Watch Me Go Crazy, One Post at a Time
Did I saw we’d be gone in a day? Oops. We’ll it’s been a couple and the fine folks here in Bagram have been trying to get us out. Apparently Salerno is a bit harder to get to than anybody thought.
We met with the JTAC’s higher yesterday and got a great brief about their mission. There seems to be something going on down there that the JTACs are part of, so it’s a race to get there before whatever is going on down there is over with.
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Erik and I have arrived in Bagram, Afghanistan this morning. Getting off the C17 and seeing the snow-capped mountains to the north was a welcome sight after seeing nothing but the flat landscapes of Iraq and Kuwait.
It was a long night, as the flight manifested at midnight and didn’t leave till about 2. It was a 4+ hour flight in the web seats that didn’t allow for much sleeping. There were so many pax that there was no room to lay out and enjoy the space afforded by the C17.
We were greeted by the AF and the Bagram MPAD right off the flight. The two soldiers from the MPAD were awesome and gave us a ride to our hooch. We should be here for a night and then on to the JTACs.
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We made it to Kuwait on a Sherpa flight after all the other flights were canceled. Neat plane that I didn’t know about before this trip. I think I will keep it a secret for a little longer.
It looks like we might not make it to Bagram tonight, as a sandstorm rolled in.
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This place is a total dump. I am up in Tikrit at Camp Speicher. We are staying in what looks like a an oompaloompa crackhouse. It was an old barracks, I’d guess. They knocked holes in the walls every ten feet to make doors, but didn’t make any windows. So we are in a rectanglar room with plywood walls, two beds and a wall locker between us. It’s so far to theporta shitters that we just open the door and piss into the dirt outside.
We got to see a water plant this morning. I’ll make a little video that shows how the contractors make bottled water. Sesame Street style.
I have finaly found somebody that is my match for knapping. I’l be talking to Erik over the wall lockers and after a little bit he stops responding… I look around the corner and he’s asleep. Pretty funny. The sun here saps your energy pretty quick.
We are looking to roll out of Iraq tonight and head for Kuwait. Then we’ll beg our way onto a flight for Afghanistan. Heh- beg for a flight to ANOTHER war zone… am I fucked in the head or what?
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We are out of Baghdad. Before we left, though, we made it out to the police station that was hit by two truck bombs in the morning. I have a couple of ghastly pics, but I doubt anyone wants to see dismembered bodies…
We said goodbye to our friends at Det 7 (3) and got on the most packed CH47 flight I have even been on. We flew to Tikrit and are now waiting to link up with a civil affairs detachment in the morning.
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We went out with the MPs again, this time on an evening mission. We had planned on getting to the station and lining up a joint patrol. That is, the MPs were going to have the Iraqi Police accompany them on a patrol to see how many of their checkpoints were actually manned.
Well, after about, no shit, 40 minutes of the Iraqi’s trying to figure out how many policemen were working at how many checkpoints we found out that they didn’t have enough gas to drive around to all the checkpoints. So, the MPs compromised, of the aprx. 24 checkpoints the IP were to be manning, we’d visit one.
It looked great.
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I spent all but 1.5 hours of daylight today in a Humvee with the MPs. We got out to attend a senior level police and paramilitary meeting. It was great to see the senior leadership of the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior police/military in action. They were talking to each other and to the Amercian military in plain terms about their issues and progress.
One guage of the effectiveness of terrorist tactics is the ’ski mask metric’. I’ve seen plenty of terps wearing ski masks. I’ve seen cops and pilots afraid to show their names or give their names to photographers or reporters.
Well, at this meeting today, one of the terps was wearing a skimask. The General in charge of the meeting told him to take off the mask or leave. It’s seems like a small thing, but while Iraqis are scared to show their faces, and their support for the ‘New Iraq’, I can’t see it working. When the general made this statement, I was excited… until the terp just chose to leave.
As serious as these guys take their jobs, though, it’s hard to ignore the fact that there are about 2 murders everyday in most police precincts around Baghdad. That doesn’t include the IPs killed in the line of duty, the US service members killed in action, or the civillians killed by large scale bombings.
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We went out with the AF MPS today to see the Iraqi police operate. There were some pretty big differences in the way the AF does business than the way I’m used to seeing the Army and Marines do it.
The MPs don’t keep their weapons on them. They are all kept in an armory whenever they aren’t on a mission. So each time they are going to head out, they spend about two or three hours drawing weapons, checking and cleaning their vehicles, briefing and doing practice drills.
At first I thought the whole routine would be a waste of time. But, as they crawled over their humvees checking them over, and mounting weapons, I was impressed with the attention to detail. A few issues were discovered and corrected before heading out the gate.
There was also a couple of females on the mission. One was a .50 cal gunner and was no different than any of the airmen on the mission.
The patrol was very organized but relaxed. The drivers communicated with the gunners and the gunners swiveled and covered all the angles as we drove a crazy route through the city to avoid the main roads and the IEDs that were surely laid upon them.
We wound up at Hy al Amil patrol police station.A police station that I remember being at with the 101st way back in March 2003. A large VBID went off a few blocks away disabling a styker vehicle.
The MPs brought a bunch of office supplies to help out the IPs, but the big meeting was to discuss the IED that struck and injured two airmen from the MP squad. The three police that were supposed to be at a checkpoint weren’t around when the IED went off.
Turns out there was a legit excuse, but the episode made the Iraqi’s aware of some pretty big gaps in their communication and reporting procedures. The question is whether they will doing anything to address the problems.
While we were waiting to leave, a police pick-up pulled in to the compound. As it drove past, the lowered tailgate revealed the soles of a pair of shoes. In those shoes was a middle aged Iraqi man, blindfolded, hands zip-tied behind his back, and shot through the head.
It was terror. It was a message. All the police got it. I don’t think much is going to change very soon.
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We rode the daylight Rhino back from the IZ to Camp Victory last night. I ended up getting to visit with Joe in his office at the Al Fawal palace last night.
I walked pretty much right in and had a specialist escort me up to his office. He’s got lots of plaques from his Iraqi counterparts and some coffee-table books that attest to his travels undertaken in the name of the coalition. He’s looking forward to seeing Mike on his trip to the UK.
Jocelyn Alberle was there and remembered me from my ill-fated 4th ID OIF I embed slot. She was happy to see me and even remembered my kidney stone episode. I got a chance to ask her about the EOD embed and I think she’ll have it straightened out for us.
In the meantime, we are embedding with the AF MPs that are out training and working with the IPs. We’ll be out on patrols in south Baghdad with them this week. We got to see one of their vehicles that was hit by an EFP. The gunner took some shrapnel to the head and is in rough shape, and another Airman got a little piece in the leg, but no KIAs. The copper spall was evident and you could see where the jet went right through the armor plating.
So, we roll out tomorrow morning to talk to the IPs that were supposed to be at a nearby checkpoint, but were mysteriously absent at the time the patrol was hit by the EFP…
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Erik and I are back in the IZ. The IZ is short for International Zone, which is what used to be galled the Green Zone. They changed the name because too many people equated “green” to mean safe. Well, with the rockets and mortars getting lobbed in here, it ain’t safe.
The day before we got here earlier this month, a rocket hit the PX parking lot. I was talking to a friend that is serving over here in the IZ and he told me a story about one of his soldiers getting shot in the gut while playing Xbox in his room. It was a stray bullet, but the incident clearly shows that this is a dangerous place whether you are inside or outside the wire.
Just yesterday morning, as we were coming in to the embassy compound, we heard a couple of distant booms. Turns out that it was a car bomb and a rocket hitting just south of the IZ. They took out another bridge. (8 left!).
Life at the embassy seems good. The security is a tight and we had to run through a gauntlet of offices and forms just to get temporary badges that would allow us to go from our hooches to the building. This is in addition to the outer ring of security just to get on the ‘embassy compound’. I suppose it makes you feels safer with all the heavy doors and guards. But Erik pointed out that we as US citizens with passports had to step aside to let the Pakistani janitors go into the building as we pleaded with a Peruvian security guard to gain entry.
We are currently working on a story about the US involvement in the Iraqi justice system. The heart of the story is the Detainees. It doesn’t seem likely that I’ll be photographing guys in yellow jumpsuits, so I’m trying to find ways to show the process without the faces, or even bodies of the detainees.
We caught a break and found out that the Iraqi judges were willing to let me shoot in a courtroom. This would have been something! But, it turns out that the day before we were to go, our PA escort told us that no US forces would be allowed to go to court due to a security threat. The alert started Sunday and is indefinite.
That was last night. We also heard back from PAO that our embed request with AF EOD was denied due to operational security concerns. Grr. I was planning on making my money with that story. I’m heading back to Camp Victory and will see if I can shake anything loose via some private channels in the head shed.
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