Fine Cinema

As promised:

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch...

Hey strangers! Please accept my apologies for the long absence – as predicted free time has become a precious commodity and I’ve been using most of mine lately to sleep. Since my last post I took another trip and of course promptly got stuck due to the nastiest sand storm we’ve had here so far. My stay wound up lasting twice as long as intended again, and although it was shorter than my trip to CCCI, it was much more operational in nature and a lot dirtier, so you can imagine the corresponding increase in hobo-power I experienced. Finally got a ride home in a General’s helo after they dropped the big dog off – video of that to come if Youtube will ever cooperate.

My fellow 25ID Navy JAG and I headed down to FOB Warhorse just outside the city of Baqubah, home of the 1^st Brigade Stryker Combat Team and one of our four investigative task forces. Our goal was to get out in Baqubah with our MA’s and investigators for a few days to meet with the local Iraqi Police and get some face time with a local judge to try and get some local national assistance with investigations. Baqubah is in Diyala province, which begins in the suburbs northeast of Baghdad and runs all the way to the border with Iran. It’s a pretty extreme ethnic melting pot and as you can imagine it’s been the site of a great deal of ethnic and sectarian violence in the last few years. Things have calmed down significantly since the peak of nastiness about two years ago, but it’s still a very unstable area.

As bases here go, Warhorse is a completely different animal than I’m accustomed to. When I arrived on Speicher, I found it to be refreshingly distant from the flagpole at VBC/IZ and a lot more focused on operations, but it’s still a division level HQ and the perspective here is accordingly wide-angle. Warhorse is the real deal. It’s not as raw as the really compact battalion and below level bases you’ll find inside the cities (for a few more days anyway), but it’s been at the tip of the spear for a long time and you can definitely tell they live life differently down there. IDF is an ever present threat and kinetic operations are just a few minutes’ drive away in Baqubah proper. I’ve been wishing for an experience more “real” than you’ll find on VBC, and I got it. And you know what they say about getting what you wish for…

We headed out on two missions with the local Police Transition Team (PTT – pronounced “pit”). These teams have worked since the beginning of our reconstruction efforts to equip and train the Iraqi Police at all levels. I got my first exposure to the PTT mission back in DC through several of my PEB clients who had received disabling injuries in the line of duty here. Not fun work, but very important. The Diyala Provincial team we rolled with were awesome – utterly professional and very serious about their mission, but at the same time very welcoming of us legal weenies trying to help in our way. We spent two full days at an IP station in Baqubah meeting with the police, and eventually an extremely elusive judge (judges are prime targets here – can’t blame the guy for keeping a low profile) trying to get some investigative and judicial assistance on cases we’re pushing out to them. I don’t know how successful we were. This is a hard culture for a foreigner to do business in and our fiscal rules hinder us from doing business in the traditional Iraqi manner. We got some face time and raised awareness though, and that seems to be a first… sooooo…. Hooyah progress.

At any rate I’ve got two real live outside-the-wire missions under my belt and my convoy count is steadily rising – for anybody keeping score I guess that means I’m really living the dream. Many more to come, including Mosul later this summer which will be a real challenge due to the security situation there. I’m enjoying myself immensely and I’m doing things that I’m sure I’ll look back on years from now in sheer amazement. I keep having these moments of miniature revelation in which I feel like I’m waking up from a dream, take a look around and think to myself “holy #@$&! I’m in Iraq and this is happening.” I’ve been in some truly surreal situations these first six weeks. Pretty weird. Happens a lot just before leaving the wire, flying, etc. I don’t know if that will go away. On the one hand I make a conscious effort to treat everything in my life like an adventure and stay amazed, but on the other hand it’s a constant battle against complacency here because at any moment circumstances can change drastically and we all need to stay sharp. It’s not wearing on me and the fact that I don’t do this kind of thing every day is a blessing for me, but not everyone is so fortunate. As such I view the work I do from my desk above all else as an effort to support those who do it all the time. Guys put their lives on the line to capture the criminals that are only infrequently more than obnoxiously huge PDF files to me, and I’m glad I’m acquiring the real-world experience to appreciate that. I think it’s essential to do this kind of thing to fully understand the situation were in and make appropriate decisions – it’s a shame not everyone has the opportunity to do so. Lucky me, huh?

In other news – a camel spider was recently captured at the Warhorse DHA (Detainee Holding Area – “dee-haw” – mini-jail where new captures are held for a few days until transferred elsewhere or released) and based on information I gathered it seems that water and vegetation are two essential elements to the camel spider’s natural habitat. These things are not in abundance on Speicher, but there are a few areas here in which I’m going to refocus my efforts and hopefully rustle up my amazing pet. I love them. Why won’t they come to me? I found a tiny spider in my CHU a while back and spent a few minutes on the floor face-to-face with it trying to figure out if it was what I’ve been looking for. No such luck. Poor guy got smashed for his trouble. My personal space equals death for all unwelcome critters and I make an example of intruders to set the tone. Maybe I’m sending the wrong message.

Finally - I’ve spent a great deal of time in Mexico and I’ve learned to live with less than savory sanitation facilities. The Iraqi crapper puts everything I’ve ever experienced to shame. Mexican toilets are Single-A baseball compared to the big leaguers they’re working with here. I’m convinced that if we’d brought a ton of flush toilets with us in 2003 there would be no insurgency. Take notes, State Department.

Headed out to one of the gates to watch a detainee release that never materialized. What also never materialized was my IBA, which I was told I wouldn't need. This was an error. The razor wire behind me is it - no more taking PPE (personal protective equipment) advice from Ugandans.

1/25 Arctic Wolves Brigade HQ.

Apparently my soul mate works at the 1/25 command post.

Warhorse CHUs look a little different than ours. Why?...

... Katyusha rockets is why.

This deck was spotless before I turned in for the evening - 6 hours later it looks like this. It's a 20 minute walk from this spot to my CHU. My lungs are going to be a case study when I get out of here.

Two shipmates from NIACT - our 1/25 BITF (Brigade Investigative Task Force) MA's.

I no longer ride in the turret, but the back seat has it's own perils. MRAP's don't have the gentlest suspension in the world and the roads are bumpy - I've hit the ceiling had some rough landings back there.

Iraqi Police roll a little differently than we do. When they say "Waring," it's no joke.

Iraqis are extremely courteous to guests - they employ an army of tea dudes to keep the Chai flowing. The ratio of sugar to tea by volume in the glass is approximately 1/1.

Country helooooooooo, take me hooooooooome...

In strips of about a mile on either side of the rivers this country is absolutely beautiful. Further out, not so much.

These dents in the desert are pre-Gulf War Surface-To-Air missile sites. There are a ton of these and dug in tank fighting positions around the cities.


Aaaaaaaaand we're back. Perk of riding in the General's helo - skipping the airport and landing right outside the office. I work in the building at the tip of the sidewalk triangle there and I live on the far right side of the block of CHUs right across the street. Charming, No?

Back in the Saddle

So I finally made it back to my home away from home. Clean uniform day brings me no small measure of joy under any circumstances here, but I must say that this clean uniform day was one for the record books. I bagged up my laundry when I got back and handed it to the uniform I had on last week and it was kind enough to walk over to the laundry shop on its own. Can't say I'll miss it, but as disgusting as it was I am mildly surprised at how well it held up given the circumstances - I was far less foul than I thought I'd be after all I put that thing through.

My ride home was absolutely amazing. If you ever have the chance to hitch a ride in a UH-60 Blackhawk, do yourself a favor and jump in. I sat in the back row in a forward facing seat right next to the "window," which is a two foot square of open space. That meant I got 180 mph wind directly in my face the whole ride, but it also meant I got a great view of the countryside and some very intriguing things that were going on below us. Wild ride - hope I get to do it again.

I'm anticipating being stationary for the next few weeks and looking forward to settling in a grinding out a lot of the paperwork that our Baghdad HQ requires of all OCI types. As an embedded attorney it's a lot harder for us to keep up with that part of the mission because we're invovled in perfecting the finished product, which is the actual investigation, once the initial attorney work is done. I am relieving the other OCI guy here when he leaves for home in July, so much of my time is spent shadowing him and learning the ins and outs of the division and brigade investigative task forces we work with. It's an involved process and there are a lot of administrative wrinkles being thrown on us suddenly, so standby for thoughts on that. It's a delicate balance between keeping the head shed happy by producing numbers and helping the operators I actually work with here. Given the choice, I'll help my operators. It remains to be seen how much longer we'll be given that choice.

I've been in Iraq a full month now and it's been the quickest month of my life. I'm afraid that by the time I get comfortable and really good at this job it'll be time to go home. One of the downsides to a 6 month deployment. I mulled over requesting an extension, but for a number of reasons I think at this point I'll stick to my scheduled return date. New job list came out recently and I'm already in line to leave my current job in DC next year and rotate to something new as early as April. Amazing how it's flown by. The job I want probably more than any other available to a Navy JAG has a spot, but it's in Virginia. I'd hoped to get back to San Diego next tour but I decided a while ago that this was the one job that I'd place at the top of my list over any other and there is an opening in line with my time to roll. Somewhat torn. We'll see if I'm even remotely qualified for it before I go into it any further - could be a pipe dream anyway. I sent my detailer (the person who gives us our assignments) my "dream sheet" and we'll see what he has to say. For now, I'll just plug away in my dusty paradise and hope for the best.

97 steps to work every day at CCCI. At least one trip up and down in full IBA, 2 for lunch and dinner, and as there is no running water in the building, maybe a few more for "incidentals." Good times.

I don't know what this statue in the IZ commemorates, but if it follows the Hussein trend, it might be for a victory over a foe he did not actually defeat.

The essential IZ photo op.

I get older; my instinctive need to climb stuff stays the same.


Little Country and me about to take a walk on the wild side.

FOB Prosperity - just down the road and much nicer than Union III, where I stayed.

LZ Washington... I spent many long nights staring at this sign waiting in vain for my ride home.

This is why it never showed up. Your Iraq-u-weather forecast for today: 115 and muddy.

Eventually made it back to my little box o' heaven. That's right, 1/4 of this baby is all mine.

Baghdad Was a Gas

As you may have guessed from the title, I've made a trip back to Baghdad. I've been down for the week doing some training at the Central Criminal Court in the International Zone (formerly known as the Green Zone) right smack in the middle of downtown. Also right across the river from Sadr City, the heart of all Shia insurgent activity in the city, and perhaps overall. Also the seat of the Iraqi government, site of the new US Embassy, and focal point of all internal and external struggles for power in the still apparent vaccuum that the demise of the Hussein regime has created. For a number of reasons, life here is a little dicey.

I've been spending my days going over to the court to sit in on various proceedings and get a better sense of what the Iraqi judges are looking for in order to convict a detainee. The Iraqi criminal justice system is vastly different from our own - it's an inquisitorial system (as opposed to our adversarial) in which the lawyers don't really do much of anything beyond handing the judge the evidence. The judge asks all the questions, reviews the evidence himself, and ultimately makes the call on both conviction and sentence. The method is a bit disconcerting to an American attorney, as it's definitely a whole lot of power to put in one person's hands, but it's their system and we have to support it. It's been an eye-opening experience in many ways. The power goes out here frequently (which, coincidentally, is why I'm writing a blog in the middle of the day instead of working. Not much to do when the lights go out) and a few days ago I suddenly found myself in a pitch black hearing room with an unshackled detainee. There were several Americans in the hearing, and I sincerely doubt I will ever forget that moment and the sound of weapons leaving holsters in the dark. I doubt the detainee will either. It was a tense few minutes but thankfully everyone sat tight as one of our detainee handlers ran and got some chem lights (high-powered glow sticks) and we finished the hearing bathed in warm, comforting neon yellow rays.

There have been times over the last month or so that I've somewhat missed the action in Baghdad, but I can definitely say I am glad I'm not here. This is a truly sinister, hostile place. There is even measurable tension between Americans in this part of town. (ask me when I get home)

I do miss the camaraderie that comes with being around other JAGs though. Up on Speicher it’s just me and one other, which is fine but I think it contributes a bit to feeling like more of a fish out of water than I might elsewhere. I doubt I will ever be able to replicate the feeling of sitting atop the massive former Baath Party headquarters building at night smoking cigars with some shipmates and watching life and death go down around us in what has been and may still be the most dangerous place in the world to be an American. I have to say, though, that I am much better suited for my job at OCI than those here and I believe I will come home having had a much more personally satisfying experience overall.

I was mislead about the turnaround time for getting clothing cleaned here, so I've also had to do field laundry in the shower here and since I put on a clean set of cammies one week ago I've taken a 4 hour helo flight in full IBA, a 30 minute mid-day red zone convoy in full IBA, and taken 3 separate walks through red zones in.... you guessed it, full IBA. (the commute here is interesting) I am utterly filthy. The beauty of it all is I absolutely could not care less. Normal concerns about cleanliness and quality of life are all gone. I have to stay alert, get my job done, and not much else matters. I'm pretty sure I'm rolling around at about 50 Hobo-Power right now. Strong.

Helo flight down here was absolutely amazing. Convoy over was tense but uneventful. Moving on foot outside the wire is about what you'd think it is. Thankfully it was brief, I was not in a bad area, and we had some infantry guys come with us for security. It takes some serious resolve to do that for a living. + respect, yet again.

Back up north to Speicher again soon. Looking forward to sleeping in my own bed.... and reducing my Hobo-Power.

Update 1 – Sat around the helo pad for 3 hours last night only to find the flight never took off from Speicher. Hitched a ride half-way home with a Peruvian security guard who dropped me off well outside the FOB in an area not exactly known for its pro-American sentiment, so I walked the rest of the way in full battle rattle. Not the most fun I’ve had on a Friday night but another memorable one to say the least. I’ll be heading back over to the pad shortly to wait on another flight. I could be stuck here a while.

Update 2 - I'm here for at least two more days. Sweet. Got a ride all the way home this time.

My ride down south.

My ride downtown.

Not a bad looking city from way up high.

Former Baath Party HQ - now our office space. Complete with TPS reports.

This used to be the ceiling of the Baath Party HQ, but some JDAMS crashed the party.

We also fired a cruise missile or two. I found this tiny jet engine in the pile of rubble behind it.

Unnecessary reminder.

Slightly Volatile...

I took the following three pictures in a span of about 20 seconds while waiting for the bus a few days ago.





[Insert painfully retread but never passed on "If you don't like the weather in XXXXX, wait 5 minutes" joke]

Life on Mars

I feel like I've finally landed. The last week has been a bit of a struggle to get my feet under me here at my new home, but after a few days of getting lost and figuring out the way things work around here I'm beginning to get into a routine. I have a feeling I won't be posting as much for several reasons. First, I can't talk about what I do at work all day other than in the most general terms describing the mission, and that's only going to be good for about one post. Second, there really isn't anything to do here but work, PT, eat, and sleep. All of which can be interesting in their own way but not exactly worth writing home about. I will be traveling to our FOBs from time to time - that should be interesting.

I'm set on finding other ways to keep myself entertained but there really aren't many hours in the day that I'm not occupied. The camel spider mission continues - no signs yet but my chances out here in the wilderness are much better than they were in Baghdad. This base is much more spread out (it's literally a mile to the DFAC. Missing the bus sucks.) and undeveloped, so I think if I keep my eyes peeled I have a decent chance at coming across one. Problem is they're apparently most active at night, which is when I like to sleep. Conundrum. There are also these little fox things running around that I keep hearing about but haven't seen yet. Keeping a mammal pet is a little more involved than what I'm looking for, although there were Jackals in Baghdad and if I'd been able to catch one of those you know I'd be riding it to work in like a week. That's not happening up here, but I did find an ammo can on the way home from the gym the other day and I hope to start a garden in it. So far the plan is to dig up cool looking weeds and domesticate them. We'll see how that goes.

From what I can tell Speicher is a good place to live and work. It's named after Navy CAPT Scott Speicher, the first official casualty of the Gulf War, shot down on the initial night of the operation. CAPT Speicher is still MIA and his status has been the subject of significant investigation in the years since he went down. On the map we're just north of Tikrit and about 170 km north of Baghdad, but realistically we're out in the middle of nowhere. There is a significant no man's land between Speicher and the next civilized area, which means anybody wanting to lob rockets or mortars at us has to come out of the cities into the wide open desert to do so. We have a bunch of Apaches here that don't take kindly to insurgents without the sense to stay in their holes, so we haven't taken any IDF in years. My mother is very pleased by this.

The base itself is just about the polar opposite of VBC - extremely spread out, no contractor zoo, nothing really going on other than day-to-day business. It's actually pretty tranquil. It's got a strange familiarity about it to me. When I was a kid my family lived in a house that was backed by a huge (to me) open field that was bare dirt most of the year. My friends and I had adventures about as epic as you can have in a dirt field with nothing more than tumbleweeds and firewood for props. There is an open stretch between my CHU and the next built up area that is eerily similar to that field. I don't think I could get away with building a tumbleweed fort on it, but it's been kind of cool to feel that familiarity in a place so foreign. Another familiar sight from the old field is the dust devil, and we get some impressive ones here. The one below was on it's way to dust devil heaven, but later in the day one sprang up near my office that was at least 50 feet wide at the base. It promptly turned into a sand storm that deposited another solid layer of silt in my lungs. Sweet.


This base is another facility we captured and repurposed. It was formerly the Iraqi Air Force Academy, but I don't think it saw much use since the first war. Most of the buildings are in pretty good shape - I'm not sure we did any fighting here and nothing looks bombed out, but for the decrepit old soccer stadium which may or may not have been where Uday Hussein broke the legs of the olympic soccer team to motivate them after losing a match. I told you he was the mean one. I have taken some pictures of it but none that do it justice yet. When I get something good I'll share. There's apparently a mural of Saddam somewhere that is relatively unmolested, which is a pretty rare find.

On to work. My job here is awesome. As I briefly mentioned before I work for the Office of Criminal Investigations and I'm embedded with the 25th Infantry Division. TF 134 has sent out attorneys to each of the four division-level commands in the country to help conduct regional criminal investigation of detainees for the purpose of prosecuting them in Iraqi courts. Prior to the expiration of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1546 (if I ever talk about this again I'll call it UNSCR) on 31 DEC 2008, coalition forces (CF) had authority to capture and detain any individuals posing a legitimate security threat to the stability of Iraq, and we did so copiously.

On 01 JAN 2009 we lost that authority - now all operations in this country must be run by, with, and through the Government of Iraq (GOI). That means the Iraqi constitution and criminal code are the law of the land. This is a good thing - a whole lot of good people have fought and died to see this process through. Problem is, we're still holding on to a lot of very nasty dudes who were rolled up under UNSCR authority. We've been tasked with prosecuting or releasing all of them in a very short time frame and nobody on our side or in the GOI wants to see some of these folks on the street again. It's in the best interest of the people of Iraq that these guys are brought to justice and I support that principle. That's about all the news that's fit to print on the subject. Our operations are in the news frequently if you look in the right places, so rather than tempt fate discussing verboten subjects here, please feel free to follow what we're doing through open source networks.

Finally, I have an address again - Anyone who'd like it and doesn't already have it feel free to shoot me an e-mail. Please send camel spider traps.

Again with the cheesy paintings. We get Top Gun and Iron Eagle - they get a mural copied form a 6th grader's Trapper Keeper.

I couldn't help but think of this as I passed through this old gate we busted down.

The DFAC. This is where I get my Cocoa Puff on.

My office is much harder than your office.

If you know me well, you'll know what effect this has as I pass by every day on my way in to work.

Like I said, it ain't all ugly...

Like a rolling stone

Welcome back friends - did you miss me? A whole lot has happened in the last week or so but unfortunately due to really bad internet access and the fact the I've been a total vagrant living out of a sea bag I haven't been able to keep up to date around here. Sooooo let's see, where did we last leave our mighty adventurer...

Ahh yes, Camp Victory. Victory is one of several installations on the southwest side of Baghdad that make up the Victory Base Complex (VBC), which includes Baghdad International Airport (BIAP). The area is a combination of marshy wetlands, post-apocalyptic dustbowl nightmare, and man-made lakes housing palaces and summer homes once occupied by Saddam Hussein and the former regime's elite. The centerpiece of the VBC is the Al Faw palace, constructed after the Iran-Iraq war to commemorate the Iraqi army's recapture of the Al-Faw peninsula, commemorated in stunning relief below:



Along the way they apparently put on costumes and stabbed an elephant in the eye to show the Persians they're friggin crazy.


Whether it was that or the grenade tosser's exquisite form, the Iraqi's won the scuffle and today we have Al Faw Palace. Emphasis on the we. It's the headquarters of MNFI and center of almost all decision making power in Iraq. In the surrounding areas you'll find all manner of administrative offices and command centers, including the bulk of TF 134 - my command.

Following some brief general admin for all the Navy folks arriving in-country, we were escorted over to TF 134 legal headquarters to meet with the XO and recieve our job assignments. I wound up drawing just about exactly what I'd hoped for - working for the Office of Criminal Investigations (OCI) as an embedded attorney at an one of the four operational commands responsible for securing the country. I'll discuss what my job actually entails at a later date, but suffice it to say this is what I was hoping for and the only way I'd be happier with the outcome would be to have wound up doing an actual op-law job. The one bummer of the deal is that my two good buddies from NIACT are going different directions and I probably won't have a lot of contact with them. I'm up north working for the 25th Infantry Division, the jarhead is at OCI with me, but he's going west to embed with his fellow jarheads of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, and the country-ass is going to the International Zone (IZ) in downtown Baghdad to be a big shot at the Central Criminal Court of Iraq. At one point it looked like we'd all at least work for OCI, but it just wasn't meant to be.

From TF 134 legal HQ, we parted ways with the rest of the JAGs and I made my way over to OCI headquarters. Our office is located in what's left of the summer homes formerly belonging to Uday and Qusay Hussein - Saddam's ridiculously evil offspring. God knows what they did in these places before we showed up, but we bombed the bejeezus out of them and made them our own. Following Saddam's capture, we held him in a special prison cell built in Uday's house. Irony much? I didn't get to take the tour there as it's shuttered up pretty tightly for some reason, but I'll find a way in before I leave. I always do. Click this link for a view of the location and you can zoom out to check out the rest of the VBC and Baghdad.

A lot has been said about the lavish palaces and ridiculous luxury Saddam and his family lived in but I must say it really isn't all that impressive. It's got a really cheesy vibe to it... everything feels like a very 80's, Scarface, theme park imitation of luxury. Close to what they were going for but off the mark just enough that it plays more like a caricature of wealth and power. Granted my basis for comparison are things I've seen in places like Rome and Barcelona that have no equal, but still... you'd think a 30-year dictator could come up with something a little harsher than this:


To each his own I suppose. It's very cool working in those buildings though. We put an impressive amount of hurt on them - shrapnel holes EVERYWHERE and some really big dings when the bombs impacted. I don't know that anybody inside survived to make a stand, but if they did they have my respect. We caught the sons in another location some time after the invasion, but by then they weren't really concerned about their beach houses anymore. I spent a few days at OCI HQ getting the lay of the land and doing some work. Supposed to to down to CCCI for some training but that has been put off indefinitely. In the meantime I've FINALLY traveled up to my permanent home on COB Speicher, a little over 100km north of Baghdad and just above Tikrit, Saddam's hometown. More on the situation here later on. It's well past my bedtime and I'm finally working again, so I'm off for now. I have my own room (of course there's a catch, and because it's me, and this kind of thing would only happen to me, it's a big one that I won't discuss here. Some of you know - others shoot me an e-mail for explanation.) and internet here is a lot better, although it's costing me $90 a month. I suppose that's the price one pays to access the tubes from a warzone.

Final note - I was staying on Camp Liberty in the section where Monday's incident took place, but I left Baghdad earlier in the day and missed the issue completely. Please keep the families of those we lost in your thoughts and prayers.

Qusay (the nice once) used to hang out here. It's beat to hell, but it's all open inside and the rooftop balcony is a good place to smoke cigars and watch the various disturbing happenings on Route Irish, just outside the wire a few hundred meters to the north, and the rest of Baghdad.

Uday (the mean one) did his thing over there. Saddam's cell is in that house and they've got it locked up pretty tight.

The inside of Qusay's house. Notice the finger-paint mural. Keeping it classy.

This is a top-down view into the outside area of Saddam's holding cell where he exercised and grew tomatos in the wooden box at the top of the picture.


Couldn't resist the cheeseball backdrop shot.

Also couldn't help but keep it real at the pool. It's just the way I roll.

The wire, like the opposable thumb, is what separates us from the animals.