Weather In Baghdad

4/20/2007 11:34:00 AM UTC +0300

I've never lived any place so inhospitable. Granted, most days are quite pleasant, even as the temperatures are approaching 40ºC, but some days are nearly unbearable.

Haze of the sort shown in the first photo is not unusual. The air is pretty bad here, but this kind of opacity can only be caused by dust being kicked up in the air by an unusually strong breeze from the north.

Dust storms are an entirely different beast than above. In the photo below, we're just about to get hit with a pretty bad one. You walk around in it because you have to, but it feels like you're getting your face shoved straight into a vacuum bag. Your mouth is closed, but you can taste it anyway; your eyes develop a thin crust of dust and tears; your nose is backed up for days.

This one below is my favorite. When you have high winds and high humidity, the dust will get picked up and absorbed into rain clouds. Everything turns orange. This photo was taken at around 0900 one morning. Note that all of the automatic street lights are on. I had the flash turned on by accident, but I actually like the sparkling of the mud drops.

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So It's Not Just My Imagination...

4/12/2007 11:24:00 PM UTC +0300

My job primarily involves sitting at a computer poring over spreadsheets. However, I do once in a while get out from behind my desk to interact with the procurement and logistics world more directly. Three weeks ago, I got to meet up with the supplier of the REVA here in the IZ.

We got to climb all over and ride around in one of these things. They ride pretty rough, but if you're being shot at you probably wouldn't care.

They also don't operate as much like a conventional car as I expected. Special military needs require that many parts of the vehicle function independently. To get this thing to move, you have to flip a bunch of switches, turn cranks, etc., in a prescribed manner. This is becoming problematic in the field, because misuse will often land a vehicle at the maintenance depot. Aside from repair time, malfunction may cost the user weeks because of the complexity of moving the vehicle across the country to a location where it can be repaired (see "The Cost Of The War" series). Will Iraqi forces be able to successfully utilize such an asset once we are no longer here to manage this logistical ordeal?

I rode out to this event with CDR Murphy-Sweet, one of our contracting personnel. The last time I saw him was a couple weeks ago, to congratulate him on his new assignment and to wish him luck. The military has a rather poor habit of praising every troop as though they possess inexhaustible moral fortitude and act with the force of God. I prefer to simply acknowledge greatness where it exists, and remain mute where it is lacking. CDR Murphy-Sweet was a good man.

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The Cost Of The War, Final Part

4/03/2007 11:21:00 PM UTC +0300

Here's an interesting account of what contractor convoy personnel go through.

It's funny, I sit behind my desk and type a bunch of stuff into spreadsheets and fill out paperwork, but I never see any of these vehicles, except on the rare occasion that they are being delivered to the IZ. My job feels almost completely imagined, but the above journal is so accurate to my own understanding of vehicle distribution, that I feel like my work thus far has been substantiated. If it's on the web it must be true!

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The Cost Of The War, Part II

4/01/2007 12:40:00 AM UTC +0300

I (intentionally) left a key element out of my last entry on the cost of the war. One of my initial assumptions when I first started learning about armed vehicle convoys was that the US military is accomplishing these missions. Not so! The teams moving these convoys are private organizations, largely consisting of veteran expatriates. They're trained every bit as well as our troops, have communications technology that probably surpasses any of our own (pure speculation here), and have seen situations grizzlier than most.

Contractors are taking over the American war zone. Jobs that were exclusively military responsibilities in previous engagements are now managed by companies like Halliburton, KBR, etc. They organize housing, manage construction projects, cook, clean... you name it. Taking this into consideration, American "troop" strength is probably twice all the manpower figures that you hear. What is the military even for anymore? There's certainly nothing about my job that necessitates military training.

We're also paying far more for their support than we'd ever give to our troops. Does this make sense? To some extent this is necessary, because our military is already stretched thin. If the US Government is willing to pay five times the average troop's salary for a contractor, why don't they just pay their troops more? They would certainly have an easier time recruiting for the Army if wages doubled.

The real issue, as I see it, is that this creates a problematic double-standard. In the military, we're persuaded that fighting for our country is about honor and discipline and serving the greater good of the American people. Or if you'd rather not join the military, it can be about making a ton of cash. Some day, honor and country will no longer be enough.

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