saddams answer to a HMMV...notice the gun turret/roll bar
this one took it a little worse
tropical iraq
another bunker
an orchard
the barracks
towards the bottom is a u.s. issue boot...
used to be a warehouse
graffitti inside the barracks
the barracks upstairs. the walls have been pushed over
a bomb came through the roof
a huge opening in the second floor...one on each side
the front side
the palace is in the back ground
the back side
thats a crater
one of saddams pools
gold trimmed toilets
the p.x. line...it's about 110 degrees outside
iraqi handprint
i went out to look around an area of the compound that i haven't been to yet...i found what i think were military barracks and a swimming pool...we aren't using the barracks but we are gettin' it on in saddams pool...priceless
Paul - What did you think about the carnage and death inflicted by Saddam before America came here? Where were you then?
Mon 14-Jul-2003 14:38 Posted by:Gary
Paul - blow it out your ass.
Sergeant, best wishes to you and your men, stay as sharp as you can in the heat, and keep yourselves safe.
Tue 15-Jul-2003 01:30 Posted by:Dave - also from Toronto, Canada
Dude, this is really good. Keep it up. Try to come home in one piece, that's the important thing. Most of the time, soldiers fight to stay alive, and for each other, to come home safe and in one piece. These wars, when you look at them closely, never mean nothing. Iraq, like Viet Nam, is just another big waste of lives and effort. You guys are not the first through something like this though, it has happened to soldiers for thousands of years.......
Regardless of your political views, this is a pretty neat thing to read - especially for an underemployed REMF. I got turned onto it by a liberal..... Hopefully you'll get to rotate back to the World soon. Take care.
Tue 15-Jul-2003 14:01 Posted by:sonorK
btw, the VP is Richard Cheney
Tue 15-Jul-2003 14:01 Posted by:sonorK
Nice Photos (especially those of Saddams palace... if u see a photo of him, piss on it for me ) but impossible to enjoy while thinking, how many people died there. This war is a crime, made by criminalists who just look for oil and tell us lies about wmd and attack a totally defenceless country. I would be ashamed beeing a tool for those murders.
thanks for your blog, and for your pics. i am totally against this insane criminal war, but i feel for the soldiers sent overseas to fight for something most of them probably don't even understand. i thank you for humanizing yourself, and the other soldiers, through your words and images. i feel so sad that you are in the position you are in. you are obviously a fine a deeply-feeling human being. i hope the day we see bush and his neocon cabal of mass-murdering world dominators shamed and behind bars comes soon. when i look at the oil-soaked press, however, it gives me not much hope for that. peace to you-- take care of yourself and your soldiers, and extend your kindness to all you meet. return home safely!
Tue 15-Jul-2003 19:48 Posted by:hanumonkey
Excellent work, man. Good writing and good pictures. The fact that people can read your writing and still make such vicious comments about the US says more about them than it does us. We did the right thing in Iraq, and your attitude shows that we are still trying to do the right thing.
Wed 16-Jul-2003 16:53 Posted by:brett
Keep up the great work, we are proud of you.
Wed 23-Jul-2003 23:31 Posted by:Steven
criminal war? .... i worked for 20 years as an automotive engineer in dearborn. many of the engineers i worked with were refugee iraqis who fled to save their lives and their families. criminal?
get over it.
what's criminal is what saddam has done to a country filled with brilliant, highly civilized, talented people. isn't it criminal to destroy lives and families? isn't it criminal to take food from the mouths of children? to put families at risk by developing chemicals and diseases in an unsafe manner and using those things on his own people?
i remember when saad's brother disappeared and he had no way to find him. no one knew where he was.
but if this happened in canada, my friends, you'd be screaming for the united states to come in to save your butts just as the kurds were pleading with us. just as the shiites in the south of iraq did.
Your photo's will be priceless someday, keep snaping. God Bless America , and God Bless our troups. My 7 year old grandson pray's for you everyday. In that tinny little voice he ask " God please watch over all our troups and keep them all safe and bring them all home to us. In Jesus name Aman " ( United We Stand )
Sat 2-Aug-2003 21:51 Posted by:Diana Clark dcclark@mrtc.com
Love the pictures. Street scenes, people pictures, your camer isn't doing that bad a job always better pictures with sun at your back,
Any homes for sale there, I sell real estate, plus I'm a ham radio operator, for fun, I listen in on the 5 Mhz activity in Iraq.
Hey cris...we gave saddam the chemicals to do his dirty work with, then stood by and did nothing after he used them, because he was "our man." Criminal? You bet. But it appears that we disagree about who the real criminals are. It's a shame...you seem like an educated person. Try opening your eyes and really seeing what's going on.
Mon 25-Aug-2003 23:14 Posted by:Yasmin
Yasmin,
Saddam's military was armed with Soviet, and to a lesser extent French weaponry, not American. US assistance to Saddam during the Iran/Iraq war was limited to sattelite photos of Iranian troop concentrations. Saddam was a bad guy then, and there is a famous quote of Rumsfeld giving his deputy a dressing down during their meeting for their totalitarian ways It wasn't all friendly fun and games, but the Iranians were a MUCH bigger threat at that point, and the results for the whole region if Iran won would have been untenable..
Anyway the important point is that Saddam made his own chemical weapons back then. Anyhow, even if we wanted to give him some, Saddam couldn't have used our ammunition. Soviet and US shells are different caliber. A US shell wouldn't even FIT into Soviet artillery!
Yasmin, where did you read this nonsense, arabicnews.com or some other similarly batty site?
Do you believe in the Easte... oops i mean Jihad Bunny, too? You know, it comes every Eid and brings bomb-vests for all the good little martyrs.
Sat 20-Sep-2003 22:09 Posted by:Crabby A
Yasmin, the French built all of Saddam's virology labs. The chemical precursors for his chemical weapons also came from the various eurotrash, france, germany.
American support for Iraq DID indeed include weapons... including artillery. This isn't a surprise or remarkable to me, but to hear Crabby A deny that the US provided weapons to Saddam's Iraq is just something I can't hear without making comment. I personally saw dozens of good old American M109 Self-Propelled Howtizers sitting around an Iraqi Army base near Baghdad. I personally went into many, many bunkers and saw ammunition that was made in the US, along with ammunition and weapons from dozens of other countries.
Along with American howitzers, there were Belgian and South African artillery, that can fire the same 155 mm shells. Iraq had more variety of weapons than I ever expected, and yes it was LARGELY Soveit-Bloc stuff, but not just Soviet. Czech, Bulgarian, Romanian, Chinese, Jordanian, Egyptian... stuff from ALL OVER.
I think most people think that the samples provided ostensibly for medical research that were USED by the Iraqi regime to produce chemical and biological weapons, constitute US support for their chemical and bio weapons ambitions... but in the end it was just a regretable loophole that they took advantage of and we weren't prepared for.
The US isn't obligated to act in every case it observes... bad things may go unpunished by the US and if so.. the US isn't obligated to act, is it? Isn't it a double standard to condemn US action when it happens and then to expect it to happen whenever YOU want it to? The US will try to act in its own interests, and each administration changes its criteria for action, sometimes daily.
Bottom line: its not a lie to say that Iraq got WEAPONS from the US for the Iran-Iraq war. It happened.
Sun 23-Jan-2005 21:47 Posted by:Vet
Interesting pics. Can someone please tell me what is most needed by soldiers in Iraq? I'm planning a care package, but want to hear it from the horse's mouth.
) but impossible to enjoy while thinking, how many people died there. This war is a crime, made by criminalists who just look for oil and tell us lies about wmd and attack a totally defenceless country. I would be ashamed beeing a tool for those murders.
