E-mail

I get a lot of crazy e-mail about projects I've worked on. The crazies come from all sides of the political spectrum and seem to think I have a special pipeline to Bush, Maliki or the CEO of my company (none of these things are true). Here are some favorites:

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(CCed to the CEO of my company, president@whitehouse.gove, vicepresident@whitehouse.gov)
Of course you hid the report on the devastating conditions in Iraq as a result of George Bush's war that you love and support. You don't want people to know how he and you murdered and maimed innocent people and destroyed a country for no good reason. George Bush, Dick Cheney and you make America sick. And that's nothing compared to what you've done to Iraq.

SD

Alexandria, VA

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(in response to an Oxfam report about declining humanitarian conditions in Iraq)
Oh yes life in Iraq was much better before we came and screwed it up. The practice of towing a power tree shredder into a family yard and putting the wife and kids in feet first, while dad watched the goo spraying all over the side of the house, was much better than now .... don't ya think? Or how about the 500 person mass grave yards, where people were buried alive clutching their children? Or the village gas killings? Just harmless play ... right?

John

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I'm not sure if you can help me but maybe you can send me in the right direction. I'm writing a screenplay involving international military operations both covert and public. Where do you go when you want to find specific details of international military operations for example ex-military personell.

Thanx,
Demetrius

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(the CAPS are his, not mine)
You are now saying what I have tried to tell my political representatives since 2003 when I retired and started researching the Iraq debacle. Reference to Senator Durbin and O/Bama regarding letters attempting to get them to inquire within their own experience why the way out of Iraq has left completely the WHAT ABOUT THE PEOPLE out of consideration.

Second, another bump in the road that U.S. is constantly hounding the Parliament with is the Oil Project. This is very important to the Iraqi process of survival due to their income for operations and distribution - 95% of which comes from OIL. . The OIL PROJECT document as written by U.S. is an indicator of not serving good will with favor. Over 75% of the oil revenue would be distributed to U.S. and 4 large oil companies. Results: financial suicide if the Parliament permits this instrument to live. Thus the reason the Oil Project is shelved by the Parliament until adjustments are agreed to.

Which brings about another problem for Bush since he has his STAY THE COURSE mantra blaring but not considered by most WHY.. The WHY is the OIL PROJECT. Without this document being signed, there can be no representation of even perhaps exiting Iraq. This due to the promises at the inception of the invasion or prior. The PNAC handbook states that all will share richly in the protection of our assets - OIL. To those who had an inkling otherwise, the only reason for the invasion was OIL and is still OIL or the revenue of.

My hope is that you and other reporters can use the IRAQ CONDITION issue to awake those who only think military and political to attain another view more directly related to success in Iraq FOR ALL IRAQ.

WC

A must-read

I'm totally exhausted from the soccer madness today, so I'll let somebody else do the talking: Steve Fainaru, a Washington Post investigative reporter (and 2006 Pulitzer Prize finalist), has a phenomenal in-depth look at a private security contractor that was working in Baghdad until last spring. Five guards were kidnapped last November, which Fainaru conclusively shows was the result of poor training, mismanagement and bad decision-making. Private security is a huge, multi-billion-dollar industry in Iraq, and I can't believe Crescent is the only company making these types of dumb choices. The full article is here; part two runs tomorrow.

Money quotes include:

"Schneider oversaw Crescent's security operations for more than two years, despite having pleaded guilty, according to court records, to misdemeanor charges of breaking and entering and domestic violence in Michigan in the mid-1990s."

"Crescent crafted its own military identification badges to enable its employees -- including unscreened Iraqis -- to gain admittance to U.S. bases."

"Reuben, the company medic, was a self-described alcoholic who was not certified as an emergency medical technician and had resigned as a suburban Minneapolis police officer in 2003 after a drunk-driving violation."

The trouble with love

In Iraq it can be the simplest things that cause all the trouble. I just spent an hour consoling D, who was in tears because of her boyfriend. The man in question lives next door, but they rarely see each other because another man in his office has connections to the Mahdi Army and has made threats toward them. They talk on the phone almost every day, but he regularly tells her that he is moving out of the country soon and won't take her with him. Today, she asked him to write down her parents' contact info in case something happens to her, and he didn't want the commitment (although he tells her all the time how much he loves her). D's parents live in Basra, a few hundred miles away, and most of her close friends from college have moved out of the country, so she's very lonely--and this boyfriend doesn't seem to be helping matters.

Dating and love are incredibly complicated matters around here. It makes me grateful for what I've got, even if it is 7,000 miles away. If you're in the same place as someone you love today, give them a hug, okay? For D and me.

Food

I like Middle Eastern food, I really do (Iraqi food isn't very different from that of any neighboring country). Hummus, babaganoush, lamb, bring it on. In general, I'll eat almost anything. But the food at our house is truly terrible.

The main problem is meat products I can't identify. Often I'll get a plate with a grayish, shiny piece of something. I try to avoid consuming any piece of meat whose animal of origin is unknown. Around here, that means I eat mostly vegetarian. Let me be clear in saying I don't think this is a problem common to all Iraqi food, but specifically created by our lousy cook (I feel bad about saying it, because she's very sweet, but...) I was surviving basically on flatbread and hummus for a while, but inexplicably we haven't been served hummus in a week. Consequently I think I'm a bit protein starved.

And oh, the oil. Everything is cooked in gallons of the stuff. It makes it fairly unappealing to look at, and it doesn't feel so good sitting in my stomach an hour later. Some of these dishes could be fairly tasty if not for the overpowering taste of canola oil.

Today for lunch I was served unrecognizable meat in a sauce that tasted like ketchup, rice and cucumber and tomato salad. I ate the salad and rice. For dinner it was the oiliest sausage patties ever, another unidentifiable cut of meat, bread and more cucumber and tomato salad. I ate bread and salad. We've got to bring back the hummus around here.

Art for art's sake

Today I visited an art gallery in northern Baghdad, where I got to spend an hour chatting (in English, no less) with several painters and sculptors. We talked about how art has changed since the war began, the difficulty in trying to sell art in Baghdad and the reasons they choose to remain in Iraq. One man estimated that 80 percent of Baghdad's artists either have been killed or have fled the country. He told me he hated Saddam, but that he has to admit life was easier for artists before the Americans overthrew the dictatorship. Art for art's sake is no longer respected, he said--now, Moqtada al-Sadr might hire an artist to paint his portrait, but nobody wants to buy a beautiful abstract painting.

Several artists also lamented the role religion has begun to play in artistic expression. Paintings that show women without their heads covered, for example, are frowned on in many circles. People tell artists that they're wasting their time, that they should be "doing something useful." Almost all of the galleries in Baghdad--once considered the cultural capital of the Middle East--have closed. Just three students graduated from Baghdad's Academy of Fine Arts this year.

But despite the solemn tone of a lot of our discussion, I found the visit somewhat inspirational. In the outdoor cafe behind the gallery, two dozen artists and students sat around drinking coffee and talking about art. The women wore jeans or knee-length skirts and removed their hijabs.
They spoke passionately about the role of art in a troubled country, about their love for Iraq and their dedication to expressing that love through sculpture or painting. As I walked back to my armored car and retied my hijab around my head, I felt a little less confined.

Soccer

The Iraqi soccer team beat Vietnam 2-0 in the quarterfinals of the Asia Cup yesterday, setting off a wild celebration across Baghdad. Every television in the city would have been set to the game if it weren't for the lack of electricity, so instead people crowded around TVs in homes or businesses with private generators.

The significance of this team to the people of Iraq probably cannot be overstated. As we're often reminded, there are Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds who play, and Iraqis love them all because they bring pride to the country. The celebratory gunfire after the big win yesterday lasted for more than an hour (12 people were accidentally killed, but we try not to let this diminish the celebration). On Wednesday, Iraq will play the winner of today's Iran-South Korea match in the semifinals.

In a soccer-crazed country, it's hard not to get excited about the team's success. Yesterday I found myself cheering a brilliant goal by Iraq's star striker along with all of the Iraqis in our office. I'll tell you one thing: thanks to our generator, we'll all be watching Wednesday!

The visa question

Today's Washington Post has an important article about an unusual memo from the American ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker. Crocker is asking the Bush administration to provide visas for all Iraqis working for the U.S. government, including everyone from translators to service workers. Crocker wrote that he fears the government will lose its entire Iraqi staff unless they have the promise of a U.S. visa at the end of their service. ""Our [Iraqi staff members] work under extremely difficult conditions, and are targets for violence including murder and kidnapping. Unless they know that there is some hope of an [immigrant visa] in the future, many will continue to seek asylum, leaving our Mission lacking in one of our most valuable assets."

Crocker is certainly correct in his statement that Iraqis working for Americans risk their lives every day. As I've mentioned before, even those working for Americans unaffiliated with the government must lie about their employment even to their closest friends. Still, millions of Iraqis have been displaced--2.2 million to neighboring countries and another 2 million within Iraq, according to the U.N.--thousands of whom quit their American jobs out of fear that they would be killed. The promise of a one-way ticket to the U.S. would likely go a long way toward the ability to maintain a stable Iraqi workforce. But the article raises an important question: if you admit Iraq is unsafe for these people, what message does that send to everybody else? Shouldn't the goal be to make Iraq safe enough for Iraqis to live here?

The proposal has interesting ramifications for those of us working in the private sector, whose Iraqi coworkers would not be covered. Several staff members in our office are increasingly bitter that our company has not arranged for them to move to the U.S. By the time American security contractors, media companies, etc. leave Iraq, they will have to confront a difficult question about they level of responsibility they should take for the welfare of their staff members.