Author: admin

Our trip to Hadithah was cut short when we ran into a wall of dust coming in the other direction.  We were lucky.  A convoy of trucks coming out of Al Asad held us up.  The delay meant that we were not far outside camp when word came in about the approaching dust clouds and we could go back.  Being dusted down in Hadithah is less pleasant in terms of bunking and preparations (i.e. we would not have our toothbrushes etc). 

So we spent the morning riding in MRAPs on a road that went nowhere, but the day was not a complete loss.  Colonel Malay decided to stop off in Baghdadi, the first village outside Al Asad, and do a foot/candy patrol.  Generous people back home send lots of candy and other little gifts to the Marines at Camp Ripper.   They get a lot more than anybody can reasonably eat (unless their goal is to weigh 300 lbs) and they share this bounty with the local kids when they go on patrol.

I talked to the local shopkeeper in Baghdadi who told me business was bad.  Costs were high and profit margins low.  He didn’t have much in his shop to sell anyway.  A bunch of guys gathered around to complain about the lack of jobs.  They wondered if the U.S. could pressure the Iraqi government into creating some local jobs and/or if there were any good jobs to be had on Al Asad.   I was a little disappointed by what they were telling me.  It was not the lack of jobs, which is a legitimate problem, but the kinds of jobs they seemed to want.  Everybody wanted to work for the government.  The idea that private businesses could/would/should create jobs seems not to have occurred to them and did not resonate at all when I brought it up. 

Of course I understand that I did not meet a representative sample and that guys hanging around on the street in the middle of the day are probably not the most active and ambitious people in town.  Everybody was reasonably well dressed.  The shopkeeper wore traditional Iraqi garb, but the young men were dressed in western style trousers and relatively clean shirts emblazoned with the names of Brazilian or European soccer teams. One man dressed in a t-shirt and sweatpants insisted on talking to me separately.  He said that he was a trained teacher and qualified to teach math and science. Yet he had been unable to get a job teaching because successful applicants either needed to bribe or know somebody.  He said that he could get a job with the IA, but preferred to work in his own field and asked that CF look into corruption in hiring at local schools.

There were many small businesses open on the street.  A quick glance around revealed three “gas stations”, each consisting of several plastic tanks of gas standing in the sun.  It doesn’t seem particularly safe or efficient, but it is a form of commerce.  We noticed that there was significantly more gas available for sale now than in the past and the plastic tanks were sitting on 55 gallon drums of fuel.  Selling gas here makes sense since we were on a main road along the Euphrates and there was consistent traffic passing by.  There was also a mechanic shop and a few more shops selling groceries. Fields near the river were green and growing.  They were planted with onions, lettuce, tomatoes and spring wheat and somebody had laid a few water pipes to irrigate fields a bit farther away from the riverbank.  A boy herded flocks of sheep though the fields.   It is clear that irrigated fields were once more extensive in the area than they are today.  The Euphrates is fast flowing at this point.  We saw ruins where waterwheels had once harnessed the power of the river probably to pump water to more distant places, but we didn’t see any working wheels anywhere along this stretch of the river.  Water wheels may be a lost art locally.  A diesel engine is less reliable and more expensive to run, but it is easier to set up and work.

Dennis has previous experience talking to local citizens about farming.  Farmers complain that nobody wants to be a farmer anymore because the work is too hard.  You can’t get good help these days.  Everybody wants to work for the government, they complain.  Our short reconnaissance and the comments of the idle young men seemed to confirm this anecdotal evidence. As usual, kids came out looking for candy.  Some could ask for candy, pens or sunglasses in English.  Some people came out of their houses to look at us or wave.  The mood was good.

A couple of guys came up who identified themselves as administrators from the high school and elementary school.  They both seemed to understand some English.  We nevertheless spoke through Franco the interpreter.  The two men complained that their school building had been taken over and used as a CF checkpoint.  I promised that I would mention the problem to the RCT.  These guys seemed intelligent and involved in their community.  They said that they had fixed up buildings themselves to serve as temporary schools, but hoped that we would do the right thing and give them back their building.  When I shook hands with them I noticed that – unlike those of the earlier group of young men – these guys had hard and strong hands.  I don’t know what kind of work they have been doing, but it is something that requires consistent hand labor.  Maybe they are indeed working to refurbish their houses to serve as schools.

They also complained about salaries and about Baghdad not giving anything to Anbar.  They said that each time money moves some leaks out of the pipeline.  Some leaks in Baghdad; a little more leaks in Ramadi and Hit.  By the time it gets to Baghdadi there is not much left.   Iraq is a rich country, they told me, but you wouldn’t know it to look around.  They indicated that they had more confidence in U.S. forces than in either their local government or the national government.  They were nonplussed when I suggested that there should be an Iraqi solution but asked that we intervene with the Maliki government to make changes.

Riding in an MRAP is never fun.  You feel every bump.  One of my colleagues literally hit the ceiling on one bumpy road.  After that I started to be more careful about the seatbelts.  In addition, they are top heavy and prone to roll over.   A few of my colleagues rolled down the hill near Hadithah Dam.  Four times they rolled over.  One guy broke his ankle and another cracked a vertebra and a rib, but nobody was seriously hurt.  The turret gunner followed his training perfectly.  He hunkered down, hung on and walked away with barely a scratch.  The gunners are in the most danger and they are often the ones thrown out and crushed.  The saving grace of the MRAP is that they are practically indestructible.  The same things that make them unpleasant make them robust.  It is the dreadnought of land vehicles – and probably as heavy as the original seagoing varieties..

Yesterday we had a particularly uncomfortable ride. We were packed into the MRAP heading toward an engagement, bouncing along with each pothole when somebody started to fart.  There were five suspects (I leave myself out because I know it wasn’t me), but nobody would admit it. Once was bad enough, but whoever it was silently broke wind several times.  Talk about bad manners.  There is not much circulation in an MRAP anyway, so odors of all sorts tend to linger, but then it got worse when the air conditioning broke down.  There we were, tightly packed in an atmosphere of dust and warm methane.  It makes you appreciate the Humvee, which is more cramped but less close or even the helicopter which has those 80 MPH winds constantly blowing through the open gun windows.

None of the modes of transportation, BTW, provides anything in the way of lumbar support.   The body armor provides a useful place to rest your chin, but puts a lot more strain on your lower back.  It hurts like mad.   I have addressed that problem with one of those u-shaped neck pillows.  I got a nice one made of temperpedic material, which I jam up against my lower back.  It really works.   I don’t leave home w/o it.  Some of the Marines say that sort of pillow is an old man’s accessory and they are probably right but when I get out of the vehicles I don’t feel like I fell off the back of a pickup truck.  The ridicule is transitory; back pain persists. 

This bleak landscape holds more promise than it seems.

“Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank. …”

Securing the route that both oil and commerce must take from Bayji to the population and refining centers in Hadithah is a major strategic goal.   In support of that goal, ePRT Western Anbar is looking for ways to support commerce and prosperity along the route, by encouraging small merchants to set up kiosks, perhaps with the support of a microfinance loan, and helping local pastoralists and farmers make a living nearby.  The challenge is that the land along way makes Death Valley look like a garden.   Development depends on water and there is not much of it available anywhere near the road, railroad or pipelines – until a few days ago.Dennis identified possible water bearing formations in Pliocene formations along the route during a helicopter reconnaissance and then followed up with a Marine patrol and a backhoe.  They struck water in three of the four areas he identified.  In one case, they found enough gushing water at a depth of about three meters to support a small community.  

This water is sustainable with wise use and replenished from natural rainfall in the area, i.e. it is not “fossil” water (as in parts of the Ogallala Aquifer, for example) that will be drained out by use.   Dennis and engineers at the RCT have already developed plans for a pond system that would take advantage of the terrain and some modern dry land farming techniques to create permanent oases around these tentative water holes. 

Below – the water is muddy at first, but left stand it clears and the flow was strong.

The technique involves “pitting,” which is a series of hundreds of small holes produced upstream from the place where a pond will be constructed.  These pits slow the runoff and allow it to soak into the ground, replenishing the aquifer.  Normally, the local desert soils shed water like a Wal-Mart parking lot.  The runoff puddles up in low places, without significant percolation and generally bakes off in the sun leaving salty pans and doing nobody any good.

We estimate that a properly constructed series of ponds featuring pitting and silt ponds to moderate rapid runoff and erosion could provide year round sources of water for local agriculture and other uses.   The only caveat is that the presence of reliable water sources on public land could stimulate increased sheep populations that could stress the limited resources available in this arid and poor environment.   This could be a classic “tragedy of the commons” where all producers try to maximize their own consumption of what becomes a dwindling and overtaxed resource base.  This however, is a challenge at any level of development.   The Iraqi landscaped suffered for years cut off from new developments during the dark years of Saddam Hussein.  Access to fresh, clean water is a growing problem worldwide and it is an especially acute situation in an arid country such as Iraq.  These inexpensive and effective projects will help address the issue in Western Al Anbar.

You can see we do not get to shoot very far.  We shot a bit farther back with the rifles, but not much.  We only get to shoot if someone is really close.

I have never been a good shot & I have at least a partial explanation.  I am a right handed but left eye dominant.  When I shot the M-4 rifle with my left hand, I actually could hit the target because I could actually see it through the scope.

The Marines took our ePRT to the gun range today to learn how to use their standard pistols and rifles.  Of course, we were not issued weapons and never will be.  Our ePRT members are not warriors.  However, in this kind of environment it is not a bad idea to be familiar with the sorts of weapons that are common around here.

We learned how to lock, load and shoot at the very basic level.  Of course, some of our ePRT members are very familiar with guns and for them it was review.  As I said, when I shot left handed, I could do all right.  The M-4 rifle has a good scope with a little arrow.  If you know the rough distance, you can aim along the arrow and it is easy to get the shots into the general area you are trying to hit.  Just keeping the rifle even is harder than it seems in the movies, however.  

We shot single shots and in burst of two or three.  For the bursts of three it is hard to keep the weapon stable, again, not as easy as it seems in the movies.  We were standing in what the Marines told us was the hardest stance.  You are more stable when you are sitting or laying on the ground and/or you have something to brace.  I had a lot of fun with this.  I shot more times today than I have in my entire life up to today.  Of course, that is not saying much, since I have never been much of a gun guy.

The pistol was easier to handle but it was harder for me to hit the targets. At one point, we had to shoot down metal targets (below).  I couldn’t hit any of them.  The Marines can more or less just knock them down.  Our “training” was not meant to prepare us for the Wyatt Earp type gunfights.  Only in very desperate situations would we even touch a weapon and contemplate the odd angry shot. At close range, we shot fifteen rounds into the target quick as we could.  I managed to hold the pistol steady enough to create a pattern that would have stopped even the most committed terrorist or crack head.  

I am confident that I will never have occasion to use the skills I learned today.  I am sure the Marines will work hard to keep it that way.  They were very polite and nice to me, but they saw my performance.  I shutter to think of how bad it would have to be if I was the last line of defense.  Anyway, I have absolute confidence in the Marines.

I have never seen them in actual combat, but I have seen how they react to potential danger.  They face it down w/o hesitation.  I think of those horror movies where the bad guy attacks the hapless people who scurry around in confusion.  The Marines would just dispatch the miscreant.  This is a good contrast between courage and fear.  It is not true that the Marines can always prevail, but they always go with courage and that just feels better. 

The profound darkness disturbed me when I got to Al Asad.   At first I didn’t like it, as I stumbled around looking for my can in the blackness, but after awhile I got used to it.  I liked the moonlight and the stars.  I developed a muscle memory that got me easily home in the dark and walking home in the dark became a nice way to unwind at the end of the day. 

Now they have installed a big light that pierces the darkness and shines in my eyes, making it hard to see the moon and the stars.  Beyond that, the less you can actually see of Al Asad, the prettier you can imagine it to be.  The stark chemical light against concrete barriers is not pleasant.

It is surprising how well you can learn to see in low light.  I recall skiing at night in Norway and how that had a special magic.   Al Asad is not like that, but I have learned to enjoy some aspects of the Iraqi night.  Funny how things grow on you.  At first you may dislike it; after awhile you accept it and then miss it when it is taken away.  Walking home in the dark, I noticed the phases of the moon and the contours of the clouds dimly illuminated in the moonlight.  On several occassions there was a haloed moon. Of course, I could see and enjoy the stars.  This was good.

Above is a picture of Dennis,  our agronomist, and  Reid who has done engagement with local leaders on a truly impressive scale.

My good friend Reid Smith will be leaving Iraq today.  He is one of those I mentioned a few posts back re losing my best.  I am losing him a little earlier than anticipated because of bureaucratic mazes we couldn’t find out way through.

Reid has his own newsletter about his time in Iraq.  As military person, his perceptive is a bit different than mine, but the similarities far outweigh the differences.  Below is a copy of his last post in Iraq.

Hey everyone,

I planned on staying here in Iraq until mid May in order to complete my one year boots on the ground.  As sometimes happens, the paperwork got screwed up.  The State Department, who doesn’t have a thorough understanding of how the Army orders process works, failed to request an extension to my initial mobilization orders.  Now, with less than a week’s notice, I have to clear out. 

The bottom line here is that I am coming home earlier than anticipated.  I know, I know, I should be happy right?, but this made me very angry at first because I feel like I’m just now getting really good at my  job.  That’s just the way it is sometimes.  As my first platoon sergeant, SSG Velez told me in 1984 in his very strong Puerto Rican accent “well ju know sir…sometimes…ju just get f—-d”.  This is a true statement if ever I heard one.

I’ve now had a few days to let it settle in and I couldn’t more excited to go back to my home and family.  Everything works itself out the way it is supposed to and I’m very glad to be headed home.
From my perspective we have defeated the insurgents.  We are only dealing with amateurs now and of them there are only a few stragglers. Those few that we do encounter are poorly led, poorly equipped and poorly trained.  In our sector for the third time in a couple months an  insurgent has blown himself up accidentally.  The latest blew his own hands off and if not for prompt medical care he would have died. 

In another case we were able to locate an IED emplacement group while they were meeting together.  We could have simply bombed them and been certain of killing them, but in order to make sure no innocent people were killed we used different techniques.  This is important because terrorists frequently travel with women and children just for the protection they provide relative to our targeting.  It took us three tries, but task force elements finally got them and no innocents were hurt.  This is an amazing capability we have developed as a military and you should definitely be proud.

We recently had one Marine Infantry battalion complete their seven-month rotation here and head home without having even one KIA.  This was  1/7 Marines who I worked with in the city of Hit, they were extremely active, did a lot of great work.  This is remarkable when you consider that normally in just one month at the National Training Center, in a training environment, we will suffer at least one soldier killed as a result of accident or mishap.

Now it is up to the Iraqis to take the victory over the insurgents we’ve handed them and be successful at governing themselves.  This has been my job over the past 10 ½ months.  It has been frustratingly slow work, but we have seen significant improvements and I am confident now that we will succeed.

It has been quite a ride and now as I look back I will miss both my team mates and the Marines who I’ve had the honor and privilege to serve with.  I will miss the many Iraqis heroes who I’ve become friends with who struggle daily to make this work despite a constant threat to their life and that of their family.  It’s an odd thing how as bad as this place sucks, it does get in your bones in a way that is hard to describe.  Without trying to be too melodramatic, perhaps it’s the fact our struggle here in many ways marks the success or failure of America  in the post cold war world. 

To all of you who have supported me with your e-mails, letters, packages etc I just want to provide a very heartfelt “Thank You”!  I would add that it doesn’t stop here and even though everyone is tired of this war, the troops over here still very much desire and appreciate your steadfast support. 

In terms of support I haven’t run into anyone over here who simply desires and end to this for their own personal safety.  This is an all volunteer force and if there is any disappointment felt at being here it normally surrounds not getting any “trigger time”.  We want the victory we’ve worked so hard for and will settle for nothing less.  We hear people often say “I support the troops”, but what we wished we’d hear more often is “I support victory in Iraq”.  
 

Semper Fi
Reid