Sunday, November 08, 2009
A Sad Week.
How petty is life in Taji these days, where we can blog about massacres of our brothers- and sisters-in-arms, 7000 miles away.
I haven't been able to stop thinking about the Fort Hood killings. I have nothing much to add to the discourse, naturally, but I was so saddened to read the following from Mark Ames, who has made himself an invaluable national resource on our sicko pastime of workplace/school shootings: "Since Hasan will be tried in a military court, the American public will only learn whatever the military wants us to learn."
Assuming Major Hasan survives and is indeed tried by court-martial (rather than in federal court), anyone even remotely familiar with modern American military justice knows how wrong Ames's prediction is. The rights and protections of a military accused are more robust under the UCMJ than the civilian federal code, especially in this case: whomever convenes this Court--prompted by his SJAs--would be concerned with nothing more than ensuring a procedurally clean record. I have no doubt that the sentencing case put on my Major Hasan's defense team would provide thorough explanation of his psychiatric condition and its origins -- at the expense of the Government. What would the civilian analog be?
On another front: I've read in multiple venues that Major Hasan "hired a military lawyer" to request a release from active duty. This is a subtle but important factual error that could be corrected with one phone call. I haven't been "hired" in five years ... because we work for free. Major Hasan may have consulted with and engaged a military attorney in purusing this administrative request, but "hiring" one would have meant that military attorney violated an essential tenet of the mission.
***
Otherwise, nothing much to report. The detainees are restless -- "When I get happy bus?" -- and the computer screens are headache-inducing. Pedestrian concerns of modern warfare for the Navy JAG.
Thanks to all family and friends who've sent gifts boxes. I am reading/watching/wiping my rear with all your presents, according to their respective intended uses, I assure you.
And I remain,
Your untrusted canooniya
I haven't been able to stop thinking about the Fort Hood killings. I have nothing much to add to the discourse, naturally, but I was so saddened to read the following from Mark Ames, who has made himself an invaluable national resource on our sicko pastime of workplace/school shootings: "Since Hasan will be tried in a military court, the American public will only learn whatever the military wants us to learn."
Assuming Major Hasan survives and is indeed tried by court-martial (rather than in federal court), anyone even remotely familiar with modern American military justice knows how wrong Ames's prediction is. The rights and protections of a military accused are more robust under the UCMJ than the civilian federal code, especially in this case: whomever convenes this Court--prompted by his SJAs--would be concerned with nothing more than ensuring a procedurally clean record. I have no doubt that the sentencing case put on my Major Hasan's defense team would provide thorough explanation of his psychiatric condition and its origins -- at the expense of the Government. What would the civilian analog be?
On another front: I've read in multiple venues that Major Hasan "hired a military lawyer" to request a release from active duty. This is a subtle but important factual error that could be corrected with one phone call. I haven't been "hired" in five years ... because we work for free. Major Hasan may have consulted with and engaged a military attorney in purusing this administrative request, but "hiring" one would have meant that military attorney violated an essential tenet of the mission.
***
Otherwise, nothing much to report. The detainees are restless -- "When I get happy bus?" -- and the computer screens are headache-inducing. Pedestrian concerns of modern warfare for the Navy JAG.
Thanks to all family and friends who've sent gifts boxes. I am reading/watching/wiping my rear with all your presents, according to their respective intended uses, I assure you.
And I remain,
Your untrusted canooniya
Thursday, October 29, 2009
This Taibbi guy's starting to make a lotta sense
Matt Taibbi - Taibblog - True/Slant: "But he also inherited a terrible financial crisis and he completely whiffed on it, siding with the financial status quo, who happen to be the bad guys. And in general, policywise, he has turned out to be eerily in sync with the previous administration, even down to some of the more obvious and egregious stuff, like the Guantanamo business and his amazing, perhaps illegal, and completely inexplicable refusal to investigate the ICRC (Red Cross) claims of systematic torture there."
I like my president, of course, and I want him to do well, but these were the two primary issues for me last fall: prosecuting the financial crooks and the torturers. He's done neither.
I like my president, of course, and I want him to do well, but these were the two primary issues for me last fall: prosecuting the financial crooks and the torturers. He's done neither.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
It rains in Iraq?
Evidently, yes. And, in Iraq, when it rains, the resulting terrestial equation goes like this:
10 HOURS OF RAIN
+
EXCLUSIVE TOPOGRAPHY OF DIRT/SAND SUBSTANCE
=
MUD EVERYWHERE
When was the last time any of you walked in the mud? Maybe on the way back to your car after a sporting event? Maybe in your garden, for a few steps, to grab the utensil or gloves you left there yesterday.
When was the last time you walked, everywhere, all day, in mud? You never have. Because you have never seen mud. I have seen it now. It is bad.
Mud, brought to reality in Iraq, is different from what you know as "mud." The brown mass that you call mud can be removed from the soles of your shoes with a little effort, a scrape against a step or mat, a smack against a wall. When this happens, you are not dealing with mud. You have on your shoes a minor brown nuisance. Mud, in its true Iraqi form, will not come off your shoes. Each step grasps new mud, so that by the end of your walk, you are several inches taller than when you began. If you want to go indoors, you can try to dislodge the mud from your shoes, but you will fail, and will inevitably smear your pants, socks, hands and nearby colleagues with mud. If you want to drive in this mud, you can, but your car will look like a Subaru ad.
ENOUGH COMPLAINING!
Life remains good in Taji. The detainees are restless, and unappreciative of the half-truths I provide them regarding their status. I pity them a little, and try to be reasonable, then I re-read their case-files. Killers, kidnappers, extortionists, etc. Still, they exist in a due-procedural netherworld of not-quite-prisoner-of-war and not-quite-prosecutable-yet, and they are eager for answers.
Tomorrow, my first day off in two months, so I will go to the pool. I love pools. I hope it's sunny, because the pool here is heated only by the outside temperature. It closes for the season on Sunday, so this is my last chance.
Half of the ladies in my work life are leaving on Friday. The two Air Force girls who've been running my office for the last four months are returning home. An influx of Navy (male) petty officers awaits. It's impossible to characterize exactly how having females in your office changes things. I can tell you a few certainties: we won't be decorating with internet-ordered party favors, posters, and rubber animalia for any upcoming holidays. We won't be stocking our closets with untold amounts of candy and skin lotion. And there will be far less giggling.
Remaining are our interpreters, Nancy and Farah, who are wonderful and teach me more about Arab life, language, and culture everyday than I've learned in 33 years prior.
The next 2.5 months will be pure chaos, as we try to get rid of this detention facility and its inhabitants, to be returned to the rightful owners: the people of Iraq, as embodied by their quasi-functional government.
And I remain,
Your humble Ian Rankin reader
10 HOURS OF RAIN
+
EXCLUSIVE TOPOGRAPHY OF DIRT/SAND SUBSTANCE
=
MUD EVERYWHERE
When was the last time any of you walked in the mud? Maybe on the way back to your car after a sporting event? Maybe in your garden, for a few steps, to grab the utensil or gloves you left there yesterday.
When was the last time you walked, everywhere, all day, in mud? You never have. Because you have never seen mud. I have seen it now. It is bad.
Mud, brought to reality in Iraq, is different from what you know as "mud." The brown mass that you call mud can be removed from the soles of your shoes with a little effort, a scrape against a step or mat, a smack against a wall. When this happens, you are not dealing with mud. You have on your shoes a minor brown nuisance. Mud, in its true Iraqi form, will not come off your shoes. Each step grasps new mud, so that by the end of your walk, you are several inches taller than when you began. If you want to go indoors, you can try to dislodge the mud from your shoes, but you will fail, and will inevitably smear your pants, socks, hands and nearby colleagues with mud. If you want to drive in this mud, you can, but your car will look like a Subaru ad.
ENOUGH COMPLAINING!
Life remains good in Taji. The detainees are restless, and unappreciative of the half-truths I provide them regarding their status. I pity them a little, and try to be reasonable, then I re-read their case-files. Killers, kidnappers, extortionists, etc. Still, they exist in a due-procedural netherworld of not-quite-prisoner-of-war and not-quite-prosecutable-yet, and they are eager for answers.
Tomorrow, my first day off in two months, so I will go to the pool. I love pools. I hope it's sunny, because the pool here is heated only by the outside temperature. It closes for the season on Sunday, so this is my last chance.
Half of the ladies in my work life are leaving on Friday. The two Air Force girls who've been running my office for the last four months are returning home. An influx of Navy (male) petty officers awaits. It's impossible to characterize exactly how having females in your office changes things. I can tell you a few certainties: we won't be decorating with internet-ordered party favors, posters, and rubber animalia for any upcoming holidays. We won't be stocking our closets with untold amounts of candy and skin lotion. And there will be far less giggling.
Remaining are our interpreters, Nancy and Farah, who are wonderful and teach me more about Arab life, language, and culture everyday than I've learned in 33 years prior.
The next 2.5 months will be pure chaos, as we try to get rid of this detention facility and its inhabitants, to be returned to the rightful owners: the people of Iraq, as embodied by their quasi-functional government.
And I remain,
Your humble Ian Rankin reader
Friday, October 16, 2009
Taji Mahal
I took my first ever helicopter flight this morning. I was terrified because, as I explained to my wife, and anyone else I saw this week, one only hears about helicopters when something awful happens, i.e., there's a crash.
My flight didn't crash. It was amazingly smooth. I was unaware that we had taken off, I heard and felt no turbulence for our ten-minute flight from Baghdad, and I was unaware that we'd landed in Taji.
Taji is about twenty miles north of Baghdad, and most of thos twenty miles are rural farmland. The area around the Tigris is well-irrigated and the farm plots look very much like those you'd find in, say, eastern Montana or southeast Idaho: hot, rocky land, split into formal agricultural divisions on which substantial houses sit. In short, it was self-evidently not an impoverished region. You could see why Sunnis didn't just want to hand this back to the Shia majority in 2003.
The base here is a sprawling artifact of the Iraqi army under Saddam. Chemical Ali's experimental labs are here. There's a massive tank graveyard. North of the prison, all sorts of debris and rubble get buried or burned, causing an acrid smoke to rise most hours of the day. It's much drier than Victory base camp, with less greenery. The architecture is more-solid; plenty of these buildings will survive the American departure. The Iraqi helicopter squadrons are trained and commissioned here, which is a point of pride for the cooperation of our fighting force. Throughout the day, the unique beige-desert-camouflaged Iraqi choppers circle the base, while the American green helicopters move in straight lines, shuttling soldiers and contractors around the region.
Life is more-spartan, relatively, than at Victory. Fewer people; less traffic; clunkier amenities. That said, compared to the front lines of our wars forty or even twenty ago, this is a decadent existence: I'm writing this entry from Green Beans Coffee Shop ("Honor First, Coffee Second") on my laptop computer, listening to my iPod, having just called my wife in a trailer, after attending karaoke night while stuffed with delicious sandwiches and melons.
If only the mother fracking Dodgers could bring me some joy ...
My flight didn't crash. It was amazingly smooth. I was unaware that we had taken off, I heard and felt no turbulence for our ten-minute flight from Baghdad, and I was unaware that we'd landed in Taji.
Taji is about twenty miles north of Baghdad, and most of thos twenty miles are rural farmland. The area around the Tigris is well-irrigated and the farm plots look very much like those you'd find in, say, eastern Montana or southeast Idaho: hot, rocky land, split into formal agricultural divisions on which substantial houses sit. In short, it was self-evidently not an impoverished region. You could see why Sunnis didn't just want to hand this back to the Shia majority in 2003.
The base here is a sprawling artifact of the Iraqi army under Saddam. Chemical Ali's experimental labs are here. There's a massive tank graveyard. North of the prison, all sorts of debris and rubble get buried or burned, causing an acrid smoke to rise most hours of the day. It's much drier than Victory base camp, with less greenery. The architecture is more-solid; plenty of these buildings will survive the American departure. The Iraqi helicopter squadrons are trained and commissioned here, which is a point of pride for the cooperation of our fighting force. Throughout the day, the unique beige-desert-camouflaged Iraqi choppers circle the base, while the American green helicopters move in straight lines, shuttling soldiers and contractors around the region.
Life is more-spartan, relatively, than at Victory. Fewer people; less traffic; clunkier amenities. That said, compared to the front lines of our wars forty or even twenty ago, this is a decadent existence: I'm writing this entry from Green Beans Coffee Shop ("Honor First, Coffee Second") on my laptop computer, listening to my iPod, having just called my wife in a trailer, after attending karaoke night while stuffed with delicious sandwiches and melons.
If only the mother fracking Dodgers could bring me some joy ...
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Stop the Insanitation
Forgive my failure to post a picture of the trip from Kuwait to Iraq. Here it is:
After getting out of the C-17, I spent the next day-and-a-half in yet another bay-scaled tent before moving into my own semi-private CHU [Containerized Housing Unit] on Camp Victory. This sad little victory of sorts -- nobody had authorized or instructed the move; I acted out of haste and frustration -- was stripped from me the next day. I was sent across the Victory Base complex to Camp Striker, where I settled (temporarily, as you'll see) in a smaller, dirtier, and less conveniently-situated CHU next to Camp Cropper, where I have "trained" for the past week and where the previously-mentioned butter story occurred.
Nowhere in my pre-deployment materials was I alerted to the rather disgusting physical contortions my body would go through in these initial weeks in Baghdad. The mild cough I picked up in South Carolina 5 weeks ago reappeared briefly in the Kuwaiti dust and has metastasized into a emphysemic hack here at Striker. Nightly, I exit my CHU to expectorate a vile concoction of dust, phlegm, and sand juice from my wee lungs. I fear waking up neighbors, but I fear more the grave larynx damage I'm doing with each heave.
I thought the cough would be the least of my concerns until, last Saturday night, at around 0130, I awoke to what I thought was somebody pressing a large kettle-ball on my mid-section. When I sat up and tried to remove the obstruction, I realized that the force was coming from the inside, eagerly moving out, not vice versa. I stumbled to the nearest port-a-john and unleashed Old Faithful in reverse. The galactic explosion of my bowel contents hitting the septic juice at the bottom of the shitter was probably the most terrifying fluid sound the critters living nearby have ever heard. I can only hope they became desensitized to it after hearing the same tumult 2.5-3 hours after each of my meals over the next two days.
Immodium having taken hold, I've now gone three days without evacuating, and my distended belly reminds me of those Sally Struthers commercials from her post-Meathead waning celebrity days.
Without violent shits or 3-packs-a-day heaves awakening me, you'd think I'd get some unfitful rest the past two nights. I would have, but for my skin. See, I got a rash. I don't know how, and I've never had a real rash before. But I got one. And it's horrible. It itches. Everywhere.
Like my legs: 
And my arms:
And my chest, butt, underarms, crotch, feet, and, most distressingly, my left eye, where a gumball-sized protrusion nearly eclipsed my sight from 10 o'clock-to-12 o'clockof the vision spectrum.
And my chest, butt, underarms, crotch, feet, and, most distressingly, my left eye, where a gumball-sized protrusion nearly eclipsed my sight from 10 o'clock-to-12 o'clockof the vision spectrum.I popped Benadryl like they were tic-tacs this morning and rubbed some of that cream on so thick I looked like Powder. The rash has subsided. But it might not have been the medicine. See, the ol' Henderson hygiene hasn't kept up with the standards of living here. I was wearing the same Kuwaiti-washed uniform and gym shorts for days on end. It was probably a combination of the Kuwaiti KBR chemical detergent and my own personal care failures that caused the rash. Lesson sort of learned. (I'm wearing the same filthy gym shorts I worked out in this afternoon.)
On the plus side: my shipmates and wingmen and Iraqi/Arabic linguist colleagues held a fun barbecue last night outside the CHUs; I'm all set to move my entire operation to Taji this weekend; and I've grown addicted to modern Arabic music. I'll write again from the northern Baghdad suburbs...
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Moo
I am in Camp Striker, though I "work" in Camp Cropper. Work is an approximation, as I don't actually do anything yet. For the past three days, I've been training, learning the operations and day-to-day activities of the lawyers in the detention operations here in Iraq, which I am to replicate up in Camp Taji.
Part of my training involved sitting in on the "Chiefs' Meeting" yesterday at the Cropper detention facility. The facility's structure is an amazing model of post-conflict law-enforcement, where the confinement facility serves as de facto state prison/p.o.w. camp/counter-insurgency re-education center. Aside from being imprisoned, the detainees are allowed a fair amount of autonomy, recreation, and socialization. Each compound is split into zones, and each zone has a Chief -- a detainee that runs his own zone. Weekly, the Chiefs convene to share their concerns and those of their zone with the commanding officer of the battalion running the facility. This is the Chiefs' Meeting.
Lots of the problems are trivial, but some are deep-seated sociological problems: e.g., The other Chiefs in my compound won't talk to me (because I am Sunni, or from Tribe [x], or city [y]. The interesting part of the meeting is how often the CO puts the answers or responsibilities for addressing each zone's concerns back on the Chiefs. "This is what leadership is about," he explains. "You have to talk to them. They have to talk to you." In essence, Figure it out. Play nice.
That was, until the last Chief, the real Takfiri (radical), raised his last concern: butter. Previously, the butter was good, now the butter is bad. There was a few moments of confusion as the interpreter and the CO tried to understand why this was a problem, and what the root was. Finally, it became clear. The new butter is from ... wait for it ... Denmark.
That's right. The detainees in Camp Cropper won't eat butter from Denmark because of the Mohammed cartoons that caused such a stir four years ago.
When the CO suggested that this was a stale issue, the Chief explained that it remained vital. We don't eat Denmark butter. No Denmark. We never forget.
We'll work on that, Chief.
Part of my training involved sitting in on the "Chiefs' Meeting" yesterday at the Cropper detention facility. The facility's structure is an amazing model of post-conflict law-enforcement, where the confinement facility serves as de facto state prison/p.o.w. camp/counter-insurgency re-education center. Aside from being imprisoned, the detainees are allowed a fair amount of autonomy, recreation, and socialization. Each compound is split into zones, and each zone has a Chief -- a detainee that runs his own zone. Weekly, the Chiefs convene to share their concerns and those of their zone with the commanding officer of the battalion running the facility. This is the Chiefs' Meeting.
Lots of the problems are trivial, but some are deep-seated sociological problems: e.g., The other Chiefs in my compound won't talk to me (because I am Sunni, or from Tribe [x], or city [y]. The interesting part of the meeting is how often the CO puts the answers or responsibilities for addressing each zone's concerns back on the Chiefs. "This is what leadership is about," he explains. "You have to talk to them. They have to talk to you." In essence, Figure it out. Play nice.
That was, until the last Chief, the real Takfiri (radical), raised his last concern: butter. Previously, the butter was good, now the butter is bad. There was a few moments of confusion as the interpreter and the CO tried to understand why this was a problem, and what the root was. Finally, it became clear. The new butter is from ... wait for it ... Denmark.
That's right. The detainees in Camp Cropper won't eat butter from Denmark because of the Mohammed cartoons that caused such a stir four years ago.
When the CO suggested that this was a stale issue, the Chief explained that it remained vital. We don't eat Denmark butter. No Denmark. We never forget.
We'll work on that, Chief.
Friday, October 02, 2009
Camping
This summer, after we spent a year accumulating outdoor and survival goods, my wife took me camping for the first two times in my life. Both in the Shenandoah National Park. Both car-camping in reserved lots. Despite minor frustrations with the fireplace on the second occasion, both times were terrific fun.
Neither trip this summer was very good preparation for ... camping in northwest Kuwait.
I don't have any pictures, but trust me when I say that the sunrises and sunsets were beautiful, and the other twenty-three hours of the day were fairly miserable. 26 people per tent, including a few of the least-pleasant, most-primadonnish senior officers in our fighting forces. Reveille at 0330, pre-empted at 0245 by a couple of early-rising noisemakers, MREs (which really aren't that bad) three meals a day, convoy trainings, walk-throughs, run-throughs, and executions in full body armor, and pervasive stinkiness.
I'm exaggerating the badness of the experience. It was pretty fun.
Two lessons. First, I have a truer-than-ever respect for the guys who did the patrols every day, in full body armor, in 115F degree heat, for a year, in hostile territory, and then another year, and then another year. They're amazing physical specimens, to say nothing of the mental and emotional toll that routine -- add also people shooting at you -- takes.
Second, every movie scene in which a pist0l-shooter walks across uneven terrain while firing accurately at his target is an absolute fiction. It's impossible.
In other news, looks like Col Reese's advice is being taken?
Neither trip this summer was very good preparation for ... camping in northwest Kuwait.
I don't have any pictures, but trust me when I say that the sunrises and sunsets were beautiful, and the other twenty-three hours of the day were fairly miserable. 26 people per tent, including a few of the least-pleasant, most-primadonnish senior officers in our fighting forces. Reveille at 0330, pre-empted at 0245 by a couple of early-rising noisemakers, MREs (which really aren't that bad) three meals a day, convoy trainings, walk-throughs, run-throughs, and executions in full body armor, and pervasive stinkiness.
I'm exaggerating the badness of the experience. It was pretty fun.
Two lessons. First, I have a truer-than-ever respect for the guys who did the patrols every day, in full body armor, in 115F degree heat, for a year, in hostile territory, and then another year, and then another year. They're amazing physical specimens, to say nothing of the mental and emotional toll that routine -- add also people shooting at you -- takes.
Second, every movie scene in which a pist0l-shooter walks across uneven terrain while firing accurately at his target is an absolute fiction. It's impossible.
In other news, looks like Col Reese's advice is being taken?
