Meet Me In Mosul

And speaking of not gathering any moss, I made another trip up to Mosul a few weeks back. For the safety of those involved, I will have to speak pretty generally. I was there to support a prosecution we've been working with CCCI in Baghdad. There were some elements that couldn't be completed on their end, so I went up to get hands-on with our investigators there and try to take a scalp on my way out. Results were mixed.

Our effort on this case is kind of representative of the situation across Iraq these days. All of the pieces are in place. We haven't fixed all of their problems, and we have undoubtedly caused quite a few. But I'm confident that we've done enough to put them in a position to choose their own fate. The problem is, this is all based on their willingness to make a choice and move forward, and as you can see from the recent ass-hattery going on with their elections, they don't seem too inclined to get it together until we're out the door and they absolutely have to. Slightly frustrating. We did everything we possibly could to get a very, very bad person put in a noose, but the final piece of the puzzle is in Iraqi hands. As of my departure, they have yet to pick the damn thing up.... one wonders if they'll realize they should care about these things before it's too late to make a difference.

They're definitely not used to the democratic concept of self-determination just yet. I don't know if dictatorship fits their culture, or if their past dictatorship has simply left a big dent that hasn't worked itself out, but at this point it seems like Iraqi society as a whole is still expecting to be told what to do, and to have things done for them. We definitely haven't been weening them off that latter tendency. I thought the picture of the tank tread running up against the wall up there was a good representation. You can only do so much with a military... I think we've done all we can here.

I had planned to stay a few days, but the weather was looking ominous after one night and I am terrified of getting stuck after my nightmares in Baghdad and Baqubah during the summer. Luckily I've got connections by now, so I was able to ditch my scheduled flight and get out a day ahead of the storm on a somewhat... special flight. We're in the process of releasing a whole lot of detainees all over the country at the moment, and we've got a full-fledged Con Air operation going to get them where they need to be. That night it just so happened we had a flight oming through Mosul and stopping at Speicher on it's way home. So instead of sitting at the terminal praying I could catch catching a helo space-A like all the contractors and regular saps, I sat around at the edge of the runway until about 0300 when the flight came in. Watched some detainees get led off, completely dumped on the AF crew that tried to deny my pre-arranged boarding, linked up with the soldiers pulling guard duty and hopped on a C-130 packed tight with my favorite people in the world - insurgents. Good times..... pretty surreal experience.

Anyway, FOB Marez is cool and I actually brought my camera this time.

"Inject the Venom!" Apparently we have poisonous wolves. I feel like we should be making a bigger deal about this.

The Marez DFAC was blown up by a suicide bomber in 2004 - this is one of the memorials to the people who were killed, outside the rebuilt facility.

But for the death and destruction, Ninewa province looks a whole lot like parts of California. I definitely didn't expect this view.

Jut over the wall there you can see the mosque that I think produced the crazy call to prayer that I listened to on my last trip here. Pretty sure they point the speakers at the base to mess with us.

The view from Marez is both very picturesque and somehow hard to take pictures of at the same time. On my first trip the air was a lot more clear and you could see much more of the city from this spot.

I imagine that somewhere there's a dude named Hesco who's swimming in a giant bin of gold, Scrooge McDuck style (yeah, I'm that old), because of these things.

Luxury knows no end in the transient CHUs.

Drink it up ladies, those glasses are 100% real and on my face.

Be Kind, Rewind

I'm in Kuwait now, deployment winding down, and I've finally got some free time to write again. I'll post my going-home thoughts at some time in the future, but for now let's suspend disbelief and pretend I haven't been sitting on about two months' worth of material and completely failing to update. SO - let's break out the flux capacitor, kick it up to 88 mph, and pretend it's... like, August again.

And since it's now August, let's talk about my recent trip to Baghdad, which was my 5th since April. My life has a whole lot of downsides here, but gathering moss is not one of them - this stone has kept rolling pretty well. I rode down with the Division SJA, who was traveling to the IZ for a conference, and the pilots were gracious enough to drop me off at VBC after taking them all to the IZ. Three Blackhawks for 5 people. That's how we roll. Daytime flights are hard to come by, so that was very cool. Got some really sweet pictures that would be awesome if the 150mph wind hitting the camera hadn't blurred most of them out.

This particular trip was for a command-wide "where are we/where should we be/how do we get there"-type meeting at our HQ in the Hussein sons' pool house. Very enlightening. I spent the majority of my weekend on back Camp Liberty, right down the street from the area I first started this deployment in. Most of my friends from TF 134 were around and it was great to get to see almost everybody again, although the occasion wasn't exactly cause for celebration and the trip was extremely brief for most. Spent a little time on FOB Cropper getting humiliated by a buddy of mine who has obviously been honing his Call of Duty skills, perhaps while the rest of us are working.

I left freshly talked at, motivated to head home and finish out my remaining 3 months far, far away from Baghdad..

This guy.

We picked up Little Country in the IZ on our way in. I tried to convince him everything was going to be OK, but we were SO high up and it was so loud and windy, poor little guy was scared!

Saddam's Waterpark-O'-Death. Word on the street is the cadaver dogs that we use to search for bodies in rubble go crazy around these lakes.

OCI HQ. I watched a supply convoy take small arms fire from the roof on my first night in Iraq. Fun place.

CHU life in the Stryker Stables, with my entire existence in a backpack. Living so large.

I see you're admiring my hat.

Please also take some time to admire the pain that Little Country and I bring.

THIS. IS. SPEICHER.
!

My Life is a Face-Palm

WELCOME TO MY NIGHTMARE.

New York Times
November 4, 2009
Pg. 1

Iraq Swears By Bomb Detector U.S. Sees As Useless

By Rod Nordland

BAGHDAD - Despite major bombings that have rattled the nation, and fears of rising violence as American troops withdraw, Iraq's security forces have been relying on a device to detect bombs and weapons that the United States military and technical experts say is useless.

The small hand-held wand, with a telescopic antenna on a swivel, is being used at hundreds of checkpoints in Iraq. But the device works "on the same principle as a Ouija board" - the power of suggestion - said a retired United States Air Force officer, Lt. Col. Hal Bidlack, who described the wand as nothing more than an explosives divining rod.

Still, the Iraqi government has purchased more than 1,500 of the devices, known as the ADE 651, at costs from $16,500 to $60,000 each. Nearly every police checkpoint, and many Iraqi military checkpoints, have one of the devices, which are now normally used in place of physical inspections of vehicles.

With violence dropping in the past two years, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has taken down blast walls along dozens of streets, and he contends that Iraqis will safeguard the nation as American troops leave.

But the recent bombings of government buildings here have underscored how precarious Iraq remains, especially with the coming parliamentary elections and the violence expected to accompany them.

The suicide bombers who managed to get two tons of explosives into downtown Baghdad on Oct. 25, killing 155 people and destroying three ministries, had to pass at least one checkpoint where the ADE 651 is typically deployed, judging from surveillance videos released by Baghdad's provincial governor. The American military does not use the devices. "I don't believe there's a magic wand that can detect explosives," said Maj. Gen. Richard J. Rowe Jr., who oversees Iraqi police training for the American military. "If there was, we would all be using it. I have no confidence that these work."

The Iraqis, however, believe passionately in them. "Whether it's magic or scientific, what I care about is it detects bombs," said Maj. Gen. Jehad al-Jabiri, head of the Ministry of the Interior's General Directorate for Combating Explosives.

Dale Murray, head of the National Explosive Engineering Sciences Security Center at Sandia Labs, which does testing for the Department of Defense, said the center had "tested several devices in this category, and none have ever performed better than random chance."

The Justice Department has warned against buying a variety of products that claim to detect explosives at a distance with a portable device. Normal remote explosives detection machinery, often employed in airports, weighs tons and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. The ADE 651's clients are mostly in developing countries; no major country's military or police force is a customer, according to the manufacturer.

"I don't care about Sandia or the Department of Justice or any of them," General Jabiri said. "I know more about this issue than the Americans do. In fact, I know more about bombs than anyone in the world.

He attributed the decrease in bombings in Baghdad since 2007 to the use of the wands at checkpoints. American military officials credit the surge in American forces, as well as the Awakening movement, in which Iraqi insurgents turned against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, for the decrease.

Aqeel al-Turaihi, the inspector general for the Ministry of the Interior, reported that the ministry bought 800 of the devices from a company called ATSC (UK) Ltd. for $32 million in 2008, and an unspecified larger quantity for $53 million. Mr. Turaihi said Iraqi officials paid up to $60,000 apiece, when the wands could be purchased
for as little as $18,500. He said he had begun an investigation into the no-bid contracts with ATSC.

Jim Mitchell, the head of ATSC, based in London, did not return calls for comment.

The Baghdad Operations Command announced Tuesday that it had purchased an additional 100 detection devices, but General Rowe said five to eight bomb-sniffing dogs could be purchased for $60,000, with provable results.

Checking cars with dogs, however, is a slow process, whereas the wands take only a few seconds per vehicle. "Can you imagine dogs at all 400 checkpoints in Baghdad?" General Jabiri said. "The city would be a zoo."

Speed is not the only issue. Colonel Bidlack said, "When they say they are selling you something that will save your son or daughter on a patrol, they've crossed an insupportable line into moral depravity."

Last year, the James Randi Educational Foundation, an organization seeking to debunk claims of the paranormal, publicly offered ATSC $1 million if it could pass a scientific test proving that the device could detect explosives. Mr. Randi said no one from the company had taken up the offer.

ATSC's promotional material claims that its device can find guns, ammunition, drugs, truffles, human bodies and even contraband ivory at distances up to a kilometer, underground, through walls, underwater or even from airplanes three miles high. The device works on "electrostatic magnetic ion attraction," ATSC says.

To detect materials, the operator puts an array of plastic-coated cardboard cards with bar codes into a holder connected to the wand by a cable. "It would be laughable," Colonel Bidlack said, "except someone down the street from you is counting on this to keep bombs off the streets."

Proponents of the wand often argue that errors stem from the human operator, who they say must be rested, with a steady pulse and body temperature, before using the device.

Then the operator must walk in place a few moments to "charge" the device, since it has no battery or other power source, and walk with the wand at right angles to the body. If there are explosives or drugs to the operator's left, the wand is supposed to swivel to the operator's left and point at them.

If, as often happens, no explosives or weapons are found, the police may blame a false positive on other things found in the car, like perfume, air fresheners or gold fillings in the driver's teeth.

On Tuesday, a guard and a driver for The New York Times, both licensed to carry firearms, drove through nine police checkpoints that were using the device. None of the checkpoint guards detected the two AK-47 rifles and ammunition inside the vehicle.

During an interview on Tuesday, General Jabiri challenged a Times reporter to test the ADE 651, placing a grenade and a machine pistol in plain view in his office. Despite two attempts, the wand did not detect the weapons when used by the reporter but did so each time it was used by a policeman.

"You need more training," the general said.

Riyadh Mohammed contributed reporting.

Correction: November 5, 2009
An article on Wednesday about a bomb detection device used by the Iraqi security forces that is considered useless and costly by the American military misstated the surname of the leader of ATSC (UK) Ltd., the London-based company that has sold hundreds of the devices to Iraq’s Interior Ministry. He is Jim McCormick, not Mitchell.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yes, this is really happening. I really have no words. I hope this puts my IED story from Mosul in perspective.

And there are no shortage of farm animal stupid suckers elsewhere in the world...




Original story at NYT.com

Real posts coming soon...

Welcome to my world

View Larger Map


COB Speicher is the darkish square about 2 clicks outside of town, roughly 10 o'clock from the Tikrit sign on this map. Whole lotta brown around here.

Interestingly enough, Saddam had a lot of vegetation planted here. There are Cypress trees and a fair amount of shrubbery, and apparently when we first came through it was well-irrigated and pretty green, unlike the dusty wasteland we live in today. the idea was apparently to hide the activities of the Air Force and whatever other nefarious crap he had going on here (assuming there are all kinds of nasty chemicals bouncing around here that I won't know I should care about for another 5-10 years). I guess it worked to keep things incognito from the ground, but from the air it makes it completely obvious there's a base here - hence the big dark square in the middle of the desert. If you know what you're looking for, you can clearly spot the base in satellite photos wide enough to show the entire middle east. The Google maps pics aren't quite contrasty enough to really show the effect, but I have access to a little better system at work that makes it quite obvious from way out in space.

Sweet hiding spot.

Keeping a Promise

Should you happen to see a guy in an orange suit outside a broken down RV, please help him get where he needs to go.



Football trip honors Reedley war casualty - Sports - fresnobee.com

Spring Break

Hi there. I flaked again. Let's get past that.

Recapping the last month will be my focus of the next few posts, and this time I really mean it, I'm going to post frequently. Already got a few in the hopper.

I recently took my much anticipated 4-day vacation, representing the first and only days I've had off so far. Deployments are tough no matter what you do - even chairborne rangers like me who sit a desk the majority of the time tend to do so in 12 hour blocks, 6.5 - 7 days a week. With every day you're not traveling or on a mission being pretty much exactly the same, it can wear on you after a while. To account for this, the military has a universal leave policy for everybody in theater - every 6 months, you're eligible for a 4-day pass to a military run R&R location either in Iraq or Qatar; for those deployed 270 days or more (my orders are 257 - JUST missed it) two weeks of regular leave to anywhere in the world. Though the facilities in Iraq are actually pretty nice (known as "Freedom Rest" locations - we've even got one here on Speicher), I wasn't about to give up an opportunity to see a new country. Even though the travel to Qatar is a ridiculous cluster and a lot of people choose to just go to Freedom Rest to avoid dealing with it, it was actually a pretty easy call to make for me...

You get beer in Qatar.

Sold.

Travel sucks?

I'll walk.

So - my trip started with a completely unnecessary trip down to Baghdad courtesy of TF 134's raging inability to acknowledge the existence of any of its personnel not sitting nicely under-thumb on Camp Victory. Speicher is an air base. We have all kinds of these big things called C-130s, and they go all kinds of interesting places like Qatar. But Baghdad has BIAP, and booking everybody through their airport is apparently easier than knowing where we all live, so back to the helo pad I went. To be fair, I didn't really mind. Blackhawk flights are probably my favorite thing to do here, so I can't complain too forcefully. Not that my gentle disposition is any excuse for poor planning...

And speaking of poor planning, they had me report a day late for my flight. Thanks again guys. You're really good. Thankfully the folks at the airport took pity on me and stuck me on the next thing smoking south and all was well. Well, relatively well. I'd originally planned to go with a few of my buddies that I haven't seen since we arrived in Iraq back in May, but due to some more egregious TF 134 half-assery and a few unfortunate incidents on the road in Baghdad, my party of 5 became a party of Mike, and everybody else stayed home or went to Freedom Rest. Luckily at the last minute a friend of mine was bumped from his scheduled dates due to yet another TF 134 fart party, and he was added to my flight at the last minute. So it worked out OK in the end.

I'll keep it brief here and just tell you the travel did in fact suck. Both ways, full days wasted. Sitting around for hours going through Qatari customs and waiting for police escorts and all kinds of nonsense. Just one big suck.

But it ended eventually and we arrived at Camp As Sayliyah, just outside the Qatari capital city of Doha. The base played a big role in the build up and early conduct of the Iraq war in 2003, but now it also houses the main R&R program for all of CENTCOM. I can't post pictures of the base, as there are some other things going on there, but I can say it pretty much looks like a cleaner, more civilized version of Camp Virginia in Kuwait. More pavement, less gravel. I must say orderly civilization felt pretty good.

What didn't feel good was the weather. Good God. 115 degrees. Which I was totally prepared for, having spent about 3 months straight at that mark here on Speicher and topping it by more than 10 degrees a few times. But it's a dry heat here.... not so much in Qatar. 95% humidity. So unbelievably foul. Kind of awesome in its sheer unpleasantness though. I appreciate extremes, and this weather was definitely that.

My timing also sucked, as it was the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which means no fun for us gringos on holiday. Long sleeves and pants off-base, no eating or drinking during daylight hours. Unreal. Usually there are a ton of trips off base to take and lots of people around, but due to the religious restrictions in was really dead on base and all but three of the trips were canceled.

In short - I drank some beer, which was glorious, and goddamn I'm a cheap date all of a sudden. I got some good Xbox time in at the USO. I ate at a real-live Chilli's, and though I have no particular fondness for Chilli's it was cool to eat at a restaurant and feel like a real human being again. Although I don't remember Chilli's food as being horrifically greasy, and I know objectively the food I ate there wasn't, but I've been eating essentially nothing but chicken breast sandwiches for 6 months thans to the fine dining choices at the DFAC and I think my taste for regular American food may be ruined. Not the worst thing in the world... so long as I can still stomach my beloved California Burritos.

Two trips I was able to go on that were cool included a beach day at the inland sea known as the Khor Al Udeid. Click on that link for pretty telling background info direct from their tourism authority - it's late and I'm going to cut to the chase. That trip was the most dangerous thing I've done on this deployment thanks to our driver, and I don't think he was even really trying to kill us. Plenty of people here are, clearly, so topping their effectiveness on accident was quite a feat. Some pictures below to tell the tale. Overall, very fun. Went snorkeling in the comically salty bathwater that is the Khor, ate an awesome local lunch and didn't get sick, and...... drumroll..... rode a gigantic camel. Big time.

Second trip was to the Villagio mall. Modeled after the Bellagio Casino, of course. Qatar isn't totally oil rich, but they have a buttload of natural gas (I just realized that's an unfortunate pun but there's no way I'm changing it. Too perfect in its nerd beauty) and they appear to be doing quite well financially. The floor has gold in it. Pretty sweet. Also, I bought a Dishdash and headgear.... pretty much these guys' twin. Party.

With travel complications, my 4 day pass wound up getting me out of the office for 10. Not a bad deal.

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves, because it's past my bedtime. More soon.

43 days left. Yes.

Kind of surreal... more so than Iraq for some reason... maybe because this scenery fits some kind of preconceived American notion of the middle east, and the overall reality doesn't.

USO. About to shoot the blurry guy in the face and bring him great digital shame.

Somewhat nicer than I'm accustomed to.



Aaaaaaaaannnnd we're approaching ridiculous...



All the way there.



Some familiar faces made the trip... although I was disappointed they went with Hardee's instead of Carl's Junior... just felt totally foreign.

I bit on the Coldstone, and much to my dismay the cookie dough was shockingly awful. Though the entire staff did sing some kind of Engrish tribute to me when I gave the cashier a 30 cent tip, so that was something.



The sand was so hot that all geniuses who didn't bring sandals had to sprint from one shade spot to the next all day. Those guys were real idiots.



My feet hurt so bad.

I'm not sure words are necessary here.

Just a couple of badasses, owning the beach and letting everybody else know they're inadequate.



A more comfortable convoy than I've become used to, but I didn't know that these...



... were good for this.... in a 30kph zone, no less... I didn't think it was possible for drivers to be crazier than I've experienced in Mexico...

...but all things are possible when you give a random Egyptian psychopath the keys to a powerful American vehicle.

But this guy was not Egyptian and his vehicle was not American. His tires were perfectly fine until he spun completely sideways going about 90 MPH on the sand. Thankfully the tires just exploded and the sand absorbed the shock, keeping the vehicle from rolling. No kidding, we pulled all of the passengers out of the down truck and left orange shirt guy an hour into the desert by himself with his ruined vehicle. Harsh company.

Cervantes Keeps it Real

So I'm re-reading one of my favorite books, Don Quixote, and I came across this passage:

Happy were those blessed times that lacked the horrifying fury of the diabolical instruments of artillery, whose inventor, in my opinion, is in hell, receiving the reward for his accursed invention, which allows an ignoble and cowardly hand to take the life of a valiant knight, so that not knowing how it comes, or from where, a stray shot is fired into the courage and spirit that inflame and animate a brave heart, sent by one who perhaps fled in fear at the bright flare when the damned machine discharged it, and cuts off and ends in an instant the thoughts and life of one who deserved to enjoy many more long years.

Originally published in 1605; still 100% on point today. Thought that was worth sharing. Carry on.