Just wanted to post a picture I finally got from my visit to the medical clinic. The girl is Jasmine, the one who really, really wanted the pink soccer ball. Sadly, the military has cancelled the clinic, no reasons given. My guess is that someone in a “senior leadership position” decided that, because the clinic was an unfunded venture for the military, it was more important to use the money and supplies on something “better”.

It seems like the military or politicians would have learned a thing or two about “hearts and minds” from Vietnam but apparently not. Granted, I don’t know the exact reason why the program was stopped but, knowing the military the way I do, I can almost guarantee the reason was probably stupid.

So, that was the first and only time I’ll probably be able to work with real Iraqis. I had fun and wouldn’t mind doing a tour that allowed me to work with the locals on a regular basis.

Just a couple more days and I’ll be at my 90 day mark in-country. Not only that, but I finally (after 6 months) got my follow-on orders. After I’m done in Iraq, I’ll be heading to Japan. Rock on!

I’ve been trying to go back to Japan since I left there in 2003. At the time, I was on the USS Kitty Hawk (nicknamed the Shitty Kitty for reasons I soon found out). I had reported there in June of 2001. For those without a calendar, just a few months later was the infamous 9/11 incident in New York. Being a forward deployed battle group, we were naturally one of the first units to respond to the upcoming war in Afghanistan. > more <

Though I don’t get to go outside the wire, I figured some people would be interested about my observations of Camp Victory and Iraq in general.

For one thing, you know you’ve acclimated when 109 degrees feels moderately comfortable and 85 degrees is decidely mild. The other day, while walking to work at 4:45 in the morning, the temp was 77.5 degrees; we thought it was a little on the chilly side. Life is really going to suck when I get back to San Diego. > more <

Today was my first time interacting with the Iraqi people. I volunteered to help with the Hearts for Baghdad program, where we visit a medical clinic on base and play with the children who come in.

We first gave out coloring books and boxes of crayons but ran out quickly. Just like American children in kindergarden, if you don’t have a big bucket of crayons for everyone to pull from, they won’t share their personal boxes. Many children kept coming up, asking for crayons, but all we could do was borrow one from another child. > more <

I just added a bunch of new photos to my Flickr site. This completes all the ones I have taken while here in Iraq.

I will be taking more photos as I get the opportunity. But I usually don’t feel like it when the temp is 115+ when I get off work.

I’m working on uploading all the pictures I’ve been taking during my IA deployment. I don’t have all of them uploaded yet but you can view the ones available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/98739387@N00/

I currently have most of the photos from my time at Camp McCrady and Kuwait. I still have to upload the pictures I’ve taken since I got to Iraq. We have limited bandwidth and our Internet connection gets throttled if we exceed a certain amount of data traffic. So I have to do it piecemeal.