messiestobjects

One Prima Donna Whingeing About Another

Something that makes me absolutely crazy about IZ culture is the whole PSD situation. Personal Security Detail teams are essentially patriotic mercenaries. They will whine and complain like little girls and possibly threaten you physically if you dare to call them by that name, but that's because none of them know how to open a dictionary.
            mercenary / adj. & n.
            adj. primarily concerned with money or other reward (mercenary motives).
             n. (pl. -ies)
            1 a hired soldier in foreign service.
            2 a person available for paid hire
Okay you can argue the 'in foreign service' bit, but not really. PSD teams guard mainly Americans, it's true, but there are also several American companies contracted as PSDs for Iraqi officials as well, and it's supposedly ALL in the service of making Iraq more secure, anyway. And most of the money is coming from Iraqi Reconstruction funds, so it's to no one's benefit to get all semantic about it... actually you could reasonably call me a mercenary based on definition 2, but I'll play the semantic card for myself in that it could mean anybody that's got a job then, is a mercenary. But that's ridiculous. And mercenary generally connotates fighting for money, which I am not. So now that that log is out of my eye, let me address the splinter that is mercenary culture in the IZ.
The camp I used to be in charge of life support for had 600 of these pampered prima donnas living in it, so I am uniquely qualified to comment on them. They are generally big pumped up rednecks. When I leave Iraq and enter normal society for vacation, I feel alot bigger than I used to because here everybody is built like a superhero. They get their own caravan room and bathroom, and are given power and water 24/7, and are usually provided with TVs and DVD players, cable and internet. Their assignments are usually not more than 3 to 4 hours long, a couple of days a week, if that. They may or may not venture out into dangerous parts of Baghdad on those assignments. They drive like maniacs, shoot to kill with little provocation, and act like the gods of Iraq. In fact, they seem to be stuck on the very silly highschool-like self appointed moniker of 'Baghdaddy', as in "Who's your Baghdaddy?!", to be seen on T-shirts worn by retarded Americans all over the country. To be fair, anybody can buy these T-shirts at the PX, but mostly the big monkey mercenaries seem to like them. Incidentally, the front of these T-shirts say this in English, but just in case they wanted to actually cross the line from stupid to offensive, they have it translated into Arabic on the back side, just to let their subjects know who's boss. Anyway, I've been told by my translator that it doesn't really make sense in Arabic anyway, so mostly it's just stupid. But it's the thought that counts.
When they're not on assignment, they're lounging about their secured and pampered compounds (which always have Gym facilities, various other recreation options, and excellent dining facilities) and complain about how their showers leak water onto their floor, the food sucks, not enough decent gym equipment, blah blah blah. Their salaries are almost never less than $20,000 per month.
Meanwhile, the American soldier gets paid substantially less (maybe a grand or 2 a month? I'm not actually up on the current salary for soldier danger pay, which they get for being assigned here) and spend a significantly more amount of time in the red zone, risking their lives. Their living situation, when they are on long term assignment here, is to bunk up with the rest of their unit and no personal space.(like in the movies!) PSDs usually get 2 weeks paid vacation every 3 months. Soldiers don't really get vacations per se, but their leave time is significantly less.
Now, a lot of PSDs are ex-military, (also ex-cops, ex-firemen, ex-security guards etc...) and feel they've paid their dues, but that's sort of beside the point for me. Why is so much of the reconstruction money being spent on security? They're paying mercenaries 10 times the money a soldier makes to do a tenth of a soldier's job! Not only is the money being spent on their salaries, but those huge plush secure compounds they insist on living in don't come cheap either, let me tell you. Just building one can cost tens of millions of dollars, and ongoing life support costs can also be in the tens of millions per year. It's so wastefull, it's almost too big to comprehend. Why not just offer a 4 or 5 times increase in soldiers pay to get people to enlist and come over here that way? If that's not feasible, there must be other options less insane than what's actually going on.
It puts me in a difficult position morally, because I've made alot of money myself by building and maintaining one of the biggest of those camps. So don't get me wrong, I am definately somewhat of a hypocrite. It doesn't make me any less outraged at the whole thing, though, even having admitted that. Plus I just really dislike these people, and have only received these impressions by having actually been in the middle of it; before I came to work for my current employers, I really wasn't completely aware of how messed up it was. It's one thing to read about it in a blurb in the New York Times, it's another thing to see it firsthand.
In my own personal news, we found a treadmill buried under lots of construction materials while cleaning out our warehouse the other day. We've plugged it in in one of the rooms in our office building and I've begun burning some calories... a much needed activity for me. If I'm this sore from walking for an hour a day on the treadmill, it would really have put a crimp in my travelling for whenever I'm freed from this prison.

EITHER This Entry is a Dull Rant, OR it's an Ad for Better Blogs

So we just had a visit from the son of GBG's owner, whose name is Chris and is now running the company. After everything that's happened, we are just now FINALLY coming to our crossroads. We were served eviction papers saying that we have to vacate this property by June 30th, because the US is turning it back over to the Iraqi government. So, if we can continue to lease the property from the Iraqis, we will stay and continue to rent this camp out to clients, which means I could be here for a long time yet. OR, the Iraqis say "Screw you evil American opportunists, whose leader is in jail for stealing money from us!" and I'm outta here!
I figure it's 50/50. Either way I'll be happy and sad. It's a win/win lose/lose!
At least I finally have an either/or situation. I'm really happy about that. It's been nerve-wracking not knowing if or when something is going to happen.
Otherwise, it's slacking as usual. I finished Buffy, and have started watching 5 seasons of Smallville. It's not as cool as Buffy, and the writing is often clunky, but hey, it's Superboy and it kills time.
Hmmmm... I guess after that last paragraph, my whole case for the waiting being nerve-wracking kind of crumbles, doesn't it? But I'm actually really ... well, I don't know what the word is. Agitated? Unsatisfied? Meh... I'm really really tired of being so inactive. My gaze seems to be unfocused from too much screen time, and I feel icky from the lack of excercise. I'd actually be working out these days due to all the free time, but there's no good place where I'm at to do that. Oh yeah, and I'm lazy. That's the nicest either/or thing about June 30th; either I'll be leaving and getting ready for some intense travel, or I'll have a real job again. So I'm really looking forward to it. It's been awesome to sit here for 2 or 3 months and get paid stupid money to do essentially nothing... a Gen-Xer's dream come true, actually. But apparently that life style is bad for you. Well, bad for me. Who knew?
Oh, you should go to davidleeson.com, or his blog. He is a professional photojournalist whose pictures I'd found on a CD here and posted on my smugmug page. When TF recently notified me that they belonged to one David Leeson, I contacted him and he was extremely cool about it and let me keep his photos on my site. He was in Iraq in 2003 during the invasion, embedded with the military, and at great personal risk took some incredible photographs.
And speaking of other bloggers; a friend of mine who likes to communicate with me through vague blog entries of her own because I'm really bad at emailing and deserve to be boiled in my own pudding for my lack of response because I can't seem to make myself write an email any more turned me on to a blog written by a 24 year old Iraqi girl. It's an incredible website; She's been writing on it since August 2003 (The same month I arrived in Baghdad!) and her intelligence, english and writing skills are better than almost any native english speaker I know, certainly better than mine. If you're curious how this whole Post-American invasion of Iraq event looks through an Iraqi's eyes, it's an awesome place to go. They've actually published her blog as a book which you can purchase at Amazon. Anyway, the blog is called Baghdad Burning, and it's seriously worth spending some time with.

Colbert Electrifies the Blogosphere, and I Get All Political 'n Stuff

I don't normally blog too much about politics or politically-related things, because essentially there are millions of people out there who are much smarter and more research-oriented, and doing it better than I could anyway. The extent of my political feeling is that I dislike politicians intensly, and am probablly an anarchist at heart; Although I realize that Anarchy is hardly a feasible form of governance in reality. I think that Anarchy might be more organized than the the current political reality of crazed bush-whacking, however.
Anyway, regardless of my unpolitical proclivities, no Bush-hating blogger out there can resist making a comment about the recent Stephen Colbert bit at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, and I laughed so hard and am so in awe of the man, that I have to post a transcript of his genius here. It's not that any of the things he said are any wittier than things which other people have had to say, although Colbert is certainly telling the despairingly comedic truth. It's that he is saying it without the slightest trace of embarassment or fear 10 feet away from the most powerful and evil man in America, and he doesn't back off. The man has stones, no doubt. Speaking truth to power, indeed.
I wish that people like him had been saying this kind of stuff to Bush's face since before the last election. I pray that the Dems win the upcoming Congressional elections so that there is the remote possibilty of seeing the great ape get his comeuppance... even if that might only mean that Evil Cheney is the fill-in president. There should be a provision in impeachment trials that allow for wholesale Administration impeachments, sort of like a White House Virus-Sweep, Disc-Clean & DeFrag program... the whole Bush Cronystration needs to go, not just it's mouthpiece. It's sad that it's likely too late for such a thing to make much difference in saving America's extremely damaged reputation with the rest of the world, not to mention any thought of reversal of actual death, damage and destruction which they've caused.
Anyway, on a side note and not entirely unrelated, I noticed something the other day while driving through the International Zone: America has been in Baghdad for over 3 years now, and Iraqis still have extremely unreliable electricity. My Iraqi friends tell me that they are currently getting 2 hours of electricity per day. The summer is starting up again, when temperatures typically will rise to between 110 and 130 degrees farenheit daily, and with no power for their Air Conditioners, Iraqis suffer through some long hot days and nights and it is really not fun... just because they are from here and have had these temperatures to deal with all their life does not make it easy for them. They were used to things being infinitely better when Saddam was the boss. Also, I'd like to mention that here in the IZ, we are almost never without power, so what's up with that?
So it's been 3 years and little to nothing has been done about the electricity situation, and I'm sorry, but the line that "Terrorists keep blowing stuff up" is just weak. It's simply not good enough when the brand new US Embassy, which construction began on about 2 months ago, is already extremely well underway. It is being built pretty much right on the Tigris river, with a clear view of the so-called Red Zone, which is military-speak for the part of Baghdad where the unimportant residents of the city are; Iraqis. It will be very easy for someone to shoot something over the river at them, and yet, construction continues at a brisk pace; I bet that barring any RPG attacks, it'll be finished more or less on schedule in 2007. Fixing up the Baghdad power station should not take nearly as much effort, and yet, it's been over 3 years. Every time I drive by the new embassy, there is a noticable difference in the amount of construction completed, and I get rather a sick feeling in my stomach because it makes me think about how obvious my government's priorities are, and how little they have anything to do with what they would have the world believe they are. ITMFA!!!!
It also makes me think about the company I work for, and how, as it turns out, I came to work for a corrupt individual doing shady deals to defraud a corrupt government of it's shady money... and how I really can't untangle my own choices from any of it, regardless of my relative innocence in all of this. I'm just a guy with a job, you know? And I'm really attached to good people here, Iraqi friends who just want to work with us so they can make some decent money for a change, because the alternative Iraqi jobs in the city can be comparatively grim. But I still feel dirty and conflicted about the whole thing. And my stomach just keeps getting more turbulent.
Anyway, I'll leave you with a nice parting shot of Mr. Colbert skewering Bush as he looks on, rather thundercloud-like you might say. It's the most inspiring event I've come across in a very long time.

Colbert for President, anyone?

Mayday! Mayday! This entry lacks cohesive control!

So I was, once again, going back through my past entries, and I noticed that I seem to frequently state that I will be leaving Baghdad shortly. Only it never seems to pan out that way. Way back when my boss was first arrested (over 5 months ago!) I was all like, dude. Bummer. Guess I gotta pack up. Then when we lost the contract in March I was all like, dude. Bummer. Guess I gotta pack up. And here it is, May 1st, and I'm jammin' out to my newest mostest favouritest band, 'The Eagles of Death Metal', in my cozy caravan, and I haven't packed a dang thing yet. In fact, we may continue in this sort of limbo indefinitely, as there seems to be no shortage of people for us to rent this camp out to.  Or, as the property our camp is built on is Iraqi Government property, and they've been making noise about wanting it back, perhaps we'll be evicted and I'll be all like, dude. Bummer. Guess I gotta pack up.
It all just made me think about how ever since my second month here, when I got into an argument with a spook, I've felt like I was going to be booted out of Iraq the next day. And almost 3 years later, that feeling hasn't left. Maybe that's how they get you. The more insecure you feel, the more you'll worry about being forced to leave, and never actually consider that, having been around for far too long, it might be time to leave of your own accord! Lordy how I been duped.
But that still doesn't mean I'm capable of actually choosing to leave. What can I say? I gave up an addiction to tobacco for an addiction to Iraq! I wonder which one could kill me faster? I wonder if, given the opportunity, I might someday look back and say, "Holy crap. I've been here for 10 years!" I mean, that's what normal people do, right? They get a job at some office somewhere, and never look up except on payday, until ten years have passed, and they've saved up for that killer family vacation to Disneyland and isn't it time to refinance the mortgage? I mean, what difference does it make if I do it in Iraq as opposed to Stroudsburg? Except on my family vacation we do an Earth Orbit, 'cause Earth Orbiting is way cooler than a roller coaster.
Anyway, I've been reading a book called "Holy Blood, Holy Grail". It's all about how a secret society has been hiding the decendants of Christ for  over a thousand years, incited the First Crusade, and got up to a bunch of all-around sneakiness. I was really enjoying it, because secret societies are neat-o, but then I went online and read in a million different places that it was all a big fat hoax. It's the same secret society that Dan Brown based "The Da Vinci Code" on; The Priory of Sion. So that's my great disappointment for this week, and I heave a great sigh. It's a far cry from threatening to junkie suicide it, ain't it though?