Picnic in the Park - Iraq Style

Today our mission was to transport some Dignitaries to the Green Zone. On our way there we passed a line of vehicles. All these people and their cars, vans, and trucks are waiting to get gasoline. The line is about 2 miles long and doubles back the wrong way into traffic.


Then, once we dropped off our VIPs. We made a little detour to the Crossed Swords Monument. Here's a picture of me and some others in the platoon. The guy not in uniform is "Tony the 'Terp." He's our platoon's interpreter that we take with us on all of our missions "outside the wire." He has never had the chance to go to this monument before, because when Saddam was in power only his political and religious party members were allowed to travel there. He was as excited to see this place as we were.



The next day we were treated to the great weather in Iraq when a dirt storm blew in for 2 days. Yay. The dirt storm blew in on a Thursday night, which is also incidentally "Bomb 'da Base night." Nobody was injured, though and the dust blew out the next day. Doesn't the dirt in the air give everything a nice brown hue?