Hello everyone,
Hope everyone is having an enjoyable summer. It’s hard to believe that it is already a week into July.
Everyone has heard the stories of Saddam and his palaces that he had built around Iraq. I had the opportunity to see a few of these palaces over the past couple of weeks. Some of these palaces have holes where ceilings used to be, courtesy of the US Air Force, but most others are still in tact. While the palaces make good pictures and are built with marble floors and chandeliers, when you actually take a close look at the workmanship, it reminds you that this is Iraq. The palaces do stand out among the common houses in the surrounding villages, particularly up here in Tikrit.
I spent some time down in Baghdad attending a biometrics conference and collecting information on Army Space Support Teams. I know most of you can hardly contain yourselves thinking of the excitement of that adventure, but hey, some of the work isn’t quite as “field army” as others.
Biometrics is actually playing a large role in fighting the insurgency right now. Biometrics is the ability to establish an individual’s identity through a unique physical characteristic. There are uses of biometrics here in Iraq that we wouldn’t stand for in the States, but the people here are accepting of this intrusion because it is helping to track the bad guys and it is saving lives. Biometrics involves taking fingerprints, facial photographs, and iris scans of Iraqis and keeping this information in a data base. Iraqis can refuse to be enrolled in the biometrics system, but they can then be refused employment or admittance to certain buildings or regions. All Iraqi security forces (ISF) have to be enrolled in the biometrics system and the system is used to scan them into their work places to ensure they are who they say they are. Fingerprints are being pulled from IEDs and IED makers are being captured right and left. Obviously people don’t leave their eye print on IEDs, but the iris scan is used to verify identities for people crossing the borders and for people entering secured facilities. The insurgents are so concerned about the use of biometrics that an Al-Qaeda member actually jumped at a biometrics computer at a border crossing and blew himself and the computer up in an attempt to destroy biometrics data. Known criminals or suspects are placed on a biometrics watch list, and if a person at a checkpoint receives a “hit,” they are immediately arrested. As I said, we obviously would not accept this type of personal intrusion at home, but we aren’t dealing with an insurgency at this point, either.
The Marines tend to be a little more aggressive with their use of biometrics than the Army. They wall off whole cities and towns and require anyone wanting entrance to have to be scanned. This has helped cities like Fallujah and Ramadi to become pretty secure.
The Army Space Support Team, or ARSST, is also located in Baghdad. The team is out of Colorado Springs and it provides the Army with information heavily derived from satellites. Unfortunately, most of the work that the ARSST performs is conducted at a level that can’t be discussed among unclassified friends, so there is not much that I can write about this topic. I will say that the Army hasn’t completely grasped the full potential of space in its day to day operations quite yet.
The attached picture is the Al Faw palace at Camp Victory in Baghdad. There are several lakes and numerous other palaces and large homes in the area that were built for Saddam’s family or for his Baath Party brethren to use. Most of the palaces, even some with holes for ceilings, are used by coalition forces now. Victory is just west of Baghdad by the airport. I will have to admit that while visiting Al Faw, I did take some leisure time and I swatted golf balls off of a 3rd floor balcony into the surrounding lake.
Most of the palaces in Iraq were built after the Gulf War and after sanctions were placed on Iraq. Saddam took the oil for food money and used it to build mansions all over the country for himself while his people went hungry.
While in Baghdad, I also went to the International Zone, which is also called the Green Zone. The international embassies are all located in that area, as well as Iraqi government facilities. I was never really clear as to what the Green Zone was like until I visited it. I pictured it as an area completely cleared of local Iraqis to keep the diplomats safe. There are actually Iraqi homes and Iraqi citizens living in dumpy homes all throughout the Green Zone. It has the Washington DC feel about it, with nice buildings surrounded by slums. To get back and forth from the Green Zone to Victory, you ride in a rolling safe called a Rhino. It is making its final journeys, though, as MRAPs will soon take its place.
The other palace in the pictures is called the Mother’s Palace. Saddam built this one in Tikrit for his mom, who counted the 365 rooms and decided that she wasn’t going to get stuck cleaning that sucker, so she never lived in it. I visited the mommy palace as I was patrolling with another Police Transition Team (PTT) in the Tikrit area. The police in Tikrit are in pretty decent shape compared to some cities. The station that we visited was the station that handled the Trojan water truck attack that I mentioned a few weeks back. These guys have the incident on video and they couldn’t help but show us the video over and over again. They even have it set to music now, and who knows, they may have it posted on their version of Youtube already. Unlike us, they have no prohibition against videotaping the dead enemy, and they had what was left of the AQI members all laid out in the back of their pickup trucks like big game during hunting season. They were very proud, but they should be. They handled it well, even the choreographed music.
That PTT patrol took place on the 4th of July, and for lunch, we ate chicken kabobs from a local Tikrit vendor. Chicken, freshly made pita bread, humus and an imported Pepsi made for a great July 4th lunch in Iraq. For the record, no stomach issues arose, so we picked the right vendor.
During the PTT patrol, we found a large group of Iraqis and we stopped and released a pigeon. Believe it or not, there was a military reason for that release, and I will have to let you ponder that event using your best cloak and dagger thought process.
It was pointed out to me recently that the US press will talk about the security gains in Iraq, but they don't ever talk about how other areas are progressing. While in Baghdad, we received a briefing that covered every topic from security to governance to economics, and there are improvements in all areas across the board. In a counterinsurgency, the security issue is tremendously important, obviously, or these other activities cannot occur. Interestingly, while everyone here is waiting for the big up-tick in violence that usually occurs during the summer months, it just hasn't happened yet. That is referred to as a "good thing."
What is occurring in large numbers is a reconciliation process. Wanted insurgents are being given the opportunity to turn in weapons or to lead the authorities to weapons caches in exchange for clearing their names and giving them a chance at a fresh start. They are appearing before Iraqi judges and most are having their records expunged in exchange for them renouncing the insurgency. They only get one chance and if they screw up, they get put away for a long time. Thousands of rounds of ammunition have been turned in, and nearly 1,000 insurgents have reconciled in the past few months in the northern regions alone.
Everyone take care.
Hope everyone is having an enjoyable summer. It’s hard to believe that it is already a week into July.
Everyone has heard the stories of Saddam and his palaces that he had built around Iraq. I had the opportunity to see a few of these palaces over the past couple of weeks. Some of these palaces have holes where ceilings used to be, courtesy of the US Air Force, but most others are still in tact. While the palaces make good pictures and are built with marble floors and chandeliers, when you actually take a close look at the workmanship, it reminds you that this is Iraq. The palaces do stand out among the common houses in the surrounding villages, particularly up here in Tikrit.
I spent some time down in Baghdad attending a biometrics conference and collecting information on Army Space Support Teams. I know most of you can hardly contain yourselves thinking of the excitement of that adventure, but hey, some of the work isn’t quite as “field army” as others.
Biometrics is actually playing a large role in fighting the insurgency right now. Biometrics is the ability to establish an individual’s identity through a unique physical characteristic. There are uses of biometrics here in Iraq that we wouldn’t stand for in the States, but the people here are accepting of this intrusion because it is helping to track the bad guys and it is saving lives. Biometrics involves taking fingerprints, facial photographs, and iris scans of Iraqis and keeping this information in a data base. Iraqis can refuse to be enrolled in the biometrics system, but they can then be refused employment or admittance to certain buildings or regions. All Iraqi security forces (ISF) have to be enrolled in the biometrics system and the system is used to scan them into their work places to ensure they are who they say they are. Fingerprints are being pulled from IEDs and IED makers are being captured right and left. Obviously people don’t leave their eye print on IEDs, but the iris scan is used to verify identities for people crossing the borders and for people entering secured facilities. The insurgents are so concerned about the use of biometrics that an Al-Qaeda member actually jumped at a biometrics computer at a border crossing and blew himself and the computer up in an attempt to destroy biometrics data. Known criminals or suspects are placed on a biometrics watch list, and if a person at a checkpoint receives a “hit,” they are immediately arrested. As I said, we obviously would not accept this type of personal intrusion at home, but we aren’t dealing with an insurgency at this point, either.
The Marines tend to be a little more aggressive with their use of biometrics than the Army. They wall off whole cities and towns and require anyone wanting entrance to have to be scanned. This has helped cities like Fallujah and Ramadi to become pretty secure.
The Army Space Support Team, or ARSST, is also located in Baghdad. The team is out of Colorado Springs and it provides the Army with information heavily derived from satellites. Unfortunately, most of the work that the ARSST performs is conducted at a level that can’t be discussed among unclassified friends, so there is not much that I can write about this topic. I will say that the Army hasn’t completely grasped the full potential of space in its day to day operations quite yet.
The attached picture is the Al Faw palace at Camp Victory in Baghdad. There are several lakes and numerous other palaces and large homes in the area that were built for Saddam’s family or for his Baath Party brethren to use. Most of the palaces, even some with holes for ceilings, are used by coalition forces now. Victory is just west of Baghdad by the airport. I will have to admit that while visiting Al Faw, I did take some leisure time and I swatted golf balls off of a 3rd floor balcony into the surrounding lake.
Most of the palaces in Iraq were built after the Gulf War and after sanctions were placed on Iraq. Saddam took the oil for food money and used it to build mansions all over the country for himself while his people went hungry.
While in Baghdad, I also went to the International Zone, which is also called the Green Zone. The international embassies are all located in that area, as well as Iraqi government facilities. I was never really clear as to what the Green Zone was like until I visited it. I pictured it as an area completely cleared of local Iraqis to keep the diplomats safe. There are actually Iraqi homes and Iraqi citizens living in dumpy homes all throughout the Green Zone. It has the Washington DC feel about it, with nice buildings surrounded by slums. To get back and forth from the Green Zone to Victory, you ride in a rolling safe called a Rhino. It is making its final journeys, though, as MRAPs will soon take its place.
The other palace in the pictures is called the Mother’s Palace. Saddam built this one in Tikrit for his mom, who counted the 365 rooms and decided that she wasn’t going to get stuck cleaning that sucker, so she never lived in it. I visited the mommy palace as I was patrolling with another Police Transition Team (PTT) in the Tikrit area. The police in Tikrit are in pretty decent shape compared to some cities. The station that we visited was the station that handled the Trojan water truck attack that I mentioned a few weeks back. These guys have the incident on video and they couldn’t help but show us the video over and over again. They even have it set to music now, and who knows, they may have it posted on their version of Youtube already. Unlike us, they have no prohibition against videotaping the dead enemy, and they had what was left of the AQI members all laid out in the back of their pickup trucks like big game during hunting season. They were very proud, but they should be. They handled it well, even the choreographed music.
That PTT patrol took place on the 4th of July, and for lunch, we ate chicken kabobs from a local Tikrit vendor. Chicken, freshly made pita bread, humus and an imported Pepsi made for a great July 4th lunch in Iraq. For the record, no stomach issues arose, so we picked the right vendor.
During the PTT patrol, we found a large group of Iraqis and we stopped and released a pigeon. Believe it or not, there was a military reason for that release, and I will have to let you ponder that event using your best cloak and dagger thought process.
It was pointed out to me recently that the US press will talk about the security gains in Iraq, but they don't ever talk about how other areas are progressing. While in Baghdad, we received a briefing that covered every topic from security to governance to economics, and there are improvements in all areas across the board. In a counterinsurgency, the security issue is tremendously important, obviously, or these other activities cannot occur. Interestingly, while everyone here is waiting for the big up-tick in violence that usually occurs during the summer months, it just hasn't happened yet. That is referred to as a "good thing."
What is occurring in large numbers is a reconciliation process. Wanted insurgents are being given the opportunity to turn in weapons or to lead the authorities to weapons caches in exchange for clearing their names and giving them a chance at a fresh start. They are appearing before Iraqi judges and most are having their records expunged in exchange for them renouncing the insurgency. They only get one chance and if they screw up, they get put away for a long time. Thousands of rounds of ammunition have been turned in, and nearly 1,000 insurgents have reconciled in the past few months in the northern regions alone.
Everyone take care.
2 comments:
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the blog post From the Front: 07/09/2008 News and Personal dispatches from the front and the home front.
Thanks for the update. Take care
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