Hello to all:
Hope all are doing well on the home front and are enjoying the wonderful hot summer weather. A little warm back there you say? Well, right now it’s cooled off from a high of 125 today to about 115. I’m told August will be worse. It amazing. You walk about 100 yards and you break a major sweat.
Last night we went to dinner at a restaurant called the Blue Star that’s in the Green Zone. The place is just a little more than a glorified tent that’s air conditioned and is surrounded by sand bags. It’s neat because you get to watch the choppers fly in just over head and I do mean just overhead. When you can see the side gunner’s faces distinctly, you know that’s close. But look at it on the bright side, where can you go in the United States and get genuine Iraqi food, beer brewed in Turkey, wine from Lebanon, and a Hookah pipe if you want it in a tent surrounded by sand bags?
This week has been predominantly filled with laughter primarily directed at ourselves and our situation but we continue to have somber moments.
We did experience a couple of bombings but casualties were surprisingly light. The most significant one was a car bomb that went off at one of the check points. The car bomb was followed by another bomber who detonated himself. There was a third bomber but he stood so close to the #2 guy that his side was paralyzed upon the concussion and he couldn’t hit the plunger although he was trying. Security shot him but he’ll live. Fr. Dennis told us that three soldiers were badly injured and one was standing five feet from the car when it detonated. All three have survived and will make good recoveries. As Fr. said “miracles do happen.” The only thing that I can think of is that the detonation knocked the soldier down on the ground and the shrapnel blast went over the top of him.
This week I got to see what $83M in cash looks like. That’s a lot of paper. I got to see Saddam’s Lladro collection, his assortment of canes and swords and I got to hold his gold plated AK-47 and his personal rocket propelled grenade launcher. I have to admit except for the Lladro’s, a lot of his stuff is really gaudy and not exactly artistic in nature. For example, you would have thought that he would have his AK with metal scrolling on it like the fancy double barreled rifles from England. It’s just plain gold plated. A lot of the walking canes all had pikes on the end or were hidden swords. One was actually a rifle. When I told the Lieutenant in the Comptroller’s Office (who has custody of the vault) that rifle canes were made in the US around the turn of the century, she was surprised. It was quite the thing back in the late 1890’s and 1900’s.
I met a couple of Italian Carabinieri’s at lunch this week and was talking about food. They are assigned security for the Italian Ambassador. They said they were going to have a pizza party and would invite us. The Italian Embassy Compound has a wood fired oven on the premises. He said the pizza comes out wonderful. I can’t wait.
We had a great time at mass today. Our choir is a mix of soldiers, law enforcement, and state department personnel. One of the state department people is a lady who is a consul for the Department of State. She has a wonderful voice and for the most part is a reserved legal type. Just before communion is about to get underway, she leans over and whispers to me that all of the Eucharist Ministers are packing heat. What’s funny is that this is coming from her. I responded that so is half the choir and 90% of the congregation. Fr. says he must keep his sermons short and to the point for the same reason lest someone gets an itchy finger. Fr. keeps saying he gets many compliments about the choir which is great. We are going to lose a few due to rotations in their schedules. Hopefully new ones will come along. The other thing that was funny was when this same State Department lady went to retrieve music from her backpack I couldn’t help notice that she had two rolls of toilet paper in there. I couldn’t help but comment that I thought that was a lot of t/p and she must really be on the go. She replied that the toilet paper in the rest rooms is crap. I said I really hadn’t noticed any different. She busts out laughing as did the rest of the choir and said that it was obvious I wasn’t a woman. I replied not even on my best day. God what a thought!
We went to the range this week so I finally got my M-4 tuned up and working for me. Our M-4’s are equipped with an electronic sight in addition to the iron sights. My electronic sight was pretty much right on but my iron sights were all messed up. Our range officer asked if I was going to use my electronic sight. I said I wanted to sight in both. I said I didn’t want any issues if the battery on my electronic sight died at the wrong time. The range time could not have been better. On Wednesday we got a respite from the heat, only in the low 100’s and there was no dust. One of our agents is a former New Jersey homicide detective who then finished his career as an Inspector General with the State Department. He is presently our boss while the real boss is back in D.C. He always uses this expression, WHAT COULD GO WRONG?? Well, with him at the range this week almost everything. We did this practical exercise where we drilled as if our vehicle was incapacitated and then we were under enemy fire. The drill was to drive the vehicle, stop, exit the vehicle on the opposite side of the danger, and then shoot the bad guy targets which were interspersed with good guy targets down range. Well, Mike is driving, he pulls up and looks like he threw the car in park but it was just in reverse. He bails out of the car and the second agent is trying to get out while the car is going backwards. At first we thought it was in neutral but its gathering speed while the second agent is caught between the console and the driver’s side. We start yelling and Mike halfway gets back in to stop the car. Both agents exit and Mike takes a position behind the hood of the car and starts firing down range with his M-4. After the drill is over we are still laughing about the car being in reverse and then notice that there’s a bullet hole in the hood of the car right in front of where Mike was positioned. Unfortunately, Mike had rested his rifle on the hood but was shooting down hill. His sights cleared but the barrel didn’t. Now we had two things to laugh and tease him about. We checked the car to make sure he didn’t damage anything important, like the radiator, and found it to be okay. If we were in the US, there’d be paperwork to write but here it wouldn’t be the only car with a few holes in it. Finally, the coups de grace comes. While the other agents are going through the drill, Mike is scrounging around and finds a .223 round in the dirt. He dusts it off and is able to remove the cartridge from the casing. He empties the powder out of it and replaces the bullet. Then he grabs the range officer’s M-4 by mistake, chambers the round, and fires it with only the primer for ignition. He gets the bullet stuck in the barrel. In the meantime we’ve finished the drill and Mike is telling the range officer while we are listening about what he did. Now you have to picture Mike who is about 6’2”, maybe 235 lbs, telling this story like a kid who did something bad with his father’s tools. You’ve got to know our range officer. He likes firearms more than I do and he takes a lot of pride in maintaining his equipment. He resembles G. Gordon Liddy and keeps asking Mike – You did this
By now, we just can’t take it and are laughing uncontrollably at this. First he can’t get the car in park, he shoots the hood, and then he gets a bullet stuck in the range officer’s rifle. We kept saying WHAT COULD GO WRONG!!! Mike is leaving in another week so we are going to give him the first Inspector General WHAT COULD GO WRONG award as a going away present.
I guess the other thing that happened this week that was pretty unique was one major dust storm on Thursday. I mean this dust was so thick that it resembled fog in San Francisco. I was up at 5:30 A.M. on Thursday morning and it was clear but by 7:00 A.M., the dust was really settling in. By mid afternoon, it was actually coming into the buildings as well. I understand that they are even worse when you are out in the desert without buildings around.
The last funny thing that happened involved our intelligence analyst. She’s a retired U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division specialist. Earlier this week, she went to the PX to buy some things. Now our PX doesn’t have a lot of stuff and we think that the reason is that the majority of the soldiers are in the Forward Operating Bases so most of the supplies go there and it’s tough to get them here. Alice ends up going to the PX and can’t find hair shampoo. She comes back mad as a hornet and said the PX can’t keep items of necessity like deodorant and shampoo in stock but they have a huge supply of thong underwear. She’s ranting whose going to be wearing that stuff with military BDUs and besides those things were certainly not going to fit her rear anyway. It took us awhile to stop laughing.
Laughter is a good thing and I’m glad that we had some good laughs this week. The rest of my working time was devoted to records analysis so there’s not a lot of items that I can discuss although some of what I found I would like to comment on but that will have to wait until the matter is adjudicated.
Well, good bye for now. Thank you all again for the good words, thoughts, and prayers. My best to you and your loved ones. Bob
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