Dear Friends and Family

Again I come to you from the ALWAYS sunny Baghdad, Iraq. I am still employed; “Hamdilila” if any of you had your doubts after my last communication, sorry about that. I am still trying to mend the fences right now. From a purely sociological perspective, it is interesting to see how the same people that I came over on the plane with me, that have imbedded themselves into positions of power and control, are now changing their personalities and are taking great joy in “lording” over those of us who had lesser visions of grandeur. Well, it’s my fault, I should have pony’ed up early to kiss some ass and maybe I could be doing the lording. I did not do it for the 20 years at CPD, so I will not start do it here. Enough said, I am still in the game. ?

Today we finished up our security detail at the B.I.A.P. That is the Baghdad International Airport, or as I have re-christened it, the “Bubba International Airport”. You ask why Bubba? Well as far as I am concerned, a few things around here should be renamed after something Southern, so why not Bubba. ? It was not a bad detail at all out there. The airport, like everything else around here, is under current control of a US contractor providing the security and logistics support. In this case it’s a company called “Custer Battles”, not a name that inspires any kind of confidence in me. L Every time you turn around here you find a new, yet unheard of, civilian contractor doing business in Iraq.

If my insight is in any way correct, there are more than 30 000 privately employed contractors working here in all kinds of different capacities. It is interesting to see them at places that you would normally expect the military or civilian police to be, such as roadblock checkpoints and force protection for the present Coalition Provisional Authority etc. and of course Abu Garib prison. Have you ever heard of a private company called “Blackwater”?

These are either ex-Special Forces or guys that always wanted to be in Special Forces. Tattooed up and down, geared up like they are getting ready to film Predator 3. They look at you as if they want to tear off your head and shit down the hole. L The only word that comes to mind is “Mercenaries”, soldiers that are for hire. In German we call them “Soeldner”. It makes me wonder if the reason that we do not need any more US Military troops on the ground here in Iraq….. is that we just hire more of these “guns for hire”.

I have been around them enough to get a good (bad) impression of their style and attitude towards the mission and the Iraqi people. These are the type of guys that put bags over peoples head and strip them naked. People that are not worried about winning “hearts and minds” but people who relish in the power over others. I know what they called the type 60 years ago.

In these past few days I walked among the hundreds of I.P. recruits and saw their faces looking at us Americans. We are the ones carrying the gun’s, we have the keys, the cars and make the rules in their country. They look at us with stone faces, half full of fear, half full of admiration and with a kind of juvenile envy and maybe even hatred. Some of our police advisor guys have little hesitation to engage themselves with them. When we do, then we suddenly find smiling and warm faces looking back, eager to know us, to reach out and interact with us.

You all have seen the imigages of US service men being surrounded by smiling local children grouping around a GI. I now know that feeling for myself and I can tell you it is most exhilarating. These people are so eager to know us and with that the rest of the world, it is overwhelming, yet the fear and suspicion of the unknown Americans that remains in them is very strong.

As far as I know Tom and I are good to go out and do our job as team fleet management for the Iraqi Police. Going into town is getting increasingly challenging. It feels more and more like deer hunting. Guess who the deer is? L As it was explained to me by my friend and language assistant Mohamed, the coalition is in all reality fighting four different, unaligned factions here in Iraq.

The Sadaam loyalist, Islamic extremists, criminals that are taking advantage of the situation and now a slowly growing grass roots resistance movement to the occupation of Iraq. Fortunately all these people are not connected. Together they make the existence miserable for us all and hurt their country in the long run. As with everything else in life, no two people have the same view of what is going on here. To the average Iraqi it is just more of the same. They have been oppressed and have lived in harms way for so long, this is just one more chapter in a sad and bitter existence. They yearn for the day that their “good life” will start. Some don’t even know what that would be; some just don’t care any more. Many feel that they have been from the frying pan to the fire. In a way we are just “Sadaam Hussain light” to them. It is hard to overcome some of the Coalition’s shortcomings to them and let’s not even talk about Abu Garib prison.

More and more of our people are going home. The program is not moving forward at all. Some say we are here to early, some others who were here back in October, say that we came too late. I feel the later are more correct. We are having very little impact on the development of the reconstruction of the police services here. With the right goal oriented management, cohesive command and control we could make a real difference.

If all works out according to my plans I will take my one and only culminated time off in late June. I hope to spend my time in Germany ? ? ? . Traveling out of here and to go anywhere is a hard row to hoe. I will try to maximize my time, since it most likely will be the only trip I will get to take. At first DynCorp promised two trips of choice on the company, now they say the second trip is your trip going home at the end of the contract. Yeah….. that’s what we all thought, NOT. The company has changed many things they promised and had advertised. The result is that now they are having a hard time recruiting more advisers. The contract renewal rate will most likely be VERY low. I am glad that my obligation ends in December.

Let me tell you all a little about the Hotel Al Sadeer. A fairly new hotel, maybe 20 years old with 300 rooms that are all singles and very nice. The layout is about the same as the old room at the Baghdad. There are six stories of rooms with little anything else. One undersized day room with a bar and a dinning room. We do have a pool but no coffee shop etc. and little atmosphere. Whenever you watch CNN do a live shot from downtown Baghdad, they show a beautiful blue domed mosque in the back ground. Behind the mosque you can see a mustard colored six story building, that’s the Sadeer.

We are about as far from the Hotel Palestine as the Baghdad is on the other side. They say that we will only to be here until maybe the end of June. Then the contracts with both hotels expire and we all might be moved into the green zone. Although here everything is subject to change from one day till the next. The housing in the green zone consists out of a large group of small trailers, two men to a unit. Man, I came all this way to live in a trailer park. L Maybe it will only be for us that are from Arkansas and Mississippi.

Maa Al Salama
Rod