Day 68: Blown out

When I first heard about average time to do an air medevac extraction (by helicopter) for Iraq and Afghanistan, I thought there was a typo. It was about 30 min in Afghanistan and 2-3 hrs in Iraq. Seemed backward because in Afghanistan, our forces are spread thinner and the combat outposts are more remote and less built up.

After being "snowed out" for 2 days and having had 4 flights cancelled on me, I now understand why. In early summer, the dust storms in this area are legendary. Looking outside, it's hard to see 100'. A brown haze hangs everywhere and people with any breathing problems are sucking hard. At night, when you turn on a flashlight, it looks like a light saber.

I'm trying to go back out to check out 3 PRT teams -- they're coming together for a key meeting tomorrow morning, and unfortunately, looks like I'm going to miss it.

At the end of that trip, I am going to piggyback along with one of the generals to observe a mutual "show and tell" -- he's bringing two of the Iraqi Army division commanders together to look at one of their camps first, and then we'll all fly over to the other commander's camp. The tricky thing is to not give the impression of this being an inspection and also not making it a direct comparison, which could lead to some loss of face/honor. It will be really interesting. I spoke with one of my counterparts who works 70% of his time with Iraqis and the main advice he gave me was: talk as little as possible, don't have your agenda that you push through, and yield to them. Again, as with civil capacity building, they must confront and work through their own problems.

I read in a local Iraqi newspaper today (translated) an interesting episode:

"In a sign of the need for Iraqi officials to show their independence, a senior American military officer was turned away from a major meeting in Baghdad between Iraq's civilian and military leaders. 'We apologize to you, but this is an Iraqi meeting and you're not invited,' an Iraqi general told the American."

You go girl.