BAGHDAD — All of us here got some bad news several weeks ago.
The Army (or someone) decided to cancel all the DoD badges and
issue a new one with much greater restrictions on it. I have
mentioned a number of times that the most valuable thing I have in
Iraq is my DoD badge. It is what lets me go anywhere, eat anywhere,
and shop anywhere, while doing it in the company of others if I
want to. Apparently, the Army recently discovered that this very
expansive and generous policy has resulted in the Army mess hall
system feeding half of Iraq because they never imposed any access
limits. It may also be what accounts for all the money Halliburton
makes here — they are paid on a per capita basis and they operate
the mess halls. Those of you who are critics of Halliburton should
know one thing, however: they run one hell of a good mess hall.
The DoD badge is to be replaced with an “All Iraq” card. This
one clearly violates the “Truth in Labeling” law since it lets you
go practically nowhere in Iraq! It appears I will not be able to go
to the mess halls to eat, or to the PX’s to shop. We will be forced
into the streets of Baghdad to shop, and to eat in our own dining
facility, a dismal prospect indeed. There is a sign posted in one
of the mess halls that a lawyer someplace, in some sort of
class-action, is willing to represent the survivors of anyone
killed or wounded as a result of being forced “into the streets of
Baghdad.” I suspect the sign was actually posted by a soldier,
probably a chronic malcontent, since no self-respecting American
lawyer would harbor such a self-serving notion.
Initially, I reacted to the switch to the new badge with relief.
My present DoD badge carries the wrong Social Security number. It
is on the back and I never looked at the back of the card until I
had had it for a couple of months. God knows why it is on the card
in the first place, since one is always warned to be very careful
with his SS number. Besides, we all carry passports everywhere we
go. I would certainly accept a passport as proper ID before a DoD
badge. In my case all nine digits in the Social Security number are
wrong; obviously someone else is walking around with my number on
his card.
I felt the new card would be a chance to correct this error
before it might affect me. An Army officer had told me ominously:
“You better get it fixed or you might have trouble when you are
leaving the country.”
We went to get our pictures taken for our new cards three days
ago. When I was looking at the pre-printed form I had to sign, I
discovered they showed the wrong passport number and attributed
someone else’s middle name to me. Next time someone comes up to you
and says, “I’m from the government, I am here to help you,” give
him a weird look.
***
THOSE WHO ARE COUNTING the days until we leave Iraq should
probably start counting again. This morning, we received a Request
for Proposal (RFP) to build a chapel at Camp Striker, which is
inside the huge Camp Victory complex in Baghdad. (Wouldn’t you have
loved to be on the committee that named these camps?)
The chapel will occupy 7,000 square feet and have 12 stained
glass windows, two chaplain’s offices and two offices for their
assistants. In addition, it will have a large counseling office,
which is now always de rigueur in such undertakings.
Building chapels doesn’t exactly equate with a quick exit
strategy.
***
ALL RFP’S HAVE SOME PROVISION for a thing called “liquidated
damages.” This is akin to a penalty clause if you fail to perform
some item on time, or as required by the contract. For example, the
contract for the Detention Center in Kham Banisad states there is a
penalty of $50,000 per day for every day you are late beyond the
agreed-on schedule.
We received an RFP the other day that contains an interesting
variation on this provision. It says, “Liquidated damages: There
will be NO liquidated damages on this project. Failure to complete
on time without adequate explanation MIGHT result negatively on the
company’s consideration for future work.”
That should put the fear of God into them!
***
TODAY HAS BEEN ONE OF THOSE days that brings into very sharp
focus one’s sense of the absurd and preposterous.
I just went to the Post Office to check on the arrival of a box
of radar parts for the system we are building. When we got to the
Green Zone entrance we came to a halt as required. The place we
stopped is just a long throw to first base from the very spot where
a suicide bomber killed 23 people yesterday at lunchtime. Another
ghastly Baghdad event! That restaurant was still oozing blood this
afternoon when I went by it.
The soldier on duty at the Green Zone gate checked my DoD badge
and, as he started to wave us through, said: “There is a group of
Massachusetts traffic experts here to check out our systems, and
they are looking at ‘seat belt discipline.’ They are 75 yards up
the road. You better buckle up.”
Iraq is a country without traffic regulations. Virtually no car
has a seat belt. It has no posted speed limits anywhere. It has no
traffic laws. It does not recognize a concept of “right of way”;
everyone has an equal right to speed through an intersection at the
same time. It is a country where no one would stop for a red light
(even if they had one) because to stop in traffic is to invite the
guy in the next car to shoot you. If you are stopped in a small
traffic jam you have invited someone to detonate a car bomb beside
you.
To this very same country has come a bunch of “traffic experts”
from Massachusetts whose first expert opinion is that the entire
country will be safer if everyone wears a seat belt! To a country
with a huge suicide bomber problem they have brought a seat belt
solution! It is quite apparent that these mindless fools have no
experience with the problems facing this country. They haven’t read
a newspaper, and haven’t bothered to learn that a seat belt won’t
go around an armored jacket. Anyway, my armored jacket is a much
superior device to a seat belt for Iraqi driving conditions.
What saves lives in Iraq is speed! Speed
doesn’t kill in Iraq; it gets you out of harm’s way.
***
ON MY WAY BACK from the Post Office today I learned something
new about concertina wire. Those are the endlessly long rolls of
razor wire that impede the progress of soldiers in battle, and of
people on the streets. You see them everywhere on the evening news,
even in places where there appears no earthly use for it.
I learned today that the reason it is left strewn absolutely
everywhere in the city is that when the wind blows, all the trash,
and candy wrappers, and garbage, and newspapers, and plastic
shopping bags get blown into the wire and trapped there
permanently. It is a masterful piece of strategy for isolating all
the filth in one place!
The RFP’s now issued for city cleanup call for the last item on
the agenda to be the collection and disposal of all the concertina
wire. When that is gathered up Baghdad will look 75% cleaner in an
instant.
Here is a totally un-related aside about concertina
wire….One day I saw two girls about six or seven years old
playing what looked like a version of hop-scotch through hoops of
the stuff. One poor kid kept catching her street length skirt on
one of the razors.
My last thought about the subject of trash in Baghdad is this:
Why should the clean-up of this filthy city be part of the $18
billion the U.S. taxpayers are footing? Why the hell don’t the
Iraqis clean up their own city?
***
HEIDER, OUR CHIEF OF SURVEYORS, came into my office about 2 p.m.
and said that Khattab and CJ had called from the checkpoint at the
entrance to Baghdad International Airport (BIAP) to say they had
witnessed a monster car bomb explode no more than 200 meters away.
Neither was hurt, but both were very badly shaken. They originally
thought the rear window had been blown in, but it turned out only
to have been cracked.
What happened was that when they reached the checkpoint, a car
loaded with artillery shells squeezed its way between two security
company SUVs and detonated itself. One reason why these SUVs are a
problem is that they are a very high profile means of getting
around. All the big SUVs are owned and operated by security
companies and that is synonymous with U.S. sponsorship. When you
see a GMC Suburban you know there are at least four
Americans aboard. Today, one pulled up next to our car and I was
able to discern through the tinted windows that it contained an
armored “capsule” that gave them added protection inside
the armored SUV! The capsule even had what I think were
bullet-proof glass windows.
According to Heider, Khattab said there were “many dead.” What
is strange is that there was no mention of this car bomb by the
news network next door to our house, the Associated Press, Reuters,
or Yahoo News until at least five hours later. They reported “one
dead.” I saw the pictures of the bloody scene taken by CJ and
Khattab. If my theory that each detached head represents a fatality
is a reasonable working assumption, then there are four dead. Both
my associates are positive there were more dead than represented by
the four heads in the pictures.
CJ and Khattab were going to the airport to pick up Steve, the
president of an American company. He was returning from three weeks
of home leave. I had originally planned to go with them because I
haven’t been to BIAP in a long time. I have therefore not had a
chance to personally see the new look of seven miles of Iraqi
soldiers guarding the entire length of the trip. And, until today,
the results of the 100% protection had worked very well.
***
THIS ITEM REPRESENTS A PEAK of frustration. Our Internet was
down today for seven hours because it was “dusty” outdoors! That
means the phones were also inoperative because they are
Internet-based.
The reason we have this system is that it’s free! Cheap is
cheap, as the saying goes.
There was one time our Internet was down for ten straight days.
That’s tough for a company whose only sources of revenue are
proposals that win contracts, and those proposals are required to
be sent by e-mail.
How many companies, I wonder, have ever “saved” themselves into
bankruptcy?
***
SOMEWHERE UP ABOVE I wrote about going to have a picture taken
for the new “All Iraq” badge. I mentioned that the application I
was asked to sign had a wrong middle name and an incorrect passport
number. I did not mention that this was the second set of
applications that had been submitted. The first set was lost.
Today we sent someone to pick up the new badges. All of them are
lost! That, on its face, is unbelievable. Our chief surveyor knows
exactly what happened to our ID cards. He says someone was able to
get them and is now downtown selling them to the insurgents! Maybe
someone in the contractors’ office is doing it. Why is that any
less plausible than saying they “got lost”?
A legitimate ID card in the hands of an insurgent has a 90%
chance of being accepted at most checkpoints. All you have to do is
to wave the card at a sleepy guard who is about to collapse from
sunstroke. The guard decides if it is legitimate based on color
patterns. He doesn’t look at your picture, and even if he did, they
are so bad as to be unrecognizable as a photo of the owner. A
legitimate ID Badge, with all its encoded information about the
owner, is a bar of gold.
What about that first set of applications that got “lost”?
Prepared by each of us individually, they contained our Social
Security and passport numbers, in addition to original signatures.
Pretty good stuff for anyone interested in such things, it seems to
me.
***
BY 7:00 P.M. THE DUST had killed the Internet, so we are here
flying blind again.
