Fraser From Iraq

Well a crap load of new guys showed up. It’s funny. Some of them are first timers, most not. They are already counting backward and planning their escapes. Which is funny because you never leave here early. In fact, you never even leave on time. The one constant you can find on the deployment is that you will not get out of here on time. It’s the basic thought to build on.

First, people never get here on time because of military airlift limitations. So because the replacements aren’t here on time, you can’t get out of here on time. Second, even when you do get the handshake and the wave goodbye, that doesn’t mean you will get out of here. Because military airlift is either late if your lucky, or canceled if your unlucky.

So the veterans of this monkey-maze never plan on leaving on time. In fact, you can usually plan on leaving at least 60 days past the time you were supposed to leave. If you get out earlier then that, then it’s a pleasant surprise.

Gotta cut it short. Will write later. But never count on anything.

- Peace J

Happy Valentine’s Day. And Happy President’s Day. They both look the same from this side of the pond. Being here for 4 months, working every day, no days off, the days of the week just blend together. It doesn’t really matter. Back home, looking forward to the weekend, maybe beers on Friday night, sleep in on Saturday, maybe a Sunday brunch, then golf. Yeah. We don’t have that feeling.

But there is a payoff when we get back to the United States. For missing 32 days of weekends, plus at least 6 days of holidays, we will receive exactly 4 days off when we return. Even if you return on a Friday, then you get that Saturday and Sunday, which everybody gets off anyway, and then it’s Monday and Tuesday off. So 4 free leave days off to make up for the 38 missed days off. If you do the upper level math, that’s 9.5 missed days off for each 1 day off received. So somehow in the bigger picture that’s supposed to all work out.

We have a pilot rotation coming up. Now those are fun to watch. First, it’s good to see a new guy, talk, and find out what the hell is going on back in the otherworld. Second, its fun to watch the guy who is going be replaced. His days all of a sudden turn into 48 hr days that can’t go by quickly enough. Planning for the great escape begins, looking up departure flights, and studying exactly when and where landfall can be made in the States. All the gear gets packed up days too early, and any extra crap gets sent back in the mail so it won’t have to be lugged on a flight. You practically have to put an ankle bracelet on them with a LoJack© tracking system to make sure they don’t jump the fence before the new guy is actually here and has had his 48 hours of time zone adjustment.

A fun thing to do is to start rumors like the inbound replacement got hung up in Europe and missed his flight, or got sick and is pushed back by a week or two. It’s sadistically funny, except when it turns out to be true, then it’s just sadistically tragic. People always write and ask when we’re going to get home? Honestly, there’s no way to answer, and we really don’t know until we actually touch down back in the United States.

The food here has really gone to crap. Convoy delays. First we’ll have plenty of cereal, but no milk. Then we’ll have milk but no cereal. The Arba’een pilgrimage to Karbal for the Shiite Muslim population has literally closed down MSR (Military Supply Routes). 10 million people walk, drive, or whatever from all ends of Muslim civilization to end up in Karbala. Our role in paying homage to this celebration is that our menu looks exactly the same as it did the day before, except with just a little bit less. This whole food experience has coincided with the new Obama Administration, and we are investigating the coincidence.

We’ve also been watching the meltdown of the economy back home, and have dutifully been burning candles for the banking executives that might be salary capped at only $500,000 a year, and who might have to fly commercial to the Super Bowl or to Vegas for their conventions. It really breaks us up.

A PVT patrolling the hostile streets here is being paid $1,399.50 per month. And an executive sitting on a private jet, whisking off to luxury destinations is complaining about only getting half a million a year, after being at the helm of a company that he drove into the ground, and then has gone to Capital Hill to beg for taxpayer’s money. You never really hear the Private bitching. He just shoulders his M-16, grabs an MRE and goes on patrol without a thought of what evil awaits him in the dark or how small his bank account is. I wonder how much we would have to pay a bank executive to patrol city streets in the middle of a combat zone?

Peace - J

OK, Barack Hussein Obama, President of the United States of America. You have had your chance. Where is the CHANGE? I am seeing nothing different, except a decline in food quality at the chow hall.

1. We will be out of Iraq in 16 months? The clock’s ticking. I’m looking around and I don’t see any moving vans.
2. My 401K is not even a 201K. It’s currently a 101K.
3. Financial institutions are patting each other on their backs and giving themselves big bonuses and new jets. I guess they are really happy with themselves for getting the bail out.
4. He hasn’t paid my mortgage. But then again, I didn’t vote for him.
5. The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in the military is now become, “Don’t Hate, Celebrate”.
6. Record Unemployment.
7. He has tapped two gentlemen for major positions at the White House who accidentally forgot to pay their taxes.
8. Madoff confesses to a $50 billion Ponzi scheme and the guy is under house arrest in his multi-million dollar New York penthouse. (Not really Obama’s fault. I’m just venting.)
9. He has selected Hillary Clinton as our Ambassador to the World (Secretary of State), and she is still trying to get disability for being shot at by sniper fire when she visited Bosnia. Her travel companion on the trip, comedian Sinbad, said there was no such sniper fire. Great pick.
10. Guantanamo Bay is being shut down. Soon those terrorist residents will be moving to nice halfway houses in suburbia.
11. He has dismissed charges against one of the alleged USS COLE bombing planners. That should get the attention of a lot of the families that lost sailors during that attack.

All right, I am joking about holding him responsible for all of these points with such a short time in office. I do wish him the best of luck in tackling these problems. But his “YES WE CAN” buttons look remarkably similar to President Jimmy Carter’s “WIN” buttons (”WHIP INFLATION NOW“). And we all know how that helped the economy.

But I do hold him personally responsible for the crappy food we have been getting since the first minute of the change in Administration.

Peace - J

Why am I here for the fifth time? This video says it all. - J

We’re all wondering what the new boss, President-elect / Commander in Chief-elect Obama is going to do when he takes office. We see things happening all around us. The Sand Box has lost its sex appeal. The hot blonde around the corner with the double D’s has gone to Afghanistan.

Not that anybody on this side of the pond is looking for a sexy war. Hell, we would all like to be home watching the playoffs on our own TVs. But you can really see the press shifting from covering the Sand Box to covering Afghanistan and the search for Osama Bin Ladin (better known here as Waldo).

Sure we still have guys running around here with S-Vests (suicide vest with C-4) and IEDs. But mostly it’s the locals that seem to be attacking each other, which is terrible, but apparently not newsworthy. Don’t get me wrong. There is still hostility within the borders towards the United States and its dwindling members of the Coalition Of The Willing. But I really think everybody is just playing it low key and waiting for the Coalition to pack up and leave. That will be the test. I don’t see this Sunni, Shia, & Kurd love-affair-of-killing-each-other going away. I also believe the Iranian influence is on a time out until we shift our attention to the other side of their border.

News cracks us up over here. The talking heads are really deciding what information the public gets, knowing full well that the public’s attention span is about 2 minutes. And if the reader has to turn a page to finish an article in a newspaper, the publisher’s probably going to loose 90 percent of the audience. Put a timer on the next sound bite you see on the Sand Box, and then compare it to the coverage of what Obama’s interior decorator is going to do with the White House living quarters, or the planning and cost of the inauguration, or what school the Obama kids are going to, or what breed the first dog is going to be…etc. etc. etc.

You get a great glimpse of the hierarchy of this war, and the support of the American public. I don’t know if this is what the public requests, or if it’s just what the news agencies supply, and everyone is now accustom to it and feels comfortable with it. I guess you eat cupcakes if that is all they have on the menu.

Peace - j

[J – Here are my top 10 notes on your post:
1.) You shouldn’t flagellate the public about your perception of their support for the war, or conflate it with their support for the warriors. The public supports the troops, if not the justification for the war. Civilians have just lost half their wealth, experienced an unprecedented housing crisis, their jobs are either lost or in jeopardy, along with their health care, with no hope of a new job. They're a bit distracted. They have incurred $12 trillion of government debt, are looking at another $3 trillion debt to pull the country’s collective ass out of the fire, and the Chinese might not loan us our own money back to do it because they have their own problems.
2.) The acquisition, interpretation, and re-transmittal of news from the war zone are at the mercy of Department of Defense oversight. So whatever is said has been approved. You know how that works.
3.) Post-assault attention by senior level political leaders was so botched that the Government hasn’t wanted reporters over there. Reporter oversight makes life too complex.
4.) The Constitution makes no requirement for news to accurately document history. Check it. I can’t find any requirement.
5.) TV’s real customers are the advertisers, not the viewers. Basically TV is an advertising medium with People magazine type video inserted as a necessary time filler to let the viewer rest before the next barrage of commercials.
6.) It is incredibly expensive to stage a reporting team over there.
7.) Budget driven managers of publicly traded media corporations say, “Let’s send the A-team to California to do Britney instead.”
8.) Then they say: “Wait! Stay here in Washington D.C.!” Because covering Obama’s children is even cheaper and easier to cover, and advertisers love it because it sells more soap.
9.) The infinitely deep pockets of the United States Government will write history the way it wants to, on a time scale that it determines.
10.) If someone doesn’t like the Gov's version of history, they can go to the library and read those elite books.

-ed.]