Abu Ghraib

I went on a tour of one of Sadaam's Palaces on Abu Ghraib now known as Camp Slayer, which is an Army base. In the day it was the Iraq equivalant to Camp David in the US. The palace does not look very good for a couple reasons, one it was still under construction, but mostly complete, and two because construction on it was stopped when the US dropped 2 JDAMs on it in 2003. It is known as "Victory over America" and he was building it in celebration of his "victory" over the US in the Gulf War in the 90's. I will try not to include too much history and mostly pictures. I just figured you should have some background to know what you are looking at. Also I wasn't planning on going today, I was planning to go in a week or two, which I still will, so I didn't get a lot of pictures, so I will get more when I go back. Just FYI.

You can see the damage. The cranes belong to a French construction company that was contracted to build it. The US offered to let them come get them. Instead they said we should pay for them. We didn't pay, and they didn't get them. Oh Well.

This is inside the grand ballroom, which is the size of a football field, literally. The background is where one of the JDAMs punched through. The white spots is all the dust in the air. Sorry.

I am standing on one of the balcony's outside the grand ballroom. The thing in the background is called "Flintstone Village" which I will say more about later. All the water is a man made lake. They dug out all the dirt, then used water from Baghdad's water supply to fill them, causing a drought.


I am standing on top of the palace here. You can see more of the lake and other buildings in the background. The one you can only see the top of by my elbow is his Mother-in-law's house. The big building in the background is called the Perfume Palace, and use to be a Brothel for the Ba'ath Party members.

Here is another angle from the roof. You can see more of the lakes. The building at the end of the road behind me is Sadaam's son's Uday's house, or at least was. The building behind that that looks like it is missing a corner on the left side is the Ba'ath Party House, where they had a lot of the Baath Party meetings and the such as. You can see a lot of little houses out on the lake. Those are the Ba'ath Party members "love shacks". The believed that anything done over water was not a sin. So they did things from Adultary to murder and figured it was okay. The hill of dirt in the background was one of the ones created by the dirt removed from the lakes. I think this particular one was actually built on top of a local cemetary, because Sadaam was just that nice of a guy and figured he needed to put the dirt somewhere.


Here is a picture of me at the "Flintstone house" with the palace in the background. The Flinstone house was a huge place (I guess similar to Toon town at disney land) that he had built for his grandkids after he had their dads killed. I guess the Flintsones was one of his favorite cartoons and so it is suppose to be built after that, being all stone and such. Hit has tons of rooms, bathrooms, kitchens etc, and they would basically drop the kids off there to play, leaving them with servants why they did there non sinning and such. It looks like it use to be really cool, but is some what in ruins now.

This is a self portrait inside one of the many rooms of the flintstone house. As you can see, our good Army friends have contributed to the destruction with all their lovely grafeety. Morons!

Here is another one of me inside the Flintstone house. This is one of the bigger rooms.

This is the Ba'ath House from the front. The right corner which is pretty much destroyed use to be a confrence room where they met, so we thought. They later learned (while clearing the room) that it was a Theatre room, where the meeting was actually them watching a movie. Pretty Woman, was in the projector.. The day we first attacked Iraq, this was the first thing hit. It was struck with a Tomahawk Missle curtesy of the US Air Force. At the time there was aproxamatly 200 to 250 people in the room. About 50 of the bodies were recovered after. The rest were all buried/incinerated due to the blast. They later learned that they missed Sadaam by about 15 minutes. The Army refers to this room as the Tomahawk room.

Here is a picture inside the Tomahawk room, or what is left of it. They say cadaver dogs still go crazy even now, six years later, when they take them in this room.

I know, another wonderful self portrait! The "wall" behind me is not really a wall. It use to be the ceiling in this hallway until a JDAM hit it. I guess the JDAM was meant for the actual conference room but missed. I think it had the same effect though.

And this is one of the last remaining murals of Sadaam. I don't think he was this big in real life.
Hope you enjoyed. If I get some more good/interesting ones next time I go, I will post them too.

Warm

Marni requested this, but you can all enjoy!

I think you can see it okay, but if not, the red goes up to 118 F. This is outside our building in the shade. And yes there is something on my teeth. No one bothered telling me and I didn't see it until I was looking at the picture. Just so you know it is dirt from all the dust. It is gone now, but does look gross in the picture. Sorry.

Work

This is a picture of me looking tough standing in the back of a C-17. In the military we have to look tough. :)

And here we are chaining down a vehicle on the plane. Notice the looking tough again.
Cleaning pallets with the pressure washer to get them ready to ship. Also what we do to stay cool around here.
Getting ready to spray down the cooler. I guess they brought in a whole pig in this for some Hawaiian thing I didn't go to because I was working. I heard the pig was in a body bag, so when they opened it they freaked out because they thought it was a person! Too bad I wasn't there to see that!
Me walking toward a C-5, the mother of all cargo planes, to help unload then load again.
Me standing in the nose of the C-5. It makes me feel small, but cool at the same time. :)
Driving the 10K AT Forklift. Everything is big over here! Texas ain't got nothin' on us!
Showing off my awesome forlkift driving skills some more!
Just trying to look important.
You would think I like to be on top of big things or something huh? I had to enter through the top. We then drove it onto the plane and chained it down.

Well hope you enjoyed. If you want to see anything else let me know and I will see what I can do.

Dust

Sorry it has taken so long to get this posted. Sorry if it was also not worth the wait. Anyway, below you will find some pictures showing how it is in a dust storm and without a dust storm. I tried to take the pictures from about the same place but it may not match up perfectly. Enjoy!


These first ones are obviously of helicopters. As you can see on the dusty picture, it is really not all that dusty on this day, just more than the clear day.


Here are some C-17s and a C-130 in the dusty picture. Notice you you can't really even see past the back of the planes.


Some more planes, with the cargo yard in front. So this is pretty much where I work, dust or shine!

Hope you enjoy the pictures.

My Pad

Okay, I know everyone is wondering what kind of Palace I live in here in Baghdad, so I am including the best pictures I was able to get. You may notice in some of them the sky looks kind of cloudy or overcast. It is just dusty.


This one is from the front right hand corner. Notice the fancy wooden sidewalk! The cement walls you see are blast barricades in case you were wondering.
Next up on out tour is going to be the front door. Yes that is right, this is the door by which I both enter and exit the tent! Nice I know. I'm sure by now you are thinking, "enough with the front already, lets get to the good stuff! Where is the back?" So for your viewing pleasure...

Her is the picture from the back. The box looking thing is our fancy AC Unit, and the side of the tent you see is the side I sleep on!

Now this one is from the front door looking in. It is sectioned of into "bedrooms" with these nifty little privacy curtains. So we do have our privacy. The tube looking thing running down the middle of the ceiling is piping the AC to everyone, and the little white circle about half way back is the fire alarm. If you take a left at the fire alarm, that is where you go into my "room". Which brings us to this next picture..

Now this one I had a little trouble taking. I had to hold the curtain back to take it, but didn't really have a lot of space to get back and get a good angle. But basically this is my room as I would enter it. To give you an idea, the bed goes from the wall of the tent, to the curtain when it is closed. Then....

This one was taken from the side wall of the tent out toward the center isle. Just wanted to let you see how huge my room is. Hope you enjoyed the tour.
Most of my squadron are in little trailers they are putting in, but a lucky few of us got the tents. They claim that they will have trailers for us to move into in about a month. If that actually happens I will post pictures of that once I move.

In my next blog I will take you on a tour of the Baghdad dust storms, so stay tuned!