Iraq Update August 6, 2005
Greetings All
I hope everyone and their families are doing fine. All is going fairly well here. I’m actually the Acting Special Agent in Charge for SIGIR Baghdad and I anxiously await the return of the real boss. Honestly, after 17 + years in management, I’m not crazy about undertaking such a position on a full time basis.
This week I had to deal with construction going on in the office while we are trying to work. If you can imagine we are a little cramped as it is. However, when you add in about 7-9 additional workers who are moving things around, drilling holes in the concrete walls, and just getting dust and dirt all over everything, to say it was fraying people’s nerves was an understatement. It’s really quite comical. We have space that is already built out for us, the wiring is set, and the furniture is in. However, we can’t move into it because we need a switch to hook us up to the main server. The same people doing the rewiring are responsible for installing the switch. When I asked why they couldn’t install the switch first and then do the build out after we move, I was told that they have to do the work in the order that the request was received. I said but we requested both jobs. He said it still doesn’t matter. Like I said, you just have to laugh at the logic.
It’s also pretty interesting listening to the Iraqi electricians yelling at each other and arguing about how to wire things. Of course at the same time we are supposed to be focusing on our work.
This week has been a real challenge for me to tolerate the water condition. Now I’m thankful that we have things pretty good considering this is a war zone. But at least three times this week, my shower consisted of a trickle of water. And I mean just a trickle. It took effort to get the soap off my carcass. My trailer mate has resorted to having a few bottles of drinking water maintained at room temperature to douse himself if need be. His hair is a lot longer than mine so I can understand why.
We had a series of assassinations this week and it got the agents to wondering. These assassinations are not being done long range or with explosives. People are getting up close and personal and dispatching their victims with small arms fire. The question we have is how are these guys getting so close to the targets? We can only imagine that the security team is either really lax or the bad guys have found ways to breach security. One of our agents has done a lot of work in Colombia and he said with the exception of bombings, the rebels played hell trying to get close to a general or a political figure. We wonder why it’s so different here?
The other night I and another agent had dinner with a gentleman and two ladies from England who were advisors to the Iraqi Ministry of Defense. It was pretty funny in that their accents were so heavy it was difficult to understand fully what they were saying. All I can compare it to was like listening to dialogue from My Fair Lady. When I asked one lady to repeat what she had said, her voice got louder and her accent was even more pronounced. When we got back to the office, the other agent said to me, Isn’t it amazing that we all spoke English and we hardly could understand them. I replied that they may not have agreed with the statement. They probably thought they spoke English and we speak American.
We have an employee who is the Human Resources Director who’s been on detail for the last 45 days. He’s been a lot of fun to work with and has helped us out quite a bit. Now this guy is not little. Chris goes about 6 foot 8 inches and is closer to 400 pounds than he is 300 pounds. Now I don’t know how many of you follow World Class Wrestling but there’s a wrestler whose name is BIG SHOW that bears an uncanny resemblance to Chris. There is a contingent of Pakistanis that work in the cafeteria who must be wrestling enthusiasts as when they see Chris, they start calling him Big Show and said he looks just like the wrestler. It’s quite funny as they raise quite a commotion over it. They ask Chris if the wrestling is for real and want to know if he is a wrestler.
I also had breakfast with a JAG and his legal assistant who were assigned to Forward Operating Base Victory this week. The legal assistant was a very nice young lady about 25 years old and the JAG was definitely a legal beagle. I noticed that the legal assistant had something on the end of the barrel of her M-16. I asked her about it. She had constructed a protective cover over the muzzle break of her rifle that would automatically blow off once the weapon is discharged. She said she had it to keep the dust out of her barrel and out of her action. I complimented her on her care and concern over her weapon and asked if she appreciated the shooting sports. She said she did not which made me even more complimentary of her care for someone who isn’t a gun freak like yours truly. She kind of beamed with pride over the compliments. The JAG seemed a little perturbed at the compliments but when he stood up to leave, his body armored, helmet, and rifle that he draped over the chair all fell over and clanged to the floor. This made him even more annoyed so I didn’t say anything further except to have a nice day and a safe trip back to Camp Victory and to make sure to get to the range and re-sight his rifle. Of course I told him I was with the Inspector General’s Office and hoped our paths would cross again. I’m sure that’s the last thing he’d want.
I was really feeling bad about the loss of life this week here in Iraq especially with the Marine Reservists from Ohio who lost about 22 from their unit. It really is painful to realize that it is a loss of very young lives with a huge amount of future ahead of them and I wonder about the worth and if most people really care and understand the sacrifice that they’ve made. It’s amazing the way the Lord can work when you feel you need a pick me up. I was presented with an article today that I’d like to transcribe here. I’d scan it but I’m afraid it won’t go through. I do ask that you take the time to read it and I hope more people see the real message being sent here. Once I read this, I got a little teary eyed for awhile but then got back to my work with new resolve.
Here Goes!
Ben Stein’s Last Column:
How Can Someone Who Lives In Insane Luxury Be A Star In Today’s World?
As I begin to write this, I slug it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is eonlinefinal and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I can to believe it would never end.
It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world’s change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton’s, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton’s is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.
Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood starts are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better that I deserve to be treated. Bu a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.
How can a man or woman who makes an eight figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today’s world, if by a star we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yogas or Pilates and eating only raw fruits while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails. They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.
A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.
A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.
The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.
We put couples with incomes of $100 M a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.
I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton’s is a big subject.
There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament …. The policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.
Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have an idea of a real hero.
I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great as actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin… or Martin Mull or Fred Willard…or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them. But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister’s help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.
This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others he has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.
Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will. By Ben Stein
I did not know of Ben Stein before reading this. I know not if he is liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, hard rocker or swing band. It really doesn’t matter as here he speaks from the heart.
Bravo Ben Stein.
God Bless All - Bob
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