OK Baghdad 2008

OK: Well, Michael Yon has left the building... Great guy, but seenings how boring thing are here, and how laid back things are here, I don't blame him so I'll take up the 'boring slack' as one would say. I have to report what I see.

Which truthfully isn't much. Beyond the kids begging treats and food, the Iraqi Parents who shoo the kids back from my truck, and the Army/Air Force/Navy troops who, to be truthful, are BORED, as there aint SHIT going on here.

OK: Bush's visit caused a bit of a 'localized uproar' in the respect that they set up "safety checkpoints" all over post... as in look at your licence, see your lease (if applicable) and make sure the vehicle isnt stolen, and other such ephmerea, but the thing that alerted me (I hadn't seen the news) that SOMEONE important was on post was that we had uparmored vehicles at every bloody corner on post, lock n' loaded so to speak, and that the guys who did the 'safety inpections' were all Sergeant Majors Or First Sergeants.

Now the guy in the corner is trying to wave me down: "So what if they wer SGMs or 1stSGTs?"

OK Poindexter: A 1st Shirt or SMAG as he's known, is an E-8 and E-9 respectively. These guys are responsible for waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than making sure some shithead contractor has his seat belted, or that his paperwork is in line... when these guys are out, running roadblocks, it means some shit is in the wind in a MAJOR way.

Such is what alerted me to the POTUS visit. I didn't actually learn of it until the late evening, but my first thought was that SOMEONE important was in town, as the same thing happened when Rumsfeld rolled thru in 04. Needless to say, I was glad this morning at oh-dark early when I literally saw Air Force One leave... Imeant life would go back to normal.

On the shoe throwing incident. I have to explain, seeing that people in the sattes doen't get what it means. To the Iraqi people, what that goombah did was MASSIVELY symbolic. The Iraqis consider the bottome of the foot, or the shoe, to be as dirty as an unwiped asshole. To them, showing the bottom of your feet is as bad an insult as you can give, and to throw one's shoes at someone, while calling them a dog, is THE ULTIMATE insult. Truthfully, if this was Saddam's Iraq, said reporter would have been taken out back and shot in the back of the head, and his wife raped, then killed, and his relatives fed into a woodchipper... its that serious an insult. The note being the footage shot of that toppling of the Saddam Statue, where the locals where beating the head with a shoe... its part of the local culture... for them/us to blow it off is a BAD move... anyways... fuck it, I'm feeling good, as I've reconnected with various Jordanian connections, so more late.