Iraq- Part I

My bro hits the road.


My brother has spent the last 12 months in Iraq. These pictures are from a DVD that he sent home, thus the quality isn't the best. I was making screen shots as the video was playing. I am posting them here rather than my normal work to show family and friends a little of what my brother and his comrades-in-arms from the Renegade transport division see on a daily basis. All phots can be enlarged by clicking on them.



This is not exactly by brother's truck. His is damaged from overuse and is being repaired. But this is basically what he drives.


Here they are showing how the truck can upload and drop the "rafts". The cargo sits on these platforms or sleds. There is a mechanical arm that catches a hook at the top of the "raft" and pulls the cargo raft on and off the truck.




This is a medivac. As my brother was shooting video, two flew in. "That's a medivac. Those are never good when you see a medivac come in," he says. "There are two of them. That is really bad when there are two of them. They are landing at the hospital. When you see that, your heart sinks a little bit and you say a little prayer to yourself."

I hope that our government officials and representatives feel their hearts sink just a little when they get their Dover Report- the casket count at the Dover airport.

Is it all worth it? Does the little boy here think it is worth it? Will he think so when he is grown? I suppose that will depend on what type of Iraq is left for him.


This is on route to Nasiriyah. "This is like the nicest part of Iraq that I have ever seen. They have houses. They have cows. They have trees. We've got a thumbs up!" Later on, my brother's co-pilot comments on the small children they see herding cows. "You see them out here doing adult jobs."



As they drive, you see many Iraqis along the road including may women dressed head to toe in black.




One thing that gets commented on a lot by my brother's co-pilot is the lack of "any concept of proper waste disposal, or at least proper by our standards." Trash gets tossed out the back of the house basically.


What you see here are palm trees with piles of burned trash in front. It seems that on this day's journey, there are quite a few places with the trash piles. These piles, in my humble opinion, can present a danger. Some of them appear to be pretty high and mounded up along the road, perfect for ambushes.

On this day, the convoy gets nervous because they are driving through populated areas. They pass through several check points manned by Iraqi police.



At one point, they discover that their planned route has changed. The Iraqis built a curb where the road used to go through, forcing the convey of trucks to turn around in the the middle of the city. The trucks have "a pretty crappy turn radius", making such a maneuver difficult. One truck is stuck at an intersection, leaving it particularly vunerable. It is blocking half the convoy behind it. This, in turn, forces the security detail to break up, half staying with the stuck convoy and half staying with my brother. My brother's half of the convoy stops while they try to decide on the status of the situation is and how to address it. The Iraqi police, pictured below, come over to confer with the lead security detail.






You can see that they are at the edge of a neighborhood. Their voices are calm, but they admit tension. "It's kinda crowded in here. I won't lie. It makes everybody a little uneasy, but they're [the Iraqi police] trained at their job. I wait for the nervous laugh. There isn't one.

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