Living and working as a Paramedic in Iraq.
Oh yeah, I'm 53% done and my R&R is just around the corner. I'm still praying it goes off without a hitch- at least let me get out of the country for a break.
Not much new to say- my bags are packed and I'm ready to go skiing!
Well, after a small hiatus, I am back on thet net. I got a trojan horse that corrupted some files and in removal, it took others with it. When this happend, I lost the ability to use Javascript (among other things) so I was unable to post here or other places that use this format. I seem to be back though.
First things first I suppose- Happy Holidays to everybody! I got a Clemson sweatshirt, a Bah Humbug T-shirt (I'm wearing it as I type), a fleece lined shirt, some pens, a couple Calvin & Hobbes books (I'm almost done reading one of them- I always loved Calvin and Hobbes), and some candy. Thanks to the family and my Aunt & Uncle.
We (the KBR team) won the Call of Duty tournamet again last night; we are undefeated, but the Army guys are getting much better- the first round was close, the second round they managed to beat us, but the third we came back and beat them by about 20 kills. We left the MWR around 10PM; I'm usually asleep by then. I had a hard time falling asleep last night for some reason. I lay in bed listening to the jets go thundering overhead. We found out this morning that the insurgents had attacked some of the people trying to return to their homes in Fallujah so the military attacked them back. We had a low cloud cover with rain on an off so the noises of the engines were pretty loud. No, we're not that close to Fallujah, but the jets come near us when they are attacking there making their turns, etc. We normally hear more helicopters than jets; that's something I don't miss, the sound of aircraft overhead and contrails everywhere.
The bombing in the D-Fac at Mosul caused a bit of a stir. A very successful aatck on their part, a great loss on ours. It's a fine line when you are trying to train ING to take over, trying to show them respect and everything and then something like that happens. We had a group of them in our D-Fac today eating Christmas dinner with us. You could see them looking around and I couldn't help but wonder if they thought they were being scrutinized for the Mosul attack. They seemed to enjoy the food though and all of them appeared to be friendly with their American counterparts, especially their trainers. Thinking back on it, I don't recall any of them having weapons on them though- maybe they were disarmed when they came in the gate or maybe they left them in their trucks, I don't know.
I wanted to say hey to Buddah (Mike) too- I really appreciate the dialogue!
Well let me close this out, I'm trying to reload software and the computer needs to restart.
I'm 49% done!
Well we got the news yesterday that R&Rs are going to be a little touchy through the holiday season. There are apparently a whole lot of people traveling and everything is backed up. If Baghdad Airport shuts down for any length of time we are going to get screwed.
I really hope this goes off without a hitch.
In other news, we had to medivac a TCN last night for appendicitis. That's the first person we're had to evacuate since Chris or I have been here. He had surgery last night and is doing well we hear. Thanks to everyone who helped along the way.
I had to break down and open one of my Christmas presents- I knew what it was anyways. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004. I have been thinking about getting my private pilot's license and figured that I could get the ground school out of the way while I was over here.
I've started reading Aron Ralston's book Between a Rock and a Hard Place. So far it's a pretty good read. You may or may not remember the author name- he's the young climber who had his arm trapped by a boulder and, after several days with no rescue, cut it off to save himself.
Three days ago we had a group of trucks carrying T-walls pull up at the front gate shot up (they were not in a US convoy). One of the driver's managed to crawl from his truck before dying, two others were already dead. Three more dead Iraqis who were just trying to make a living. This whole situation is ridiculous. They were attacked a few miles down the road from us. I think I've heard explosions (off the FOB) every morning for the last few days along with sporadic gunfire.
Why shoot a busload of your country men just because they are trying to earn a living? In a country with rampant unemployment where people are trying to scrape out a living to support their families what sense does it make to kill them so that there is now no one to take care of their family? This is the act of thugs- not righteous warriors.
These people's line of thinking is so far from my own that I have a hard time fathoming how they've managed to make it this far.........
Disclaimer: my words are my own and don't represent anyone else's opinion. Heck, I'm probably wrong anyways.
Copied from a reply I wrote to a friend (edited for content):
"I am troubled and want you guys back, but am old enough to remember our withdraw from Vietnam with those poor individuals trying to grab the last chopper out of there. We are so deep now we should not leave the place in such a mess.
Your environmental diatribe disturbed me. I am having a really hard time supporting anyone (natives) over there. They are so far from my mindset. My wife wonders why there are no mothers speaking out. Surely they do not want to see there sons killed everyday. There have to be some reasonable people in that god forsaken place. It does not sound like it."
....... Admittedly though, the cultural differences are shocking in some regards.
Your wife wonders about why the mothers don't decry the deaths, well that too is cultural. They grieve and wail, but they also accept that it is Allah's will and that they will go to heaven for their sacrifice. We're not fighting a people so much as we are fighting thousands of years of Islamic thought. The Koran hasn't changed much since its inception and given the number of rules/laws/whatever laid out in it, there are bound to be discrepancies- which there are. Much as the Old Testament gives rules for general living along with ways to worship, the Koran sets forth general living guidelines too. Unfortunately, it doesn't really seem to leave room to adapt to modern society and so you have clashes occurring between the old ways of life and the new ways.
There are people with modern ways of thinking, but again, you are looking at a mostly agrarian society that had little use for or interaction with the government (as near as I can tell from what I've seen and read). They do interact with their religious organizations though and much of the education here is religion based so now you have indoctrination into a way of thought that hasn't changed much in a thousand years. Kind of scary isn't it?
If you look at the countries that have made a sincere effort to advance, notably Jordan, Kuwait, Dubai, and Saudi Arabia, only a percent of the people have made the changes and that has been against a lot of resistance. Religious laws still supersede, or more often are, the enforced judicial law. Beating your wife is still acceptable in Dubai (and other Islamic countries) as long as you don't kill her. Dubai is a country that now allows consumption of alcohol (again within certain guidelines) women don't have to dress traditionally, and prostitution is common in the bars, yet it's still OK to brutalize women.
Most of the people want the same things as anyone else- to be left alone to live their lives. I suppose the problem arises in that they seem to envision outside influence as a threat to this. Many seem to be lacking any real concept of the future- they live now and when they die they want to go to heaven, but what happens in between isn't really a reality to them if that makes any sense.
We, the American government, may have come in with good intentions, but, as the saying goes- The road to hell is paved with good intentions. If their own people aren't able to change the common man's thought processes, what are our chances? Unfortunately, I'd have to say none.
I suppose this whole experience has made me question my own religious beliefs (I was raised Presbyterian but I've considered myself agnostic for quite a few years now). As I read more and more news stories about the problems that Europe is having with the rapidly growing influx of Islamic culture, I believe that this is indeed a growing battle between religious thoughts. We in the west view this as a political endeavor; in the middle east, religion and politics are intertwined. You start to see the importance of separation of church and state.
If anything, Iraq should be a glaring example of what happens when you get people with varying beliefs together and try to make them all one people. It doesn't work. It never has, and it never will in my opinion. The only thing we all agree on is science and thats because science is defined by facts- repeatable experiments with a control, it's the theories that cause us so much problems; problems, because theories are just opinions and every one has their own and they justify them through emotion, not fact.
Wow, I just realized I'm rambling again. I'll stop now.
Wow, another 5 mile day! I'm actually starting to enjoy running like I did when I was in high school. I'm going for 6 on Saturday if everything is going well. The rampant cold/flu that has been in camp for a month now has got its claws on me and I'm trying to keep it at bay. I've got a cough, but no fever, etc. A little Robitussin at night helps me sleep and I wake up feeling pretty good.
Chris and I have decided to start running every day (except Sunday) and then work out in the afternoon. I rarely eat breakfast and lunch is all of about 15 minutes and a sandwich to go for dinner so I have plenty of time. My goal is ten miles before the end of the year. Funny, I can remember when my goal was to run the 4.3 mile perimeter road. Funnier still, when we started, I was having trouble with a mile.
On to the biodiesel part of today's notes. In my spare time I've been looking at alternative fuels. Yes I know I work for a company that makes most of its money off the oil and gas industry, but that doesn't mean I want to be a slave to the market. Soooo, with that in mind I've been looking at alternative means of power both for the home and the vehicle.
Biodiesel, for those who don't know what it is, is diesel fuel made with vegetable oil- commonly used fryer oil. This is the French fry oil at fast food restaurants, etc. When burned as fuel, it lubricates well, burns hotter and cleaner, and dumps less pollution into the air. All of these are good things. I've really gotten back on an environmental kick lately. The excess and waste in this country is appalling. I'm not talking about the army here, I'm talking about the Iraqis. I can't say much about the US except they do what they have to to dispose of waste. The Iraqis onto he other hand have no sense of environmental ethics that I can see. Kuwait was the same way. They just dump stuff wherever and I guess expect someone else to pick it up or Allah to take care of it or who knows...... There is every thing from food wrappers to cars and trucks scattered all over the place.
If you could collect and recycle just the plastic drink bottles here, you could make a fortune. Of course that would require investing in the technology to do so and that's still a limited market, but it's still an idea. Oh the places my mind goes sometimes.
Given the current state of the economy here and the unemployment rate and the fact that labor is so cheap, I'd love to see a CCC type program put into place (Civilian Conservation Corp for those of you wondering). The average person here will work for about $3/day with no real qualms about it. If all the numbnut zealots would quit blowing everything up, you could organize people into clean up crews to start cleaning up all of this mess. I'm not talking about just the trash, I'm talking about the war debris, and the junk that is everywhere. Put these people to work beautifying this place and you could have a halfway decent looking place. Fix the roads, clean up along them, repaint the towns and the mosques (they're usually quite colorful), start farming efficiently and practicing water conservation and quit fueding with the Jews and the Christians. When you think about the number of religious sites that are located here, and the number of people of all faiths who would love to see them, this place could do a booming religious tourism business. I know it sounds silly, but look how many people go to Israel to walk around and look at the desert. Hey, it could work I think.
Well I got off on a tangent, and it's time to go to bed so I'll call it quits for tonight........
