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It’s a Conspiracy--the Blog
The thing about conspiracies, apparently, is that it takes a lot to explain ’em.
The “Clouds Over America” conference at the Character First! Character Training Institute in the old downtown Holiday Inn took more than 12 hours to go through the host of conspiracies threatening to take over Oklahoma (and the WORLD!). Of course, the conference was sponsored by the granddaddy of conspiracy theory diviners, the John Birch Society.
Clearly, however, Sally Kern was a headliner. Speaking at the banquet Friday evening, Kern made a point of going over, bullet point by bullet point, each tenet of the Homosexual Agenda. In addition to the quotes published in the Oklahoma Gazette, Kern also spoke of the “Gay Mafia”.
I do recall the episode of Will and Grace, in which the head of the Gay Mafia was revealed to be none other than Elton John. I suppose I could have handled that. But no, apparently it’s even deeper and darker and scarier than that.
She stated the name of the guy. Since I might be defaming someone, I won’t restate it here. That, and I don’t want to be found dead in bed, nude, painted magenta. She sure made him and his folks sound scary:
“He along with a handful of other millionaires and billionaires are called the ‘cabinet’ of the gay mafia, and they spend millions of dollars in local and state races to compete…to defeat conservatives or anyone who opposes same sex marriage,” Kern told the diners. “They are not tied to the political agenda of the Democrat Party. They are concerned only about the agenda of the homosexuals. Very seldom do they give their money to federal causes. They want to concentrate on local and state races.”
Dang! And it just so happens that Sally Kern is a STATE legislator!
Kern did make a plea for understanding, citing criticism of her past statements about gays.
“We are at a different situation in our country today where disagreement is considered hate,” Kern said. “That’s really sad. The political process or democracy revolves around the free discourse and exchange of ideas to talk about the merits and the pros and cons of issues. When you start saying that just to disagree with someone is the same as hate, that’s a pretty dangerous situation.”
If you think that’s dangerous, consider the long string of glittering generality State Senator Randy Brogdon spoke of during his part of the dinner entertainment. Our problem in this country, the Owasso Senator said, was that we no longer have our eye on Freedom. That’s right. Apparently a great watcher of many movies and TV shows, Brogdon reminded the crowd of that scene in Apollo 13, where Tom Hanks was having to steer the spaceship back from the Moon by aiming at the Earth by sight.
“We have taken our eyes off of the fixed reference point of Freedom,” Brogdon said. “We’ve turned our back on the founding fathers. We’ve turned our back on the very thing that propelled this great nation into existence. Freedom and liberty. The thing that moved us in the direction and has promoted life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness for millions of people over the years. We’ve taken our eyes off the fixed reference point of Liberty.”
He never explained what he meant by “Freedom,” but it is apparently interchangeable with “Liberty”. “Freedom” is also, paradoxically like a wall. He referenced a wall in the Bible that some guy had to rebuild around some biblical town (NOT Sodom or Gomorrah, I promise). Anyway, God, who is omnipotent, told this guy to rebuild the wall. The guy thought it daunting, until he decided to ask all his neighbors to rebuild their own part of the wall. They did, and the wall was rebuilt.
“Folks, that’s what we need to do today. We need to rebuild the wall of Freedom in America,” Brogdon said. “We need to start in our own home, in our own church, and in our own community. If we rebuild that wall of Freedom, American can return and will return to the roots that God gave us. “
So…uh…. Freedom is sort of like a wall. But Freedom apparently does NOT mean watching whatever you like on TV.
“The moral decay of this nation is getting rampant,” Brogdon said. “How is it, when I grew up, as a nation sitting in front of the TV, how we’ve gone from Father Knows Best to Will and Grace? From I Love Lucy to Sex in the City? Ozzie and Harriet to Two and a half men? How has our nation shifted from one nation under God, to perversion and scandal around this country? How has our nation shifted from Liberty for all, to favor for few and bondage for many? From Love of country to self-indulgence. How have we become so dependent on government from people who were dependable for service and sacrifice? I’ve got the answer folks, wanna hear it? We’ve taken our eyes off the fixed reference point of Freedom.”
If you ask me, that reference point is anything but “fixed.” It’s a wall, it’s a spaceship, it’s…Freedom!
He did leave some hope for us. Reese Witherspoon.
“One of our brilliant legal minds recently stated that one honest voice can be louder than the crowd.” (Amen, the crowd said loudly.) “That was Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde II. I don’t know about the messenger, but the message rings true to me.”
Then, so help me God, he compared her to Sally Kern.
“It just takes one person, one idea, somebody like a Sally Kern willing to make a stand who can make a difference in this dark world that we are in.”
By this point, I’d believe anything. I went home and watched Napoleon Dynamite.
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The mind body connection in depression
In 2006, Psychiatrist Gregory Simon and other researchers at the Group Health Center for Health Studies in Seattle charted the connection between depression and obesity.
That study showed that obese subjects had as much as a 44 percent greater chance to also have a mood/anxiety disorder, such as depression.
With such a strong correlation, Simon said exercise can be a vital element not only to physical well-being but to mental health as well. He said his is far from the only study on the subject, but they all point in the same direction.
“People who suffer from clinical depression are probably around one and a half times as likely to be overweight or obese, and it goes the other way too. People who are overweight or obese are probably somewhere around one and a half times as likely to suffer from clinical depression,” Simon said. “Some say one and a quarter, some say twice as often, but it’s probably a fair average…if you say which comes first, the answer is that the street runs in both directions.”
While many know how hard it is to lose weight, and just as many know how hard it can be to “buck up” from depression or anxiety—both of those conditions has a solution in behavior, Simon said; exercise.
“Certainly we know exercise helps people lose weight…and there is evidence that shows that exercise has an antidepressant effect. It’s not a huge, powerful effect, but there are some pretty good studies that show organized exercise helps people who are depressed. A core part of a lot of effective counseling programs for depression is about reactivating people, helping people to get activated about doing positive things, being more active and doing things they enjoy…but physical activity needs to be a part of that too.”
In a recent article in Oklahoma Gazette, studies pointed out Oklahoma’s high obesity rate was likely linked to our area’s terrible rating in walkability. Is our high rate of depression also linked?
The study concluded that there is “a significant association between neighborhood walkability and depressive symptoms in older men. Further research on the effects of neighborhood walkability may inform community-level mental health treatment and focus depression screening in less-walkable areas.”
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Bush and the shoes
Those shoes thrown at President George W. Bush’s head — how did that happen? Where was security?
That was the first thing I thought after watching the AP video of a dissident “journalist” throwing his shoes at the President. When I spent time in Baghdad in the spring of this year with Oklahoma’s National Guard, the 45th Infantry Brigade, I had to get badged in order to attend any press conferences while in country.
Getting badged was a huge deal. It took hours to get my press credentials. I had to get fingerprinted, have my retinas scanned, and turn over samples of my DNA, all for the right to attend a press conference. It was an intimidating process, involving state department and FBI background checks. So, I got my little driver’s license for the free press. The only consolation is that I knew a few of the Oklahoma City folks in the badging office and got a story out of it. (Getting badged as “press” didn’t help at all. It meant they could pigeonhole me easier.)
One issue mentioned to me at the time is that badging local Iraqi officials was a security issue. They saw the badges as (perhaps rightly) a privilege signifying access granted to those with power. They wanted them for their family members, cousins, friends and as favors to those whom they wanted to impress. Back then, U.S. military officials warned that it would be a problem down the line.
Was this proof of that? A nutcase with an Iraqi-access press badge got close enough to nearly bean the president with shoes. What if he had thrown something else?
And had he been vetted like I was?
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Quick study?
I hope.
A thing about being a staff writer, especially at a paper like Oklahoma Gazette, is that you have to immediately home in on a subject and write intelligently enough about it in order for it to be basically correct.
Oh, sure. One can perhaps not be keen on the difference between sauté and fry if writing about a political cookout. But in order to write about French cooking, it might be a good idea to learn. (Nope, no idea here about what difference between the two). At a paper like this one, I have to jump hip deep into a subject—usually a couple of different subjects—any given week.
At larger papers, reporters get “beats.” If you’re assigned to cover education, then that’s your “beat.” You pretty much get to learn the nuances of school board meetings and such. Soon you can doing a driving tour of various OKC schools while sleepwalking in your pajamas.
Here, you might still be in pajamas, but you wake up in a new world every day.
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Baby meet bathwater
It was an interesting interview with Dave Dank, incumbent Republican Representative for House District 85. Among the most interesting things he told me was that he’d considered the $18 million dollar transferable tax credit that Rocketplane got from the state was ridiculous. He noted that the first thing they did was sell it to a financial institution.
Dank called it a boondoggle.
“They (Rocketplane) sold it for something like $15 million. They got cash. The company got the tax cut, and the taxpayer got nuthin,” Dank said.
It was a good conversation. He created rapport regarding a subject both Scott Cooper and I wrote about that he found interesting. It provided a smooth segue into his message of fiscal conservatism on behalf of his campaign.
Thus, he had his say in Oklahoma Gazette, which is the state’s third largest paper by the way. His opponent, Democrat Bart Jay Robey, had his own say as well, taking Dank to task over not voting to fund insurance for poor children in Oklahoma, a matter that certainly sounds worthy of debate. There is no doubt that 60,000 some-odd people within our circulation area will get at least a chance to glance at both of their messages. Those readers will have a week to get to those stories and mull over their messages.
Oddly, in the two other races I covered, the Republican candidates refused to call me back. I know they got my messages. I know they got my emails. I called the state party leaders who also passed messages on to them.
Republican Jason Nelson, a registered lobbyist on file with the state Ethics Commission, faces Democrat Dana Orwig, a teacher at St. John’s Episcopal School and a deacon with the same church, for the House District 87 seat. By all accounts, the race is close.
So why did Jason Nelson give the floor totally over to his opponent, in addition depriving potential voters of an honest message from him? It’s his loss, and it could turn out to be literally true. The readers will get a week to mull over whether they want a lobbyist or a teacher to be their representative. Yep, those papers will be on stands throughout the district for a whole week. A whole, long week.
Same goes for Republican Mike Christian. He also refused to return repeated calls and emails. He faces Democrat David Castillo for the house district 93 seat, and as well faces independent candidate Jack Cherry. Both Cherry and Castillo called back…
Even though Nelson and Christian gave interviews with the Oklahoman, they didn’t with Gazette. What gives there?
When I called state Republican Party chair Gary Jones, he bewilderingly told me to call the Oklahoma Democratic Party.
“They are pretty good at getting numbers like that,” he said.
Really? The vaunted Oklahoma Republican Party can’t call its own candidates? It was hard for me not to laugh out loud (I may have, now that I think of it).
State Republican Party spokesman Patrick Moir said the candidates might be apprehensive about talking to Gazette about their campaigns.
"It may be that they don't see the Gazette as all that friendly to the Republican party," Moir said.
Well, when they ignore Gazette’s 60,000 readers in the core of their own districts, they aren’t that friendly to themselves, are they?
A side note here. I’ve been a bit absent from this blog for about a month. Both my hands and Scott’s hands got full with the Oklahoma Risin’ series. Now you can expect some value-added. Stay tuned.
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Riding Right
A letter responding to our article on Bike Commuting came from J. Ray, who said he like the article. However, J. had a comment and a question:
Q: “The Gazette article indicates that I should occupy a lane of traffic as if I were driving a car, rather than trying to stay very near the curb in order to stay out of the way of other vehicles. If I am on the street, which only has one lane of traffic going in my direction, I can’t imagine that the drivers of the motor vehicles behind me are going to be happy going the same speed as I am….
“My question is one that I truly hope will elicit an answer from someone in law enforcement or city government. When riding my bike, I obey traffic laws more conscientiously than most other bicyclists that I observe. I signal my turns, and I stop at stop signs….When I approach a traffic light, however, I have a problem. I am not heavy enough to activate many of the sensors in the street that regulate the lights. If there is no other traffic going in my direction, I could wait a long time for a green light. In this situation, how many minutes (or hours) should I wait before running the red light?”
A: J., Thanks for that. The information regarding occupying the lane came from Steve Schlegel, of Schlegel Bicycles on Broadway in Downtown Oklahoma City. His advice sounds pretty knowledgeable, and I think it’s worth pointing out that he regularly bike commutes from Edmond to his shop. He said:
“If I have problems with people passing too close, I pull out to the left to the point they almost have to exit the lane and make a true effort to pass me, as opposed to squeezing through a lane. That’s when most cyclists have problems.
“Cars (by law) must stay three feet away from a cyclist.
“I think a lot of times cyclists put themselves in a difficult situation by riding too far to the right. We advise people to ride in the passenger tire track. That gives them about two feet to the edge of the roadway. If by chance you feel pressure from the cars you do have an area of exit. Another thing is that part of the roadway is swept by the vehicular traffic and most of the debris ends up in that last 18 inches. From a standpoint of reducing flat tires you’ll have less of those issues as well by riding far enough into the lane.
“If you have a wide enough shoulder you can ride in them, but again, if they are not swept well you can end up with a lot of debris.”
I have to admit as well, J., that it can be unnerving to drive in heavy traffic with a lot of cars coming up your backside. What if they clip you? What if they zoom on up and don’t see you, like newspaper columnist Robert Novak did that cyclist in DC? I’ve been hit on a bike, and it ain’t fun.
Yet, I’ve certainly heard Schlegel’s advice from other cyclists as well.
And what about that issue with the traffic lights? Dang, I admit, J., that I’ve run the light when I got in the left-hand turn lane and waited through a couple changes of the light, when it became obvious the thing couldn’t detect my bicycle. But is that right way to handle it?
Right now, I’ve got a call into the OKC police about this subject, so let’s see what they say.
One thing that I’m fairly sure is the right thing to do is to ride with traffic (and J. didn’t ask about this, but a number of you have). Sure, you’ll hear others telling you to ride against traffic so you can see them coming and get out of the way. After all, I heard for years that walkers should walk against traffic for just that reason. But bikes are different. On a bicycle, you are often clipping along at around 15 mph. Ever hit something dead on at that speed? I have. Smushed my bike’s front end and racked both my shins and forearms. Ruined the bike and I had purple shins for a couple weeks.
Well, when you are going against traffic, you have to consider closing speed. That means you add your speed to the approaching car’s speed. So, if you are going 15 mpg, and the car is approaching at 25 mph, what’s the real speed that you collide? How about 40 mph. Think that would make a difference? Yes it does — a life or death difference.
So, ride with the traffic.
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Bike Commuting — the tips
Commuting by bicycle has great upside to it.
One, by bicycling back and forth to work, or for errands around the ‘hood, one doesn’t pay the $3.50-$4 a gallon just to pick up a half-gallon of milk or to pop by the library to return the overdue book. After a month, you really do notice a difference in the pocketbook.
Steve Schlegel, owner of Schlegel Bicycles in Oklahoma City, said sales are up, and those who are buying the bikes for serious errand-running or commuting are able to pay for them after only a couple of months, due to the gasoline savings.
However, there are some things to consider when it comes to bicycle commuting, he said. Schlegel said he regularly commutes from Edmond to Oklahoma City.
“You’ll need a feel for what your commute time will be on a daily basis,” Schlegel said. “My commute has a predominant south wind and my commute time can be greatly affected by wind on a given day. If I was on a tight time schedule, that’s something to anticipate. You don’t want employees showing up late for work.”
Choosing the right route is probably one of the top considerations. Schlegel suggested that consulting the route map created by Oklahoma City’s planners is a good place to start. The routes are color-coded according to difficulty.
OKC police Sgt. Rick Pierce, who also regularly commutes by bike, said routes should be chosen on the basis of how much traffic the would-be rider will have to contend with. Safety is a very big concern and the route to be chosen may not necessarily be the most direct path.
“I’ve always chosen my routes on based on volume of traffic, access, and the hazards that might be presented at the time I am traveling,” Pierce said. “I’m not afraid to go out of my way to avoid significant traffic…First and foremost, I’m looking for light traffic. A good road surface is a bonus, nice smooth wide road. If it’s a four-lane road, it gives people room and me more space.”
Both Schlegel and Pierce said that having a place to shower after riding, before work, will likely be important to the bike commuter. While a few professions can have their work arrive stinky and sweaty, most would like someone with loftier grooming standards.
Pierce said he is lucky in that, as a bicycle police officer in Bricktown, he doesn’t have to change into formal clothing. He just puts on his bicycling police uniform upon arriving at work and then takes right back out on the streets on a department bicycle.
“When I ride to work, I have to dress to ride. Then when I get to work, I have to dress to work. I’m lucky because I’m going to go out and ride my bike again,” Pierce said. “I don’t have to be ready for a boardroom conference with a coat and tie. If you are in that situation, that adds a significant amount of difficulty with that situation.”
Both Pierce and Schlegel told of picking a “car” day (like when it’s raining too hard to bike, or when something large needs to be carried) and dropping off a load of clean clothes and picking up the old ones.
“I’ll usually pick a day of the week I know I’ll have to drive one day or another, ” Schlegel said. “I call it my exchange day. I’ll bring clean clothes from the house and take the dirty clothes home. You’ll want a sufficient wardrobe at work. You could do it with a backpack on a daily basis, but I enjoy the freedom of not having to carry a bunch of stuff on most of my commutes.”
As for a shower, Schlegel said if your place of work doesn’t have one, he suggested getting a membership at a downtown health club to use their shower. He said his shop is planning to incorporate showers and clothing storage on-site.
“Find a facility. Some businesses have affiliations with a downtown health club. Even on-premise area for a shower. We’re proposing a limited membership with the YMCA where it’s just for shower facilities alone.”
Finally — and it can’t be stressed enough — use a helmet. Studies show that serious injuries or death on bicycles are reduced considerably when the rider wears a helmet.
“I learned a long, long time ago in all the sports I participate in that I’m not a professional. The absolute best riders on the planet wear a helmet. I don’t think I’m better than those guys are. When the Tour De France is on, those guys wear a helmet. I always have my helmet on,” Pierce said.
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Oklahoman dead in Iraq
Just because we haven’t heard much from the folks in Iraq of late doesn’t mean they aren’t in danger.
According to The Associated Press, at least 10 people, including four Americans, died in an attack in Baghdad’s Sadr City Tuesday.
One was identified by the U.S. State Department as Steven L. Farley of Guthrie, a member of a Provincial Reconstruction Team, military-civilian units that help with rebuilding efforts in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
In Berlin, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice praised Farley’s public service. She said Farley was in the U.S. Navy Reserve, mobilized after 9/11. She also said he served on the U.S. Seventh Fleet’s staff in the Western Pacific. Rice said Farley joined the State Department last year.
“Along with thousands of other citizen-patriots, he volunteered to serve in Iraq, joining the State Department in 2007,” Rice told AP. “He was one of the hundreds of dedicated men and women serving on Provincial Reconstruction Teams, helping the citizens of Iraq to rebuild and revitalize their local governments after years of Saddam's tyranny.”
Rice expressed gratitude and sympathy to Farley’s family, including his wife, according to the AP.
Records show Farley was a Republican candidate for state office in 2004.
According to the reports, a bomb exploded during a meeting with local members of an area council, killing many attending.
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 Oklahoma adjutant general visits Iraq
The commander of Oklahoma’s military forces visited the Thunderbirds on their mission in Iraq recently, according to a release.
Maj. Gen. Harry Wyatt III, Oklahoma’s Adjutant General, met with troops of the 45th Infantry Brigade, Oklahoma’s National Guard, while they are conducting detainee operations in the Baghdad area.
Wyatt inspected a program in which Iraqi detainees are learning carpentry skills, much of it being taught by Oklahoma guard, the release said. Wyatt thanked the soldiers for their service.
“One thing about the Guard, everywhere we go, we leave it better,” Wyatt said. “Whatever the mission, we bring a lot of talent to it.”
Wyatt said he looks forward to welcoming the soldiers back from Iraq when their mission ends, expected this fall.
“By all reports you’re doing an excellent job,” said Wyatt. “This has been a great day. The next best day will be when I welcome you back onto Oklahoma soil.”
More than 3,000 Oklahoma National Guard men and woman are serving in Iraq. Currently, another unit of the Oklahoma National Guard, the 45th Fires Brigade out of Enid, is readying for deployment later this summer. An artillery unit, the Fires Brigade numbers about 800.
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Get sick with impudence
For those in Iraq, I thought you all might like some good news. Oklahomans may have solved the problem of infectious disease.
In a nutshell, a doctor at Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation in Oklahoma City, with Judith James at OMRF and Rafi Ahmed of Emory University, together with other researchers, cloned human antibodies.
Those are those white blood cells that your body produces when a germ, bacteria or virus, is introduced into the body. When Docs vaccinated the soldiers with multiple vaccines, those soldiers’ bodies produced antibodies that keep them from getting Hepatitis, Anthrax, the flu, tetanus, and all those other squirmies that awash war zones.
Well, the docs at OMRF used the antibodies to kill the flu. Already, Wilson explained to me, they grew antibodies that stop (in the lab) the recently emerged Solomon Islands flu strain.
“Just one week ago we produced the first human antibodies, ever, that we know of, for this new strain of flu,” Wilson said. “We are generating the antibodies and we have some good commercial partners who can develop them so they can be tested in organized clinical trials.”
You can read about their story in the journal Nature, or in Scientific American.
What does this mean? Dr. Wilson explained that virtually any disease with which one can be infected can be cured this way. If someone was to come down with that flu, and they hadn’t been immunized, then if you put a dose of fresh-cloned, resistant antibodies into their blood, it would fight their flu, even cure it.
Ebola? “Yes,” Wilson said. Anthrax? “Yes.” The flesh-eating virus? “Yes.”
And the Docs can grow as many antibodies as they want, and even freeze the stuff for later if an epidemic breaks out.
This breakthrough isn’t like other research advances you hear about. This didn’t happen in a mouse and now has to go through decades of testing, etc, before it makes it to market, if ever. The antibodies were cloned from those already growing in people. No animal (but us) in the loop.
“It’s not just some chemical we are going to stick in people and hope they don’t get sick,” Wilson said. “We are already filled with antibodies. What we do make is much more likely to be safe.”
Is there a caveat to any of this? Well, the actual curative effects must still be tested in those humans, and then it comes to putting it to use, and there are a lot of miles yet to go. Wilson said that it’s up to the FDA, the drug companies and others in the marketplace to make this procedure available once it proves it really works.
“Now it’s up to the world to apply it. There are just so many possibilities. We could have new drugs—they’d still have to go through clinical trials and things like that, and they’d have to go through big pharma,” Wilson said. “I think the benefit they have is that it’s much less likely they will be stopped along the way. They aren’t going to cause some terrible side effect or even a minor side effect that’s more dramatic than the disease. What we do make is quite likely to be useful.”
So, for those of you overseas—perhaps the world has turned a corner, and apparently, like you all over there, Okies are pulling it off.
P.S. I told you all I’ve been nursing a broken right arm. Yes, yes. I’ve heard plenty now about how I came back from Iraq unscathed but couldn’t manage North May Avenue on a scooter. Well, my only excuse is that all scooters in Iraq were busy, so I didn’t get to ride one of the deadly things over there.
But this joking is beside the point. Fact is, one Oklahoman recently got the first Purple Heart for the 45th this deployment.
Well, when you all get back, watch out going up North May.
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 I’ve been laid up from a broken arm, folks. Thank goodness that Sgt. First Class Wolf is in da’ house (over in Iraq, anyway). Apparently one of our guys got a bit bunged up there, too. But he came through it. And thus, the 45th has its first purple heart on the deployment so far. - Ben Fenwick
Oklahoma Soldier Receives Purple Heart
An awards ceremony was held today in order to recognize members of Company C, 1st Battalion 279th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Brigade Combat Team of the Oklahoma Army National Guard who have performed with excellence during the Brigade’s current Tour of Duty.
Of all the awards and recognitions bestowed this day, a distinct honor was given to Spec. Ryan Bair of Tulsa, Okla., recipient of the Purple Heart. Bair was given the Purple Heart for Injuries he received while conducting a mounted mission in support of detainee operations. Bair was manning the turret in a Humvee during a convoy escort mission when they were attacked by enemy combatants with small arms fire. Blair engaged enemy with his weapon system when he was struck. He fell into the vehicle but quickly regained his senses. He stood back up, manned his weapon system and re-engaged the enemy, suppressing the threat. Bair was treated for his wounds and has made a full recovery.
“It bothered me at first.” Bair said as he recounted the incident, “You always think it’s going to be them, not you. Well, that day it was me. I felt eerie for a few days, it was strange, but I resolved not to be intimidated off my gun so I climbed back up in my turret and continued the mission.”
Bair counts his blessings, “I feel very fortunate and I believe someone was watching over me.”
Lt. Col. Doug Stall, Battalion Commander for the 279th Infantry Regiment, had this to say about Bair. “Spec. Bair is a courageous young man. The day after he was released for duty, he went right back into action. He is one of the many heroes in the 45th Brigade Combat Team, which Oklahoma sent to war.”
The Purple Heart is the oldest military decoration in the world in present use and the first American award made available to the common soldier. It was initially created as the Badge of Military Merit by Gen. George Washington. His keen appreciation for the importance of the common soldier in any campaign compelled him to recognize outstanding valor and merit by awarding the Purple Heart to deserving individuals.
Today, the Purple Heart is awarded to any member of the Armed Forces of the United States who, while serving under competent authority in any capacity with one of the U.S. Armed Services, has been wounded or killed, or who has died after being wounded.
Brig. Gen. Hipwell presided over the awards ceremony to personally pin the Purple Heart on Bair. Bair’s commitment to excellence, outstanding performance, and bravery in the face of danger is a credit to himself, his unit, and the U. S. Army National Guard. - Sgt. First Class Erik Wolf
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 Another perspective
It’s been heating up for soldiers of the 45th in Iraq; first, in terms of enemy action, and now in actual air temperature.
In the midst of all that remains Sgt. 1st Class Erik Wolf, whom you may recall from a couple of my posts. Wolf says he’s been getting a number of requests from folks back here for his “A Soldier You Should Know” newsletters.
In addition to those, he wrote this week to friends back here about general conditions at the front, or “downrange” as they call it these days.
Wolf, along with much of the 279th Infantry, is currently serving in Camp Cropper, a detainee camp near the outskirts of Baghdad.
Here’s what he has to say about recent events there, edited a little for space:
“…men and women are finally getting to go back home for a few days to enjoy a much needed (and well deserved) break from this place. I don’t get to come home for a few more months yet but it’s good to see soldiers flying out. It encourages the rest of us that time isn’t really standing still.
“…Things are not nearly as intense as they were. We do still get an occasional rocket or mortar lobbed at us but our defense and warning systems quickly dispatch and mitigate the threat…Just suffice it to say that we’ve got far cooler things to protect us than the bad guys have to shoot at us.
“It’s getting hot. 105 degrees today in fact. The heat seems to focus with an intensity that simulates standing in a hair dryer. Even in the shade… it’s pretty toasty. No worries though… like I mentioned in an earlier e-mail, we keep about half the ocean bottled up so hydration really isn’t a problem.
“…Overall I think everyone’s spirit and attitude is doing considerably well. Everyone is [pretty much] resigned to the mission at hand. Still, it’s tough sometimes. Infantry Soldiers long to be on the battlefield. It’s what they train for and what they do. Nowadays, we find ourselves fighting a different kind of war in an entirely unexpected environment. Detention Operations is a challenging environment to say the least. Still, these men and women are supremely professional. They have embraced this mission, however un-natural it may seem, and are performing to the highest standard with pride and dignity.
“…Every now and again we get lucky and catch a little news here. Seems the majority of every broadcast these days is centered on the presidential candidates and their ongoing efforts to discredit each other and swoon the voters. That and the polygamy compound in Texas seem to be the ONLY thing happening at present (at least from our perspective). I guess the rest of the world just pales in comparison.”
Well, come to think of it, Erik, I guess polygamy isn’t so much against the law over in your part of the world. This week’s “A Soldier You Should Know” features a profile on a soldier who is a veteran of the rescue mission undertaken by the 45th during Hurricane Katrina. Check it out. Write and he’ll send you his updates.
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 Better or worse? What the General says
The number one question anybody has asked since I came back from Iraq (now nearly a month) is “What’s it really like?”
It happens in checkout lines, old friends chatting me up, or at parties, or anywhere the subject of the trip comes up.
Usually, that question is accompanied with “Is it as bad as the media reports it?” Or “Is it getting better like the government is claiming?”
All those questions are a matter of opinion, and my opinion for those last two is “Yes.”
There were three separate bombings I heard in Baghdad that shook the U.S. Embassy compound during the roughly two weeks I was there. One was the Sunday night after I’d arrived. Off in the distance was a huge explosion and it shook the little trailer house that counts as a hooch. The next day, several people remarked about it. It took some time before I found out what may have been the explosion — a bomb blowing up the car of a police chief in the Al-Mansur district, outside of the Green Zone.
The other two were in succession. As I was packing to move to a different compound, insurgents ran a car bomb at a checkpoint a couple of miles away, exploded it, and the police manning the checkpoint fired back with machine guns. Then we heard a second explosion.
“Now this is the Baghdad I know!” said one of the soldiers escorting me. It was his fourth tour in country. According to him, the place was too quiet up to that point.
Which underscores the issue. Is it better? Well, according to him it, and several other veterans I’d visited with over there, things were very, very much better than they had been. How good is that? Well, three car bombs going off in a week in Oklahoma City might garner a different assessment of how good things are.
In this week’s Oklahoma Gazette, I interviewed Brig. Gen. Myles Deering, the commander of Oklahoma’s 45th, the Thunderbirds. Gen. Deering didn’t put the situation in terms of “Better ” or “Worse.” This is despite that since I left, in fact, since Easter Sunday, the green Zone received sporadic rocket and mortar fire. Gen. Deering rather operationally defined the situation.
“Really I don’t have any particular information other than just going off our environment and surroundings,” Deering said. “We had a week there where the indirect fire (rockets and/or mortars) was very heavy and it has since tapered off. I have no way of knowing what they (insurgents) are going to do. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail and we can continue to do what we are tasked to do and that is rebuild this country.”
Deering said that although there had been attacks on the Green Zone, members of the 45th, whose job it is to support the U.S. Embassy and several forward operating bases (FOBs), are basically just going about their business and occasionally ducking.
“The attacks create more of a temporary diversion from our duties, rather more of a distraction. It’s temporary, an inconvenience,” he said. “Once the alarm goes off, you react and do so until given the all clear. Folks go right back to performing their missions. If they are in bed, they go right back to bed and to sleep. It’s a distraction but nothing more than that right now.”
He continued that those in the FOBs were getting less fire than the staff in the Embassy, but that all the units are supporting one another.
“We deal with it as a team. All the FOBs out there are part of us. That’s part of my responsibility to assure they have the same level of security that we do. In fact I’ve made it around the last two days and visited with all the FOB mayors, and they are doing well. Most of the activity, especially during Easter week, was directed at the Embassy Annex,” Deering said.
The other areas of Iraq with elements of the 45th, primarily Camp Cropper on the outside of Baghdad, and Camp Bucca in southern Iraq, are not getting attacked like the Green Zone.
One thing the attacks in the Green Zone mean is that many 45th soldiers there will be recommended for their Combat Action Badge. The CAB as it is called is awarded to soldiers who come under fire in the course of conducting their duties.
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 Soldiers you should know
As I’ve been promising, I’ve got more interviews with soldiers that I want to share. Well, leave it to Sgt. 1st Class Erik Wolf to beat me to the punch.
Wolf, a buddy from the Afghanistan days, is stationed at Camp Cropper detainee camp, one of the larger Iraq missions for Oklahoma’s 45th Infantry, the Thunderbirds. Wolf is the operations sergeant for the 279th Infantry Battalion.
When he’s not doing his normal brainiac stuff, he’s a pretty good Public Relations manager for the battalion. On my visit he had a whole host of soldiers lined up to talk, and when Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe visited recently, he gathered some of the battalion together for a meet-n-greet. Well, now he’s started a newsletter, called “A Soldier You Should Know.”
Wolf’s piece is about a Chaplain’s assistant, spec. Benjamin McBride, Jr., 22, of Tulsa.
“’Boyish’, ‘Innocent’, ‘charming’ – All are words that might aptly describe the first impression one might get when they first meet him, but beneath his adolescent features, this young man exudes a steel resolve to execute a far more mature role as helper and protector of the Unit Ministry Team,” Wolf writes of McBride.
Wolf explains that since Chaplains are protected under the Geneva conventions, they can’t carry weapons. That’s where McBride comes in, as the Chaplain’s bodyguard.
“My job is to keep the Chaplain alive,” McBride tells Wolf. “I work closely with the Chaplain to help him provide religious support to Soldiers.”
But that’s not all. McBride also is an intermediary, confidant and all-around good listener to the soldiers, acting sometimes on behalf of the Chaplain, a sort of para-chaplain.
“Jesus had 12 Disciples, The Apostle Paul had his faithful servant Timothy; our Chaplain has Specialist Benjamin (Ben) McBride Jr.,” explains Wolf.
I had the opportunity to meet with McBride when I visited Cropper last month. He really IS a boyish, charming guy. But he had a serious wisdom in his tone that I found startling. It’s sort of that feeling I get when I meet somebody who has that certain gravitas, like a former President or something.
McBride told me that family issues at home tend to be the foremost concerns of the soldiers he deals with — not necessarily the issues they face there. McBride, who has a wife and child at home, said he often sees that the worries of soldiers aren’t about what they are dealing with in the war zone, but about what they can’t deal with back home.
“Most people here want to fix the problem. They want a hand in it and they can’t do it because they are here,” McBride said. “It makes them feel useless and it puts that extra burden on them — not being able to be there.”
He said soldiers have to fix what they can and quit worrying about what they can’t. He said that’s what most soldiers turn to the Chaplain for — the problems they can’t solve alone.
“It’s just one of those things that you are going to have to…if you are religious…leave to God,” McBride said. “You have to make sure the one you have at home is getting the support she needs from family, friends, and any kind of resources the military offers.”
As for Wolf, he said he intends to keep writing these. I guess now I have a contest on my hands. If both of us do it right, then the readers win.
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Oklahomans under fire
Reports from Baghdad’s Green Zone indicate a tenuous cease fire with the Shiite militia of Iraqi strongman Muqtada Al Sadr is breaking down — the zone, including areas occupied by members of Oklahoma’s National Guard, has been under rocket attack.
Reports from Reuters Wire Service indicate that rockets or mortars have slammed into the Embassy compound for the fourth straight day, a barrage that started on Easter Sunday.
Reports indicate that several U.S. Army personnel were wounded and one contractor was killed.
Oklahoma National Guard Spokesman Col. Pat Scully said Wednesday that he has had no reports of injuries to Oklahoma personnel.
A first-hand account of the Easter rocket attack was posted by medic Shawn Riley, a sergeant with the Oklahoma National Guard stationed at the U.S. Embassy.
“This was certainly an Easter to remember. Back home it is traditional on Easter to have a sunrise service. Well, here in Baghdad there is another tradition, try to kill the infidels on their holiest day of the year,” Riley writes. “At sunrise the insurgents opened up the day with barrage of rounds pointed right at us. We did the standard procedures to protect ourselves. Some toilet paper did make the ultimate sacrifice defending its nation going up in flames in a dramatic show of smoke.”
Riley said he and others attending Easter services in church had to take cover during the service as the chaplain finished the prayer.
“He finished his prayer with amen and the congregation hit the floor of chapel and then began to clear out for the bunker. Attending church in a combat zone is interesting enough for one you carry your weapon in and put it under your seat. This has always seemed weird to me,” Riley writes.
Iraqi Shiite strongman Muqtada Al Sadr committed last month to extending a six-month-long ceasefire that is credited with much of the drop in violence recently in Iraq. However, reports indicate that the rockets are being fired from predominantly Shiite neighborhoods in Iraq. U.S. officials have claimed the attacks are being backed by Iran.
Oklahoma’s 45th Infantry, the Thunderbirds, are deployed to Iraq through fall on missions throughout the country. The headquarters unit is serving at the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad, Iraq.
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 The Real Story; Baghdad, Iraq
There was a lot of consternation over my being in Baghdad, especially at the Embassy. The U.S. State Department, which is supposedly the diplomatic arm of the U.S. Government, really, really, really, really wanted me gone.
I recently published a piece elsewhere describing what happened, but for those of you who faithfully read this blog, I’ve got a more detailed version I wrote up at the time, but held until I got home. Yeah, I was worried about retaliation.
In short stories I might have undertaken in the Baghdad area I did not get to do. Further, stories about attacks in the area were purposefully held from me, and I was threatened with removal were I to report them. Ones, which I did report, elicited complaint, and the Embassy put a lot of pressure on the 45th’s command over me. So, here is the bit I wrote about dealing with the State Department:
The Bourne Stupidity
Baghdad, Iraq — If only I’d gone ahead with my plan to take my Spanish refresher course before traveling to Iraq.
No, really. It turns out that Spanish is probably as useful in the Green Zone to get from one place to another as Arabic. Okay, maybe Arabic would be a little better, but then you couldn’t talk to the checkpoint guards.
These guards are a private contractor, as are many in the IZ, or International Zone. Called “Triple Canopy,” they are trained, armed security from Peru.
Day, in, day out, especially after State Department had me removed from the Embassy, I pass through checkpoints with these guards.
I walk through several checkpoints on the way from Blackhawk to the Embassy. I see their faces and say, “Buenos Dias!”
“Como esta?” they shout back.
“Uh….muy bien, gracias.”
They’ve been pretty forgiving. I woke up one morning after a late night of cigar-smoke socializing and, walking through the checkpoints, greeted them all with “Buenos nochas!” (Good evening).
They laughed.
“Buenos DEEE AAAS,” they corrected.
I shook my head.
“Voy a dormir, mucho.” I said. (I am going to sleep a lot).
For a bunch of guys who can kill you in an instant, I like them better than most of the press officials officing in the Palace.
The deal went down like this. The day after I interviewed Coburn, pretty much as soon as his plane left the runway for his continuing trip to Afghanistan, a senior State Department spokesman entered the public affairs office asking for Lt. Col. McGuire, who is the officer in charge of my trip.
“I know where she is,” I said.
He looked down at me like he’d just noticed me. He introduced himself rather forcefully.
“Oh, DO you?” he said, his voice dripping with some kind of distress.
“Yeah, she’s in an office down the hall.”
“How do you know that?”
“Well, she told me.”
All that seemed real significant to him. He didn’t know how to get to this office and I told him I could take him there, so he asked me to. We walked out in the hall and walked a short way down it. Suddenly, he turned to me.
“So, where is your escort?” he said.
He held his arms out to his sides like a Rockette about to a high-kick, and looked up and down the hall.
I was bewildered at first. Here was a guy with a blue badge, which has escort privileges and a host of other amenities associated with it. He was very, very special. In fact, the State Department doesn’t accept anyone under a certain IQ level. He’s supposed to be one of the smart ones.
I pointed to his badge.
“You are.”
He looked irritated.
“Oh, is that so?”
Apparently it was some kind of attempt at a Jedi mind-trick, and I’d blown it for him. Beyond that, I had a badge from the Embassy that granted me access without an escort — not that he cared.
We proceeded down the hall to the office. Once inside, he told me to walk back down to the other office alone, but said he’d be sure to watch me as I did.
Inside, I was told later, he proceeded to demand all the articles I’ve written, all the forms I’ve signed and all the paperwork regarding me, all in a file. This stuff has been handed over before, but he wanted his own copy of it, apparently.
Back in the public affairs office, the outgoing public affairs spokesman from the National Guard unit the 45th was replacing asked me what happened. I told him.
“Oh, yeah. He was trying to entrap you. That happens here all the time. Did you remind him about his badge?”
It was shortly after that I was demanded moved from the embassy compound. According to several officers who discussed it with me, the interview with Coburn elevated the State Department’s concerns. They were worried about negative coverage — that’s what was written in a memo I read — and maybe as well as likelihood I would sneak down the hall in a ninja suit, nabbing state secrets, or the Hope Diamond, or some such.
After that, even though it wasn’t required by Embassy rules, the 45th agreed to the State that a soldier would be with me at all times. At ALL times. Yes, to the toilet. I would make jokes about it…but in the end, let’s just say it wasn’t a positive PR move. (No pun intended)
On one of my checkpoint sojourns to breakfast, as I took my seat with my 45th escort, we sat in a relatively unpopulated area of the dining room, at a completely empty table.
Immediately, a guy with a blue badge sat down next to me. Said nothing. My escort and I talked through breakfast about normal, banal stuff that Okies talk about. (How ‘bout them Sooners?) Eventually the guy sat back, sighed, and got up and left.
My escort looked at me quizzically.
“What was that about?” he asked.
“I dunno. Think he was following me?”
“Dude, he was SO following you. It was Bourne Supremacy, right here!”
After that, I would see the spokesman. He would wear his sunglasses in the dining hall (not supposed to — there were rules against it) and make a point of sitting at my table. Real secret agent stuff.
Well, there you go. There are good people who helped me in the Embassy, but there weren’t enough. The others win. I’m finally convinced. They suck. Your tax dollars at work.
In 2004 in Afghanistan, I followed Oklahoma soldiers and others on patrols, got rocketed at, shot at, and slept on rocks. It was 125 degrees some days. Dust coated me thickly. There were a few times I was worried about dying, and wondered what my life might mean if it happened. I walked with people I wished I could be like. They called me their friend. Reporters aren’t supposed to feel like that. We aren’t supposed to be so close to our subjects. But who am I kidding?
Life was great. That was when I covered the 45th.
I’ll be moving on in a bit here. Out of Baghdad. – Ben Fenwick
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 Big D and Beyond; Dallas
The trip from Kuwait to the U.S. is easier than the one going to Kuwait. For one, you gain a day. For another, you are going home.
We landed at DFW at 8 a.m. Texas time. The captain announced that two fire trucks were giving the plane a “water-cannon salute.” As the plane pulled up to the terminal, a fire truck on each side hosed the plane down from end to end — for the soldiers coming home from the war. The soldiers I was with appreciated it, wondering a little that someone thought of this sort of thing.
I got off the plane, all wobbly, and lumbered to customs — which I dreaded. Didn’t we already go through that? Are they going to search me again? I remembered coming back from Mexico more than once when the customs agents tore me limb from limb.
The woman at the customs counter asked what I did. I winced, because here it would come again — I would explain I was a reporter, and then I’d get told about how the media was screwing up the war, or get pulled out of line and searched, or something else. Get ready to be harassed…
Not this time. She stamped my papers and handed me my passport.
“Thank you for what you did,” she said simply.
Shit, I almost cried.
After that, everyone walked down a corridor to the baggage claim area. Walking out of the hallway, they faced a gauntlet of USO volunteers. The volunteers cheered each soldier as he or she walked out, shaking hands, hugging, asking if there is anything they need, and hopping to whatever the soldier requested. It was touching and gentle. I just asked where a payphone was, and one of the USO volunteers handed me a phone.
I had an appointment to keep. A college buddy of mine and I were supposed to attend the North Texas Irish Festival, which started that night, a Friday. I was actually going to make it. I caught a couple of buses to the train platform for Fort Worth.
The sun was shining. Birds tweeting. It was like some dream world, so peaceful. One doesn’t realize how much stress a war zone is until one comes back home. When the dangers are gone, you feel like a puppet with the strings cut. I did anyway. Iraq was my fifth war zone.
On that train platform stood a group of people who appeared to be developmentally or mentally disabled. They had folks who appeared to be minding to them. I noticed we were near a state hospital of some kind, so I supposed them to be on an outing for the day.
I had an odd reaction — it was emotional for me. I thought of one of the attacks that happened in Baghdad as the 45th was entering Iraq. Al Qaeda strapped bombs to two women who were reported to be mentally disabled or somehow mentally impaired — then sent them into a crowded market and blew them up. I’ve read accounts that placed the death toll as high as 90 people.
But here we were, all standing in the sunshine, nobody strapping bombs to them, and they can catch a train. This is America. Nobody having to check for bombs, no checkpoints with guys pointing guns at us and demanding for us to stop and be searched.
For me, this is what coming home at the fifth anniversary of the war comes to. I just bought a $5 dollar ticket, got on a train, and got off the train downtown. Just like it’s supposed to be. And my buddy Mike waiting to pick me up.
We had a steak dinner and I drank two beers, then crashed at the hotel until the Irish festival started. Then another buddy, Tex, came by and we all went to the festival and listened to Irish music, smoking cigars and drinking Guinness. The beer of freedom.
So, my trip ended there. But I plan to write on. There is a lot of material I collected that I plan to post, so stay tuned.
For those interested in the story about the 179th Infantry at Camp Bucca, you can read it here.
Although Gazette doesn’t normally post its full-text stories on the Web, an exception was made for this one because there are so many people who want to see the story, who live far away. Thank my publisher, Bill Bleakley, and the assistant publisher, Jeffri-Lynn Dyer, for doing this.
I’m just the messenger.
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 Camp Bucca, Iraq; to Kuwait
Travel in and around Iraq is exhausting. By the time I was to leave, I’d culled down my bags to three bags: computer backpack, a silver duffel bag, and a military duffle bag loaned to me by Lt. Col. McGuire, my escort. I mailed home a lot of stuff.
Lugging everything together with a 30-pound armored vest ain’t easy. Travel to and from Bucca is by helicopter, and they cram them with as many souls as will fit. This means everyone sits on the bench seats facing one another, and the baggage is piled high, higher than one’s head.
Going in and out of the copter, one lugs all this stuff. Sometimes you have a ride to the landing strip, sometimes you don’t. But when we flew out to Kuwait that last time — me for the flight home, and McGuire for her connecting flight to Baghdad — we had a bus waiting for us. Granted, we had to wait for two hours in those buses while they ferried everyone waiting at Bucca, several copter loads at a time. Then, it was one more night.
The digs at the base there were pretty good for a hastily built American military base. They have a pretty nice village with the coffee shop, spa, souvenir shop and USO building. The USO building there is built differently. Inside, it is made up like a hippy hangout (!) with a little movie theater inside a wooden bus, multi-colored to look like a hippy van. Drawn into the windshield is a depiction of Jerry Garcia. Weird. But nice.
One can kick back on the many couches lying around. You had to take off your shoes upon entering the place, but it was nice and cozy. A lot of soldiers were snoozing on the couches. It was peaceful. Go figure.
The next day, they manifested me on a flight out of Kuwait. Military flights there are chartered out, which means flying on a big, normal jetliner. I said goodbye to Lt. Col. McGuire, my constant escort for the last six weeks. I have to say, she put up with more than I did. And she’s still in Iraq, folks.
After going through customs (which messed up my carefully packed baggage something fierce, but the soldiers were nice) they quarantined us for about six hours or so.
I took to watching a couple of videos they had on a big screen TV. The thing about these deals is you will watch a video you’d never watch normally. One was Bruce Almighty, which I had no interest in seeing, but watched because it was there. Then…they showed a movie I’d watch, The Kingdom, with Jamie Foxx.
It’s a thriller about FBI agents having to investigate within the constraints of operating in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The more I watched it, the more constricted I felt — it was hitting too close to home with me. I was tired of being in Iraq, constantly challenged, threatened and constrained. And that’s from our side, by the way. Then there is the constant strain of always expecting some kind of attack, staying on guard, watching out for security this, threat that, etc. When you’ve been in it for a while, you don’t even realize that it’s constantly propping you up, like some kind of truss that makes you stand upright.
One scene in the movie that drove it home for me was the one where the entourage is convoying along in their black SUVs, and a car bomb attacks the convoy. The resulting wreck is catastrophic and shocking. Having been in enough convoys, I have to say, I always worried when that would happen in real life. Never has for me, but our folks are still over there.
At that point I looked over to a sergeant standing next to me and I said, “You can’t get me out of here fast enough.”
He smiled slightly and nodded.
Before the movie ended, they called us to board more busses. I got on it with a group of soldiers going home for R&R.
On the way to the airport, we had a little excitement. A car with Kuwait plates suddenly veered into our lane in front of the bus and started slamming his brakes. Why? Hell, I had plenty of imagination to explain why at this point. The bus driver would flash his lights at the guy, and the driver kept doing it, stomping his brakes so hard in the middle of the freeway that smoke came off his tires. Crazy. A lot of us in the bus were paying pretty good attention. It went on for a few minutes. Finally, the guy just quit doing it, and veered into another lane and was gone.
At the airport, we quickly boarded a big, white plane with “North American Airlines.” It was an average looking jetliner. A 767, I think.
I gripped the seat as we took off, then hooted with a few of the soldiers when the wheels left the runway. At least I wouldn’t get car-bombed now.
Next stop, Dallas.
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Playing catch-up; Oklahoma City
 Oh, I’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do…
I’ve been back two weeks. I was expecting a nice, long nap when I hit dirt down in Dallas, but nothing doing. Instead, it’s been this extra marathon to run after I thought I already broke the tape. Basically, I’ve been writing, writing, writing on several stories from Iraq, and finishing the last of it.
Here’s a rundown of the work from over there: 8 in Oklahoma Gazette, 14 blog entries for the Gazette’s Web site, and 12 other freelance stories, for an estimated total of approximately 28,000 words — so far. I arrived at this assessment figuring about 750 words per piece. In all, about 200,000 people per newspaper story read about Oklahomans in Iraq.
But wait, that’s not all.
I’ve been working for the last two weeks on an upcoming cover article for Gazette, about the time I spent in Camp Bucca with members of Oklahoma’s 179th Infantry, part of the 45th. It will be out Wednesday, March 19th, so be sure to locate a Gazette newsstand somewhere.
I really didn’t plan it this way but it will be the 5th anniversary of the war. As luck would have it.
In the meantime, I’ll get back on the horse here. I’ve got a lot of material I just couldn’t fit into any stories. I’ve talked with so many soldiers, so many interesting people, I hope to eventually touch on them here.
Plus, I’ll see what else I might throw in for the folks over there. Maybe there’s an update or two on things in this state that folks in Iraq might want to see.
So, sorry it’s been two weeks, but I’ll make it count. Stay tuned.
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 “Back in the 'Stan;” Baghdad, Iraq
We really needed a break from all the crap at the palace. Had to go to the Red Zone. Thank God.
So, Lt. Col. McGuire and I suited up in our body armor, she loaded her pistol and we climbed aboard the Rhino armored bus for a trip to Camp Cropper, a detainee camp where a lot of Oklahoma guys are stationed.
Back in the ’Stan, as we called Afghanistan, things were different. I had the opportunity to cover a number of pretty good stories and also have a few things go on that had nothing to do with “news” as we know it, all the real thing all the time.
There was the first patrol I went on outside the wire at Camp Phoenix. A guy shot at us with a shotgun and then ran away. The squad I was with didn’t catch him. First patrol. I wrote about it and the Gazette put it on the cover.
Then there was another good story I got while there, probably a month in. It involved three officers with the 45th who got into a pitched firefight with Al Qaeda. They and their Afghan trainees ended up rescuing two guys on a Special Forces sniper team, killing 19 Al Qaeda fighters, and getting out of it without a scratch. Great story.
A year after I got back, the History Channel called, having run across the piece, and asked where I could find the three officers. I knew of one, Chris Chomosh, a half-Choctaw guy who is an officer with the Tulsa Police Department. The History Channel put all three guys on a TV show called “Shootout Afghanistan,” complete with computer animation about how they pulled off that win. It was awesome.
Well, life has a funny way of catching up. An Irish friend of mine told me, “You meet everybody twice in life.”
When Lt. Col. McGuire and I crossed that checkpoint into the Red Zone, the bus commander ordered everyone to lock and load. Me, I lock and load my camera, ready for incoming, note pad and pen ready to fling ink. The Colonel shoots ’em down, and I ask them, “If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?” Teamwork.
The ride to Cropper wasn’t bad, and the unit there, the 279th Infantry out of Tulsa, was waiting for us on short notice. We couldn’t stay long because they hadn’t been expecting us and had no place for us to stay, the outgoing camp commander said. Two women with the camp’s public affairs office, A U.S. Navy Captain and an Army Captain, picked us up in a van and escorted us onto Cropper. The place was huge.
But no sooner had we pulled into the lot than Sgt. Erik Wolf, a vet of the Afghan war and a fellow denizen of Kabul’s Camp Phoenix, walked up and hugged me.
“Good to see you!” He said, one of the first people in all of Baghdad to say that. (Well, one guy in the Embassy. One of the three nice ones.)
Wolf works in some kind of brainy stuff that I’ve never completely understood but is vital to operations and everyone depends on him. Have to check my notes on the specifics — and since they are probably sensitive or something, I’ll have to NOT get back to you on it. Suffice to say, he’s like an idiot savant without the “idiot.” Talks fast, brilliant. Funny.
He immediately launched into a story about how I got locked out of the base one day after the base had changed commanders, just before the Oklahomans went back home. He made my predicament sound nobler than it was.
“Ben was out interviewing British soldiers. Then he showed up at the gate and said, ‘Hey, I’m Ben.’ Well, these guys from Indiana didn’t know him from Jack. I just happened to hear the radio traffic and shouted, ‘He’s with us. And they let him in.’”
They did let me back on base. I really was worried. And, well, if I’d been doing what I was supposed to do I would have been interviewing British soldiers. Actually, after six months and about to go home…well, I’d been buying a souvenir sword. Nice of Wolf to try and give me a little dignity in the tale.
I did a series of interviews in a gusty, windblown tent, and then we got ready to go to lunch. Then another guy walked up. Chomosh. He hugged me too. We hooted, hollered and started getting caught up on stuff — Okies all hoot and holler when they meet overseas. It’s just one of those things that makes us better. It’s also what makes us personable and humble.
Anyway, another hug — we masculine battle-types can hug, it’s okay — and got caught up. Being a street-smart Tulsa police officer and a gunslinging Afghan mountain warrior, I’d expected him to be frustrated with his new job — which is some kind of high-level command coordination — but he actually likes it.
“We are doing strategic-level planning for a two-star (general) and a four-star (general),” Chomosh said. “We are really doing some neat things here.”
After a bunch of this, we went to a command center where I ran into another guy, Sgt. Ranney, who took me on a wild ride during the rescue mission in New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina. We bumped through back streets in the Garden District chasing looters.
All this reminded me of what it’s about and brought up sagging spirits. Made me realize my part in this deal.
We started a quick round of interviews. Partway through one of the interviews, there was a commotion. Wolf came in and calmly explained there was a disturbance that was about to turn into a riot, and we’d just stay in the building, armed and ready, while the professionals handled it.
Afterward, we visited a little more exchanged e-mail addresses, then left. On the way out I chatted with the two female public affairs officers from Cropper, just asking various questions about the place. We learned that Ouday, one of Saddam’s psychopathic freak sons, had a special palace on an island in a nearby lake. It was a palace he’d created specifically to have sex in. Now it’s used for female quarters.
“We live in it now,” one said, and they laughed.
According to their version of the story, Ouday would take women there, rape and brutalize them, then shoot them and burn them in a pit behind the palace. She said it’s now used for a burn pit for refuse.
The Armored Rhino buses arrived and picked us back up. We bussed back through the Red Zone into Baghdad’s Green Zone, back to the Embassy. How quickly the day goes.
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 Goodbye, Baghdad; Baghdad, Iraq
When I was a kid, my mom would dole out allowance on the basis of chores. Yes, there was garbage to take out, cattle to feed, clean up my room, etc. But there were bonus bucks to be had.
My extra cash would come from memorizing poems and bits of American letters. Gettysburg address, Preamble to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, but also poems by Robert Frost, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Edgar Allen Poe, Hamlet’s soliloquy from Shakespeare, those sorts of things. She went by some kind of word count. I think Hamlet got me five bucks.
What memorizing these actually did was develop what intellect I might have, such that, oh, I became I writer I guess. More importantly, however, these things are little tidbits that I can draw upon when my own words might otherwise fail me. There are times when, being a typical, life-long Okie, I suddenly find myself in something much bigger than I might have seen at the high-school homecoming or barn dance or whatnot. Like when I see the enormous scope of Baghdad, American military driving or walking everywhere, I know that I walk in the steps of the Prophet Daniel or Alexander the Great or Xerxes and wonder what it might all mean. These poems and passages give me directions to the next open door or warm hearth. They are mnemonic devices for the soul.
As we prepared to leave that place, one of the things I did not get to do was do the usual American-in-Baghdad thing, take my picture with those big, crossed swords in the background, where Saddam held his military parades. You know the ones. Didn’t get that picture.
However, as I walked to the palace chow hall with Sgt. Riley, we passed a fenced-in back lot that seemed to be a motor pool and I knew it was where they had Saddam’s head. These were the big hammered bronze heads that had been mounted on top of the palace now used for the U.S. Embassy. They were removed after we invaded.
Riley and I jogged around the fence and I posed next to one of those unmistakable giant heads, as big as a Mack truck. No doubt about it, Saddam’s face, down in the dirt. Big as Dallas.
Looking at those, one of the poems Mom had me memorize came welling up. It was by Percy Shelley, called “Ozymandias” — one of my favorites. It begins “I met a traveler from an antique land, who said….”
The traveler in the poem tells the narrator about traveling in Egypt and coming upon the statue of what now is believed to have been of Rameses the Great — you know, the bald-headed guy who gave Charlton Heston a hard time. The pharaoh who enslaved the Jews until Moses sicced frogs on him. Anyway, the traveler could read the inscriptions on the statue, “which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,” the poem says, “the hand that mocked, the heart that fed”:
“I am Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look upon my work, ye mighty, and despair!”
“Around the decay of that colossal wreck” the poem continues, “boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away…”
And here, right where I stood, was Ozymandias again. Stern face, King of Kings. And around, not lone and level sands, but his gardens filled with trailerhouses for troops, booted feet tramping what were once his flowerbeds, a maze of expedient concrete walls topped with concertina wire lining every street, building or yard.
And that’s the way it goes for guys like him. And for travelers like me to tell the story.
“Okay, we gotta hoof it,” Riley said.
We left Hussein in the dirt and moved with a purpose to the chow hall and ate.
A few hours later, Lt. Col. McGuire and I left behind Baghdad in a Blackhawk helicopter, bound for Kuwait. Next stop, Camp Bucca. We had to leave Iraq in order to fly back into it. Camp Bucca is in the southernmost part of Iraq, and it’s easier to fly out of the air base in Kuwait. Heck if I know why. I just write.
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 No Joke; Camp Bucca, Iraq
This place is about as far as you can get from anywhere in Iraq, seems like.
The trip here was long, arduous and a big, fat pain. A long, dreary iron-man course in which we lugged baggage, slept in several different tents, in bases and towns we don’t want to remember, trudging in blowing dust storms as we mounted up in vehicles, helicopters and airplanes. At one point we were up more than 24 hours straight hopping from one flight to another. Tiring, bone-grinding, butt-aching travel. Thus, it’s been difficult getting all the blogs out. (I’m sending this one, then a couple others that I wrote but didn’t get a chance to send).
At one point, we were back at Camp Buehring, Kuwait, where a dust storm hit and we were caught for four days. I took to bundling up my face like a Bedouin, which got me a few interesting looks from westerners, and a few grins and thumbs-up from Kuwaitis. They probably thought about me what we think when we meet someone visiting Oklahoma from, oh, Delaware, wearing cowboy hats, boots, spurs and chaps, walking through Bricktown. Nevertheless, I’m told something like 10 percent of the dust here is human or animal waste. Screw that. I’ve gotten pneumonia from dust storms in Kandahar, and breathing through a scarf is a good idea.
Anyway, we finally arrived in Bucca.
Bucca is a huge detention facility. The whole camp has around 20,000 Iraqi detainees. That’s about the population of McAlester. The town part. Thunderbird soldiers are walking through the detainee compounds, manning guard towers, building water mains, manning patrols, wiring buildings, you name it. These Thunderbirds are part of the 179th Infantry Battalion and the 160th Field Artillery, mostly.
We landed at night after flying here aboard Chinook helicopters. The flights were backed up from days of layovers in Kuwait. The air crew crammed us in so tight that they sprayed us with WD 40 so we would slide out quicker when we landed. Just kidding.
Well, that’s a point to be made. I’ve written a lot of things over here, but I have to watch my attempts at humor. For one thing, if I didn’t make it clear just now that I was joking about the WD-40, then many for the unfamiliar with this kind of travel, how would they know?
And humor here can get dark. The folks in this zone joke about the extreme situations in which they find themselves. They joke about the curtain of darkness that sometimes threatens to cover them. They joke about anguish and despair, or about fear and solitude. Humor can get edgy. Like, did I tell you the one about the insurgent who cut off a guy’s head in the bar?
The point was driven home to me when I joked with a friend recently. I told him I’d gotten surrounded by insurgents with knives in their teeth, and the tank was broken. Ha ha, right? I mean, I’ve had nothing like that happen and I thought it was cute when I left it on his answering machine, because I’d missed him once when I called.
Guess what? It was not funny. After all, I have been on patrols in scads of military vehicles. I’ve taken shelter when explosions went off. We’ve all seen the footage of the war on news channels. Things really do happen.
Next time I’d checked my email, there were a few suggesting I call right away — was I all right, did I get hurt when the tank broke down, etc. Damn, I felt like an idiot. I should know better. People at home thought I was in trouble.
I spent an hour or so on the very expensive AT&T phone bank here explaining and apologizing. Afterward, I went to my hooch and got into my jammies. As I lay my head on the pillow, I heard that distinct whistle-woosh of incoming rounds, then the low thud of explosions. We were under attack.
I jumped out of bed, threw on some sweats, slipped into my sneakers and flew out the door, into the concrete bunker nearby, more or less a few seconds after the siren sounded. I hunkered down in there with several other camp denizens, including a couple of Air Force guys and a female Army soldier who ran out of the shower in her exercise uniform and dopp kit. We waited as the siren sounded. One of those in the bunker noted, to the assenting of the others, that the insurgents were testing the “new unit” — the Thunderbirds, about whom I was here to report. After a while, the loudspeaker gave an all clear and the attack was over.
The next day, at a ceremony for the Oklahoma units taking over their commands, an officer explained that a man died in the attack, a contractor from India. Others were injured.
An attorney I know from Oklahoma City, here with the unit, said, “Well, this is our first test by fire.”
It wasn’t mine. I’ve been under fire before. But it was still, indeed, a test. I can tell you, it’s no joke.
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 Golfing in Blackhawk; Baghdad, Iraq
The State Department really had a cow. What? A reporter, living on our Baghdad Embassy compound?
Yep. Me. See, when I became an embedded reporter to follow Oklahoma’s 45th over to Iraq, I had to get a background check from the Pentagon to make sure I didn’t show up on a terrorist list, or outstanding felony warrant, or even a mediocre one. So I submitted all my stats to Central Command and they ran the numbers. Apparently, they never found out about the time I fixed the thermostat in Mr. Kitrell’s history class to stay on full-blast hot all day, or about that time Robbie and I switched the detour sign to Main Street and had people detouring to the school parking lot, or any of that stuff, so CENTCOM passed me and I was allowed to embed.
When one really, really embeds, and goes to live, eat, patrol, convoy or sleep in the barracks with the troops, one has to have orders typed up just like them. This was from the beginning an unmitigated Mongolian cluster, but Lt. Col. McGuire, who is the public affairs officer responsible to me, made it happen after a lot of hurdles. Done. The orders embedded me with the command unit, the 45th IBCT, HHC. Headquarters. Know where they headquarter? In Baghdad, the embassy compound. Saddam’s palace.
You’ve seen me write about it. Remember? Cigar club, horses on the ceiling, Dr. Freud?
Well, that whole time, more than a few in the embassy were fuming that a reporter was there at all. Just not right. Orders be damned. When I had the temerity to interview Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, who came to Iraq to check on the progress of the war and say “Hi!” to the Oklahoma troops, that was it. I was out, by gum.
Well, I moved across the street to Forward Operating Base Blackhawk. The digs weren’t bad, but I was mopey because it was clear that I wasn’t really welcome covering the 45th there. All I wanted to do was be an Okie, writing about Okies gone away to war. Big state secret, apparently,
The first night I was there, after getting directions to the showers, I was trudging across the dusty lot to get to them. Copters like I’ve previously described were whirring in and out of the nearby LZ (landing zone). As I walked, I spied a guy in Army shorts, bare legged and chested, standing amid the swirling dust of the soccer yard next to the compound.
He had a golf club in his hand. Another guy was snapping photos of him as he swung and hooted. He had a big, barrel chest from apparent weightlifting, legs like trees, arms like legs. Swing — snick! And holler. It looked like fun. The guy looked at me and extended the golf club. His name was Eric, he said. The guy snapping photos was Jonny Love.
“Come on. We’re gonna knock it outta here. Let’s do it!” Eric said.
Had to be Special Forces. OK, I said. The target was a former palace garden over a wall.
About a hundred yards away.
I reared back. Eric gave the play-by-play: “Oh, look. This guy’s got it. He’s checkin’ his swing. He’s got good form. That ball’s in trouble. Oh look out!”
I missed the ball. So we did it again. This time, Jonny Love snapped a shot and I hit the ball. It skipped across the ground and whacked against a pile of concrete.
“Not bad, not bad,” Eric observed.
We tried it again, and Jonny snapped another photo.
Then Eric looked at me. “So, Ben, what is it you do?”
I’d had a really hard week. Too many I would answer that question to would blanch or say some smart-ass remark about the media. I’d pretty much had it.
“I’m a reporter. I embedded with the National Guard from Oklahoma,” I answered.
Well Eric had a different response.
“You putting them in the paper back in…what was it? Oklahoma?”
‘Yeah,’ I said. “People are eating it up. The stories just leap off the stands. People back home really support their guard.”
“That’s good. You know, treat those guys right. They really need it,” he said. “We Special Forces, I guess we don’t have anyone to write about us. We ought to have someone write about us.”
“I’d like to write about you guys,” I said.
I told him about patrolling with 45th soldiers in Afghanistan on the Pakistan border. There were Special Forces there, but I wasn’t allowed to write about them, photograph them, or anything.
“I’d really like to write about you.”
“Oh, could I get you some stories,” Eric said. “But, no, I guess we just have to be unsung.”
Jonny took my e-mail address to send the photos. We shook hands, I thanked them for the golf game, and trudged on out to the showers. When I came back, they were gone.
Jonny sent the photos — pretty good shots, by the way, although the subject needs to quit eating bacon in the chow hall. But more important, he sent them to me, a reporter.
Nobody fighting in that war deserves to be unsung. What’s going to happen without someone to write about it?
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 Outside the Believers Palace; Baghdad, Iraq
Right now as I write this, I’m sitting outside the Believer’s Palace in Blackhawk, a Forward Operating Base. I’m taking sort of a downtime to gather my laundry, my thoughts and my strength for a few stories I hope to garner in the coming days. With more than a couple thousand Oklahoma troops coming in, I hope to at least touch on a few units outside the Green Zone, but it requires planning, which the 45th public affairs office is furiously trying to arrange.
The “Believer’s Palace,” I’m told, was a Saddam stronghold. The top of it was once ornate and luxurious, and the underground portion was one of the strongest bunkers ever made, built for the Hussein regime by German engineers (If you want something done right…have a German build it). Indeed, the U.S. hit it with multiple cruise missiles and bunker busters, but they never cracked the bunker. The bombs did, however, bust the plumbing and the bunker flooded, forcing everyone out of it. It’s the little things, as always. The top, of course, is a blasted ruin now.
Sgt. Clifton, who is the “deputy mayor” of this FOB, dropped by and cordially tried to take me inside for a quick tour, but the keys had been nabbed by some engineers doing a pre-demolition inspection of the place, so we couldn’t get in. We concluded to try it again when we get a chance.
Instead, I decided to smoke one of those marvelous Montecristo cigars I rescued the other day when we dove into the shelter. So, sitting at the small bench under a net canopy, I lit up, finally. Worth it, I promise.
They have wireless here and I also fired up the Vaio laptop. Great reception. The future has arrived. I pulled up a few tunes on Youtube and just mused on the scene. The sunny day wafted cool breezes, but little dust. Great thunderheads boiled up to the north, and I first listened to U2 “Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.”
Then, being a child of the Seventies, I called up Devo and listened to “Jocko Homo.” I watched their early video, the one where they declare “Are We Not Men? We are Devo!,” watching Mark Mothersbaugh dance around in white pants pulled up past his belly button.
But beyond the screen, I watched Blackhawk helicopters with red crosses on them —Medevacs — whirl past the majestic date palms. This place is near a landing zone and copters come and go at all times. When the Medevacs fly, someone is hurt, and it happens often.
I’m not privy to security briefings here, so the facts on the bombing and gunfire we heard the other day that sent us into the shelter hasn’t yet been made available to me. My public affairs people aren’t necessarily brought up to speed on such things, and if they are, it’s often classified and they are not allowed to tell me even if they do know. Rumor and innuendo runs through places like this. Finally, reports start to trickle out.
Reports are that a couple of car bombs driven by suicide bombers ran a checkpoint. Police fired on the cars and they exploded. People were killed, civilians I am told. The International Herald Tribune, a generally trustworthy newspaper, gave an account that might be the one.
Although in the embassy compound, ducking into our little hideaway, we were never in danger, the dangers and the sacrifices are real.
In a recent interview, Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn told me things are turning around. He points out that attacks and casualties are 10 percent of what they were during the summer and the reports support that. He said he’d visited a village that had been the site of fighting only 10 days ago.
“Overall the risk to our Oklahomans will be the smallest at any time we’ve been in Iraq, and it’s going to get better every day,” Coburn told me. “The proof of that is that I’m walking among Sunnis who were controlled by Al Qaeda 10 days ago … today, without a helmet on, walking with our troops in a city, and they are coming up hugging on our soldiers.”
So now I’ve called up “When Love Comes to Town.” Another flight of Medevac copters whir in for a landing. BB King is telling me he’s seen love conquer the great divide.
And then a wind springs up, just now. It rattles the awning above the table I’m sitting at, and down falls a bunch of dried bird droppings onto the table and my keyboard.
Everybody’s a critic.
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 Smokin in Baghdad; Baghdad, Iraq
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. – Sigmund Freud
Life at the palace — the U.S. Embassy Annex — is filled with intrigue and peril. For instance, the recent visit by actress Angelina Jolie, which involved both in one. I mean, the place is really a palace, and it has all the trappings. In one room, now a cubicled office space, a dome soars in the ceiling above that features mighty horses rearing and stomping around one large, white horse. That’s Saddam. See, the dome was over his mighty, pedestaled bed. The place must have been like the kitchiest honeymoon suite in Vegas, even a rival to such a place, easily. One wall depicts SCUD missiles arcing toward Israel. Noble, rearing horses. Mighty, long, sleek missiles filled with power.
All in Saddam’s bedroom. Paging Dr. Freud.
The great, bronze Saddam heads that sat in front of each entrance to the palace have been removed and stuck in a lot behind the palace. The mighty bedroom is an office filled with cubicles. A beautiful, chandeliered ballroom is now the site of the ubiquitous military coffee shop, the Green Bean Café. It’s also the site of the palace Texas Hold ’Em poker tournament. (Third place!) An exquisite entry foyer with a carved ceiling, chased with marble, is now a workout room.
But that doesn’t mean there is not art appreciation. Nightly, by the pool, next to an open-air, covered patio with a fireplace and a pool table, a group of those who are pleased by high art gather for their often-nightly circle of enlightenment. Yeah, I’m talking about the Baghdad Cigar Aficionado Club.
Founded in 2007 by cigar fan Bob Richardson, the cigar club features a bunch of guys and a few enterprising women who gather to coalesce in the vapors of human experience, with a little Dominican or Honduran aroma wafting along for good measure. And with all the sliding panels, office politics and gut-wrenching top-dogging within the palace, the cigar club is where to go to leave it all behind.
“We have them leave their rank at the door,” said a man in a KBR hat when I questioned the seemingly at-ease posture of the participants.
Just good ol’ joes having a good, relaxing evening chomping on a Churchill or puffing on a pantella. When I dropped by, they were quite friendly, offering me a free stogie — either a night-black Maduro or a creamy natural stick from the Aficionados Smoke Shop in Charlottesville, W.V. I chose the natural. A buddy who was with me, a high-ranking political advisor and former Marine, had the Maduro.
Frankly, I stayed up way too late, swapping tales of adventure and intrigue. There were more than couple of folks there who had been in town for years. One, a highway contractor, said he’d been in Baghdad since 2004.
“We used to drive to and from Basra in a thin-skinned vehicle. No problem.”
And now?
“Can’t do that anymore. That’s one thing that’s changed since then.”
The next day, as at my hooch, I’d been packing a bag and had picked up a couple of cigars, Montecristos in those enameled aluminum tubes. As I was turning to pack them, I — and some of the soldiers I was with — heard a large “Boom!” in the distance. It was followed by the rattle of machine-gun fire. Then an alarm honked near us and said something totally unintelligible. We high-tailed it into a bunker where we hunkered down and waited for an all-clear. I looked down in my hand, and there were the two cigars. I’d not even put them down. I looked at my comrades.
“Anybody got a light?” I asked.
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 The Jolie Caper; Baghdad
The dining facility at the Baghdad Embassy annex has a great, big sign that says “Palace DFAC”. It is by Saddam Hussein’s old palace in the center of Baghdad’s “Green Zone,” now called the “International Zone.” The whole place is labyrinthine with security, crawling with contractors, internationals, diplomats and soldiery of every type. The whole IZ is called the Star Wars Bar.
At around 10 p.m. a couple nights ago, what had to be a massive explosion ripped through something, somewhere across the river in the Red Zone. Could have been anywhere. It shook the compound. The next day a number of people mentioned they heard it, but no one could figure out where the blast occurred. A cursory scan of news events indicated it may have been a bomb planted in an Iraqi police chief’s car in the Monseur district. It killed one man and injured several.
Oklahoma’s 45th controls five Forward Operating Bases, or FOBs, in the IZ, responsible for security, transportation, water, sewage, and electricity. From time to time one can hear the rattle of gunfire over the wall of whatever FOB one is staying in. So it goes, as a wise man once said.
And then there’s Angelina Jolie. (The actress.)
While I was dining in the Palace DFAC with soldiers tasked to escort me within the walls, Pvt. Leslie Goble of Oklahoma City and Sgt. Shawn Riley of Stroud, we saw the dining staff preparing a reserved table of about a dozen people. The uniformed men scrubbed and polished the plastic tablecloth, laid down place settings (!) and placed a single rose in a bud vase (!) in front of each setting.
“They said Jolie is going to be in here at one o’clock,” someone whispered as they passed.
“Angelina Jolie?” Goble asked. “Do they mean Angelina Jolie?”
As time passed, this was confirmed. A plan hatched in my mind. We needed a pic of Angelina Jolie with an Oklahoma soldier. Brilliant, just brilliant. The camera I chose to bring on this trip is an Olympus Stylus 790 SW 7.1 megapixel camera. It says on the package it is shockproof, dustproof and waterproof to ten feet under, perfect for airborne assaults, beach landings, crawling through steaming jungles, blazing deserts, and photographing Angelina Jolie. I turned to my two escorts.
“You guys have to do this. You have to walk up to her, ask her for her autograph, then have her sign your Thunderbird patch. One of us takes the picture. The folks at home will LOVE it.”
The guys looked at me like I was outta my mind.
“You mean, just walk up and ASK?” Riley said.
“Yeah, yeah. That’s what I mean.”
“Man. I dunno,” Riley said. “I could hardly ever talk to girls. It’s a wonder I ever even got married.”
Riley’s wife and daughter live back home in Stroud, ducking tornados. Riley’s daughter is starting to talk while Riley is here in deployment. Yes, he’s the guy who was getting sick at the airport. He’s better.
It was decided. Riley and a couple of other soldiers would wait outside the DFAC. Goble and I would wait inside, near the table. As we waited the DFAC filled up with a lot, lot, lot of people who apparently got hungry for a late lunch. Sure enough, a bunch of dignitaries from the Embassy showed up.
For those who might see this as paparazzi — please, listen. I approached a couple of officials I recognized and asked them if Goble could ask Ms. Jolie for her autograph. Three, including Jolie’s handler, said, “Sure, it’s okay to ask.” Paparazzi don’t ask. They just run your car into a bridge abutment for a photo.
Suddenly Riley burst into the room. “I got it, I got it!” he said. “Dude, I’m shaking.”
He held the patch up, and there was her scrawl in sharpie on the unit’s Thunderbird.
Raul Rivera, a public affairs soldier here, took the pic.
Eventually, Ms. Jolie DID come in. The soldiers were polite enough — it wasn’t an out-of-control mob.
Every now and then, a soldier would ask, “Ms. Jolie, could you take your picture with me?”
Sure, Ms. Jolie would say. And she would.
About 10 minutes of this, however, and it became apparent I’d never get a pic of her autographing an Oklahoma soldier’s patch. That’s okay, though, because Riley did. Once it became apparent that he would be in print, he called home and explained it to his wife. She apparently took it…OK.
As for me, I finally got to do my first laundry run in about a week. I have three pairs of pants, three shirts and one set of sweats. Yeah, underwear and socks and stuff. All that.
So, I did. When I pulled my clothes out of the washer to put in the drier, I heard a clunk! I looked into the washer and there was my camera. I’d washed it with my pants. Oh crap.
Would it still work? I handed the camera to Riley. He turned it on snapped a pic of me. Still works!
Thus, you all get a picture of me doing my laundry. Sorry, no Angelina Jolie today.
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Magic Carpet Ride; Baghdad, Iraq
We are in Baghdad.
We landed in Baghdad packed tight in a transport plane called a C-17. It’s a big jet, though not the biggest, and used for transporting cargo, or if need be, soldiers. The planes usually transport cargo, so when they transport soldiers, it ain’t meant for comfort. What happens is this: They clamp in big square piece of metal into the hold of the plane, called a pallet. Some of these big pieces of metal have loads of luggage strapped to them, others have a big, square bathroom (for longer flights) that they clamp down. Others with a bunch of frayed airline chairs are called, paradoxically, comfort pallets. Oh, the chairs are comfortable enough. But they are very, very close together.
We were bussed to the plane in Kuwait at the Ali Al Saleem Air Base. This base, which some officer told me was bombed by us when the Iraqis were occupying it, has a bunch of busted up bombproof bunkers for the now non-existent fighter jets and an appropriate runway for this kind of air traffic.
Onto the plane we filed in alphabetical order and some got seats while others lined along the walls of the plane. The walls, floors and ceiling are all exposed tubing, wiring, structural supports, struts, etc, and very loud because there is not as much insulation as your typical airliner. That low rushing sound you hear on a normal airliner is so loud that you have to put on earplugs. Anyway, the people lined along the walls have uncomfortable seats, but at least they have lots of leg room and can stow their bags under their seats.
Those in the comfort pallets -- me being one -- got into the seats in the middle, and with full (required) combat vests, helmet, backpack and, oh, pillow, I needed Vaseline and a shoehorn once I sat down with that all on my lap. It was impossible to get the items under your feet once you sat down. I sat with my pack on my lap, unable to turn around, for about a couple of hours.
Man, after about 30 minutes I suddenly had this feeling of claustrophobia I haven’t felt since I crawled into the drainpipe underneath Chastain’s store back home when I was 12. I didn’t scream or foam at the mouth, but only just. After a little while I took off my helmet and I cooled down and felt better. I saw about a dozen soldiers in front of me do the same thing. I couldn’t turn around to see the others.
Eventually, we landed. It was night. I saw the lights of Baghdad in the distance and we marched through the back of the plane out the big back door.
Once we got inside -- surprise, there were no more convoys to take us into the International Zone. In fact, they couldn’t transport us anywhere because there were no other convoys to even take us to tents. So, we all laid on the floor. A dirty floor. With mice running around.
The airport had a little PX, the stores you see on military bases. And it had a Subway sandwich shop. In the middle of concrete-barrier nowhere. Wild. Well, I knew we would spend 10 hours in the dirty tent sleeping on the floor, and I spied this box of carpet remnants. Six bucks each. I bought one.
When I went back to the terminal, they laughed at me. Laughed. Lt. Col. McGuire said, “So, Ben. Got yourself a carpet there? What’s that for?”
I said, “Oh, a little carpet, a couple throw pillows, some bud vases ... this place could be awesome!”
Well, anyway, I laid that carpet down along a group of chairs, stuck my little camouflage desert pillow on it -- yeah, they have them -- and bid everyone a good night. I pulled my coat over my head and called it a night. I actually slept about six or seven hours. Not bad at all.
When I woke up, I saw about half a dozen soldiers had bought those carpets and pulled the same stunt. And that was about all they had in the PX, actually. These poor folks were laying all over the dirty floor, just miserable.
Sgt Shawn Riley came down with the Baghdad Crud. Yeah, different town, same yuck. Poor guy, like he needed it. He’s getting better now -- this is his fourth tour of Iraq, so I think he gets better faster.
Finally, they loaded us onto the huge, armored buses called Rhinos. These really are just big, armored buses, with armored windows. Everyone piled on wearing full battle gear and loaded weapons. There were little port holes in the side through which a soldier might shoot if being attacked by bad guys. Then, the buses, with military escort, took off up “Route Irish”, the infamous street leading from the airport to the Green Zone.
Soon, we were there. Everyone on the plane made it just fine. There are more coming, more until the whole unit is in-country and standing up their missions.
Baghdad. City of Sheherizade, “She whose realm is noble,” who spun her tales so the king would not kill her. That king had killed, they say, 3,000 women before she made him stop by telling him tales. Her tales gave back to him his soul.
This is it. The land of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, Hammurabi ... one of the many stops of Alexander the Great. The reign of Cyrus the Great and Xerxes and all those guys. Ali Baba and the magic carpet. Saddam, firing his gun in the air from the balcony of his parade grounds to celebrate his omnipresent. And now, land of car bombs and insurgent attacks.
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Dusty Minefield; Camp Buehring, Kuwait
As I write this, the sky is gray and thick with dust. It’s like soup. The dust storm started to blow in yesterday afternoon shortly following a training session I covered with the 279th Infantry. A hard, cold wind started blowing, kicking up dust, but then the sky just fell with it. Soon, it was an early dusk, with generator-run street lights glowing through the dun-colored view, like those lures you see on fish lurking in deep-sea diving shows.
This dust is nee-asssty. When I was deployed to Afghanistan, one of these hit Kandahar. I didn’t have a scarf, and just walked around breathing it. Well, I came down with pneumonia. I later was told that, at least there, about 30 percent of the dust contained human and animal waste. Lovely. Another guy told me that Chlamydia, a common, low-level venereal disease, is prevalent there in the soil and that I’d gotten Chlamydia pneumonia. Even better. They called it the Kandahar cough.
Many in the unit now have the Kuwaiti cough. Coughing, wheezing and Z-packs all around. Those packets of Zithromyacin antibiotic are the usual treatment of this malady.
The dust coats the tent or anything outside. Inside, too. It floats lightly in on the air and settles on everything. Everything. Computers, cameras and other gadgets are to be stored in plastic bags when not in use. It gets in clothes, bedding and toiletries. When you breathe it in, the grit gets in your teeth and it feels like the pumice with which the dentist cleans your ivories.
When I went to eat at DFAC 2 last night, a soldier who knew me from the Afghanistan deployment stood behind me at the soup counter.
“Whaddya think of this dust storm?” he asked.
I told him what I thought of it. He laughed.
“They last for days here,” he said.
I didn’t bring my scarf I used in Afghanistan, so I went to the PX (Post Exchange) and bought a “Recon Wrap”, a polyester sock-like sleeve you pull over your head and across your face. Wheee.
Addendum: This morning, the dust cleared. Not a three-day event! But now it’s windy and cold.
Addendum Part Two: The Dust is back this afternoon.
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 Hardship and Privation, Camp Buehring, Kuwait
“I don’t want to see anyone, anyone, taking any 20 minute showers. Combat showers only!”
Combat showers. They are this: Wet down, lather, rinse. Do NOT repeat. Maybe five minutes. Out here at Camp Beuhring, on the edge of the great Arabian desert known as the “empty quarter,” water must be trucked in daily by huge tankers of the kind that haul diesel fuel to gas stations back home. Only 15 gallons a day are allowed per person, per day. Now, the typical American uses something like, oh, I can’t remember, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a hundred gallons a day.
Life here is Spartan and harsh. For instance, the local Burger King on this base does not serve ice with its Cokes. Just the Coke in a can. Similarly, the Starbucks here does not have skim milk for the lattes. Can you imagine? Seriously.
No, seriously, this base has a Starbucks. It sits behind “Hesco” wall barriers, used to absorb rocket attacks, near the center of the base. Yes, I’ve had a triple latte every day since I’ve come to Camp Beuhring. Usually, Afghan war vet Colonel Kyle Goerke, Major Cary Bryant (a Norman police officer when he’s not fighting wars) and I go have one in the afternoon around three, about the time the jet-lag wall hits. It’s a battle to stay awake here because the nine-hour difference is horrendous. In fact, it’s enough to make me go to the spa for a pedicure.
Yeah, the spa. I ain’t kiddin. It’s near the gift shop and the Starbucks.
Or, if one is in the mood for Pizza, there’s the Pizza Inn over by the USO library, not far from the Great Steaks Company.
For the more conventional fare, there is the base mess hall, or DFAC, which is Pentagonese for Dining Facility, pronounced Dee Fack. Anyway, a soldier or Marine or coalition military person (such as the one of the many Aussies that abound here for some reason) flashes a card, and gets in line. The chow hall itself, DFAC No. 2, was built for the forces by these two Kuwaiti princes who apparently wanted to show their appreciation by building the best dining hall anyone here has ever seen. There is a row of Moen faucets jutting over marble countertop as one walks in the front, before getting in line. Then, there is either the short-order food line, or the main-course food line.
The short-order line is omelets in the morning, cooked to taste with all fresh ingredients. At dinner, it’s hamburgers, hot dogs, personal pan pizzas, onion rings, etc.
The main-course line is hit or miss. Either you are going to like it or not. Tonight was shrimp and steak. I dunno. Ehhh. Not bad.
The hardship is the kilometer-long walk from the 45th’s billet (that means big Quonset hut tents in which the troops are staying) to the DFAC. After you walk it a few times, it pretty much burns up the calories with which we must be stuffing ourselves. It’s hard enough a walk across these Arabian sands that when I can, I take the bus, one of the four they assigned to the 45th to use at their will.
Heck with this. War is Hell. I’m going to get a facial.
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 The Great Meal-Ready-To-Eat; En route to Kuwait
I’m not completely alone in this, but MREs -- Meals Ready to Eat --are really not that bad. There are a variety of entrees available, giving the options of choosing one’s own poison, so-to-speak.
Here at Camp McGregor, MREs are the required lunch. Well, that is, if one doesn’t eat a bag of chips or find the local catering truck that tools around the base, called “Indian Boy.” More about that later.
We’ve all heard about MREs, but I’ve read precious little about how to eat them. Luckily, I was schooled in the proper procedure during my first visit with the 45th overseas, in Afghanistan in 2004.
It works like this. First, open the heavily constructed cardboard box. Best to drop it from a C-130 transport plane. The MREs are in square packages covered with slick, thick plastic. These days, the plastic packages can be peeled open on one end.
First, select the meal you want.
1) Pick up meal marked “pork patty, chopped and formed.”
2) Replace.
3) Pick up “Country Captain Chicken.”
4) Replace.
5) Pick up “Chili and Macaroni.”
6) That’s the one.
7) Peel open and look at the various components. MREs have a variety of foodstuffs in them according to the meal plan. “Chili and Macaroni” has the entrée by name, chocolate chip cookies, “Cinnamon Royals” (Red Hots, actually, but they can’t say that. Ours is not to wonder why.), Wheat Snack Bread, Jalapeno Cheese product, “accessory packet” containing a little roll of toilet paper, gum, a book of matches, salt, pepper, sugar and instant coffee, and a little plastic bag containing a packet of carbide, upon which you pour water to cause a chemical reaction that heats the entrée.
8) Eat the cookies.
9) Take the chili mac out of the cardboard box in which it resides. The food is in a foil pouch.
10) Cut or tear open one end of the plastic bag containing the carbide heater. Pour water into the pouch up to the line. If you pour it over the line, it will explode and blow the meal open, spreading chili mac across the tent and necessitate a visit from the fire brigade.
11) Not really. The pouch does get hot and the smoke coming off it will burn, really.
12) As it starts to fizz, generating the heat, slide the entrée pouch into the plastic bag.
13) Special tip: Put the little pouch of nacho cheese in too. Yum!
14) Place the plastic bag with the entrée and cheese pouch as it is bubbling and burning your hands into the cardboard entrée box. Set at a slight angle, smoking opening upward, about a half-inch above the table.
14) As meal heats, eat the red hots.
15) Skip the snack bread. Trust me.
16) After it heats for about 15 minutes, it’s pretty hot. Remove from the pouch and wipe off the excess carbide sludge. It’s deadly poison.
17) Not really, I guess.
18) Matter of personal taste, but I slice the foil pouch holding the chili mac lengthwise, making for a better scoop with a plastic spoon.
19) Enjoy.
20) Repeat as necessary.
We have made it to Kuwait! More soon.
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 Without a shot; Camp McGregor, NM
The “cha-chink!” of a pistol bolt being drawn and released is distinctive. It’s often used with menace in many a scene of a movie thriller. The bad guy is about to plug the hero, or a helpless victim. He has that thousand-yard stare, and draws back the slide of a semiautomatic pistol held black in his hand, and releases it. “Cha-chink!”
Even if you don’t know about guns, it’s apparent that there is something menacing about it, something that readies the gun to be fired, a hot plug of lead burning a hole right into the heart of our hero.
It’s a sound I’ve heard every day, all day, all around here at McGregor. The men and women of the Thunderbirds, Oklahoma’s National Guard, walk around the base with weapons always strapped to the side or slung over their shoulder. It’s practice for the real thing about to happen when they fly across the big pond and take up positions in Baghdad and surrounding environs.
They have to carry them all day, every day, at all times, and never leave them in the bathroom, or next to the table in the mess hall, or leave them in their room when they go jog or lift weights. All the time, all day, no matter where they go, they have to have them.
However, they must clear them every time they enter a building, according to the regs. What does that mean? Well, they are required to remove the magazine, or “clip” as it’s colloquially called, which is the thing that holds the bullets in the gun. Then they have to draw back the slide, which is the mechanism that feeds the bullets into the gun when they shoot it.
That yanks the live round out of the barrel — the part you don’t want pointed at you, ever — and tosses it out. Once they do all that, the gun is empty and they can take it in the building.
There are 55-gallon drums filled with sand outside the buildings just for that purpose. After removing the magazine, the person with the firearm points the barrel into the drum, and draws back the slid to make sure it’s completely unloaded. “Cha-chink!”
Why do they point the gun into the barrel? Well, guns sometimes go off. Sometimes, the soldier will be talking to one another, routine, routine, routine, blah, blah, blah, and occasionally someone will jack a round into the chamber, or forget to take it out, and “BANG!”
Because they are pointing the gun into a barrel full of sand, the round buries itself in the sand instead of that soldier, or his buddy’s head, or the fender of the Humvee, or the reporter who is also in line to get into the chow hall. The others all laugh at the guy who cooked off the round, and then his supervisor writes him up, or not, or puts him on duty guarding the latrine, or makes him run around the tent doing press-ups with his rifle, saying, “This is my rifle, this is my gun, this o | |