I r a q
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I r a q |
One MP Company's Tour, 2004 | |
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The wise man's eyes are in his head; but the fool walketh in darkness: |
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| Witness to the Bizarre W hat is it like to travel to far places, you ask. As I remarked after my first trip to the Arab lands years ago, People are the same everywhere. Well, that has not changed. Smiles come from strangers everywhere, if you know how to manage your manners and fish for man's desire to connect through humor, patience, and hopefully, help.Still there are in some corners of the world tucked away mangy non-understanding sects of souls, efforting their way into the pursuit of whatever dream some black sheep had fed them, towards a corner of humanity, a dumping ground of man. Visit the eternally bright yet inwardly dark Forbidden City of the Mojahedin, crypt of many souls still alive, roach motel of human slave labor, iron vault of isolation. I and my fellow MP soldiers spent 2004 guarding this dark place. They call it Ashraf. See what I saw there. Come away enlightened, if darkness can do that; come away fearful; just don't fail to come away.... Update: My thoughts five years after rolling into Ashraf ... in case you missed the email.
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| Photo Albums of my 2004 in Iraq | |||||||||||||||||||||||
 Say you were going
into a place where armed bad guys loaf around and getting wounded was a serious
reality. Wouldn't you want the most realistic first-aid training? And make
serious business of knowing your weapons.... Yes you would. You would want The
Finest Training. Then you would go slaughter all the bad guys. For
Loafing. Can't they read the sign? |
 Put on some
fresh windshield wipers for a long drive. And flight. And swim. Okay maybe no
swimming…till the pontoon bridge! Getting
There is half the challenge. See how we crossed the continents (and I think
an ocean or two) in a Travel-odyssey…Travel-audacity…Travel-idiocy…one of
those! |
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 Some lions are
fierce. Some lions are wooly. Ours is red. Forward
Base Red Lion, in the shadow of the Mojahedin-- our home for a year. Here
are some of the scenes and faces we never grew tired of seeing. |
 At the end of bumpy
roads and dusty trails lies Paradise, Shangri-La...but not these roads. At the end
of the trails we took lies this bump-on-a-log we called home. Modern army life still
means Roughing
It. |
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 Sometimes you have
to Work.
This cannot be avoided. We did so much of it, it was basically all we did.
Come put your "boots on the ground" as we run, sit, guard, patrol, spy, etc.
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 What goes on when
we're not burning ourselves out on 12-hour perpetual shifts? Not-Work!
Kick back your mind in our Post-work de-stress-ment zone, where card games are
lethal and anything that goes on brings out crowds and cameras. |
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 Where do dreams
end? For the Mojahedin, their dream ends here. Likewise, eventually our
nightmare ended too. Gear up one final time with us as we join the trail that took
us here so long ago...and Leave
It All Behind. |
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The heart is deceitful above
all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
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� 2005 John O'Leary |
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