My Claims Missions

Lots more pics and updates on the way... These pics are taken from my Claims missions where I pay money to Iraqis to repair their homes we destroy (accidental ones, we don't reimburse combat actions or when AIQ causes the damage, except in special circumstances). We also give them money for injuries and civilian deaths. Below, you can see me sitting on the floor eating with some She'iks. I work in the last dangerous providence where the sect differences are still very extreme. If you are reading about suicide bombers, especially women, then most likely they are from Diyala province.

At this lunch we were meeting with Sunni and Shi'ite leaders in regards to allowing those who were kicked out of their homes during the sectarian violence a couple years ago to return.

The following pics are all from when we meet with Iraqis and give them money for claims. We go to the gate on Saturdays and then bring them to this little shed and take in and pay claims. The woman in the green shirt, Riva, is my translator as this is my main mission. I am also in charge of the fiscal law here- every contract goes through me for fiscal approval. Finally, I'm still the prosecutor and I'm working about 4-5 cases in total ranging from the idiot husband soldier sending naked pictures of himself to 8 different women over the internet, an Officer who stole money from the government and a couple involving child porn and aggravated sexual abuse of a minor.

It's not always pretty, but this little girl comes in once a week and I try to entertain her as best I can. Last week, that included hiding food in all of my 12 cargo pockets in my uniform and 'finding' the food during the 20 minutes she and her mother were in there. When that ran out, she decided to play Army herself. She was injured when she was struck by a suicide bomber (a female) in the market of the town I go to every Wednesday.

Sometimes the people bring in local food to feed us. The first and last one was this fish and veggies they brought in, it was incredible. But the best part is their little bread pita things that you pick the food up with. The third photo was the best, it was all fresh veggies and different kinds of beef, pork and lamb kababs. Surprisingly, I have not had any trouble with the local food.

My Crib in Iraq

The Bad News is that I haven't had time to write a whole lot, but the Good news is that I'm going to try to download a bunch of pictures... Here are pics of where I live and work...

First is the walk I have to take from my CHU to the bathroom trailers. One on the far left is the Men's Latrine and the trailer on the right, the showers. You do not want to be caught mid-shower when the power goes out! I have so far been lucky several times...

You can see a homemade 'porch' that was in front of my CHU. It is no longer there...

Each area of 20 or so CHUs are placed together in a 'Pad'

Pictures from inside my CHU: not much going on there. I have a bed, my computer which costs $130 a month for slow internet that can't upload pictures, videos or tv shows, and one little three drawer thing I bought for underware and socks. Oh yeah, I bought the rug, Army chair and blankets down here as well. The wires coming inside are for television satelite and internet that I don't have or does not work. The wireless is wireless and it's weak.

My M4

Here are a couple pictures of my work space which is very cramped.

Random Pics of me on Warhorse

At the range:

Here I am on the roof of the main tactical building on th 4th of July. They shot off an illumination flare for every 2SCR Soldier that had fallen while on this tour. The first picture is supposed to be this, but I don't think you can make it out very well.

Here is me getting my combat patch. One gets this after serving 30 days downrange.

Flying into Warhorse, my current Base

On the morning of 20 June 2008 the 64 of us left Kuwait to meet up with our 4600+ strong Regiment. Again, 5 of us were separated from the other 59 and we had to take that spacious flight pictured before. We arrived in one of the bigger bases (not including Baghdad which is an entirely different animal) called FOB Anaconda or Balad Air Base as it's both an Army base and one of the largest Air force bases in Iraq. Check out the hyper-link for life on a bigger FOB. This place actually has a huge swimming pool and a first-run movie theater- (and as a trail party in October/November, I'll be here for several weeks.. score) this is sort of funny as the nickname of this base is ‘Mortaritaville’ due to all the indirect fire it takes.

I note this because I've received some pretty big news recently. I haven't had the same job or lived in the same place for 2 years at a time since undergrad (even law school was broken up with a semester in Ireland), However, I may have my next three years planned out. Last month was already my third year as a JAG attorney and really, I had a two year dream assignment in the Netherlands before getting the not-so-dream assignment as the Rear-D Prosecutor for 6 months before coming to Iraq.

The word on the street (assignments come out about once a year in the fall) is that I will get my #1 choice of Japan for a couple of years beginning summer of 'o9. My brother and his family recently moved to Beijing, China for a few years so this is really something I wanted. I was more than willing to take a year in Seoul, Korea (usually one year assignments) while waiting for a slot to open as there are not many slots available in Japan, just as there were only three (now changed to 2) slots in the Netherlands, but as it turns out, I may be able to go straight to Japan next summer.

The catch- I will stay in Iraq when my unit leaves in November and switch over to another unit who is coming down after we leave. I will train the new legal team and leave them after 4-5 months, making my deployment closer to the usual 12 months. Saves the JAG trouble of moving all these others around and I take on an entirely different position. I'm pretty excited about it for two reasons. Because I got down here later than the rest of my unit, I’ll serve as a Trail Officer at Anaconda for a few weeks making sure everyone gets home okay then I will go fly by myself to wherever the new unit is in Iraq. I may be able to come home for a few weeks in there somewhere as everyone is supposed to get 18 days of R&R for each deployment.

Had I gone back with my unit, I'd go back to being the base prosecutor for 6 months before heading to Japan. There are never more courts-martials than immediately after a unit deploys and after a unit re-deploys from Iraq. Believe me, they brought me in last August to this base in Germany to be the Rear-D prosecutor following the deployment of the 2SCR. They leave all the trouble behind. I was pushing to get down here for several reasons, but was hand tied until I cleared our docket. Well, that docket will be crazy again next January-April.

The other reason is that I will be in a new location. I'm not sure where yet, nor could I say now anyway, but I hope it to be in Baghdad. By then, I would have experienced being a JAG on a real FOB (forward operating base) at a Brigade level (or in this case a Regiment since 2SCR is a Stryker Cavalry Regiment) on a Brigade Combat Team (BCT). This is as close to 'boots on the ground' an attorney can get to real soldiers and real missions, unless they themselves are Special Forces or something and part of the actual fights.

The next progression is to work at a higher level like a Division which is made up of 3-5 Brigades and consists of 10,000-20,000 Soldiers or even higher, a Corps which is made up of three or so Divisions. Well, that's all fine and dandy, and it's sure nice to move up the latter, but the higher you go, the further away you get from helping out real soldiers on a personal level and the more TPS reports and meetings and trainings and Fragos you receive. The higher up you get, the more administration you do. Maybe someday, that will interest me, and I suppose you get more say developing policy and managing younger/newer JAGs, but if you ask me (and many Division and Corps JAGs as well,) the best job as a JAG is in a BCT.

I believe the next unit is also a BCT and one that will be located near Baghdad, so I would get a chance to experience a different location but still be a real part of the action on the ground. I will definitely discuss what I mean with this in later submissions.

So anyway, (finally some pictures and maybe a movie!) when all 64 met back up in Balad after a night of rest (night being 3 hours for me since the trail party arrived late) we planned to fly into our current base: FOB Warhorse. I was very excited to ride in some Blackhawk helicopters, and since I now had lead on our group of 64 (the other Officer had trail now) I got to ride in the first one and get a window (well actually an opening). It was amazing. I'm not the biggest fan of flying as many of you know, but this was an incredible experience flying fairly low to the ground, seeing the Iraqi countryside and heading towards our base.

I'm getting closer to actually talking about what I do here, but I'll end this submission with my first night here. Unlike the Netherlands where we only had 3 Officers for the entire country (and we also covered down on parts of Norway, Britain, Germany and Belgium) and Vilseck, Germany who was deployed so there was really only one other Officer I hung around, once I got here, I saw that there were others around, lots of others actually, and that night was the first night of what has become a Saturday night tradition: Poker night with Non-Alcoholic beer and cigars (though I don't smoke). The winner gets to write their name on the table for future units to see and admire. I have held my own each week, but usually blow it during 3-4 consecutive hands near the end like last 3 or 4. So here is our weekly group which is made up of 10 Captains: 3 are JAGs, a handful are operations (formally company commanders) and one or two are currently company commanders.

Some of the photos are a little blurry. (I'll get the Poker pics up later..) and it looks like I won't be able to download videos on here with this terrible connection...

Kuwait: our staging base before Iraq

I would rather spend 5 months in Iraq than 1 month in Kuwait.

For one thing, the weather is much worse in Kuwait. Remember, Iraq is considered one of the cradles of civilization. Though much of Iraq is currently desert and not so comfortable or suitable for life, there is no comparison. I’m north of Baghdad and there are many trees here along the Diyala river basin, but not so much south of Iraq’s border in Kuwait.

During my eight days in Kuwait in late June, we suffered terrible sand storms. There were times that you could not see 10 feet in front of you. The wind was incessant, and it would blow the sand all over the place. It gets into everything, but you get used to it, I suppose. One of the sergeants with us didn’t have proper glasses or goggles on and the sand kept blowing around between his face and whatever glasses he was wearing and it just cut his eyes all up. Pretty nasty stuff.


The temperature was in the teens during the day, usually getting to about 112-115 but the wind made it seriously feel like a human convection oven. Best time of the day was around 0500-0530 before the sun was really up. By 0800 it was over 100 degees for the next 13 or so hours and even past 2200 (10pm) it was always in the 90’s.

The combination of the heat and wind with the sandstorms was laughable.

Our wonderful FOB in Kuwait:

Interesting enough the facilities on Kuwait varied drastically. Here are picture of our showers and bathrooms.




Problem was these were 100 meters from the tent pictured in the last update. Most of the time, I just used these facilities,




which were right outside our back door. Have you guys ever gone inside a port-a-potty during the summer? How about in a desert? I have bathroom issues as it is, these don’t help.

Here are a few of us walking to chow at the DFAC (I hate most of the military slang and ‘chow’ and ‘latrines’ are probably the big two).

We are not allowed to take pictures inside the dinning hall (DFAC) for some reason though most of the people do. I will definitely take some shots of the DFAC on FOB Warhorse as it’s quite good, but at this staging base in Kuwait (one of several) there are many fast-food and American style immunities as people come through Kuwait on the way to Iraq. Starbucks? By the way, the pictures look hazy because they were taken right after a sandstorm.

We were only supposed to be there a few days, but the bad weather cancelled several of our flights and we managed to leave 8 days later. I’ll end this segment with my transportation to Iraq: a C-130 . Forget about all those perks of business class or even economy class, flying in a C-130 with a broken air conditioner in the middle east is the only way to fly! Thank God, they couldn’t fit our entire group on one plane so the only other Officer in this group, two others and I, stayed back 5 hours to grab the next flight. I cannot imagine how crowded and uncomfortable they must have been. Here are pics of me and our very small group. We actually had plenty of room. Did I forget to mention you ride in these in full 40 pound battle rattle?

Next segment will be about my first two weeks at FOB Warhorse where I’ll be until mid-October. I just found out since I came down here mid-deployment to our Regiment, I’ll be one of the Trail Officers making sure everyone gets home okay.