Getting Settled

These blogs are combed by the insurgents and their spineless “terror techies” around the globe for information about soldiers and bases in Iraq that will help the insurgents attack us. If you’ve never heard of a terror techie (I’m sure they have other names), just think Jordanian or Saudi male, 17 – 30 years old. Skinny with glasses. Erectile dysfunction. Wealthy family. Sits on the computer all day, telling people how to make bombs. Many of them have “jihad names” that translate into something like: Jimmy’s Father, from San Francisco. I know it sounds strange. You have to be a terrorist to understand it. I guess to them it sounds something like “The Terminator.” But anyway, they collect pictures that soldiers post on the internet and then send them to their terrorist pals. Well you are not going to see or read any of that stuff on my blog. All of those pictures will be posted when this war is over. Yes, that means a long time from now. So to all the terror techies, sitting there in front of the computer drinking your Coke, you’ll have to look somewhere else. Hey, here’s an idea: log off the net and come to Iraq, and I’ll show you what a real Marine ass kicking feels like.

Since that’s out of the way, I will just say that my job involves training the new Iraqi Army and police forces. Actually, I have several different jobs. The most important one involves antiterrorism and force protection (i.e., the protection of soldiers, civilian workers, and Iraqis). This involves coming up with a plan to defend our base with cement bunkers, security patrols, and various weapons. Of all of the 5 jobs I have now, it is the most fun, and the most “Marine-like.” I work with people from all four American services—Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. I also work with a whole bunch of US civilian contractors and civilians from other countries like Pakistan, the Philippines, and Bangladesh, and of course, Iraq. They are all good people that work very hard. You most certainly will not see pictures of my Iraqi friends on this website. From time to time, Iraqis that leave our base end up being killed because the bad guys find out that they work here. It is extremely sad when this happens. These people take incredible risks by coming to work here. To stay as safe as possible, they hardly ever go home. You will not see their pictures, but I will definitely tell you about them.

It is a cliché now that you can’t really understand what’s going on here unless you have actually been here. But unfortunately for you, it is true. Journalists give you a certain glimpse, but most people know that journalists have to take an angle when they present the news. That could be good. That could also mean they dissect the truth and arrange it in packages that taken by themselves are flat-out lies. A lot of them have a political agenda, though they may be in self-denial about it. Others want to sell papers or get promoted. Shit, maybe I have an angle, too. I don't know. But my aim here is just to call it as I see it. So at least you will have that. I want you to feel what it is like here, at least for a Marine Captain in this little part of the war. I am certainly not in heavy combat. I’m not kicking in doors or fighting for my life every day. But I do deal with the Iraqis quite a bit. And I have been getting around the battlefield to see what’s going on. So I hope that I’ll get the chance to write about some things that aren’t in the papers.

Life here on my base isn’t too bad. Not as cushy as on the American side of the base, but in many ways things here are better. I have my own small trailer that I share with another soldier. (We are completely separated, albeit by a paper-thin wall.) I have a small television and refrigerator in my room, and free internet service. The food here is pretty good. There is a gym. I really can’t ask for much more. Back in WWII the only way to contact your loved ones was by writing a letter. These took weeks to get the front lines. In Vietnam, same thing. But here in Iraq, I can use the web cam to talk to my kids. Though I've been gone three months, my two-year old son actually sort of knows who I am. (I don’t think he understands what a “Daddy” really is, though. To him, it is probably just the guy on the computer screen that makes funny faces... I'm "The Daddy Show.")

Well, I'm pretty much in a routine now. The days are long and hot and dusty here. The job is tedious. So every once in awhile, I get with some of the civilian contractors and other Marines, and we grab some guns and some ammunition, and we go shoot. It’s very manly, and very fun, and it keeps me from punching people in the face. So I like it. Enjoy the pictures.

Some Corner of a Foreign Field

April, 2006

Camp Taji

Just outside of the northwestern reaches of Baghdad there is a city called Taji. It’s a city that I know next to nothing about. Here’s what I’ve heard: for hundreds of years, Taji has been the place that Iraqis go to hide from the government.

It’s only 28 kilometers from the center of Baghdad. Grove after grove of date palms. Farms and mud huts near the banks of the Tigris. Multiple places to lay low. Plenty of people to hide you. Some that would turn you in, for the right price… or for no price at all. I guess it’s been that way for hundreds of years, and that’s the way it is now. In Taji, Sunni meets Shii, and right now that’s a recipe for disaster. And did I mention West meets East?


I live in a walled American city; a base, not surprisingly, called Camp Taji. The soldiers that serve here will some day, over beers at some VFW hall, say “Yeah, back in Iraq I served in Taji.” But most of them won’t mean “the Iraqi city of Taji.” Because most of them won’t leave the base. They’ll do their six months and then go home. Out there, the Iraqis have their Taji. This base is our Taji. The base here is divided into two parts that are separated by a sturdy barbed wire fence. One side is an “Iraqi Side”, home to thousands of Iraqi troops and the Americans that train and advise them. The other side is called the “Coalition Side.” (That’s a fancy name for “American Side.”) I happen to live on the Iraqi side. Some day the whole base will become an Iraqi Army base, as it was before we got here. But for now, it’s like East and West Germany. The American side has improved dirt roads and clean sidewalks. A movie theater. A Pizza Hut. A recreation center with pool tables and sodas. Bingo Night. Hip Hop Night. Salsa Night. Soldiers on the dance floor in their PT gear, trying to be the young kids they really are. A swimming pool. Basketball courts. Military police handing out speeding tickets. Then, when you pass through one of the gates that separates the two sides of the base, you are back in the third world again. The Iraqi Army guards wave you through after checking your ID, which they most certainly cannot read. I usually try to say a few words in Arabic to them, which they like. Their heads are often wrapped in a t-shirt or scarf, and they wear sunglasses. Not really to guard against the sun, but to guard against being marked by an informant as being in the Iraqi Army. Sometimes when Iraqi soldiers leave our base to visit their families, they don’t come back. Usually it is because they’ve been killed. Sometimes soldiers are killed soon after they leave the gate. The insurgents follow them and wait for a good place to shoot them.

After passing through the guard house and onto the Iraqi side of the base, you begin to hit potholes. Dusty streets. No speed limits. Terrible drivers. Iraqi soldiers hitchhiking rides to their barracks in the sweltering sun. Sewage ponds in parking lots. I live in a small compound on the Iraqi base; an island of America in the midst of their broken Iraqi buildings. The U.S. bombs all but demolished this place. Taji was once the home of the Republican Guard units that were charged with the defense of Baghdad. It was the home of tank factories, Scud plants, and special weapons research facilities—(“Chemical Ali” had a weapons lab here). It’s a huge base, and you never know what you might find if you start to drive around. There’s a huge dump of scrap metal, wood, and concrete. Random engines from Russian Migs, with titanium still gleaming underneath their rusted hulks. One day I wandered into the remnants of a driving school. I can only imagine what stories this place holds. Most of them will never be old. Today the base I live on is a place of contrasts. It is a dumping ground for thousands of blown up or rusted out Iraqi tanks, trunks, and artillery pieces. Yet it is also the home to a huge depot full of armored trucks and weapons that are building the new Iraqi Army. It isn’t strange for me to see a new “chocolate-chip” colored Iraqi Humvee speed down a road past a blown up Russian-made truck from a now long-gone era. And in the same way that many current Iraqi Army officers are former Republican guards or members of Saddam’s army, soldiers now roam the fields of junked out tanks to find parts for their newly refurbished ones. Things have come full circle for the Iraqis, though I’m not sure what that really means at this point.

Taji is my new home. When I got here in April of 2006, the war was still raging. And as I settled in for my first few nights in this place, I was sure that I would spend much time away from the war, a bit of time on the outskirts of it, and maybe some time right in the middle.