(These are posts I wrote last year, but wasn't comfortable posting for various reasons (didn't want to get canned!))
Feb 2008
Today I was thrown for a loop. Most days are near duplicates of the one previous, so it doesn't take much.
First I picked up the inbound flight from Kuwait and there was a really attractive woman in the group, that was a highlight.
Then I went with my boss over to camp Dublin for the first time. Dublin is a couple miles down the road. It's the camp where the US trains a lot of the Iraqi police. There's been controversy about it being infiltrated by the militias/insurgents and also about the efficacy of the programs themselves. I'd never been there before. Over the last year we've borrowed helmets from them, so our mission was to return the 120 that we owed. Because I didn't have a pass, I hid in the back of the truck to get through the security checkpoint. Yes, that's extremely dumb, but my boss was driving and it actually seemed really funny while we were doing it. This was my view in the back of the truck.
Scattered on the floor in the photo are 120 brand new helmets in bubble wrap. The price? A whopping $38,000. I still can't believe it. It's a tiny example of the norm here. EVERYTHING costs huge money. Each helmet is over $350.00.
Just outside the warehouse where we dropped the helmets was the shooting range. There were a few dozen guys laying on their bellies shooting AK47s in a perfectly groomed and very large gravel range.
From there we went to see the doctors who provide health care for the trainees. My boss hit them up for Viagra. "Hey doc, you got any more of them little samplers for Viagra, I'm going on leave tomorrow." Awesome! My boss is the kind of guy who's so honest and open you want to protect him. They didn't have any and one of the doctors gave him a few words about how dangerous that stuff can be when mixed with things like hot dogs which are full of nitrates.
At dinner tonight, my boss looked down the table and said, "Lith uuu ane e a". I looked over and there were a couple of Lithuanian soldiers sitting there. I freaked them out with my rusty Lithuanian language skills and asked them what they were doing here. The short answer: representing Lithuania in the coalition of the willing. Remember that? I can tell you who the real collation of the willing is: DynCorp, Northrop Grumman, First Kuwaiti, Black Water, Halliburton, USIS, Bearing Point, Kaseman, Torres, and the big bubba that does it all, KBR. That’s the Coalition of the Willing. And they’re willing to bill you for the air that you breath, plus their overhead to bill you.
It turned out that the one of the women who trained me during my first months in Peace Corps Lithuania is the same woman who taught those two Lithuanian soldiers English. Small world. Though I had a feeling this was going to happen.