On My Way Home

WOW! My tour is over. It seems just like yesterday I was arriving under the cover of darkness at the US Embassy and getting my assigned room and unpacking my gear.
I have once again had the honor of working with some of the finest enlisted and officers from all services of the US Armed Forces. In my military career, I have made many friends but you don't make as good of friends as you do in a war zone. You find out really quickly that you depend each and every day on these folks and many of us have grown quite close. We worked hard and played hard. I truly feel like we have accompolished something while I was here and I wouldn't trade this expeirence for anything in the world.

This is the last time I will see darkness in Iraq, unless it is on TV. It's a happy time because I know within a matter of days I will be with my family again. It is also a sad time because the people here will never be able to enjoy what we take for granted every single day in the states. I'm looking forward to trees, grass, rain and cold weather. I certainly won't miss the sand storms, unbearable heat and living in a room not much bigger than a closet and eating the same thing day after day.

I'm not really sure how many people actually read this blog but I want to say thank you to every person out there who takes a minute or two every day to think about the men and women working to make Iraq a better place to live. We can't do this job without your support.

That's it. I'm outta here!

The Ring of Baghdad.....

U.S. military and Iraqi security forces have begun a massive effort to seal off Baghdad with a ring of reinforced checkpoints, berms, trenches, barriers and fences in an attempt to clamp down on insurgents, officials said Friday.
A few dozen checkpoints will be placed along key arteries in and out of Baghdad to ensure that people move through "predictable paths" that can be controlled, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman, said late Friday night. Iraqi forces will man the checkpoints and patrol the terrain, with support from U.S. troops.
"We know there's a flow in and out of the city of those who are responsible for the violence," Johnson said. "The intent is to control Baghdad city."
The plans were announced on a day when officials said 52 bound and tortured corpses were found across Baghdad over a 24-hour period. Baghdad's body count has surged in recent days, despite a month-old push by thousands of U.S. and Iraqi forces to tame some of the capital's roughest neighborhoods.
The construction of a ring around Baghdad would be the most ambitious security endeavor yet for the U.S. military and its Iraqi allies as they try to block militias, death squads and insurgents from funneling in weapons, explosives, funding and recruits from outside the capital.
"The enemy is changing tactics, and we're adapting," President Bush said Friday in Washington. "The enemy moves, and we will help the Iraqis move. And so they're building a berm around the city to make it harder for people to come in with explosive devices, for example. . . . They got a clear-build-and-hold strategy."
The project is underway as sectarian violence is emerging as the biggest challenge to U.S. and Iraqi forces engaged in what some U.S. officials have called the Battle for Baghdad, a confrontation that might strongly influence the future path of Iraq.
"We're trying to knock down sectarian violence and go after those folks, those death squads that have caused this new form of violence, that if left unchecked could lead to civil war," said Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the second-ranking U.S. military officer in Iraq.
The effort to wrap Baghdad in a protective bubble is not a new tactic. In Fallujah, U.S. and Iraqi forces have controlled entry and exit since an assault by U.S. forces in November 2004. In the volatile town of Samarra, where the bombing of a Shiite shrine in February triggered the sectarian violence now ravaging Baghdad, the U.S. military has erected berms around the town. The dirt ridges, a few feet high, serve largely to channel traffic.
Johnson, the U.S. military spokesman, said the Baghdad project has been underway for a few weeks and that building has begun. The plan is to use the natural terrain where possible and reinforce existing barriers, "complementing them with trenches, in other places berms, and other types of fencing."
Such efforts are among the methods that counterinsurgency experts recommend to gain control over population movements. Yet some analysts also say that the United States has never taken what many of them contend is an essential first step: conducting a thorough census, then issuing identity cards and requiring all people to carry them at all times.
It is unclear whether the planned complex of berms, trenches and checkpoints will be effective in Baghdad, a megalopolis of 81 square miles that includes vast stretches of farmland and open terrain. Insurgents and members of private militias might still be able to avoid the checkpoints, and even if they don't, U.S. and Iraqi forces still face the problem of identifying them.
The Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins in October, is likely to increase the flow of people in and out of Baghdad. The Iraqi government, Johnson said, is trying to determine how the plan to seal Baghdad will affect the flow of vehicles in a city already clogged with heavy traffic.
The grisly discoveries of more bodies around the capital illustrated how serious the ongoing sectarian strife has become. According to Iraqi police officials, some of the corpses had disfigured faces. Most were shot in the head. All bore marks of torture. Some were found near a railroad track, others near a bus station. Five were beheaded. All were young men, in civilian clothes, between the ages of 20 and 35.
The bodies were dumped in both Shiite Muslim and Sunni Muslim neighborhoods, east, west and south of the Tigris River, which weaves through the heart of the city. In total, 114 bullet-riddled and tortured corpses have turned up since Tuesday.
Meanwhile, on Friday, five U.S. soldiers were reported killed. Military officials said they included two who were killed Thursday in a suicide bombing that also wounded 30 Americans west of Baghdad. Another American soldier died in combat in Anbar province on Friday, and two more were killed by roadside bombs -- one on Thursday in northwest Baghdad, the other in south Baghdad on Friday.
In the northern city of Mosul, a car bomb that targeted a U.S. patrol killed nine civilians, said Brig. Gen. Saed Jubury, a police spokesman.
In the political arena, a revered Shiite cleric indicated that he would not support a proposal to create a controversial autonomous Shiite region that many Sunnis and some Shiites fear could partition Iraq.
After a meeting with senior Shiite leaders, Ayatollah Mohammad Yaqoubi's office released a statement saying that Yaqoubi stressed "the maintenance of Iraq's unity and expressed his upset over the discord among the political parties and their preference for their factious interests over the public interests of the people."
The statement delivered another blow to efforts by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, to pass a draft bill that would carve Iraq into a three-part federal system, including a separate Shiite region.
Sunni Arab political parties have accused their Shiite counterparts of trying to break apart Iraq and have threatened to boycott parliament. Both the Kurdish-populated north and the Shiite south are oil-rich, while most Sunni Arabs live around Baghdad or in Iraq's resource-poor western provinces.

Even After US Leave, Abu Ghraib Is Still In The News

The notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad is at the centre of fresh abuse allegations just a week after it was handed over to Iraqi authorities, with claims that inmates are being tortured by their new captors.
Staff at the jail say the Iraqi authorities have moved dozens of terrorist suspects into Abu Ghraib from the controversial Interior Ministry detention centre in Jadriyah, where United States troops last year discovered 169 prisoners who had been tortured and starved.
An independent witness who went into Abu Ghraib this week told The Sunday Telegraph that screams were coming from the cell blocks housing the terrorist suspects. Prisoners released from the jail this week spoke of routine torture of terrorism suspects and on Wednesday, 27 prisoners were hanged in the first mass execution since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime.
Conditions in the rest of the jail were grim, with an overwhelming stench of excrement, prisoners crammed into cells for all but 20 minutes a day, food rations cut to just rice and water and no air conditioning.
Some of the small number of prisoners who remained in the jail after the Americans left said they had pleaded to go with their departing captors, rather than be left in the hands of Iraqi guards.
"The Americans were better than the Iraqis. They treated us better," said Khalid Alaani, who was held on suspicion of involvement in Sunni terrorism.
Abu Ghraib became synonymous with abuse after shocking pictures were published in 2004 showing prisoners being tortured and humiliated, galvanising opposition to the US presence in Iraq.
The witness gained access to the prison just days after the Americans formally handed over control to the Iraqi authorities on Sept 1.
Inside the 100-yard long cell block the smell of excrement was overpowering. Four to six prisoners shared each of the 12ft by 15ft cells along either side and the walls were smeared with filth. The cell block was patrolled by guards who carried long batons and shouted angrily at the prisoners to stand up.
Access to the part of the prison containing terrorism suspects was denied, but from that block came the sound of screaming. The screaming continued for a long time.
"I am sure someone was being beaten, they were screaming like they were being hit," the witness reported. "I felt scared, I was asking what was happening in the terrorist section.
"I heard shouting, like someone had a hot iron on their body, screams. The officer said they were just screaming by themselves. I was hearing the screams throughout the visit."
The witness said that even in the thieves' section prisoners were being treated badly. "Someone was shouting 'Please help us, we want the human rights officers, we want the Americans to come back'," he said.
Prisoners interviewed in the presence of their jailers said they were frightened for their safety. They complained that chicken and milk had been cut from their rations, leaving them on rice and water. They also complained about the oppressive heat.
Outside the prison, relatives of some of the inmates said they were being tortured by their captors. One woman, who gave her name as Omsaad, said: "My son Saad [who was arrested in Fallujah as a suspected insurgent] said he is being tortured by the Iraqis to confess the name of his leader. I met my son and he told me they were being treated badly by the Iraqis."
Haleem Aleulami, who was released from the jail last week, three weeks after being arrested in Ramadi for carrying a pistol in his car, said the Americans had treated him better when they ran the jail. He claimed that visits from the International Red Cross staff had dried up and accused local human rights workers of being members of Shia groups who turned a blind eye to problems in the jail.
"The people are Iraqis and they are members of the Sciri and al Dawa parties. They have a good relationship with the leaders of the jail and they keep quiet," he said. The guards swore at the ordinary prisoners, he said, but those in the terrorist section were treated more brutally.
"The guards were swearing at us, but in the terrorist section they were beating them. I heard it all the time. Everyone knows what is happening."
And Khalid Alaani, who was also picked up in Ramadi suspected of involvement in Sunni terrorism, said: "We preferred the Americans. We asked to move with them to Baghdad airport because we knew the treatment would be changed because we know what the Iraqis are. When the Americans left everything changed."
Staff at the jail said that the prisoners were allowed out from their cells for only 15 to 20 minutes a day because of the danger from the regular mortar attacks. They are no longer allowed access to the main hall where the Americans had allowed them to watch television and the room is now reserved for the use of officers and guards. Staff explained that the air conditioning in the cell blocks had broken, although it was working in their quarters.
One officer, Capt Ali Abdelzaher, said: "We have a problem with the financing for the food, not like the Americans, and there is a technical problem with the air conditioning."
Capt Abdelzaher also confirmed that a number of inmates had been transferred from the Jadriyah detention centre, along with their guards and interrogators.
Graphic stories of abuse at that previously secret facility emerged after US soldiers found 169 prisoners showing signs of torture last November.
Most of the prisoners held by the Americans at Abu Ghraib were either released in recent months or transferred to a new £32 million detention centre at Camp Cropper near Baghdad International Airport.
Yesterday, the International Red Cross confirmed that its visits to the prison had been suspended since January 2005 on security grounds.

Sobering Talk About Baghdad

The top U.S. military commander in the Middle East said Wednesday it could take "many more months" to end the sectarian violence in Baghdad and "a matter of years" to train the Iraqi army properly.
Army Gen. John Abizaid's assessment, sobering at times and optimistic at others, came a day after President Bush declared Iraq the "central battlefield" in the war against terrorism during a speech in Washington.
In an interview with local media at MacDill Air Force Base, Abizaid said there are no speedy solutions to the religious fanaticism fueling al-Qaida and other terrorist groups.
"The extremism in the region, it's difficult, it's dangerous, but it's not mainstream. The vast majority of the people in the region don't want it to be mainstream," Abizaid said.
"Our challenge is to figure out how to shape it so that moderate influences can emerge as the primary voice in the region. That's easy to say, but it's hard to do," he said.
Using the phrase "The Long War," Abizaid compared the current global conflict to the lengthy ideological struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union that began after World War II.
"I don't think it's the never-ending war any more than the Cold War turned out to be the never-ending war," he said.
"If you were asking people in the mid-1950s whether or not it was never-ending, they'd look out there and say, 'This is going to be a long problem for us and we're not quite sure how it's going to come out,'" Abizaid said.
As commander of U.S. Central Command, Abizaid oversees a region stretching from Central Asia to the Horn of Africa. He returned Sunday from a three-week trip to the area, where about 215,000 U.S. troops are deployed. More than 140,000 of them are in Iraq.
A boost in Baghdad's forces has reduced civilian deaths and stabilized other areas. But the violence between Muslim factions in Baghdad remains a potentially "fatal" problem if not brought under control, he said.
"We've got to be careful about thinking that this problem in Baghdad is going to be over anytime soon," Abizaid said. "This is going to take a couple of months at least before we know how we're doing."
While calling the levels of violence "high" and "dangerous," Abizaid said the country is not at the brink of civil war.
"As long as Iraq holds together in its government, as long as Iraq holds together in its armed forces, as long the majority of the people … don't want the country to descend into civil war and are working hard to hold it together, then I think we're not there," he said.
Abizaid said Iraqi forces are fighting, but like the government of Iraq they have not matured into a force capable of taking responsibility for their own security.
"Probably we were a bit optimistic in thinking Iraqi forces will be completely ready to take over sectors when the government hasn't gelled yet," Abizaid said. "We're not there yet. It's going to take some time for that to come together."
Discipline among the Iraqi forces has been spotty, he said.
"There are some units like the Iraqi special operations units that are some of the best units anywhere in the Middle East," Abizaid said. "There are other units that disappointed us greatly because they were unable to answer the call … "
Iraqi forces have taken more casualties than U.S. forces, he said.
In a briefing before the interview with Abizaid, Army Maj. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti said the area of greatest concern to U.S. military commanders in the war on terror is al-Qaida's ability to manipulate information over the Internet.
"They don't have any limits, they don't have any need to be truthful," Scaparrotti said.
In Iraq, Abizaid wants Centcom to be put out of a military job.
"The whole problem in front of us is not to do it all ourselves," Abizaid said. "We have to turn over more and more of the responsibility for fighting the country's battles, for administering the country's resources, to the Iraqis.
"We don't win if we stay there forever," he said. "We don't win if we increase the number of American troops to 500,000. We don't win if we do everything for them."

How to Prepare for a Deployment to Iraq

It has been a little bit of a news quiet week here other than the usual car bombs, mortars and rockets. Therefore, I decided to post something a little bit funny.
This goes out to everyone who is even entertaining the idea of making a trip or deployment to Iraq.

How to Prepare for a Deployment to Iraq
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 showerhead down to chest level. Keep four inches of soapy cold water on the floor. Stop cleaning the toilet and pee everywhere but in the toilet itself. Leave two to three sheets of toilet paper. Or for best effect, remove it altogether. For a more realistic deployed bathroom 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 showers, wear flip-flops and keep the lights off.
6. Every time there is a thunderstorm, go sit in a wobbly rocking chair and dump dirt on your head.
7. Put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it on "HIGH" for that tactical generator smell.
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. Leave a lawnmower running in your living room 24 hours a day for proper noise level.
10. Have the paperboy give you a haircut.
11. Once a week, blow compressed air up through your chimney making sure the wind carries the soot across and on to your neighbor's house. Laugh at him when he curses you.
12. Buy a trash compactor and only use it once a week. Store up garbage in the other side of your bathtub.
13. Wake up every night at midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a saltine cracker.
14. Make up your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in your food cabinets or refrigerator. Then serve some kind of meat in an unidentifiable sauce poured over noodles. Do this for every meal.
15. Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during the night. When it goes off, jump out of bed and get to the shower as fast as you can. Simulate there is no hot water by running out into your yard and breaking out the garden hose.
16. Once a month, take every major appliance completely apart and put it back together again. 17. Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for five or six hours before drinking.
18. Invite at least 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.
19. Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and lie under it to read books.
20. 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.
21. Keep a roll of toilet paper on your night stand and bring it to the bathroom with you. And bring your gun and a flashlight.
22. Go to the bathroom when you just have to pass gas, "just in case." Every time.
23. 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."
24. Wash only 15 items of laundry per week. Roll up the semi-wet clean clothes in a ball. Place them in a cloth sack in the corner of the garage where the cat pees. 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 or smell like. Enthusiastically repeat the process for another week.
25. Go to the worst crime-infested place you can find, go heavily armed, wearing a flak jacket and a Kevlar helmet. Set up shop in a tent in a vacant lot. Announce to the residents that you are there to help them.
26. Eat a single M&M every Sunday and convince yourself it's for Malaria.
27. Demand each family member be limited to 10 minutes per week for a morale phone call. Enforce this with your teenage daughter.
28. Shoot a few bullet holes in the walls of your home for proper ambiance.
29. Sandbag the floor of your car to protect from mine blasts and fragmentation.
30. While traveling down roads in your car, stop at each overpass and culvert and inspect them for remotely detonated explosives before proceeding.
31. 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.
32. Drink your milk and sodas warm.
33. Spread gravel throughout your house and yard.
34. Make your children clear their Super Soakers in a clearing barrel you placed outside the front door before they come in.
35. Make your family dig a survivability position with overhead cover in the backyard. Complain that the 4x4s are not 8 inches on center and make them rebuild it.
36. Continuously ask your spouse to allow you to go buy an M-Gator.
37. When your 5-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 two weeks, give your son the gum.
38. 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.
39. 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.
40. Just when you think you're ready to resume a normal life, order yourself to repeat this process for another six months to simulate the next deployment you've been ordered to support.