Iraq Update 7/29/05
Hi All:
Excuse the delay in getting this out. I had to skip a week as my family was on vacation so Rachel couldn’t forward the correspondence. I don’t have a lot of new stuff as I have been confined to the office as I’m acting for the boss while he is in the United States. He’s coming back at the beginning of August and I’ll be happy to see him come back. After over 17 years of management, I really don’t want to get back into it full time.
This week I had a very heart warming experience. Our translator, Noha, and I were speaking about families and I was telling her about my two daughters and my wife. Noha thanks me for making the sacrifice to come over here and liberate them from Saddam Hussein’s regime and for helping them in the reconstruction. Now Noha and her family are not exactly poor but she gave as an example that since the Iraq/Iran war they have had continuous power outages and have been totally restrictive in movement. For example under Saddam’s regime, women under the age of 48 are forbidden to go anywhere alone or without any male accompaniment. She was able to travel out of the country only because of foreign property ownership or else she would not be able to see her family that live elsewhere. Noha said, Iraq used to be a wonderful democratic country but Saddam did away with it all. That pretty much says it all. Iraq had a self sustaining economy and great natural resources but through complacency, the people allowed themselves to be ruled by 20% of the population. My experience with Noha teaches me that no truer words were ever spoken that the “price of freedom is constant vigilance.” I will never believe the words “it can’t happen here” ever again.
The above was the good part. The bad part was that we had a translator who was taking advantage of his position and, as a result, was causing a potential security breach. Initially he was hostile when confronted with the issues and I thought there might be some major trouble. However, things became calm especially when he was confronted with the evidence then all he wanted to do was depart in a peaceful manner. His id badge was pulled and he was escorted from the compound. It made for a tense moment or two. It just must be human nature for one to want to take advantage of something if the opportunity presents itself.
The other night we had a unique experience. After a rather bad dust storm, the choppers were flying. Now typically when the choppers come in for a landing, they set off flares. The flares are to deflect heat seeking rockets etc. Well the choppers came in so low that the flares landed on some of the palm trees in our trailer complexes and caught them on fire. We have the Baghdad Fire Department which is manned by fire personnel from the States. I learned that the palm trees actually have a sap that is very volatile and this kept the trees burning. The fire department put the fires out but it made for some interesting moments and some pigeons and doves are running around with singed feathers.
I had a meeting with a financial minister from an Iraqi Ministry. She was extremely nice and very articulate in English. It was very interesting to speak with her and she is being very helpful on one of our investigations. The gold they have here is really rich colored stuff. I believe it’s 21 or 23 carat. It kinda hard to shop given the volatility and the fact that if one ventures into the red zone for other than official business, you are out – no excuses.
I know a lot of you are still wondering what the heck I’m doing over here. I forwarded a Wall Street Journal article on our Inspector General, Stuart Bowen to Rachel who will forward it to you all. The article details to some degree the work we are trying to do here. My only regret is that we weren’t empowered to do this as soon as this country was secured before the money flow started.
I was able to work with some U.S. Army Special Forces this week on a matter of mutual interest. These guys had experience in South America, other Middle East, and other hot spots. There were very interesting to speak with. It’s amazing how unassuming they are. If you crossed them on a street in America you wouldn’t give them a second look and you definitely would not consider them to be SF. They look like they should be mowing a front lawn in suburban area. They don’t look like the Rangers, the Seals, or Diplomatic Security personnel all brawn, muscle, and heavy weapons. However, I wouldn’t want them after me. As it turned out we had information about some weapons being purchased that were not being stored properly. We were able to tie down the acquisition and actually found the weapon site. It definitely isn’t secured properly but these are not U.S. arms or U.S. money but at least the information is in the right hands. I definitely don’t want to hold info on something that could be used against our troops.
You should hear me trying to talk Arabic with some of the workers. They really get a kick out of my attempt to pronounce the words. It’s really tough to make some of these sounds. Some sound like you’re trying to clear your throat.
Oh I’ve got to end this with our lovely Alice on the rampage again over the PX inventory. You remember I wrote to you about Alice, the Army CID retiree, who couldn’t get shampoo but could find lady’s thong underwear. Well, she comes back from the PX steaming mad again today. It’s 118. She says she still can’t get any shampoo but the PX is loaded with two kinds of bubble bath. Unfortunately, there aren’t any bath tubs in the entire International Zone except for the medical tubs at the hospital emergency room. She is just livid that they would even place the bubble bath out on display. Again, it’s good for a laugh.
We had a list passed around today in the office asking what dessert we were missing the most while here in Iraq. The employees were putting down banana splits, fresh strawberries, etc. I wrote down “Sex.” I figured they serve us cookies, ice cream, cake, and sometimes flan at two meals a day, who needs more sweets than that? What’s not happening here for me?? You got it!!! However, at my age, I can tough it out. I just double my time at the gym.
Ya’ll have a great week and we should be back in sync with Rachel returning from vacation. Take care and thank you again for all of your thoughts, good wishes, and prayers.
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