Baath Party!!

Part of the tour I took one week ago led us through the Baath Party house. The Baath Party being the controlling party of Iraq prior to the invasion in 2003. The luxury that these people lived in, while the average person less than a mile away was living in poverty is sickening. That being said, the use of marble and the extreme lavishness that these buildings held was overwhelming. I really would have enjoyed seeing what the buildings looked like before they were destroyed by JDAMS and Tomahawk cruise missiles.

The above picture is of the lobby, just as you enter the party headquarters.

The swimming pool, supposedly it was never filled with water, and was instead used for the elemination of opponents. The wall not shown has a large "stain"

Looking out from inside the lobby . . . you can almost imagine how beautiful this would have looked in its prime.

I don't have very many pictures of me on here, so I figured I would load a couple up. These were taken at the Baath Party House and the Victory Over America Palace respectively.

Trailer living

Life at Camp Stryker (my new home) is quite different than my previous six months at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait. Nearly every aspect of life is different, from my daily tasks to my living arrangements. I never thought I'd find myself living in a mobile home, but here I am living in a room in a trailer. Part of me feels like I should put a chair out front and start drinking beer with my shirt off. Thankfully, this urge is impossible to fulfull here since I can't drink here (not that I drink anyway).


The picture above is looking down the row of trailers just outside of my door. The concrete T-Barriers are for our protection, and are all around our CHU (Container(ized) Housing Unit). Well, that's the grand tour of my new trailer life. In the next installment, we'll talk about mobile home entertainment.

Pictures as Promised

Here are a few pictures from the mission that was just completed. I hope you enjoy!



This is the view from my truck. A good view of all the trucks we just picked up to escort north.



This is what it looks like at the front of the convoy.



Our GPS was definitely having a few problems. It says we're going 418mph. We are not an F16.



Looking out over the desert at sunset, it can actually be quite gorgeous.



Someone's trailer broke down so we attempted to load it onto our trailer. It . . .well. . .lets just say an hour and a half later, our trailer was still empty.



This is my workstation. Complete with personal computer, machine gun, and a hat rack :-)



Unpaved roads can be fun! It would really stink if the wind were blowing straight down the road.

The last leg

I can't believe I've been out on the road this long. . .and I still have one more day of the trip left, the longest day of the trip so far. Not only do we drive farther than on any other day, when we get to our destination, we still have to drop our loads that we're carrying, and empty out our trucks. I have NO idea when I'm actually going to get some rest. Anyway, once I get back to Arifjan, I hope to put some pictures up from the mission.