it to sit unplugged for five or six hours before drinking.
14. Invite 185 people you don't really like because of their strange hygiene habits to come and visit for a couple of months. Exchange clothes with them.
15. Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and lie under it to read books.
16. Raise the thresholds and lower the top sills of your front and back doors so that you either trip over the threshold or hit your head on the sill every time you pass through one of them.
17. Keep a roll of toilet paper on your nightstand and bring it to the bathroom with you. Bring your gun and flashlight.
18. Announce to your family that they have mail. Have them report to you as you stand outside your open garage door after supper and then say, "Sorry, it's for the other Smith".
19. Wash only 15 items of laundry per week and don’t dry them thoroughly. Roll up the semi-wet clothes in a ball. Place them in a cloth sack in the corner of the garage where the cat urinates. After a week, unroll them and without ironing or removing the mildew, proudly wear them to professional meetings and family gatherings. Pretend you don't know what you look like or how you smell. Enthusiastically repeat the process for another week.
20. For proper ambience, shoot a few bullet holes in the walls of your home.
21. Sandbag the floor of your car to protect from mine blast fragmentation. Put a big crack the windshield.
22. While traveling in your car, stop at each overpass and culvert and inspect them for remotely detonated explosives before proceeding.
23. Fire off 50 cherry bombs simultaneously in your driveway at 3:00 a.m. When startled neighbors appear, tell them all is well, you are just registering mortars. Tell them plastic will make an acceptable substitute for their shattered windows.
24. Drink your boxed milk and sodas warm.
25. Spread gravel throughout your house and yard. Sprinkle sand in your underwear drawer.
26. Before they come in, make your children empty their squirt guns into a clearing barrel you placed outside the front door.
27. Make your family dig a survivability position with overhead cover in the back yard.
28. When your 4 year-old asks for a stick of gum, have him find the exact stick and flavor he wants on the internet and print out the web page. Type up a Form 9 and staple the web page to the back. Submit the paperwork to your spouse for processing. After 2 weeks, give your son the gum.
29. Announce to your family that the dog is a vector for disease and shoot it. Throw the dog in a burn pit you dug in your neighbor's back yard.
30. Wait for the coldest/hottest day of the year and announce to your family that there will be no heat/air conditioning that day so you can perform much needed maintenance on the heater/air conditioner. Tell them you are doing this so they won't get cold/hot.
31. Spell phonetically. Change your accent daily.
32. Drive to the worst crime-infested place you can find. Go heavily armed and paranoid, wearing a flak jacket and a Kevlar helmet. Set up shop in a tent on a vacant lot. Speak in a foreign tongue. Announce to the residents that you are there to help them.
KBR is hiring. Read More......
2004-01-17
Saturday, January 17, 2004
10:45 – Baghdad. Amman was totally not Baghdad. Nice hotel, nice sites, mostly nice weather, nice folks, and no guns.
Our stateside bosses decided to send us out of Iraq as sort of an xmas present mixed with a mid-tour vacation. Sure. Absolutely. It wouldn’t be as nice as going to Kuwait, mostly because Kuwait means Europe then home, but it was still an anticipated break. Not in the least restful, since the two overly short days we spent there were spent on excess.
There aren’t many ways to get out of Iraq. Driving is one, but Amman is ten hours away on a bandit-strewn highway, and really, you can see most of the countryside of Iraq in about ten minutes. Endless sand is pretty much endless sand,… until you get to the rocks.
We took Miltrans (MILitary TRANSport) instead. Not a crowded flight either, only four of us Ungrateful Whiney Prima Donnas (the first wave) and six or eight PMO wheels who were going to a conference in Amman. Just a dozen passengers and our bags on the entire C-130 allowed us to put up our feet and relax a bit more than when there’re forty passengers, crammed shoulder to shoulder so that cargo pallets can be maximized.
Departures from BIAP, like the arrivals, are tactical. However, there are some limits to the rate of climb of a C-130 so, instead of zooming straight up from the runway, we zigged and zagged at treetop level until we had enough speed to climb. With each zig, I was looking nearly straight down out of my little porthole, not seeing the trunks of the date palms due to the view through the fronds. With each zag, looking straight up into the desert sky. A few zigs and zags later, and we began a steep spiral ascent to an elevation out of rocket range.
After a more traditional landing, we were met on the tarmac by armored Suburbans from the U.S. Embassy and shuttled to the Four Seasons (your tax dollar at work). My holiday group went to the Four Seasons. The wheels went to the Sheraton so we’d have no further contact with work until we left.
Now what?
Drinks in the bar. A red Thai curry, perhaps, and another drink. Nice start. I could do this all day long. But sightseeing was the order of the days. Eating well and drinking well were orders as well, and who was I to contradict an order?
Lots of old stuff in Jordan. Two Roman amphitheatres in downtown (old) Amman. The temple to Hercules and a seventh century restored mosque on the citadel above town. The spectacular ruins of Jerash north of Amman. Mount Nebo, where they say Moses looked over the Jordan River valley to the Promised Land. An incredible mosaic map of the Middle East on the floor of a Greek Orthodox church in some little town somewhere between Amman and the Dead Sea.
And the Dead Sea, where we had mud baths and bobbed like fleshy corks in the hyper-salty water.
I went juza shopping one day, but the best I could do was a small zarib and an oud. “Fine”, I thought, the zarib I can pack, but I really wanted to ship home the oud, since they’re a little large sometimes. Armed with the information that I could ship my oud home for around twenty Dinars a kilo, I left the thing with the concierge to deal with.
After supper, I found a note on the desk in my room, informing me that FedEx was going to charge the princely sum of 437 Dinar and 50 Piastas (over 600 USD) to box and send the thing, plus the 5% take for the hotel. The result is that I’m traveling now with an oud, which is sure to make interesting carryon for the trip home.
The highlight, though, was just walking down the street. We took the opportunity on our first afternoon to see some of the downtown sites. Once visited, we set off walking towards the hotel. We’d never make the five uphill miles, but there were plenty of taxis and English-speaking taxi drivers that we could flag down whenever. There were plenty of shops downtown. Trinket shops were mixed in with the small restaurants, bakeries, clothing, luggage, jewelry, electronics and miscellaneous business concerns present in a thriving city center. We spent a couple of hours nosing a round, and it was well past dark when we finally hailed a cab.
But I had walked freely and casually amongst the souqs and citizens of Jordan. No guns. No Humvees. No desert camouflage uniforms. I was still a target, but the target symbol was no longer a bulls eye but a dollar sign.
Absolutely fine. Read More......
Our stateside bosses decided to send us out of Iraq as sort of an xmas present mixed with a mid-tour vacation. Sure. Absolutely. It wouldn’t be as nice as going to Kuwait, mostly because Kuwait means Europe then home, but it was still an anticipated break. Not in the least restful, since the two overly short days we spent there were spent on excess.
There aren’t many ways to get out of Iraq. Driving is one, but Amman is ten hours away on a bandit-strewn highway, and really, you can see most of the countryside of Iraq in about ten minutes. Endless sand is pretty much endless sand,… until you get to the rocks.
We took Miltrans (MILitary TRANSport) instead. Not a crowded flight either, only four of us Ungrateful Whiney Prima Donnas (the first wave) and six or eight PMO wheels who were going to a conference in Amman. Just a dozen passengers and our bags on the entire C-130 allowed us to put up our feet and relax a bit more than when there’re forty passengers, crammed shoulder to shoulder so that cargo pallets can be maximized.
Departures from BIAP, like the arrivals, are tactical. However, there are some limits to the rate of climb of a C-130 so, instead of zooming straight up from the runway, we zigged and zagged at treetop level until we had enough speed to climb. With each zig, I was looking nearly straight down out of my little porthole, not seeing the trunks of the date palms due to the view through the fronds. With each zag, looking straight up into the desert sky. A few zigs and zags later, and we began a steep spiral ascent to an elevation out of rocket range.
After a more traditional landing, we were met on the tarmac by armored Suburbans from the U.S. Embassy and shuttled to the Four Seasons (your tax dollar at work). My holiday group went to the Four Seasons. The wheels went to the Sheraton so we’d have no further contact with work until we left.
Now what?
Drinks in the bar. A red Thai curry, perhaps, and another drink. Nice start. I could do this all day long. But sightseeing was the order of the days. Eating well and drinking well were orders as well, and who was I to contradict an order?
Lots of old stuff in Jordan. Two Roman amphitheatres in downtown (old) Amman. The temple to Hercules and a seventh century restored mosque on the citadel above town. The spectacular ruins of Jerash north of Amman. Mount Nebo, where they say Moses looked over the Jordan River valley to the Promised Land. An incredible mosaic map of the Middle East on the floor of a Greek Orthodox church in some little town somewhere between Amman and the Dead Sea.
And the Dead Sea, where we had mud baths and bobbed like fleshy corks in the hyper-salty water.
I went juza shopping one day, but the best I could do was a small zarib and an oud. “Fine”, I thought, the zarib I can pack, but I really wanted to ship home the oud, since they’re a little large sometimes. Armed with the information that I could ship my oud home for around twenty Dinars a kilo, I left the thing with the concierge to deal with.
After supper, I found a note on the desk in my room, informing me that FedEx was going to charge the princely sum of 437 Dinar and 50 Piastas (over 600 USD) to box and send the thing, plus the 5% take for the hotel. The result is that I’m traveling now with an oud, which is sure to make interesting carryon for the trip home.
The highlight, though, was just walking down the street. We took the opportunity on our first afternoon to see some of the downtown sites. Once visited, we set off walking towards the hotel. We’d never make the five uphill miles, but there were plenty of taxis and English-speaking taxi drivers that we could flag down whenever. There were plenty of shops downtown. Trinket shops were mixed in with the small restaurants, bakeries, clothing, luggage, jewelry, electronics and miscellaneous business concerns present in a thriving city center. We spent a couple of hours nosing a round, and it was well past dark when we finally hailed a cab.
But I had walked freely and casually amongst the souqs and citizens of Jordan. No guns. No Humvees. No desert camouflage uniforms. I was still a target, but the target symbol was no longer a bulls eye but a dollar sign.
Absolutely fine. Read More......
2004-01-16
Friday, January 16, 2004
19:30 – Baghdad. The Missive Unreleased.
The day of our trip to Razzaza squished in and out of sloppiness. Not raining when we left the palace, but cold and moist by the time we got to the old Ministry building, just a klik east and south of the Ministry’s temporary quarters at the Ministry of Oil (MOO, honest). We had to stop there first to pick up an FPS (Facility Protection Service) interpreter. You see, the troops that drive me to and from the Ministry have more than just my protection on their plate. Their duties also include recruitment and training of one of the many police forces that the CPA is establishing here.
The CPA argument could be that, in using various police forces throughout the country, as well as an independent Army, Navy and Air Force, no one entity will ever be powerful enough to wrest control from a duly elected civilian government. Fair enough, but it means lots of independent militias and lots and lots of AK-47’s.
My guys have a particular interest in the branch of the FPS that protects the facilities of the Ministry of Water Resources, providing guard service at offices, pump stations and dams. The interpreter, then, was an armed member of this Service, as was his driver.
Both were late.
And we waited for forty minutes or so in the figurative shadows of what remains of the old Ministry building, thoroughly looted and burned by folks who apparently don’t believe that one should avoid shitting where one sleeps. For a while, we bitched about the lateness, and then just bitched in general, which is mostly a joke of a dialogue, common to soldiers while they wait for nothing to happen. There were seven of us from the Coalition side, four soldiers and three civilians, myself and two from the CPA’s shadow ministry.
We headed out eventually into a light cold rain with the two Iraqis as lead in a four-door Mitsubishi pick-up, reminiscent of the old Dogwagon, but less old and more two-wheel drived. I was in the second vehicle, a dark blue civilian Suburban, the senior sergeant driving, MP5 in his lap, a Specialist in the front passenger seat, M-16 at the ready, a spare SAW between them. I was in the second row of seats, just behind the driver. One of the other civilians, a relative youth from D.C. was in the third tier of very bouncy seats on the passenger side.
The third and last vehicle in this minor convoy was a black suburban they call “the Intimidator”, due to it’s oversized profile, accentuated by an aftermarket luggage rack mounted half a foot too high on the roof. The other sergeant was driving this one, M-16 stuffed between the seat and the console. Another Specialist and his M-16 were in the second tier behind the front seat passenger, the other civilian.
[Yeow! What a waste of text. Why, prey tell, would your author bother with such detail?]
There’s no easy way out of Baghdad, and Razzaza is about an hour out, once you get out. Our interpreter’s lateness would certainly make us late for our rendezvous with the pump station manager and local DG. We pressed on through the heavy morning traffic as the moist air finally couldn’t hold it anymore, and let loose with a spotty and cold winter rain.
We needed a dual carriageway, but access to ramps were limited, unless you go on the off, turn right at the herd of sheep and, alakazam, seventy miles an hour. Eighty miles an hour. Ninety miles an hour. Bobbing and weaving through traffic. Using speed as a tactical element. It’s almost a game of chase. The lead car drives as fast as he can, and the following vehicles don’t fall behind. Note that it’s not “the following vehicles don’t try to fall behind”. There’s no trying. Falling behind is just not an option.
Ten minutes of this and we were out of expressway, routed now down a four-lane with earth median, then into one of many midsized cities. Thursday, the day prior to Friday, must be a more formalized market day in the hinterlands, as the markets were full to overflowing with people and goods, increasingly sodden by the steady light rain. Sloppy mess as well, as the dust here never gets washed away, just hydrated for a brief time and redeposited. The dirt’s relocation strategy involves applying itself as a slick film on everything around – streets and cars especially, although the fresh vegetables and raw meats displayed throughout this particular market couldn’t have been immune from the spray of filth.
The mud slime was so thick on most of our windows we couldn’t see out the back window at the trailing ‘burban (had to use the mirrors) and barely caught sight of the tractor as it passed us in the slow city traffic.
Honor tarnished, the best of the United States Army picked up the tempo, and forced our convoy down the street eventually passing the tractor when it’s way was blocked by a parked car.
The sergeant slipped more heavy metal into the stereo as we slipped out of town and cruised up to seventy or so on another southbound four-laner with grassy/weedy/scrub brushy median. The rain was falling harder and the mud slime was getting thicker on all the glass surfaces.
And then the “BANG”.
Not “pop”. Not “pow”. Not “boom”.
“BANG”. And I was more alert than I’ve ever been.
Self check. No damage. I looked up to check out the rest of us in my vehicle and met the eyes of each of them doing the same. We were apparently unblemished, and slowed to maybe forty to allow the other ‘burban to approach on our right. It took me a moment to realize that the reason I could see the following crew so clearly is that they had no window glass at all on the driver’s side of the vehicle. The door panels, fender and quarter panel were perforated, and the front left tire was flat.
IED.
An Improvised Explosive Devise. Command detonated in an unmitigated attempt to kill me and my mates.
Command detonated about half a second behind me.
Fuckers.
There are some people here who have yet to lose the war along with the rest of the country. They’re the same guys who lob mortars and rockets at us, and spray small arms fire when they feel they won’t get hurt doing so. Call them what you will. Insurgents. Former Regime Loyalists. Bad Guys. Terrorists.
Fuckers.
And these fuckers set about a dozen of these IED’s across central Iraq each and every day. Old munitions mostly, mortars and mines, reconfigured to be easily camouflaged along the roadside as a pile of rocks or a piece of junk or a small dead animal. Then they hide and wait for an appropriate target. Not a particular target, just an appropriate one, like a couple of Coalition Suburbans with some soldiers in them.
Fuckers.
I must admit, though, that I wasn’t so pissed at the time. I was on a very serious adrenaline rush. The senior sergeant radioed to the other vehicle to pull over when they could, which happened to be a wide area by the side of the road, a hundred meters or so from the blast site. Doors sprung open and armed and angry men emerged, eyes intent in the direction we had just traversed. Sometimes, IED’s are followed up with SAF, small arms fire.
There was none just yet. The FPS Iraqis had stopped as well, and their two AK’s joined the ranks of Coalition weaponry to secure our perimeter as the situation was assessed. The second vehicle’s driver had a few small cuts on his hand and ear from the flying glass. He had been knocked unconscious by the blast, but recovered as his passenger’s hands went to the steering wheel. The Suburban was toast. At least it didn’t look like it would travel well with all of its transmission fluid in a blood red pool intermingling with the slick mud as it spread out from under the chassis. It was leased, anyway. There was no effort to pursue our attackers. With no immediate following action, we figured that they had fled the moment the IED went off.
I later learned that our attackers did pursue us, and my guys were wise to remain vigilant. However, it took little more than five minutes for us to stop, assess, treat the injured, salvage everything we could from the much less intimidating Suburban, and pile seven of us into our remaining vehicle, abandoning the other. We would continue south for a time, get out of the urban area, then cut over to an expressway to Baghdad by speeding a few miles along a winding piece of asphalt. We were stoked. We were pissed. We didn’t need the heavy metal. Like myself, I’m sure everyone was playing a passionate and extreme soundtrack in their heads, penned just for the occasion.
The roads dried out by the time we hit the cutoff, and remained dry at the expressway, where the suburban ran back into Baghdad at about as fast as it would go, about one hundred twenty.
I was back in the office by ten, having left barely three hours prior. The adrenaline was starting to wear down and, by lunchtime, I found myself immensely tired and in a state of mild shock. I retired to my hooch to contemplate mortality and take a long nap.
That’s my war story. Read More......
The day of our trip to Razzaza squished in and out of sloppiness. Not raining when we left the palace, but cold and moist by the time we got to the old Ministry building, just a klik east and south of the Ministry’s temporary quarters at the Ministry of Oil (MOO, honest). We had to stop there first to pick up an FPS (Facility Protection Service) interpreter. You see, the troops that drive me to and from the Ministry have more than just my protection on their plate. Their duties also include recruitment and training of one of the many police forces that the CPA is establishing here.
The CPA argument could be that, in using various police forces throughout the country, as well as an independent Army, Navy and Air Force, no one entity will ever be powerful enough to wrest control from a duly elected civilian government. Fair enough, but it means lots of independent militias and lots and lots of AK-47’s.
My guys have a particular interest in the branch of the FPS that protects the facilities of the Ministry of Water Resources, providing guard service at offices, pump stations and dams. The interpreter, then, was an armed member of this Service, as was his driver.
Both were late.
And we waited for forty minutes or so in the figurative shadows of what remains of the old Ministry building, thoroughly looted and burned by folks who apparently don’t believe that one should avoid shitting where one sleeps. For a while, we bitched about the lateness, and then just bitched in general, which is mostly a joke of a dialogue, common to soldiers while they wait for nothing to happen. There were seven of us from the Coalition side, four soldiers and three civilians, myself and two from the CPA’s shadow ministry.
We headed out eventually into a light cold rain with the two Iraqis as lead in a four-door Mitsubishi pick-up, reminiscent of the old Dogwagon, but less old and more two-wheel drived. I was in the second vehicle, a dark blue civilian Suburban, the senior sergeant driving, MP5 in his lap, a Specialist in the front passenger seat, M-16 at the ready, a spare SAW between them. I was in the second row of seats, just behind the driver. One of the other civilians, a relative youth from D.C. was in the third tier of very bouncy seats on the passenger side.
The third and last vehicle in this minor convoy was a black suburban they call “the Intimidator”, due to it’s oversized profile, accentuated by an aftermarket luggage rack mounted half a foot too high on the roof. The other sergeant was driving this one, M-16 stuffed between the seat and the console. Another Specialist and his M-16 were in the second tier behind the front seat passenger, the other civilian.
[Yeow! What a waste of text. Why, prey tell, would your author bother with such detail?]
There’s no easy way out of Baghdad, and Razzaza is about an hour out, once you get out. Our interpreter’s lateness would certainly make us late for our rendezvous with the pump station manager and local DG. We pressed on through the heavy morning traffic as the moist air finally couldn’t hold it anymore, and let loose with a spotty and cold winter rain.
We needed a dual carriageway, but access to ramps were limited, unless you go on the off, turn right at the herd of sheep and, alakazam, seventy miles an hour. Eighty miles an hour. Ninety miles an hour. Bobbing and weaving through traffic. Using speed as a tactical element. It’s almost a game of chase. The lead car drives as fast as he can, and the following vehicles don’t fall behind. Note that it’s not “the following vehicles don’t try to fall behind”. There’s no trying. Falling behind is just not an option.
Ten minutes of this and we were out of expressway, routed now down a four-lane with earth median, then into one of many midsized cities. Thursday, the day prior to Friday, must be a more formalized market day in the hinterlands, as the markets were full to overflowing with people and goods, increasingly sodden by the steady light rain. Sloppy mess as well, as the dust here never gets washed away, just hydrated for a brief time and redeposited. The dirt’s relocation strategy involves applying itself as a slick film on everything around – streets and cars especially, although the fresh vegetables and raw meats displayed throughout this particular market couldn’t have been immune from the spray of filth.
The mud slime was so thick on most of our windows we couldn’t see out the back window at the trailing ‘burban (had to use the mirrors) and barely caught sight of the tractor as it passed us in the slow city traffic.
Honor tarnished, the best of the United States Army picked up the tempo, and forced our convoy down the street eventually passing the tractor when it’s way was blocked by a parked car.
The sergeant slipped more heavy metal into the stereo as we slipped out of town and cruised up to seventy or so on another southbound four-laner with grassy/weedy/scrub brushy median. The rain was falling harder and the mud slime was getting thicker on all the glass surfaces.
And then the “BANG”.
Not “pop”. Not “pow”. Not “boom”.
“BANG”. And I was more alert than I’ve ever been.
Self check. No damage. I looked up to check out the rest of us in my vehicle and met the eyes of each of them doing the same. We were apparently unblemished, and slowed to maybe forty to allow the other ‘burban to approach on our right. It took me a moment to realize that the reason I could see the following crew so clearly is that they had no window glass at all on the driver’s side of the vehicle. The door panels, fender and quarter panel were perforated, and the front left tire was flat.
IED.
An Improvised Explosive Devise. Command detonated in an unmitigated attempt to kill me and my mates.
Command detonated about half a second behind me.
Fuckers.
There are some people here who have yet to lose the war along with the rest of the country. They’re the same guys who lob mortars and rockets at us, and spray small arms fire when they feel they won’t get hurt doing so. Call them what you will. Insurgents. Former Regime Loyalists. Bad Guys. Terrorists.
Fuckers.
And these fuckers set about a dozen of these IED’s across central Iraq each and every day. Old munitions mostly, mortars and mines, reconfigured to be easily camouflaged along the roadside as a pile of rocks or a piece of junk or a small dead animal. Then they hide and wait for an appropriate target. Not a particular target, just an appropriate one, like a couple of Coalition Suburbans with some soldiers in them.
Fuckers.
I must admit, though, that I wasn’t so pissed at the time. I was on a very serious adrenaline rush. The senior sergeant radioed to the other vehicle to pull over when they could, which happened to be a wide area by the side of the road, a hundred meters or so from the blast site. Doors sprung open and armed and angry men emerged, eyes intent in the direction we had just traversed. Sometimes, IED’s are followed up with SAF, small arms fire.
There was none just yet. The FPS Iraqis had stopped as well, and their two AK’s joined the ranks of Coalition weaponry to secure our perimeter as the situation was assessed. The second vehicle’s driver had a few small cuts on his hand and ear from the flying glass. He had been knocked unconscious by the blast, but recovered as his passenger’s hands went to the steering wheel. The Suburban was toast. At least it didn’t look like it would travel well with all of its transmission fluid in a blood red pool intermingling with the slick mud as it spread out from under the chassis. It was leased, anyway. There was no effort to pursue our attackers. With no immediate following action, we figured that they had fled the moment the IED went off.
I later learned that our attackers did pursue us, and my guys were wise to remain vigilant. However, it took little more than five minutes for us to stop, assess, treat the injured, salvage everything we could from the much less intimidating Suburban, and pile seven of us into our remaining vehicle, abandoning the other. We would continue south for a time, get out of the urban area, then cut over to an expressway to Baghdad by speeding a few miles along a winding piece of asphalt. We were stoked. We were pissed. We didn’t need the heavy metal. Like myself, I’m sure everyone was playing a passionate and extreme soundtrack in their heads, penned just for the occasion.
The roads dried out by the time we hit the cutoff, and remained dry at the expressway, where the suburban ran back into Baghdad at about as fast as it would go, about one hundred twenty.
I was back in the office by ten, having left barely three hours prior. The adrenaline was starting to wear down and, by lunchtime, I found myself immensely tired and in a state of mild shock. I retired to my hooch to contemplate mortality and take a long nap.
That’s my war story. Read More......
Friday, January 16, 2004
08:45 - Baghdad. John called Wednesday evening, wanting to know if I’d like to go to Razzaza to see the many pump stations there. Of course, I said yes. I’ve found that it’s tough to improve a system that I’ve never seen up close. Not impossible, just tough to do when all your data is paper, electronic, captured images, or word of mouth. I truly appreciate the site visit. To see, hear, and smell the project. To capture its gestalt and shove it in a small box I keep in my pocket for that very purpose.
If you believe what you read about the pump stations at Razzaza, you might learn that Razzaza wasn’t always a lake. Sadly, it never advanced beyond a depression. Holes in the ground, I have learned, are good places to put stuff. In this case, the Iraqis long ago decided to fill this depression with water, developing a happy, although incredibly saline lake, or buhayrat, or even bahr, which is probably an abbreviated way to say buhayrat, which is probably just an Arabic way of saying depression filled with saline water, only said with one word, instead of lots of them.
The saline water comes from the downstream end of the irrigation process, as the naturally occurring salts in the soil are washed away with the drainage water. It’s kind of like the way I remember the human circulatory system to work. The recollection is modified by close to thirty years of not thinking about the subject, but here goes. Fresh water is pumped from the source river into a main canal, which branches into branch canals, which is branched into secondary canals, distributary canals and water courses. These are like increasingly smaller arteries, moving the precious alcohol, er, oxygen to the various muscle groups and organs.
At the field level, farmers will cut very small canals in and around their crops to perform the final distribution and primary collection (capillary-like activity, but not capillary action) then, on the downstream end of the fields, the collection process begins in earnest, as saline water is routed through larger and larger canals. The problem, though, is what to do with this saline (that’s “salt” for the uninitiated, and those not paying attention) water.
If it wasn’t so saline, the drainage water could be discharged right back into the source river, to be used again further downstream. But this drainage water is far from suitable for use as irrigation water again (if you’ve got doubts, try watering your houseplants with saltwater for the next five weeks), so it would end up polluting the source water, so huge, river-sized drains are constructed to convey the drainage water either to the sea or to huge depressions like Razzaza.
At a couple of points in this system, gravity gets in the way, and pumps are required to lift the water, so that it can flow for a while longer. Some of these pumps can be huge. At Razzaza, for instance, the pumps which finally lift the drainage water into the lake have a design capacity of 35 CMS (cubic meters per second). Whereas thirty five is sort of a small number, it’s really the CMS that we need to understand.
Remember those Jello-brand pudding cups? The ones you toss in your lunch box or snack on during mid-afternoon lulls? Each little can holds about four ounces of pudding. As such, a properly configured pump station could move about 300,000 cans of pudding every second. If you could fit, say, sixty of the convenient four-packs in a shopping cart, this would equate to about 1,250 shopping carts of pudding every second.
Hmmm, maybe the small can of pudding thing is going nowhere. Lets suppose you live in a 2,500 square foot house with those nice nine-foot ceilings. The pumps at Razzaza, if configured for creamy Jello-brand pudding, could fill your house to overflowing in less than 20 seconds. That’s a lot of pudding! And twenty seconds doesn’t give you much time to grab the cats before the advancing pudding flood.
The point being, the pudding is wasted and your rugs will never get cleaned. Not dissimilar to Razzaza, where the water is wasted, and the lake is sort of a pit (I guess “pit” means “depression”, too, but in this case I meant “pit” as in “dump”).
As it turns out, I didn’t get to tour the site. Our mission got scrubbed during the ride down there, so we came back to the palace.
It was a sloppy day, anyway. Read More......
If you believe what you read about the pump stations at Razzaza, you might learn that Razzaza wasn’t always a lake. Sadly, it never advanced beyond a depression. Holes in the ground, I have learned, are good places to put stuff. In this case, the Iraqis long ago decided to fill this depression with water, developing a happy, although incredibly saline lake, or buhayrat, or even bahr, which is probably an abbreviated way to say buhayrat, which is probably just an Arabic way of saying depression filled with saline water, only said with one word, instead of lots of them.
The saline water comes from the downstream end of the irrigation process, as the naturally occurring salts in the soil are washed away with the drainage water. It’s kind of like the way I remember the human circulatory system to work. The recollection is modified by close to thirty years of not thinking about the subject, but here goes. Fresh water is pumped from the source river into a main canal, which branches into branch canals, which is branched into secondary canals, distributary canals and water courses. These are like increasingly smaller arteries, moving the precious alcohol, er, oxygen to the various muscle groups and organs.
At the field level, farmers will cut very small canals in and around their crops to perform the final distribution and primary collection (capillary-like activity, but not capillary action) then, on the downstream end of the fields, the collection process begins in earnest, as saline water is routed through larger and larger canals. The problem, though, is what to do with this saline (that’s “salt” for the uninitiated, and those not paying attention) water.
If it wasn’t so saline, the drainage water could be discharged right back into the source river, to be used again further downstream. But this drainage water is far from suitable for use as irrigation water again (if you’ve got doubts, try watering your houseplants with saltwater for the next five weeks), so it would end up polluting the source water, so huge, river-sized drains are constructed to convey the drainage water either to the sea or to huge depressions like Razzaza.
At a couple of points in this system, gravity gets in the way, and pumps are required to lift the water, so that it can flow for a while longer. Some of these pumps can be huge. At Razzaza, for instance, the pumps which finally lift the drainage water into the lake have a design capacity of 35 CMS (cubic meters per second). Whereas thirty five is sort of a small number, it’s really the CMS that we need to understand.
Remember those Jello-brand pudding cups? The ones you toss in your lunch box or snack on during mid-afternoon lulls? Each little can holds about four ounces of pudding. As such, a properly configured pump station could move about 300,000 cans of pudding every second. If you could fit, say, sixty of the convenient four-packs in a shopping cart, this would equate to about 1,250 shopping carts of pudding every second.
Hmmm, maybe the small can of pudding thing is going nowhere. Lets suppose you live in a 2,500 square foot house with those nice nine-foot ceilings. The pumps at Razzaza, if configured for creamy Jello-brand pudding, could fill your house to overflowing in less than 20 seconds. That’s a lot of pudding! And twenty seconds doesn’t give you much time to grab the cats before the advancing pudding flood.
The point being, the pudding is wasted and your rugs will never get cleaned. Not dissimilar to Razzaza, where the water is wasted, and the lake is sort of a pit (I guess “pit” means “depression”, too, but in this case I meant “pit” as in “dump”).
As it turns out, I didn’t get to tour the site. Our mission got scrubbed during the ride down there, so we came back to the palace.
It was a sloppy day, anyway. Read More......
2004-01-07
Wednesday, January 07, 2004
2030 – Baghdad. It’s a question that’s bugged me all day long. You know the type. The one that just festers in the background, happy to be bourn in silence for minutes or for hours, then sneaking back into the front, burning up with a primal urgency. This is a question that must be answered.
What Warner Brothers cartoon used Bizet’s Farandole, from L’Arlesienne, as a theme?
Bugging me. Bugging me. Bugging me. But it wasn’t Bugs.
Bugging me since I heard the tune played at a performance of the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra last night. As well, it was their last number, so I was humming the tune as we “bowled a few frames” at the Al Rashid. Driving me nuts again this morning, as I enlisted the more cartoon-enlightened. [There’s really a scary number of those here.] To no avail. There would be no reach back into an up to date Loony Tunes database.
The rest of the performance wasn’t nearly so frustrating in retrospect.
First off, I had no clue that this was even an event until less than 24 hours prior. Makes me wonder why there’s so little advance notice for local events, be they cultural, political, or morale based. One possible motive this time may have been the target audience, primarily Iraqi and diplomatic wheels – a number of ambassadors and the president of the Iraqi Governing Council (about as important an Iraqi as there is today), among others. Advance notice to me equates to advance notice to the bad guys, affecting their time to plan a suitable response.
As it was, the bomb sniffing pooches were nose to the task at the convention center, examining cameras and cases and bags and other stinky interesting things. In the two or three thousand seat hall, there were at least a dozen visible automatic weapons, and who knows how many in the wings, keeping the president, ambassadors, timpani and me safe from music haters.
For whatever reasons, the attendance was only about five or six hundred. Lots of suits. Even a mink or two. Lots of Iraqis. Makes me wonder where the cultural elite was hiding during the past twenty years. Certainly, the folks who used to enjoy this sort of distraction used to be upper crust, but the upper crust used to all be Baathists, who should all be gone now. This may only leave scattered literati, but I’d guess the guests that night were mostly returning Iraqis, here to lead the country into the new age (and reap the potential).
I had no suit. Neither on or even with me, but found a fine seat anyway in the middle, about a dozen rows from the front, and settled in with a half dozen Whiners to enjoy the show.
The Orchestra was freaks about tuning. Once he entered, the concertmaster led not with a single sustained note, but with a small digital tuner, pointing to each brass player in turn, to tune, pointing them flat or sharp until they got it right. The strings could do this unassisted. However, the process was repeated (albeit in an abbreviated form) after each number.
Eventually, the conductor, dressed in some way wide tails, took to his riser and did his conduction thing. As it turns out, he was quite the dancer. I was hoping for the Greatest Hits of the Dark German Composers (as always), but instead got a more happy German, Ludwig Van to start. Following was a piece the conductor (Ezzat) composed, including the use of a few traditional Iraqi instruments. The featured soloist was a cellist, Karim Wasfi, playing well enough on a Faure number, then some Mommer and Sagirma before the enigmatic Bizet tune to close the show.
As usual, the cameras were there. Between two of the latter numbers, one video unit appeared in an aisle near the stage, accompanied by a talking head, who appeared to be giving a play by play of the concert. Perhaps the extensive tuning was some sort of TV time out, allowing journalists the opportunity to provide some commentary.
Although small, sixty members strong and weak (the strings were tight, the brass less so), their performance was well appreciated. If naught else, for a chance to forget about where we are and when and why we are.
The highlight for me was the use of the traditional instruments, featured especially on the Mommer number (I think). Six Iraqi men in traditional costumes were given seats around the conductor. They settled in with their zarib, oud, balaban, santur, tar, daf, and juza, and raised the roof. Highly energetic, and obviously pleased to be making music for the masses once again.
I hope I can find a juza in Jordan this weekend. Read More......
What Warner Brothers cartoon used Bizet’s Farandole, from L’Arlesienne, as a theme?
Bugging me. Bugging me. Bugging me. But it wasn’t Bugs.
Bugging me since I heard the tune played at a performance of the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra last night. As well, it was their last number, so I was humming the tune as we “bowled a few frames” at the Al Rashid. Driving me nuts again this morning, as I enlisted the more cartoon-enlightened. [There’s really a scary number of those here.] To no avail. There would be no reach back into an up to date Loony Tunes database.
The rest of the performance wasn’t nearly so frustrating in retrospect.
First off, I had no clue that this was even an event until less than 24 hours prior. Makes me wonder why there’s so little advance notice for local events, be they cultural, political, or morale based. One possible motive this time may have been the target audience, primarily Iraqi and diplomatic wheels – a number of ambassadors and the president of the Iraqi Governing Council (about as important an Iraqi as there is today), among others. Advance notice to me equates to advance notice to the bad guys, affecting their time to plan a suitable response.
As it was, the bomb sniffing pooches were nose to the task at the convention center, examining cameras and cases and bags and other stinky interesting things. In the two or three thousand seat hall, there were at least a dozen visible automatic weapons, and who knows how many in the wings, keeping the president, ambassadors, timpani and me safe from music haters.
For whatever reasons, the attendance was only about five or six hundred. Lots of suits. Even a mink or two. Lots of Iraqis. Makes me wonder where the cultural elite was hiding during the past twenty years. Certainly, the folks who used to enjoy this sort of distraction used to be upper crust, but the upper crust used to all be Baathists, who should all be gone now. This may only leave scattered literati, but I’d guess the guests that night were mostly returning Iraqis, here to lead the country into the new age (and reap the potential).
I had no suit. Neither on or even with me, but found a fine seat anyway in the middle, about a dozen rows from the front, and settled in with a half dozen Whiners to enjoy the show.
The Orchestra was freaks about tuning. Once he entered, the concertmaster led not with a single sustained note, but with a small digital tuner, pointing to each brass player in turn, to tune, pointing them flat or sharp until they got it right. The strings could do this unassisted. However, the process was repeated (albeit in an abbreviated form) after each number.
Eventually, the conductor, dressed in some way wide tails, took to his riser and did his conduction thing. As it turns out, he was quite the dancer. I was hoping for the Greatest Hits of the Dark German Composers (as always), but instead got a more happy German, Ludwig Van to start. Following was a piece the conductor (Ezzat) composed, including the use of a few traditional Iraqi instruments. The featured soloist was a cellist, Karim Wasfi, playing well enough on a Faure number, then some Mommer and Sagirma before the enigmatic Bizet tune to close the show.
As usual, the cameras were there. Between two of the latter numbers, one video unit appeared in an aisle near the stage, accompanied by a talking head, who appeared to be giving a play by play of the concert. Perhaps the extensive tuning was some sort of TV time out, allowing journalists the opportunity to provide some commentary.
Although small, sixty members strong and weak (the strings were tight, the brass less so), their performance was well appreciated. If naught else, for a chance to forget about where we are and when and why we are.
The highlight for me was the use of the traditional instruments, featured especially on the Mommer number (I think). Six Iraqi men in traditional costumes were given seats around the conductor. They settled in with their zarib, oud, balaban, santur, tar, daf, and juza, and raised the roof. Highly energetic, and obviously pleased to be making music for the masses once again.
I hope I can find a juza in Jordan this weekend. Read More......
2004-01-04
Sunday, January 04, 2004
10:30 – Baghdad. Sometimes I wonder what the Iraqis think of us. Not lots of the time, only sometimes. And not lots of Iraqis, only the ones that work in the palace, providing for a few of our perceived basic needs, like clean bathrooms and floors.
In our end of the building, there are three Iraqis who work to keep the place tidy. Two of them do most of the work and, as we are American ignoramuses, their given names are “Bathroom Boy Number 1” and, what the heck, “Bathroom Boy Number 2”. In all honesty, I can’t tell Number 1 from Number 2, so I tend to use their real names. They are both supervised by Mohammad, a huge man who just points them to new tasks throughout the day.
Bathrooms are just a part of their three bucks a day existence. They also sweep and mop the floors. The sweeping is effective enough, but there’s so much dust and dirt here, that mopping is really the only way to effectively pick up the filth. Sadly, modern mopping techniques have yet to immigrate to Central Iraq. In Baghdad, mopping involves a moist and dirty rag draped over a squeegee and pushed back and forth over the floor. The rag is never rinsed, so the result is just temporarily moistened dirt.
At the Ministry, they use the same process, and I’ve witnessed the stooped, black-clad old women moistening the dirt through the corridors and down the stairs, without benefit of the squeegee. It’s cleaning chaos, really. Push brooms are pulled. Pull brooms are pushed. Teams of Squeegee Boys are tasked with moistening the dirt in the palace parking lot. I even saw a man sweeping the dirt (as in, there was no grass, only dirt, dirt) outside the office door yesterday. Meanwhile, there’s a guy at BIAP who spends his day propelling one of those rotary buffers across the terrazzo floors in the international terminal – never applying wax or cleansers, just buffing and buffing.
In the palace, the cleaning gets done while we work, so we’re distracted as it occurs and relocated while it happens right around the desk. This marks the time for another snack.
You see, we eat all the time here. Now, whether it’s for comfort, or for calories, or to make up for the lack of taste and variety at the DFAC, it really doesn’t matter. We keep huge amounts of snacks in each office, and pause to consume them at regular intervals. Cleaning time is just another excuse. Typically in each office, a separate table is assigned the responsibility to hold and display these snacks. The arrays of food are often compared and bragged about, “Well, this is nothing. You should stop by sometime and see our huge pile of crap”.
I guess it’s not all crap. Well, sure it is. Some of it’s better for you (dried fruit and popcorn) than others (Peeps and Pop Tarts), but there’s a lot of it. Scads and scads. Candies, crackers, chocolates, chips, chewy stuff, crunchy stuff, and bad beef jerky (to hell with the alliteration). The snack table gives us something to do for a moment’s break, and entices visitors to stay a while and be sociable, instead of just delivering orders or assignments and disappearing.
This is especially effective with a senior USACE guy, who can hear a bag of Peanut M & M’s opening from down the hall, a bird Colonel who is addicted to Hot Tamales, and a General who will give you a medal in exchange for a bag of Twizlers.
Sometimes snack food shows up from the DFAC, typically in the form of canned fruit and chips. Not the Brit “chips”, but the Kuwaiti kind. They’re much like American chips, made from thinly sliced potatoes and deep fried, but with odd flavorings – like paprika, green pepper, chicken, and tomato ketchup. The latter variety was introduced just today, to very bad reviews throughout the bullpen. What condiment-flavored chips are next? Mayonnaise? Relish?
More strangeness. The Iraqis aren’t poor starving Third Worlders, but they are poor Third Worlders, and the cost of keeping us in empty calories is lots more than they make in a day. Our response? We continue to consume, demonstrating our excessiveness. Continuing to establish our assemblage of plenty in the midst of dire need. Read More......
In our end of the building, there are three Iraqis who work to keep the place tidy. Two of them do most of the work and, as we are American ignoramuses, their given names are “Bathroom Boy Number 1” and, what the heck, “Bathroom Boy Number 2”. In all honesty, I can’t tell Number 1 from Number 2, so I tend to use their real names. They are both supervised by Mohammad, a huge man who just points them to new tasks throughout the day.
Bathrooms are just a part of their three bucks a day existence. They also sweep and mop the floors. The sweeping is effective enough, but there’s so much dust and dirt here, that mopping is really the only way to effectively pick up the filth. Sadly, modern mopping techniques have yet to immigrate to Central Iraq. In Baghdad, mopping involves a moist and dirty rag draped over a squeegee and pushed back and forth over the floor. The rag is never rinsed, so the result is just temporarily moistened dirt.
At the Ministry, they use the same process, and I’ve witnessed the stooped, black-clad old women moistening the dirt through the corridors and down the stairs, without benefit of the squeegee. It’s cleaning chaos, really. Push brooms are pulled. Pull brooms are pushed. Teams of Squeegee Boys are tasked with moistening the dirt in the palace parking lot. I even saw a man sweeping the dirt (as in, there was no grass, only dirt, dirt) outside the office door yesterday. Meanwhile, there’s a guy at BIAP who spends his day propelling one of those rotary buffers across the terrazzo floors in the international terminal – never applying wax or cleansers, just buffing and buffing.
In the palace, the cleaning gets done while we work, so we’re distracted as it occurs and relocated while it happens right around the desk. This marks the time for another snack.
You see, we eat all the time here. Now, whether it’s for comfort, or for calories, or to make up for the lack of taste and variety at the DFAC, it really doesn’t matter. We keep huge amounts of snacks in each office, and pause to consume them at regular intervals. Cleaning time is just another excuse. Typically in each office, a separate table is assigned the responsibility to hold and display these snacks. The arrays of food are often compared and bragged about, “Well, this is nothing. You should stop by sometime and see our huge pile of crap”.
I guess it’s not all crap. Well, sure it is. Some of it’s better for you (dried fruit and popcorn) than others (Peeps and Pop Tarts), but there’s a lot of it. Scads and scads. Candies, crackers, chocolates, chips, chewy stuff, crunchy stuff, and bad beef jerky (to hell with the alliteration). The snack table gives us something to do for a moment’s break, and entices visitors to stay a while and be sociable, instead of just delivering orders or assignments and disappearing.
This is especially effective with a senior USACE guy, who can hear a bag of Peanut M & M’s opening from down the hall, a bird Colonel who is addicted to Hot Tamales, and a General who will give you a medal in exchange for a bag of Twizlers.
Sometimes snack food shows up from the DFAC, typically in the form of canned fruit and chips. Not the Brit “chips”, but the Kuwaiti kind. They’re much like American chips, made from thinly sliced potatoes and deep fried, but with odd flavorings – like paprika, green pepper, chicken, and tomato ketchup. The latter variety was introduced just today, to very bad reviews throughout the bullpen. What condiment-flavored chips are next? Mayonnaise? Relish?
More strangeness. The Iraqis aren’t poor starving Third Worlders, but they are poor Third Worlders, and the cost of keeping us in empty calories is lots more than they make in a day. Our response? We continue to consume, demonstrating our excessiveness. Continuing to establish our assemblage of plenty in the midst of dire need. Read More......
2004-01-02
Friday, January 02, 2004
18:00 - Baghdad. Notice: Impending whining.
Someone in this space once wrote that the “increasing bureaucracy makes me think that the Americanization of Iraq is almost complete.” I guess that was me.
Anyway, I just received notice of some near term incoming personnel to the PMO. Out of twenty newbies, we expect one Major General, three SES (members of the Senior Executive Service), one Colonel, two Lieutenant Commanders, one Major, two Captains, two Lieutenants, two GS-15’s, two GS-14’s, and one each of GS-13, GS-12, GS-11, and a lowly GS-9.
It’s likely that a GS-14 is equivalent to a Lieutenant Colonel. And commonly, a GS-15 is equivalent to a full Colonel. And, uh, generally, an SES is equivalent to a General. With Lieutenant Colonels and above considered management, the new guys will consist of nine Indians and eleven Chiefs.
Add this to the four SES’s, four Colonels, one Major, one Captain, one GS-14, four GS-13’s, and a GS-11 already deployed here, and we’ve got twenty-two Chiefs and fourteen Indians.
Oh, and we contractors (although worker bees at heart) are all GS-14’s and 15’s, bringing the totals to thirty-seven Chiefs and fourteen Indians. It’s no wonder I have to make my own coffee.
Next on the ungrateful whining - the new space. When these new executives arrive, they will undoubtedly want the rooms with windows that we belly crawling contractors currently occupy. We’ll be evicted, of course, and relocated to the ballroom, the ghetto, the Frisbee court, the place where we have rallies with the little remote controls cars I got for my birthday. Whatever it’s called, it’s a big space, over five thousand square feet, and soon home to over seventy desks.
But the place needs adequate lighting. Sure, there’s already a few sconces about the room, even a line of small cans recessed into the perimeter of the ceiling, but the three Ronco Chandeliers had never worked, so the Major and I developed a supplemental lighting plan, and brought it to KBR/Halliburton for a quote. Of course, there’s no bidding. KBR is the sole source for this type of work in Iraq, so we swallowed hard at the $45,000 cost and waited two weeks for them to get into the task.
A fairly simple process, really. Just drill a few holes in the concrete ceiling, spaced every six feet or so, and anchor some steel rods on which will hang wiring tracks and nearly one hundred fluorescent fixtures. The only problem with the installation so far was that there was too little light in the room for the workers to see what they were doing.
The solution, reconnect the switch that controls the Ronco Chandeliers. That gave them plenty of light. So much, in fact, that there is really no need to install the fluorescents at all. Except KBR won’t stop what they’re doing, because they have a signed work order.
Grrrr. As it turns out, KBR electricians disconnected the light switch when their guys had lived/slept in this space, so that the overly bright additional lighting wouldn’t disturb their sleep. The electrician we worked with in the development of the project assured us that he “had never seen those lights working.”
Not surprisingly, we just spent forty grand to install shop lights in a palace ballroom. Read More......
Someone in this space once wrote that the “increasing bureaucracy makes me think that the Americanization of Iraq is almost complete.” I guess that was me.
Anyway, I just received notice of some near term incoming personnel to the PMO. Out of twenty newbies, we expect one Major General, three SES (members of the Senior Executive Service), one Colonel, two Lieutenant Commanders, one Major, two Captains, two Lieutenants, two GS-15’s, two GS-14’s, and one each of GS-13, GS-12, GS-11, and a lowly GS-9.
It’s likely that a GS-14 is equivalent to a Lieutenant Colonel. And commonly, a GS-15 is equivalent to a full Colonel. And, uh, generally, an SES is equivalent to a General. With Lieutenant Colonels and above considered management, the new guys will consist of nine Indians and eleven Chiefs.
Add this to the four SES’s, four Colonels, one Major, one Captain, one GS-14, four GS-13’s, and a GS-11 already deployed here, and we’ve got twenty-two Chiefs and fourteen Indians.
Oh, and we contractors (although worker bees at heart) are all GS-14’s and 15’s, bringing the totals to thirty-seven Chiefs and fourteen Indians. It’s no wonder I have to make my own coffee.
Next on the ungrateful whining - the new space. When these new executives arrive, they will undoubtedly want the rooms with windows that we belly crawling contractors currently occupy. We’ll be evicted, of course, and relocated to the ballroom, the ghetto, the Frisbee court, the place where we have rallies with the little remote controls cars I got for my birthday. Whatever it’s called, it’s a big space, over five thousand square feet, and soon home to over seventy desks.
But the place needs adequate lighting. Sure, there’s already a few sconces about the room, even a line of small cans recessed into the perimeter of the ceiling, but the three Ronco Chandeliers had never worked, so the Major and I developed a supplemental lighting plan, and brought it to KBR/Halliburton for a quote. Of course, there’s no bidding. KBR is the sole source for this type of work in Iraq, so we swallowed hard at the $45,000 cost and waited two weeks for them to get into the task.
A fairly simple process, really. Just drill a few holes in the concrete ceiling, spaced every six feet or so, and anchor some steel rods on which will hang wiring tracks and nearly one hundred fluorescent fixtures. The only problem with the installation so far was that there was too little light in the room for the workers to see what they were doing.
The solution, reconnect the switch that controls the Ronco Chandeliers. That gave them plenty of light. So much, in fact, that there is really no need to install the fluorescents at all. Except KBR won’t stop what they’re doing, because they have a signed work order.
Grrrr. As it turns out, KBR electricians disconnected the light switch when their guys had lived/slept in this space, so that the overly bright additional lighting wouldn’t disturb their sleep. The electrician we worked with in the development of the project assured us that he “had never seen those lights working.”
Not surprisingly, we just spent forty grand to install shop lights in a palace ballroom. Read More......
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