Howdy y'all. I'm in sunny Iraq and have been here for three weeks now. I'm working on a PSD team and have been driving, riding well or walking formations pretty much the whole time. It's been a very educational experience for me, that's for sure. My team is made up of solid professionals and I'm glad to be working with this crew.



That's me on a hilltop overlooking an oil facility. They burn off the natural gas because they don't have the facilities to process it right now.

Quoted: Good luck, stay safe.

Quoted: Be safe.

So far, so good.

Watch out for the game wardens sneaking up through the woods

Be safe and have fun while you're over there.

Michael

Quoted: Wow... Best wishes to you, hope you make it back unscathed.  Post some stories when you have a chance!

Thanks. I'll post what I can.

Quoted: What's wrong with your face? Is that another one of them Gubment experiments gone wrong? Have they been feeding you strange looking pills? Kidding! Good luck, and God Bless.

Yeah, that face thing is kinda starting to worry me. Do you think I should see the medic about it? Little kids stare at me on the street...

Quoted: You certainly look ready, in shape, got the tools stay safe.

I definitely have the tools. I'm very well equipped here. Weapony-goodness!

Quoted: Watch out for the game wardens sneaking up through the woods Be safe and have fun while you're over there. Michael

WE are the game wardens here!

I'm glad its been a good experience for you, Jeff.  We'll cheer you on but look forward to your return.

Great to hear from you, Jarhead_22, and to see that you're doing well!

As always, you remain in our prayers daily.

Eric The('BringingTheCrusadesToAJihadistNearYou')Hun

Quoted: I'm glad its been a good experience for you, Jeff.  We'll cheer you on but look forward to your return.

Thanks. I look forward to my return as well. It looks like it'll be sometime late November/early December.

Quoted: Great to hear from you, Jarhead_22, and to see that you're doing well! As always, you remain in our prayers daily. Eric The('BringingTheCrusadesToAJihadistNearYou')Hun

Thank you, Sir. May I have another?

There is a fellow on my team who has a considerable collection of body ink, most of it religious iconography of one sort or another, and he and I have discussed the idea of having my avatar --The Maltese Cross-- tattooed on our right shoulders.

God be with you Jar

Thanks for all the good wishes, gents. I took that position on the edge of the hill just for the picture and don't make a common practice out of skylining myself.

The picture below is of a place you may have heard of before: Halabja, Iraq. It's the Kurdish city that Sadaam nerve gassed back in the eighties, then bulldozed the city. We went up there because the Kurds were putting a road in and found another mass grave near the site.

Quoted: I haven't seen this report in the mainstream news media and probably won't, but we should remain those Saddam sympathizers and his minions that Saddam & Co have committed mass murder and other atrocitie and must answer for it. If the USA didn't stand up to Saddam no one would, and we won't find out the actual horrors until all of this BS is just faint memories in many sheeples' minds.

5k dead immediately with more to follow, according to local sources. In the memorial building, there were twenty or thirty pictures of the mass dead laying in the street in what used to be the town.

The first link that Google returned from a search on halabja: www.krg.org/reference/halabja/index.asp

Good to hear from you, bro. Keep safe.

Thanks again for the good wishes and free beer offers.

My ass is very well protected here. The team I'm on is stacked with guys who have been there and done that, and many of them have been here before in uniform. We have had in-depth training on the situation over here and that training is ongoing. We had a slow business day today so we put a couple of the vehicles on the road and practiced blocks, screens and pushes.

I'm pretty well set up for gear here. We got a generous issue with top quality stuff: Paraclete, Bushmaster, Blade-Tech, Insights, SureFire, etc. Plenty of ammo. There is a base nearby with a PX for all my soap/toothbrush/magazine needs, and even a half-assed attempt at a Pizza Hut. All in all I can't complain.

Quoted: With the Kurds in control, is northern Iraq pretty safe and secure?

Yes. So far, so good. No Americans have been killed in Kurdistan.

A location in Kurdistan. The gent in the picture behind me is Mustafa Barzani, the founder of the KDP (Kurdistan Democratic Party) and the father of the present KDP leader. Warlord is apparently a hereditary position here.

My introductory primer on the population of Iraq:

Iraq is made up of four primary groups: Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen and Assyrians. There are other small groups and subdivisions of the four main ones, but these four are the chief players here.

The Sunni Arabs are the group who held sway in the Ba’ath party under Sadaam Hussein for thirty years. They suppressed the Shia Arabs over a centuries-old argument over the succession of the Caliphate. The members of Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi army terrorist gang are Shia Arabs. The Arabs are the ones we see everyday in the man-dresses called dishdashas and the Saudi-style headscarves called keffiyehs. They are hardcore Muslims and believe that there can be no government without Islam, that the laws of man are an abomination and only shariah law should hold sway –not just over them, but over all of mankind.

The Kurds run things in the north and hate and distrust the Arabs for the suppression they’ve suffered at Arab hands since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire when southern Kurdistan was absorbed into what is now northern Iraq, as well as parts of Iran, Syria and Turkey. There are no Arab police in the north and many places aren’t patrolled by police at all, but by militias organized by and drawn from the chief Kurdish groups here, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. Notice that both groups represent the nominal nation of Kurdistan rather than the Kurdish people. The militias are made up of guys called Pesh Mergas, Kurdish for "Those who face death." If we let them take the gloves off and made some motion toward holding back the Turks, the whole northern third of Iraq would become the seed of a greater Kurdistan. The problem is that this phenomenon would not go unnoticed by the Kurds of eastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and northwestern Iran. The Turks, although not prepared to send troops or allow passage into northern Iraq for the initial Coalition invasion of Iraq last year, staged troops on the Iraqi-Turkish border in preparation for an invasion of their own in case of a general Kurdish uprising. Kurds were expropriated from northern Iraq Stalin-style under Hussein, with Arabs sent in to literally move into the just-vacated houses of Kurdish families. The PUK are trying very hard to get all their people back in and have an overwhelming majority for the upcoming census which will be the basis of electoral power. The Kurds are also Muslims, but view Islam as their religion but not the overriding organizing influence that the Arabs do.

The Turkmen are immigrants from Turkey who form an entrepreneurial class here, opening a lot of shops and small businesses, making deals that keep the economy going, like the Lebanese in northern Africa. They are Muslims, but are businessmen first and foremost.

The Assyrians are a very small Catholic minority here, and small Catholic churches can be found in Assyrian neighborhoods in northern Iraq. They were brutally suppressed under Sadaam Hussein and worry that they’re being left out of any positions of power in the new government. They are the descendants of some of the original inhabitants of Mesopotamia and are trying to claim an autonomous region of their own, without much success.

This mixture forms a volatile stew from which to draw a new government and keep the country together. It works in our favor here in the north because the Kurds hate the Arabs, and the intelligence apparats of the KDP and PUK have essentially the same goal as ours with regard to Islamic terrorists here, but take it to the next level. They are very pro-US and have only been able to be as organized as they are because of the northern no-fly zone that we maintained here for twelve years between Gulf Wars I and II.

We still wear our body armor and do business the same way in Kurdistan, but we get saluted at Pesh Merga checkpoints when we show the American flag.

Quoted: You wearing Royal Robbins pants? It reminds me, I need to get some more, I pretty much wrecked all mine.

Yes, they're sort of an unofficial uniform over here.

New York Clothiers in Waco, TX has a great price on them and that's where I get mine.

Quoted: God bless you Jar, glad to hear things have gone smoothly. Stay safe and check in when you can. - BG

Thanks d00d, I will.

EDIT:   Now I'm just plain curious... what pistol is keeping your belt company?

Glock 19 with G17 full-capacity mags.

Quoted: EDIT:   Now I'm just plain curious... what pistol is keeping your belt company?   Glock 19 with G17 full-capacity mags.

I cant believe no one's asked you about your rifle

Quoted: I cant believe no one's asked you about your rifle

Select fire Bushmaster M4 with FF rail assembly.
YHM folding front sight and BUIS.
EOTech 552.
DPMS vertical foregrip.
SureFire 6P in a no-name thumbscrew ring.
Redi-mag.

When the picture was taken I had the issued VTAC sling on it, but I have since switched to the GG&G adapter plate and Wilderness singlepoint that I brought with me.

Quoted: Stay safe you crazy mofo!

Shine on you crazy diamond!

Good luck, what happened to your face in all the pix?

(i.e. tagged)