A Break From The Office:3

PART IX - SCROLL DOWN TO PART I ---------------------------------------It was cool to be part of the new and improved Iraqi court system. The way they do things is very different than how we do it in the States. There was no jury but there were three judges and the defendant, the guy on trial, stands in a little wooden cage! It was funny to see the insurgent standing there behind wood bars; he already looked guilty standing there! The JAG told us that the death penalty has been used twice since his deployment and that they were executed by means of a public hanging! Crazy! He also said that those two guys were hung because they had killed other Iraqis, it hasn't been used in cases where Coalition Forces were killed. Well after we testified our little vacation went down hill fast. We kept on getting bumped off flights and it took us four days to get back to our unit. FOUR DAYS! It was miserable! We would sit out on the tarmac in 125 degree weather for an hour or so waiting for the helicopter to arrive and then when it did they would say, "Sorry no room. Maybe you can get on the next one". We started taking anything flight available, we didn't care where it was going we just wanted to keep going north! And we didn't have beds or cots or showers. We had to stay right there at the Flight Ops offices incase something opened up and we could keep going north. I started protesting the fact that we kept getting bumped because some officer wanted to go somewhere and I quit shaving! I didn't shave for four days and nobody ever said anything to me. I think it was because I had this look of, "Go ahead. Say something. I dare ya." We were so fed up with it. If we didn't have our units relying on us to keep the work going in our area we would have just given up and disappeared into the mass of 130,00 troops in Iraq. We could have done it to. No body was keeping track of where we were. It was tempting and it would have been easy. This picture was taken on our last flight that we needed to get back to Kirkuk. It is just a little village out there somewhere. I don’t' even know where it was, other than it was North of Baghdad. What a miserable four days.


PART IIX: The Green Zone is often mentioned on TV and I have wondered what makes it so special, well I found out. The Green Zone is a section of downtown Baghdad that is completly surrounded by a fifteen foot tall concrete wall. All vehicles and personnel entering the Green Zone are searched and it is very secure. While in there I didn't need to wear my kevlar helmet or carry my weapon, it was cool. To get to the Iraqi Court Building we had to leave the Green Zone by walking through this little iron door and walk a few hundred meters to the justice building. This picture was taken from the side that is considered the Red Zone. Before we crossed over we were given a briefing by an Air Force Security Force Sergeant and he told us, "When we go into the Red Zone my guys will file through the door first and when you come through it is time to be alert. The Red Zone is a dangerous place." Well SSG Mayo and I looked at him like, "Give me a break dude! You may walk a short distance in the Red Zone every once in a while, but we LIVE in the Red Zone. We eat the Red Zone for breakfast, lunch and dinner!" It was funny to see him try and get us all nervous to leave the Green Zone.