Skip to main content

Back in the USA

Well – I have been gone… again… I am sure anyone reading this is completely shocked that I would be traveling. I am such a home-body that almost never strays away from my front stoop… Ok, that may not be exactly truthworthy. I may even be a little of the opposite.

Once again I have traveled to Iraq, but this time I was not gallivanting around the North chatting with locals and placing myself in completely safe villages that caused others to have coronaries. Nope – this time I was sent there by the company I work for. They paid for the trip and I got to have the great privilege of staying in fortified structures, traveling by armored vehicle and military air-craft. My meals were taken in gargantuan dinning facilities with hundreds of soldiers and contractors eating American food and not worrying about diarrhea. All-in-all it was a standard boring trip. Hmmm… maybe my old way of touring has caused me to not find FOBing to be a real form of foreign-service.

As I did go overseas with my company I am sorry that I am not allowed to go into more detail, and I can not show you the pictures. Not that there is a lot to see past rows and rows of concrete barriers, razor wire, dust, and debris. Not exactly the pre-2003 Baghdad. One thing about Saddam – he sure ran a clean and tight ship.

Now that I am back in the USA I will try and put some more stuff up on my blog. This may be random stream of conscience stuff – so just bare with me.

Thanks for paying attention…

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What would it take to test everyone in Oahu for COVID-19

Let's look at the numbers There are currently around 960,000 people on Oahu. A standard digital PCR analyzer (the machine used to test the swabs) can process 500 tests per day. Who can run the tests? There are three entities that can do testing on Oahu.  How can we collect the samples? To collect samples to be analyzed there needs to be collection points. Collection sites The majority of people could come to a collection site that is set up near where they live. These could even be someone’s polling station that is used for voting. The stations can be set up to have people in that polling district come to the collection location. The collection sequencing can be set up by first letter of the last name with A-B on day 1, C-D on day 2... Mobile collection sites For those people who cannot come to a collection site, they can call into the polling center to have a specially trained team to come out and collect the sample. These would include nursing homes and peopl...

Al Qaeda and the Ashayish?

Recently I had the privilege to read an article by Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis that compared the Kurdish Ashayish to al Qaeda. To me this was a very interesting article because I have always viewed them as diametrically opposed institutions. If you do not know what the Ashayish or al Qaeda is then let me start with that. According to their own website Al-Qaeda's objectives include the end of foreign influence in Muslim countries and the creation of a new Islamic caliphate. The name Al-Qaeda quite literally means camp and was created in Afghanistan when the Sunni Muslims were creating training bases for the mujahedeen (holy warriors) to fight against the Russians. These camps were created by the House of Saud and were funded in part by the US State Department (these actions were recently made into a movie called “Charlie Wilson’s War”). The Ashayish are the security forces of the officially recognized Kurdish Regional Government of Iraq. The Ashayish were created as th...

Peripheral Visionary

It is never a good idea to type when you are angry. If anyone has read my blog before you will see that many things have been cut out of it lately. There were too many toes being stepped on and to many things being referred too. My emails were long and disjointed and easily taken out of context. So to ensure this does not happen again I will dissect everything I write before I put it on this site. If you are offended by what you read please let me know and I will take that off as well. I do not want to offend anyone. So from now on I will not use names to describe anyone. Everyone I talk about will be given pseudonyms. This will anger some of you because you want to know the names, places, dates – but you will have to settle for the taste, smell, and feel. If you want their real names you will just have to wait for the book.