The wall.

I think I've hit it. That point in the deployment where everything that used to be new and exciting has lost it's luster, work is no longer interesting, and the days drag like never before. Pretty much there. A lot has been going on in the detainee ops world that has made my life very, very unpleasant as work becomes more tedious file managing and less anything that resembles something stimulating.

Probably a factor in my non-blogging of late. I'm not really looking to air my grievances in a public forum, and grievances are about all that have been worked up over the last two months. I can't even discuss the details that would make any of it comprehensible.... which complicates writing a public blog about my life here, as you can imagine. Oh well... might as well stick to the play-by-play. Recent events include:

Baghdad - spent 8 days (that were supposed to be 2) on beautiful FOB Cropper, part of the VBC next to Baghdad International Airport, home to one of our last remaining detainee internment facilities. It's an interesting place, but typical VBC in its overcrowded ugliness and laughable asinine tension. Senior enlisted without enough work to do prowl the streets hunting for soldiers with their glow-belts on over the wrong shoulder - what could be WORSE in a war zone than a uniform violation? Nothing on Cropper, that's for sure. I had some good times with my buddies who are working there, but getting stuck again sucked and in general I try to spend as little time with insurgents, in prison or out, as I can. So my Cropper days ended as soon as the dust settled.

And speaking of the dust - if I can get away with saying this and not jinxing us, the dusty season appears to have past. I've been able to see the stars at night for two weeks straight now and I haven't had to spit out mud after walking up to a mile, which is a good measure of air quality here. In fact, I think a mudless mile is the gold standard. We're clear. Unfortunately that also means it's hotter. Confirmed 125 degrees a few days ago. You get used to it though... it's really bizarre. I think it's a combination of having to wear excessive clothing everywhere and knowing that no matter how uncomfortable you are, no one cares and you can't avoid it so it's not even worth getting spun up about. Just go about your business. It's hot. And?

Tikrit - though COB Speicher is just outside of Tikrit, we don't exactly wander into town for drinks on the weekend. I managed to work my way onto the manifest for a mission into town to meet with the chief judge of Salah Ad Din province to discuss investigations and other issues associated with my mission. It was a great trip and the court was truly impressive - I have to say they run a more professional and advanced operation here than even CCCI in Baghdad, which is considered by most here to be the flagship judicial body.... probably because we made it a few years ago and nobody wants to admit we have an ugly baby. The court in Tikrit actually has copies of the Bible and the Torah for witnesses to swear on. Pretty enlightened by middle-eastern standards. I doubt you'll find something like that in some of the more advanced countries in this part of the world.

Mosul - This was my most recent little jaunt, just taking place yesterday. I flew up to go on a similar mission into town to meet with the chief judge of Ninewa province, only to find that the passenger capacity had been reduced and I didn't make the cut. This information was relayed to me several minutes after we landed... and was apparently known to people I work with on Speicher several DAYS before we took off. Thanks guys. Regardless of the total flop there, it was good to get off Speicher again and see a new base. FOB Marez/Diamondback is the base complex there, and it sits on a hill on the southwest side of the city overlooking all of Mosul. I didn't take any pictures... I was a little to tired and heated about getting bumped from the mission to motivate for some tourism, but now I'm regretting it. Mosul is a lot cooler looking than the desert here. Much more topography - there are a lot of hills and even a mountain or two, and a big river (Tigris?) going through the middle of the city. As my shipmate here before me put it "Mosul looks like I pictured the Bible." He's actually right - Mosul is apparently the biblical city of Ninevah (hence Ninewah province - don't know why the city name changed).

The base sits right up against the edge of the city... pretty much in it, although now that we're "out of the cities" I guess I just have to adjust my definition of city limits. I always thought a spot surrounded on 4 sides by city was actually in the city, but you know I was wrong on that one. Just over the wall from where I stayed was a huge mosque, and during the evening call to prayer they had what sounded like 4 or 5 guys going absolutely nuts singing on the loudspeaker for about 45 minutes. Ramadan just started, so I imagine they up the ante a bit. It was pretty surreal to hear that going on and look out over the city as the sun set. I walked out to the wire and just stood there appreciating it for a while.

I do have a good story that developed recently. I won't say where or when for operational safety, but I was out with one of our civilian investigators going to meet with some Iraqi investigators sent out by the central government to work in the provinces - kind of like FBI types in the US. I didn't know we were going to be leaving the base, as we were driving a civilian SUV with no armor, we were in soft uniforms, and it was just me, him, and our interpreter.

As we get close to one of the gates, he pulls out a magazine and puts it in his weapon. "Are we going amber?" I say. (The Army doesn't use the term "yellow," but applies colors to describe weapon state, whereas USN/USMC use numbers. A Green weapon is unloaded, an Amber weapon has a magazine in it, and a Red weapon has a round chambered ready to fire - depending on your circumstances, you adjust weapon posture accordingly - on base you're usually Green) "You should probably go red," he tells me as he racks his slide and chambers a round. Somewhat shocked, I realize he's driven us straight off the base and we're out in town in a damn Mitsubishi by ourselves. I quickly follow suit with my weapon and politely inquire what the game plan is, and points to a building just a few hundred meters away... next to the two large piles of rubble that used to be buildings until a VBIED leveled them a few weeks ago. Turns out the area is actually an Iraqi facility and the road is... kind of secured, but it's definitely not my ideal way to travel.

So we get down to the building and go inside, and it's a typical Iraqi security force facility. Tons of dudes milling about in various states of undress, some sleeping on the ubiquitous office beds (work day ends at 2pm, then it's nap time. Not kidding.), all manner of unidentifiable schmeg staining the walls and floor, smells like an unwashed jock strap. Good times. We meet with an Iraqi Colonel for a while and talk to him about his cases, security in the city, etc. and we come upon the subject of Explosive Ordnance Disposal. The Iraqi approach to EOD tends to be very different than our extremely professional technical methods. When Iraqis find an IED or unexploded ordnance, they have a habit of just shooting at it until it explodes and calling it a day. Sometimes they clear civilians from the area before they do this, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they use rifles from afar, sometimes they use pistols, necessarily very close. Sometimes they just pick the damn things up and start pulling wires out. I think it goes without saying that this results in a lot of unnecessary death and dismemberment.

So they dude is telling us that his guys just found an IED outside the building and they didn't shoot it, so he wants EOD to come over and render it safe and take some pictures. We're totally excited at this point because this represents a pretty huge breakthrough in terms of safety and professional investigative methods, so we quickly agree and get down to details.

We ask how big it is. He draws a roughly ice chest sized box with his hands, which is typical. We ask what it looks like. It's insulating foam painted to look like cement with a bunch of mortar rounds inside - also standard. This is going somewhere, very good work we tell him. Now for the big money - where is it? He gestures off to his 7 o'clock and says something, and our interpreter looks a little confused, so they go back and forth a bit and finally the terp looks at us and says "It's here." Here? What do you mean, here? They go back and forth some more in Arabic and our terp finally squirms a bit and gives us the details.

They have a large, intact IED in a closet down the hall. The Colonel assured us it was cool because he had someone watching it -literally a kid in man-capris sitting on a stool outside the door.

This is the part where we freaked out a bit. Appearances and relationships are big here and we couldn't really run away without offending the guy, so we grabbed one of his officers and made some big deal about needing to bring him back to the base to make copies of a case file before everybody quit for the day, and then it was time to GTFO.


Solid afternoon.

LTG Black, Judge Advocate General of the Army. Awesome guy - smoked a cigar, offered me a job, and posed for this glamor shot.

GEN Petraeus - Kind of a big deal. Leather bound books, rich mahogany... you know the deal.

Baghdad's northern suburbs, coming in from Taji.

Very big man in a very small car.

Predator predating over the range on Speicher.

Home on the range.

The old boss with the new boss. I think Saddam's Heisman is a little more convincing.