Back in the early days, almost everyone who arrived in Baghdad was given a gun—regardless of if you knew which way to point it. But times have changed. These days the Regional Security Officers use the privilege of taking a civilian [read: woman] to the firing range as a pick-up line in the sole venue for socializing on the Embassy compound—an outdoor, two picnic table "bar" open two nights a week till midnight, called the "Lock-n-Load." Despite the civilian firearm deprivation policy, there are guns everywhere. Military and security personnel are expected to have their weapons ever at-the-ready, so at the gym they are propped against equipment, at the pool they are stashed beneath chaise lounges, there is a pile of gunmetal on the periphery of the dance floor at salsa night (a poolside event that seems to be the only thing for which the Morale, Wellness and Recreation board has managed to hustle up more than forty people), and there are dirt-filled oil drums outside of compound facilities in which gun-toters are asked to discharge their weapons. I'm still not totally clear on what that means, but I think there are lots of bullets in that dirt because they need to clear the gun's chamber…I'll stop at that since I'm embarrassing myself.
\n \nDespite the latent hostility of it all, I am here after the International Zone, aka Green Zone, has been civilized. I feel both nausea and disappointment hearing cowboy tales of the wild days—when people of the Coalition walked with bags of cash to pay for "reconstruction projects," drove through the streets of Baghdad in "soft" cars (not armored convoys of Personal Security Details (PSDs)—the muscle-bound\n mercenaries that protect "Emboffs" or Embassy officials) as if Baghdad was the actual city in which they were living, drunkenly rode bicycles off of high dives into the palm-fringed pools reflecting Saddam\'s colossal always-gaudy-yet-sometimes-impressive palace, and told the elite of a nation how they were to run their government (not that this has changed much)…As wrong as things were then, the fact that they are more wrong now and growing continually wronger, and the fact that the Green Zone is a post-war Club Med with chlorine and palm oases dotting the barbed wire and concrete t-wall fortified city-within-a-city—I would almost prefer having been here when it all began and bureaucracy didn\'t camouflage our persistent ineptitude with procedures and badges and endless meetings, briefings, memos, and cables that get sucked into some policymaking black hole…\n\n \nBut enough of my diatribe and on to some details. After spending my first week in a "transient" trailer (that was big enough for just a twin bed and a nightstand) that required walking 500 feet to the communal bathroom trailer, last Friday I moved into my luxurious split trailer where a shared bath divides a large trailer into two single-occupancy rooms. There are sandbags piled between the trailers to block shrapnel (and life-giving, mood-balancing natural light), but my trailer community is actually among the better, newer zip codes in the Embassy compound. The main drawback is that the enclave is in the "firing line" of the Blackhawk route, so the roar of the helicopters goes on night and day. All "permanent" trailers have TVs (some with built-in DVD, but not mine!) with approximately twenty cable channels, air conditioning units that seem intent on enabling glacial formation, a twin bed, a bureau, a desk, and a chair. (I was warned about the standard-issue "linens" provided, but I could not imagine that such transformations could befall a sheet! They really feel like sandpaper after the thousand-washing nubs of thread ball into grainy spikes. Thankfully, I heeded some warnings and brought a pillow—the one provided is like a bag of balled-up gym socks. And I thought I was civilian, not military! Such hardships…)\n",1]
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Despite the latent hostility of it all, I am here after the International Zone, aka Green Zone, has been civilized. I feel both nausea and disappointment hearing cowboy tales of the wild days—when people of the Coalition walked with bags of cash to pay for "reconstruction projects," drove through the streets of Baghdad in "soft" cars (not armored convoys of Personal Security Details (PSDs)—the muscle-bound mercenaries that protect "Emboffs" or Embassy officials) as if Baghdad was the actual city in which they were living, drunkenly rode bicycles off of high dives into the palm-fringed pools reflecting Saddam's colossal always-gaudy-yet-sometimes-impressive palace, and told the elite of a nation how they were to run their government (not that this has changed much)…As wrong as things were then, the fact that they are more wrong now and growing continually wronger, and the fact that the Green Zone is a post-war Club Med with chlorine and palm oases dotting the barbed wire and concrete t-wall fortified city-within-a-city—I would almost prefer having been here when it all began and bureaucracy didn't camouflage our persistent ineptitude with procedures and badges and endless meetings, briefings, memos, and cables that get sucked into some policymaking black hole…
But enough of my diatribe and on to some details. After spending my first week in a "transient" trailer (that was big enough for just a twin bed and a nightstand) that required walking 500 feet to the communal bathroom trailer, last Friday I moved into my luxurious split trailer where a shared bath divides a large trailer into two single-occupancy rooms. There are sandbags piled between the trailers to block shrapnel (and life-giving, mood-balancing natural light), but my trailer community is actually among the better, newer zip codes in the Embassy compound. The main drawback is that the enclave is in the "firing line" of the Blackhawk route, so the roar of the helicopters goes on night and day. All "permanent" trailers have TVs (some with built-in DVD, but not mine!) with approximately twenty cable channels, air conditioning units that seem intent on enabling glacial formation, a twin bed, a bureau, a desk, and a chair. (I was warned about the standard-issue "linens" provided, but I could not imagine that such transformations could befall a sheet! They really feel like sandpaper after the thousand-washing nubs of thread ball into grainy spikes. Thankfully, I heeded some warnings and brought a pillow—the one provided is like a bag of balled-up gym socks. And I thought I was civilian, not military! Such hardships…)
\n \nComparatively speaking, the USAID (US Agency for International Development, for those of you who are blissfully unaware of this organization) compound is really swank. These globe-trotting, poverty fighting democracy-spreaders have built stucco homes that resemble an \nArizona retirement community, they have a quasi-restaurant that uses local products (rather than the weeks-frozen, preservative-ridden Midwestern fare fried to oblivion in the D-FAC or dining facility), and a tiki bar! AND their solid structures cost less to build than the prefab shanties that house the lackeys of the world\'s largest embassy…but I cannot get started on the graft and mismanagement that abounds here or I will resort to $%#@&*?!+%@$#*&! I will only state that \nU.S. taxpayers fork over $33 per person per meal to serve prison food, and contractor, Parsons, continues to get government construction contracts despite the fact that they have yet to complete a project (they were paid to build 150 health clinics and built 20)…and those examples are just the tip of the iceberg. Good thing the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR)—the body auditing activities here—is working at the speed of government, or those responsible might not have retired to Bermuda by the time we realize how truly catastrophic this boondoggle is…\n\n \nA bit on danger: Since I have been here, there has been one incident of mortar fire in the IZ. We had to stand in the marble halls of the palace—away from the windows—until the Great Voice told us it was safe to go back to work. Another morning I awoke to faint thuds of distant mortars—it turned out that shops selling beer outside the IZ had been targeted by conservative elements. There was one "controlled detonation" of a suspicious package that turned up at the Post Office, and then there was the truly unfortunate event of the CBS crew the other day…I have been into the "Red Zone" three times now—each time in a convoy of two armored SUVs and two Humvees with snipers. The drivers tear through the streets, zigzagging along pre-planned routes (an advance team will determine the routes, but they will change the ways they get to the same location to avoid ambushes) to prevent possible suicide car-bombers from penetrating the convoy. On my most recent trip to the Ministry of Oil, we got stuck in traffic and the burly PSDs from the other SUV exited their vehicle in their Kevlar vests and helmets (we need to wear them in the RZ, too) and surrounded our SUV, facing the Iraqis on the street with their semiautomatic weapons brandished. This type of travel does not win us friends. Ambassador Khalilzad joined our meeting that day with the new Minister of Oil, but he was deposited just outside the entryway of the building in a "Little Bird" helicopter. There were no fewer than 50 PSDs on hand for this event—truly a small army. In contrast, today I was visited by someone on the Hostage Task Force asking about a technocrat in the Ministry—evidently he had been kidnapped. When it comes to \n",1]
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Comparatively speaking, the USAID (US Agency for International Development, for those of you who are blissfully unaware of this organization) compound is really swank. These globe-trotting, poverty fighting democracy-spreaders have built stucco homes that resemble an Arizona retirement community, they have a quasi-restaurant that uses local products (rather than the weeks-frozen, preservative-ridden Midwestern fare fried to oblivion in the D-FAC or dining facility), and a tiki bar! AND their solid structures cost less to build than the prefab shanties that house the lackeys of the world's largest embassy…but I cannot get started on the graft and mismanagement that abounds here or I will resort to $%#@&*?!+%@$#*&! I will only state that U.S. taxpayers fork over $33 per person per meal to serve prison food, and contractor, Parsons, continues to get government construction contracts despite the fact that they have yet to complete a project (they were paid to build 150 health clinics and built 20)…and those examples are just the tip of the iceberg. Good thing the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR)—the body auditing activities here—is working at the speed of government, or those responsible might not have retired to Bermuda by the time we realize how truly catastrophic this boondoggle is…
A bit on danger: Since I have been here, there has been one incident of mortar fire in the IZ. We had to stand in the marble halls of the palace—away from the windows—until the Great Voice told us it was safe to go back to work. Another morning I awoke to faint thuds of distant mortars—it turned out that shops selling beer outside the IZ had been targeted by conservative elements. There was one "controlled detonation" of a suspicious package that turned up at the Post Office, and then there was the truly unfortunate event of the CBS crew the other day…I have been into the "Red Zone" three times now—each time in a convoy of two armored SUVs and two Humvees with snipers. The drivers tear through the streets, zigzagging along pre-planned routes (an advance team will determine the routes, but they will change the ways they get to the same location to avoid ambushes) to prevent possible suicide car-bombers from penetrating the convoy. On my most recent trip to the Ministry of Oil, we got stuck in traffic and the burly PSDs from the other SUV exited their vehicle in their Kevlar vests and helmets (we need to wear them in the RZ, too) and surrounded our SUV, facing the Iraqis on the street with their semiautomatic weapons brandished. This type of travel does not win us friends. Ambassador Khalilzad joined our meeting that day with the new Minister of Oil, but he was deposited just outside the entryway of the building in a "Little Bird" helicopter. There were no fewer than 50 PSDs on hand for this event—truly a small army. In contrast, today I was visited by someone on the Hostage Task Force asking about a technocrat in the Ministry—evidently he had been kidnapped. When it comes to
U.S. personnel and Iraqi personnel, there is not much of a spread in risk here. My next trip out will be this Friday--to the State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO), located in the notorious slum of Sadr City…hopefully the convoy will be unable to achieve such speeds that I can't see life on the streets. Spending 12-14 hours working in the Palace in the IZ (it's true—and only a one-day weekend if you're lucky!), we—the Emboffs—really know nothing of Iraq…
