Light at the end

When two more of our fresh reporters piled into Iraq last week, I officially became redundant.

Fortunately, this does not mean that I will be thrown from a Humvee and left at the nearest sand dune. It means I’m a few steps closer to my current home base in Okinawa, Japan.

It took several days to catch the right flights into Tikrit, so I counted on the same long waits and seemingly endless transfers. I called the helicopter terminal to check on flights and received a surprise:
“We can get you on a Chinook, but it leaves in 45 minutes.”

No flight in the history of military aviation has ever left at the exact time scheduled. The only question was whether it was going to be early, or late. I grabbed my still-drying khaki pants and all other belongings, stuffed them in my rucksack, threw on the helmet and armor and caught a ride to the helo pad.

When I arrived, a fresh unit of 101st Airborne soldiers were waiting for their flight. The 101 is taking over command of the north central AO (area of operations) next month, an area about the size of Maryland. They’re taking over from the 42nd Infantry Division, which is actually a New York National Guard division.

The 101st guys are easy to spot, since they’re all wearing the hip new digital camouflage uniforms, which are predominantly green. This is great if you want to resemble a computer-rendered desert tree. I think they came up with it out of rivalry with the Marines, who have also have a digital pattern. Of course, the Marine Unies actually match the desert.

A couple dozen of the 101s would join me on my flight, which was late. The Chinook is an odd-looking chopper with twin rotor blades. The sergeant I spoke with who once crew chiefed a Chinook used less than flattering terms to describe its capabilities.
“I’d quit before crewing another S@#!hook,” he said.

We took off at nightfall and stopped at three bases during the 2-hour flight. I’ve flown on several aircraft in the course of my job, including some deep-diving search and rescue choppers. This was the first one where I could feel yesterday’s lunch screaming to rise up and reintroduce itself. I closed my eyes and tried to think about anything else…

“You know, Achmed, I wish we had one of those funny looking helicopters.”
“Yes, Habib.”
“You think the Americans would trade it to us for the Kia we have on blocks? The dash is like new.”
“I don’t think they will do that, Habib.”
“Why not? They gave $40,000 to a man who sent his kids in Samarra to pick up trash.”
“Yes, well…Habib, you might finally be on to something.”

I arrived on the ground, stomach intact, at Balad Air Base/Logistics Support Area Anaconda. If you’ve been anywhere recently without much in the way of comforts, Balad is a shock. They have multiple chow halls, fast food restaurants everywhere and more square miles than Washington, D.C. They have six bus lines running through the base. I found a bus to take me to the air terminal, and the Filipino driver immediately began bartering with me.
“Do you like DVDs? Do you have anything you don’t need? Maybe some Army pants?”

***
I made it to the terminal and figured I’d just ask when the next flight to Ramstein Air Base left, then find a bunk.
It was listed to leave in less than two hours.

I set my expectations low; it was a medevac flight, and those rarely took passengers. I waited in the terminal and grabbed an MRE. Some sort of chicken, with a side of peanut butter and bread. It sustains you, even if it does make your pee smell funny.

I was booked for the flight at 11 p.m., and cleared customs be dumping everything out of my bags at 11:45 p.m.

As I said, military flights never leave on time. I lied down on a wooden bench until about 4 a.m., when the flight left.

I sat next to an Air Force reservist who had spent three months at Q-West, a base way out in the northern desert where nothing ever really happens. She carried an M-16 as required, but she had never fired it. Air Force folks don’t normally use weapons anyway.

“My friends back home say I make Iraq sound like it's fun,” she said with a little Chicago grit in her voice. “We used to explore all the old buildings that Saddam’s Air Force hadn’t cleared out. We’d have a few socials. The PX wasn’t bad.”

On the other side of the C-17 Globemaster Cargo plane laid three stretchers. One Marine looked OK; two others had breathing tubes stuck down their throats. I couldn’t see much but the medical equipment surrounding them, but their discolored, swollen feet stuck out from under the blankets.

The difference between the Fobbits and the Marines in Western Iraq (see last entry) had never contrasted so deeply as in that moment.
More to come …

Even in the middle of nowhere, Lt. Rob and Sgt. John show that civilization exists.

The average day

I've been traveling a lot this past week, so I haven't had much time to write. I did speak with a reader who asked me to describe what the average “day in the life” was like in Iraq.

Since I’m constantly moving around, I don’t have much of a routine. But a lot of servicemembers do – especially the ones known as “Fobbits.”

Fobbits spend their days “inside the wire” and relative safety of the Forward Operating Base. Some of the more gung-ho types make fun of them. But they need Fobbits. A lot of support work has to be done, from equipment maintenance to handling the vast paperwork bureaucracy.

For Fobbits based far from the fighting, the days blend together. They might occasionally hear a boom somewhere. At the remote bases, life isn’t much different than on any other U.S. military base in the world. You go to the office, you eat, maybe you visit the post exchange and buy a DVD.

Then there are the folks out in daily convoys, patrolling the streets and raiding suspected insurgent targets. These men and women don’t have average days. To illustrate the difference, here are some complaints out of the Stars and Stripes letters to the editor section from Fobbits:
“I am writing to protest the gym hours. It used to open at 5 a.m., but now it only opens that early for officer and sergeant majors. That isn’t fair.”
“Why do the guards at the main entry point stand for sergeants major? If you’re going to stand for them, you should stand for lieutenants too.”
“The food at the main chow hall was better last year.”

The folks outside the wire are a bit more to the point about their complaints. It’s usually something along the lines of, “Hand me a bandage, I’m bleeding.”
A more philosophical complaint might be, “We’ve had four IEDs on this trip, and now we’re getting small arms fire? Did they think they didn’t have our attention?”

The soldiers who spend their time off base sometimes forget that Fobbits are the ones who keep the trucks running, the guns working and make sure the gunners have hot food when they come back to base. The Fobbits sometimes forget how good they have it in comparison.

Personally, I’ve tried to strike a balance. You cannot tell a complete story of Iraq’s servicemembers by staying inside the wire all of the time, nor can you tell it if you’re wrapped in a full body cast.

An Iraqi voter dips her finger in indelible ink as a fraud countermeasure. Never mind that the ink lasts for 8 hours and the polls were open for 10 hours.

We've voted, now what?

Two milestones were achieved during the past few days in the Middle East: the Iraqi people cast their ballots in their first constitutional referendum, and I got up early two days in a row.

Around 10 p.m. Thursday, Lieutenant Rob shows up at my “choo,” a half-trailer surrounded by sandbags.
“We got you a ride, Erik,” he said. “You’ll be leaving from the helicopter pad at 5. Link up with a Captain Burnett.”
Good, I thought. I’ll be leaving a base on the edge of Samarra, aka Hell, and returning to the relatively comfortable confines of one of Saddam’s renovated former air bases. I’ll even be able to sleep late.
Wait a minute. Military folks don’t say 5 p.m. They say 1700, 17. If they say 5…
“Ok, Rob, I’ll see you then.”
“Actually, I’ll be sleeping in. Have a good ‘un.”

I should probably explain that a flight or convoy scheduled for 0500 never actually leaves at 0500, or any other listed time. You have your “show-up time,” which is between 20 minutes and two hours before the listed time. Then you usually wait for 30 minutes to four hours after the listed time. It’s all part of the military’s patented “Hurry up and wait” program.

Since Lt. Rob swung by around 10 p.m. and I had to be there at 4:30 a.m., that meant six hours of sleep, minus 30 minutes for packing and cleaning up. Or so it seemed at the time.

At 11 p.m., the artillery began firing. The first shot is the startling one, but only for a split second. If it’s a really loud boom without any noise afterward, it’s outgoing. It’s the soft boom with a “pfft” afterward, that means it’s incoming. Even then, you don’t really worry about it unless it’s close, and fortunately, the insurgents don’t have much grasp of trigonometry.

Boom. The second round of artillery fires, further confirming that it’s outgoing. The startle factor is way down, and continues downward with each round to the point that your hear rate stays about the same. There are people who get so used to it that they can sleep through several rounds of artillery fire. Unfortunately, I am not one of them.

The trip back to cushy Forward Operating Base Speicher was therefore groggy, but uneventful. I spent most of the next day relaxing for the first time all week. Little things like a spring mattress, clean showers and a library at your disposal become wonderful luxuries when you’re living mostly in desert tents.

So it was in this content, if tired state, that Maj. Bethany sees me and says, “Good news, we got you a ride to the provincial elections office tomorrow. We’ll be leaving shortly before 0400.”

For most other stories, I would laugh and tell them go to enjoy themselves. But the Iraqis were voting on their constitution, and it would be a toughie to tell my editors that I had no idea what happened because it was sleepytime. So at 0330, I put on my IBA (Army slang for individual body armor), my helmet, my backpack with 25 lbs. of electronics equipment, grabbed a compression bag with a sleep sack and one night’s worth of clothing and hoofed it to the staging area.

True to the “Hurry up and wait” formula, we arrived at the elections office at 0700. By 9 a.m., the voting numbers in the Sunni-dominated Salah Ad Din province looked strong. Remarkably strong. But an Army lieutenant colonel reassured my skepticism.

“Would I say these numbers are 100% accurate? No. But would I say that these numbers are 95% accurate? Umm, no, I wouldn’t say that either.”

He did show me photos from a UAV (expensive remote control plane) that showed lines out the door at some polling booths, which was reassuring. Of course, I couldn’t take the Army’s word for it without seeing it for myself.

The folks with the 2^nd Battalion, 7^th Infantry Regiment were more interested in taking the South African centerfold model posing as a CBS reporter out for a spin to the polls, but they found a tiny corner in a Humvee for me too. The CBS woman and a battalion’s worth of Humvees roared off in one direction, and my smaller detail went to a different spot.

***

It was a hotter day than usual. The streets were nearly empty of traffic, thanks to roadblocks throughout the country. People were walking to a large, renovated school to vote. Several children spotted my camera. They began hamming it up, happy to have their picture taken. It’s only their fathers who get skittish around photographers.

The troops set up in position behind some barbed wire 100 yards from the polling spot. They were barred from the site to make the referendum look more Iraqi. I went to the station with an Army interpreter, and was promptly told by an elections worker that only one site in Tikrit was open to the media. We walked back to the officer in charge and told him which site was open. He was not pleased.

“I’m responsible for your security,” Captain John said. “If we go there, and something happens to you, it falls on me. I can’t guarantee your safety there…it’s probably the least safe site in the city.”

Fortunately, Captain John had an Iraqi general on speed dial. Amazing how that can clear the way. So after 10 minutes of arguing back that at the original polling station, I was in. It took another 10 minutes of arguing to get permission to take pictures, under the condition that I ask voters if it was OK. We walked into a small classroom with about a dozen voters lining up to sign their names on a registry, then collect their “yes” or “no” ballot.

Nearly all of them men refused to have their picture taken. I wasn’t sure how to shout, “wussy boys” in Arabic, but I wanted to, although in retrospect this probably would have been a bad idea:
“Achmed, did he just call us what I think he called us?”
“Yes, Habib. He called us wussy boys.”
“Achmed, do you think a black bag over his head would be a good fashion accessory for him?”
“Yes, Habib. Maybe something in burlap.”
“Or maybe on of those new burlap/poly blends. Everybody’s raving about them.”

Fortunately, my photographic savior appeared in the form of a large woman in black, who I have affectionately nicknamed, “Big Mama.” Seeing the anxiety in the men’s faces, she waved me over as she grabbed a ballot. The men demurred. She was fine with pictures, names, anything I needed. Was she scared? No way. Men here usually get uptight when you try to take pictures of “their women.” But it was obvious to me that no one in their right mind messed with Big Mama.

Story:

In Saddam's hometown, citizens have their say

Samarra -- umm, no longer a vacation paradise.

Everyone in Samarra is a tough guy. The kid greeted us with, "Yo, what's up!" in English.

On the road again

Some people would rather walk outside during an artillery barrage than sit through an American Forces Network commercial break.

They’ll usually play back-to-back commercials along the lines of “A good soldier is a heart-smart soldier!” followed by “Baskin Robbins, now available at a base near you!”

I can live through life’s little hypocrisies. Boredom is what drives me out of perfectly comfortable surroundings and into destinations that wouldn’t be any fun even if they did have real toilets. It’s what put me in a Humvee bound for Samarra, one of the least desirable places to live on earth at the moment.

I took this one-hour jaunt in a much safer vehicle than the aforementioned Old Yeller (see the ‘Road tripping with Bart’ entry). It was nice to have a seat belt and windows without cracks. However, it didn’t inspire confidence when the gunner started asking First Sergeant Reg, who sat in the front passenger seat, “What if the cars don’t stop when we pull out? What if this and that and….”

The driver looked equally experienced. I think he was 12.

Gate traffic delayed our trip long enough for the sun to set. Once on the road, we drove fast enough to come within 100 feet of the tail vehicle of another convoy. When Iraqi vehicles do this at night, bad things happen.

“Gunner, flash the light! Let him know we’re American!” yelled Sergeant Reg.

Yes, gunner, please let him know we’re American. I’d like to take a nap back here and I can’t do that during a .50 caliber firefight with another Humvee.

We were successfully identified, but not moving fast enough for Sergeant Reg.

“Cut around them,” he told the driver.

We drove over the sandy median and to the opposite lanes of the four-lane highway. The fact that cars were traveling toward us did not seem to bother Sergeant Reg. Sure enough, they all veered while we passed a 40-vehicle convoy of Humvees.

Despite the unorthodox travel, I made it to a base outside Samarra and slept the night. I won’t bore you with too many details about the next day, mostly because I’m tired right now. But by Friday morning U.S. time, the story will be on Stripes.com. I’ll put a link here to the story when it posts...Vote will be a decisive point for Samarrans

I spent most of the day in the Green Zone (there isn’t anything green there, but they call it that anyway) in a 4-hour meeting with a bunch of local politicians, Iraqi generals and a few random Americans.

For most of the meeting, I was too far away from the Arabic translator to have any idea what they were saying. I got so bored that I considered pulling out my pocket Texas Hold ‘Em electronic game. I play the game on mute, but sometimes the game resets and the sound comes back.

Not knowing what they were saying, I didn’t want to interrupt some major strategic plan against Zarqawi’s Al Qaeda forces with a computer voice saying, “Welcome to the World Series of Poker!” followed by tinny drumbeats. I don’t think Iraqis generals play much poker.

When I got out of the room, I did meet a translator outside talking to some soldiers. He was a 17-year-old kid who taught us to greet Iraqis by saying, “Elefah tafah,” which means, “1,000 apples.” I believe that we too should greet each other by yelling out random numbers of fruit.
“Morning, Bob! 1,200 peaches.”
“Thanks, Doug. How’s the wife? 50 cumquats right back at ya.”
“She’s doing great, Bob. Watermelon.”

The translator also taught us how to say, “You suck” two different ways, along with, “This place sucks” and “We all volunteered for this. Damn, we’re stupid.” I’m sure we could have learned more useful things to say, but this is what you get when you hire a 17-year-old translator.

He then showed us a cartoon clip on his cell phone of George W. Bush ranting in Arabic about beating Saddam. Even in Arabic, Dubya has a high-pitched Texas accent.

Stories:
Information, access may hinder Iraqi rural voters

The next time you complain about needing a bigger house, just be thankful.

Hanging out in the crib with the Hussain brothers. Most Iraqi homes don't have couches. But they do have satellite dishes. I guess everyone has their priorities.

For some reason, a lot of the kids are taught to look serious in pictures. This guy cut loose.

Our interpreter reaches for dates from a palm tree in rural north central Iraq.

Give me liberty, or give me tile flooring

There are some advantages to living in a mud hut.

Feel free to walk around the kitchen in muddy boots, because all you’re doing is reinforcing the floor. You save a lot on Pine-Sol and paint. Should the home ever need repairs, all you need is a bucket of water and a clump of sand.

Other than that, living in a mud hut sucks. Fortunately, most of the farmers living in the rural desert between Tikrit and Bayji have upgraded from mud to concrete. The rooms are tiny and the furniture consists of traditional rugs and a couple of pillows, but it’s better than mud.

Despite their humble means, the local farmers can be generous and welcoming. Granted, some of them actively support insurgents who are trying to kill you, but at least they have the decency to offer you watermelon and Chai tea. They’ll feed you, but they won’t eat anything. It’s Ramadan, when Muslims abstain from food and drink until sundown. They are also supposed to abstain from sex and impure thoughts.

I’m not sure what the Hussain (note the ‘a’) brothers were watching on their satellite TV hookup Friday, but I’d say it probably conjured an impure thought or two. Lt. Blaine from Idaho, several members of the Puerto Rican National Guard and I pulled up a rug and spoke with Ali and Barzad. I asked them about the constitutional referendum coming up on Oct. 15. You know, the one the United States is hoping will unite the Iraqi people and serve as a shining beacon of democracy in the part of the world where blah blah blah…
“We haven’t seen it,” Ali said.
Ok, so you don’t have a copy. What have you heard about it?
“We don’t know what’s in it.”
Our interpreter, an Iraqi-American nicknamed “Nick McKurd,” doubts them.
“A lot of them don’t want to tell you when they disagree with the constitution, so they only tell you what they think you want to hear. They don’t want to offend you. But I get this same satellite TV service, and I know they’ve been talking about all the points in the constitution, the good, the bad…”
Nick confronts Ali in Arabic for a few minutes.
“He says they must have been watching other channels,” Nick said.

I’m sure they were. While I was there, they were watching a blue-eyed bellydancer who looked like she was performing on some sort of Middle Eastern American Idol knock-off.
Alright, um, do you plan to participate on Oct. 15?
“Oh yes, we plan to participate. Except we don’t know where the polling places are. And there is a curfew, we don’t know when. We hear that we are not allowed to drive that day.”

There will be a curfew from Oct. 13-17, 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. Traffic will be restricted in the city centers. Voters from rural areas are being asked to park at the outskirts and walk.
I talked to several others like the Hussain brothers who knew little about the constitution. When you asked them what they wanted in the document, nobody talked about systems of checks and balances. They want peace, security and enough natural gas to power their homes.

I did speak to one guy, Hamid, who said he knew about the constitution. He lived in a large concrete house with thin pillars supporting a covered porch. A tract of fresh-cut grass stretched across the front yard. Several trees provided shade, including a palm tree with dozens of still-ripening yellow dates.
“This guy was a Baathist,” Nick said. “You don’t get a house like this out here without having some connections.”
Roving behind Hamid was a young man in a white gown with a long, black beard. Lt. Blaine didn’t like him at all. “Looks like your campus radical type,” he said.
I questioned Hamid to see how much he really knew about the constitution. It turned out he knew about as much as everyone else, not that the details mattered to him.
“I don’t trust the guys who wrote it,” he said. “And yes, I’ll vote.”

So it appears that in the midst of a crucial vote, some people won’t show at the polls and many others will make decisions based on personality instead of policy. Sound familiar? And you thought they hadn’t learned anything about the American political process.

Stories:
Free press is a foreign concept in new Iraq
Forces plan election security in Sunni Triangle

Be safe, buy an Iraqi Freedom T-shirt

I saw the new civilian Army safety officer at my current location today. He is, of course, incredibly dangerous.

This should not surprise anyone acquainted with Army logic, which dictates that some jobs be given out to people on the premise that they either perplex or humor other soldiers, thereby distracting them from their difficult mission. This in turn boosts morale, assuming no one gets hurt.

Eager to make a big safety impact, the safety officer grabbed a ladder and climbed up to a light fixture with a burnt bulb. The safety officer is not a small man. The locally bought ladder was well aware of this, as much as an inanimate object can be aware of anything. As he climbed the top steps, the ladder bowed under his weight. Several people noticed, but no one was quite sure how to tell the safety officer. As a rule of thumb, if you can’t tell someone that they are engaging in risky behavior on a base, you report it. The report would then be forwarded to … the safety officer. He could then forward the matter to a pile of paperwork to a higher up safety officer, who would review the report, say, about the time the U.S. is ready to remove Saddam Hussein’s great-grandniece from power.

The safety officer’s next move was to ask Sergeant 1^st Class Mike about the fire extinguishers. “Why weren’t they in boxes? We need to make boxes. The regulation states that each fire extinguisher shall be mounted on the wall in a box.”

SFC Mike pointed out that this would require taking several soldiers off duty to make fire extinguisher boxes. Some of these soldiers were rather busy with trivial pursuits, like watching the perimeter for insurgent attacks on the first day of Ramadan – a time when jihadists believe they will go to a special place in heaven as a reward for martyrdom.

“I told him that actually, the regulation doesn’t require boxes,” Mike said. “It says the fire extinguishers should be placed in boxes if they are available. In the absence of boxes, a sign at eye level should be placed on walls, with arrows pointing to the fire extinguishers.”

Paper signs were made, and the safety officer left in a huff. Times like these, I begin to wonder if I’m about to run into Heller's Major Major Major Major. Rule pushers like the safety officer are actually a time-honored tradition in the army. It’s something new that makes me wonder if I’ve crossed into the twilight zone. We’ve turned a war zone into Your Official Operation Iraqi Freedom Shopping Destination.

Most bases both stateside and abroad have a PX, or post exchange, where servicemembers and other base denizens can purchase tax-free stuff they would find at retail stores. Most PX’s in Iraq resemble a 7-11, adding special forces knives and subtracting the Slurpees.

The PX on Camp Liberty near Baghdad resembles a Wal-Mart. Shoppers can buy digital camcorders, books and furniture. They can buy music, and not just those $2.99 tapes you find at truck stops in Alabama. I considered purchasing a collection of rare hits by The Animals.

The most striking items are the ones that market the war as something like a tourist attraction. You can buy Hard Rock Cafe, Baghdad (under new management) mugs; "Happiness is Iraq in My Rear View Mirror” hats; and what war souvenir collection would be complete without a “Naked Camel Watching Team” T-shirt? Each of these items comes in a variety of sizes to fit the whole family.

The 101^st Airborne, the same folks from “Band of Brothers,” will be taking over command of the north-central area of operation, a place the size of Maryland. I’m imagining going back in time to Bastogne in 1944, with Rangers pinned down in the snow, surrounded by enemy gunfire.

“Hi, guys. In 60 years, your division will be at war again, except they’ll be shopping for ‘Don’t Make Me Open This Can of Whoop Ass’ T-shirts inside an air-conditioned, portable battlefield superstore. In between, they’ll be rounding up people who believe that God will grant them 40 virgins in heaven if they blow themselves to smithereens.”

To think, all I wanted to buy when I got here was some Saddam money from a kid outside the base with a pimped-out tricycle.

Corrections

I've corrected a few things in the last post after some sweet, blessed sleep -- should make it more readable.

May I speak to the concierge?

It’s easy for people to question their sanity before choosing to come to Iraq.
Given a choice between 1. Traveling to a war zone, or 2. Doing just about anything else, most people choose the latter.

Society will never judge anyone as crazy for not going to Iraq. Those who choose to go do the “Am I crazy?” self-examination at the terminal, on the flight and during the first night’s stay. After that, the absurdity of the situation takes over. You never ask yourself if something you’re doing in Iraq is crazy because, well, everything here is nuts.

This is why my sanity alarm never went off when I gave up the first private room with a clean shower I’ve had since arriving in Iraq, for the opportunity to experience luxury accommodations at the Abu Ghraib detention facility (slogan – you’ll come for the jihad, but you’ll stay for the 24-hour Photo Mart.)

No, I was not an inmate; although some of the guards probably would have happily dragged me around in a dog collar and pointed at unkosher places while smoking a cigarette – but you have to pay extra for that kind of treatment.

I stayed at a nearby location and toured the prison during a massive prisoner release that U.S. and Iraqi officials consider a conciliatory gesture ahead of Ramadan. The official thinking is thus, provided by Iraq’s deputy prime minister: “These people are messengers of the good treatment they have received here. This release will build bridges of understanding between the coalition and different Iraqi groups.”

This is partially true. U.S. servicemembers expect a flurry of “messages of understanding” before the Oct. 15 constitutional referendum, most of which will drop out of the sky and explode. A few more care packages will be placed alongside the road, a token of appreciation for their “good treatment.”

The official line from the U.S. government was also handcrafted by the Pentagon in Bizarroworld. Review boards have determined that none of the 900 or so prisoners released were guilty of any violent crimes, according to the top brass. Meanwhile, one soldier told me that about a week ago, a guy they accidentally released was actually a sniper with three confirmed kills. And while the U.S. does pick up a lot of people in sweeps that probably aren’t guilty of anything, many get released from local detention facilities before being transported to places like Abu Ghraib.

Many people who first visit Abu Ghraib are surprised. They imagine a fortified concrete compound, or something that looks like a modern prison. It’s actually a lot of tents, gates and barbed wire sprawling over 280 acres of dirt. Most of the prisoners share tents. Others are in reasonably spacious accommodations that still amount to cages.

When a reporter asked about prisoner treatment, the Iraqi deputy prime minister said, “Prison isn’t supposed to be fun. Have you been in a prison? I’ve been in prison for political reasons. It wasn’t fun.”

Many of the detainees are well aware of the focus brought by Lynndie England and company on the prison. They will walk around with their Korans in hand and shoes off. The juvenile detainees will shout, “I want to go to school! We are missing school!” in Arabic to passing reporters, as if 15-year-olds in any nation on earth actually want to go to school. I can’t imagine any of their parents putting, “My son made the honor roll at Abu Ghraib detention facility” bumper stickers on their cars.

The prisoners also act differently whenever an Islamic cleric gets detained, a military policeman told me Saturday.
“The prisoners don’t like the halal food because it’s too bland. They ask us for our MREs.”
For the non-military folks, MREs are meals-ready-to-eat, chemically heated food in a bag that stores for several years.
“When an imam gets arrested,” he said, “suddenly everyone is praying five times a day. It stops again when the imam leaves.
“A lot of Iraqis are like that. They act one way when we’re around, because they know we’ve got the money to support them and they don’t want to offend us. But once we leave, they go back to their old ways 20 seconds later. If we leave the country, that’s exactly what they’re going to do.”

If this country is ever going to join the 21st Century, it will be the doing of a select upper-middle class that decided it’s in their best interests, much like the American revolution. Otherwise, all of the U.S. prodding in the world won’t make a difference. Because after a while, the folks who are asked to come back to Iraq won’t bother asking themselves the sanity question. They’ll pop open a beer, turn on a football game and stay home. Who could blame them?

Prisoners from Abu Ghraib await their release Saturday.