When we landed in the Green Zone, we were met by a man named Barney, a representative from the ICITAP/CPATT program (International Criminal Investigation Training Assistance Program/Civilian Police Assistance Training Team. It seems that ICITAP wasn’t a big enough acronym, they needed to add to it). Barney was a decent enough guy, but having dealt with so many new people coming in and asking him the same questions he had answered countless times before, his patience level wasn’t what it once had been. “Toss them in the back,” Barney said as we loaded our gear into the back of a pickup truck and then climbed inside the cab. We then drove a short distance towards our new temporary home, the Adnan Palace, where much of the police program was located and run from, and where we would be billeted in a large tent for more than two weeks, drawing full pay while sitting around and doing nothing. Later the next day we would be officially welcomed into the CPATT family in Iraq.
The Adnan Palace was a large, somewhat pyramid-shaped structure, which had at one time been a residence for one of Saddam Hussein’s daughters and her husband. Garish and tasteless both inside and out, much like all of Saddam’s own palaces. There was a large swimming pool behind it, which was devoid of water. If you weren’t paying attention at night, you could walk right into the deep end of an empty swimming pool, since there really wasn’t anything in place to prevent an accidental tumble—no barricades, lights, or warning signs.
We arrived at the palace and had to make it through the checkpoint security to get access into the compound. The vehicle was searched inside and out, the guards using mirrors on long sticks to check the vehicle’s undercarriage. Most of the checkpoint guards were private contractors hired from Iraq. Considering the unemployment level in Iraq at the time, and the ongoing reconstruction efforts, finding jobs for Iraqis was an important part of the equation. The guards looked like they were just going through the motions but seemed efficient enough.
There were so many companies trying to cash in on the billions floating around Iraq, with many of them hiring guards from other Third World countries to keep costs low and profits high. There were Nepalese, Ugandans, South Americans, even Fijians. Companies went wherever they could obtain cheap labor. Supposedly all had prior military experience from their home countries, but I sincerely doubt those from Uganda or Fiji were of quite the same caliber as the American forces.
Later, we would discover that our perimeter security guards at the Baghdad Police Academy were indeed from Fiji—very friendly individuals, always smiling and waving at us as we walked around the inside of the compound. The only problem with that was that the bad guys would be coming from outside the compound, which is where their attention should have been directed. On more than one occasion I would yell up to one of them to keep a watch on the other direction. They readily complied, smiling while they did so, but soon thereafter you’d see them waving again at someone else walking inside the compound. There was little sense of comfort from having their eagle eyes on the job and, once I received it, I drew my M-4 carbine a little closer to my bunk at night when I slept, and made sure I kept a weapon with me at all times during the day.
After we passed through the checkpoint at the Adnan Palace entrance, we drove a short distance to a small parking area near a large tent surrounded by sandbags. We got out of the vehicle with all our gear and Barney led us into the sandy-colored tent, which was about 40 feet long by 25 feet wide, with an entrance on both ends. Inside the tent, running down the middle, there were about 20 sets of bunk beds, separated by wall lockers—the wall lockers being that in name only, since they mostly didn’t lock or even allow the doors to close securely. Some were even without doors entirely.
The bunkbeds were placed end-to-end up against each other, running the length of the tent. Near one end of the tent were a few hard, white, plastic lawn furniture-type tables and chairs, a large-screen TV, and a refrigerator with a supply of bottled water. Magazines and other reading material lay strewn across the tables. Spaced along the tent walls were combination heater/air-conditioning units, three on each side of the tent. Since ICITAP had received advanced notice of Stan and Ruby’s arrival, a small section in one corner of the tent had been blocked off with wall lockers, making a sort of bedroom for them, giving the married couple a little privacy away from the rest of us. It was ICITAP/CPATT’s version of a honeymoon suite.
The Adnan Palace compound was fairly large and consisted of row upon row of the same large tents that we were staying in, each with sandbag walls built up along the sides and the ends of each tent. There were perhaps six or eight tents in all. They all looked exactly alike, and if you weren’t paying attention you could walk right past the tent you lived in and go inside the wrong one. There were also a few concrete bunkers placed here and there, where you could hunker down during a mortar attack. The bunkers were shaped like an upside down letter ‘U’, about 12- or 15-feet long and open on each end. Maybe eight or so people could huddle together inside in case mortar rounds started raining in on the compound.
The first floor of the Adnan Palace had been turned into office spaces around a large circular atrium. The upper floors were being used by Iraqi and U.S. military officials. CPATT also had an office with internet service, and a training room in a small theater located off the main foyer. The atrium was pretty much the same as all the other palaces and buildings associated with the Saddam Hussein regime—all were gaudy and ostentatious. On the palace grounds were the tents that were being used as classrooms for some of the higher-ranking Iraqi police, as well as newly arriving police trainers such as ourselves. There was also a chow hall tent, again surrounded by sandbags, which the Iraqi students and some Americans used. In addition there was a small restaurant in an adjoining building, which was affectionately named ‘the Baghdad Country Club’, but we took most of our meals at a military chow hall that was a short ride on the bus.
The compound, like most others in Iraq, was surrounded by high concrete walls, with several elevated guard towers along the perimeter staffed by armed contract security forces. Once again, you had to be cleared through an armed checkpoint to gain access to the Adnan compound, and in order to be admitted you better have your CAC card clearly displayed. Most of us had purchased lanyards to hang our cards around our necks, or small ID cases that could fit around your arm with elastic straps. The mandatory display of CAC cards was required on any military installation.
If you carried a weapon, you had to ensure it was unloaded by clearing (unloading) it at a clearing barrel set up at the checkpoint. No rounds in the chamber were allowed. Even though, as police officers, none of us had ever carried an unloaded weapon, we were guests of the military so we followed their rules… for the most part, as far as they knew anyway, with the exception of General Order No. 1 (the prohibition against alcohol).
Picture an average small-college football stadium back in America, and that would be about the size comparison of the Adnan Palace compound, obviously minus the high walls of a football stadium. It included the palace structure itself, the empty Olympic-size swimming pool, and some other smaller outbuildings. It was surrounded completely by high concrete ‘T-walls’. T-walls, blast walls, they were one and the same, and they were all over Iraq. They served as the exterior perimeter walls for all U.S. bases, the entire Green Zone, and other public buildings and compounds throughout the country. They were made of reinforced concrete and looked like an upside-down letter ‘T’. They were roughly two-feet thick, with the base thicker, and most were around 20 feet tall, some even topped with barbed wire. T-walls also surrounded many of the buildings inside a fortified compound for added protection.
The Adnan Palace was also near the military parade boulevard built by Saddam for official celebrations and parades. It had a large reviewing stand about midway down the boulevard, and at each end of the boulevard were the large Crossed Swords statues. The hands and forearms holding the swords were supposedly sculpted from Saddam’s own hands. They formed an arch across the boulevard and met in the middle about sixty or eighty feet above the surface of the road. Next to this was the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier memorial. The Baghdad Zoo, or what was left of it was also nearby. There was also a memorial park with a few ancient fighter jet airplanes that had been on display at one point in time. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was located off one end of the parade boulevard, standing alone. It looked basically like a large dinner plate, maybe 80 feet or more across and resting atop a 40-foot tall pedestal, with the red, black, and green of the Iraqi flag added in. It was a rather gaudy and ostentatious display, as was typical with Saddam’s palaces and everything else that he constructed. ‘Tacky’ was the watchword that Iraqi architects adhered to, it would seem.
The ground cover in this area reminded me of the desert in the southwest of the U.S., with only a little vegetation, mostly scrub brush mixed in with a few small trees—no grass anywhere, but dust and sand everywhere. Perhaps at one time it had been well maintained, with manicured lawns and shrubs, but after all the years of United Nations sanctions, not to mention war, the entire area had fallen into a state of serious disrepair.
The weather in Baghdad this time of year was fairly mild. It was hot enough to need air conditioning during the day time, but at night the temperatures dipped down to the low 40s and even upper 30s, making it just chilly enough that those of us who are ‘cold blooded’ needed some heat turned on inside the tent overnight. This turned into a point of irritation between the warm-blooded and cold-blooded people of our group, with each of us sneaking over to the units when no one was looking and adjusting the temperature—only to have someone else sneak over when you weren’t looking and change it back.
Once we were billeted in the tent, Barney turned us over to a guy named ‘Lenny’, who as best we could tell was sort of in charge of logistics for the Adnan Palace. Toothless, and about 50–55 years old with a scruff of a beard on his chin, he immediately commenced to regale us with stories of his derring-do as a police officer, as well as during his service in Iraq. He instructed us on how to properly carry our M-4 carbines (which had not been waiting for us on our arrival, contrary to what we had been promised) in order to be able to rapidly engage the enemy when involved in gunplay on the streets of Baghdad. Lenny’s ‘heroics’ might have made you look at him in awe as a ‘super cop’ if you didn’t know any better. Those of us who knew better quietly rolled our eyes as we looked at each other and mouthed ‘bullshit artist’ when Lenny wasn’t looking.
Lenny claimed that he had been the chief of police for a community in the Midwest of the United States. His resume might have sounded impressive to the uninformed, but since one of my daughters had attended college nearby I was quite familiar with the community where he worked—a small spot on the map which was basically nothing more than a radar trap along a roadway. It was not the thriving, challenging metropolis that he tried to portray it as, and certainly not one to produce the gun battles and acts of derring-do Lenny claimed to have participated in. Though I don’t know the exact numbers for certain, the police department he worked for was very small, likely no more than a ‘chief ’ and one or two other officers, and probably part time officers at that. In many very small communities like this anywhere in the States, the police chief is usually related to the mayor or other important people in the town, and not necessarily hired for their professionalism, education, or skills.
While giving us a tour of the compound, Lenny took us over to a small building which sat next to a large metal gate, which looked more like a metal wall. As we were told by Lenny, right on the other side of the gate was the so-called ‘Red Zone’, where the bad guys were. There was nothing preventing them from driving a car or truck right up to or even through the gate and blowing themselves up, or jumping out of the vehicle and firing their AK-47s at anything that moved inside the Adnan Palace compound. It was not a very comforting thought at that particular moment in our tour of the palace grounds, but we later found out that Lenny’s description of the bad guys’ proximity to us was wildly exaggerated, as was everything else that he told us.
Lenny kept an office and a bunk inside this small building by the metal gate. Inside, he pointed out his collection of DVDs, which covered an entire wall. Lenny told us we could watch as many as we wanted. We never asked him how many of them were porno, but I suspect that there was an exhaustive supply.
Lenny also prided himself on being able to obtain just about anything you might need, though his means of obtaining things was left to conjecture. I never quite knew which side of the law Lenny was on—a typical ‘scrounger’ of the first order, it would seem. He was definitely a self-promoter and very likely his scrounging efforts were exaggerated as well. We didn’t really care too much as we didn’t figure on having that much contact with him. Our stay at this location was expected to be short. Little did we know it would last quite a while, at least three weeks.
The Green Zone was an approximately four-square-mile, highly fortified area in the heart of Baghdad, on the west side of the Tigris River. It was a fairly secured area, where the American and other foreign embassies were located, along with the Multi-National Force headquarters. The main hospital, the 28th Combat Support Hospital (called the ‘CASH’), was also located there. The court facilities where Saddam Hussein would eventually be put on trial was also located within the confines of the fortified walls surrounding the Green Zone. Many government-contracting offices and private-contracting companies were located there as well. An effort had been underway by the powers-that-be to get people to start calling the Green Zone by a different name, calling it the ‘International Zone’ or ‘IZ’ instead. Most likely some diplomat came up with that, thinking it didn’t sound as ominous as ‘the Green Zone’. By this time the U.S. government and the military were already trying to change the image of our effort in Iraq.
As I mentioned earlier, the Adnan Palace itself once belonged to Saddam’s daughter (now a widow) and her husband. Unfortunately for Saddam’s daughter, her husband had reportedly defected to Jordan a number of years earlier. As the story goes, he was later enticed into returning to Baghdad and told that Saddam was letting bygones be bygones. When he arrived, he was rushed off to a waiting helicopter and unceremoniously thrown out from a few thousand feet up in the air. Hence Saddam’s daughter being a widow. I can’t attest to the accuracy of this account but it makes for a good story, and that’s the story we were told. Suffice to say that Saddam’s son-in-law is taking a dirt nap somewhere in Iraq, whether for parachuting out of a helicopter without a parachute or through some other cause, and Saddam’s daughter was indeed a widow.
Even though the Green Zone was mostly secure, we were advised by those who had arrived before us that we shouldn’t leave the compound without an armed escort, as we had not yet been issued our M-4 carbines or Beretta 9mm pistols. We had been told back in Virginia that as soon as we hit the ground in Baghdad we would be issued weapons, but that just wasn’t the case. It was just the first of many things we were told that we would find out weren’t true.
The PX and a military chow hall were a short drive away from the Adnan Palace, and we could check out a full-sized armored SUV to drive there if we chose to. Again, without weapons we weren’t really comfortable and didn’t want to travel too far from our compound. There was a shuttle bus operating within the confines of the Green Zone. It would pick you up at designated bus stops—one being the Adnan Palace—and then transport you to the CASH hospital, to Saddam’s palace (which housed the embassy and military headquarters), the PX, and some other locations within the zone. We were told it was safe but to me it looked like a nice, large, slow-moving target for an insurgency RPG. The only thing the buses were lacking was a red and white target circle painted on the sides, the back, and the roof.
Two experienced police trainers, Don and another man whose name I’ve forgotten, were inside our tent when we arrived and gave us the lowdown on what to expect, as well as other useful information, such as where in the zone you could purchase a six-pack of beer. This was the first time we heard of Café Napoli, located on a section of Route Irish just before it led out of the Green Zone and into ‘injun territory’. Route Irish was the main road to and from BIAP and the Green Zone, which, as I previously mentioned, had been closed to all vehicular travel by contractors because of the constant attacks.
After getting settled into our tent, I walked over to the palace building to see if I could send some emails back home, letting loved ones know that I had arrived safely. That was pretty much the routine for the next couple of days, until the arrival of the remainder of our group from Lorton, Virginia. The internet room was located off the main atrium of the palace. It was a room about 20 feet in length by around 15 feet wide, and there was a large conference table in the middle, surrounded by chairs. The table top was covered with Ethernet cables for hooking up laptops. Accessing the internet presented a challenge, since there were only six Ethernet cables and it seemed like there was always a dozen people trying to hook up.
Once settled into the tent at the Adnan Palace, we all established our daily routine, which involved eating breakfast taking the bus to the PX, eating lunch at a nearby military chow hall, checking email, going back to the PX to stare at the shelves and counters for anything new that may have shown up, eating dinner, showering, watching DVDs, sitting around and bullshitting, and then going to bed. Not necessarily in that order. There was simply little else we could do.
“You guys thirsty?” Don asked one day. He had already been accommodating enough to take us on a few beer runs to Café Napoli. Being a beer drinker (in moderation) I would always opt for a case of Corona, which could usually be found at Café Napoli, but you took whatever they had—beggars can’t be choosers. At different times, Café Napoli had Corona, Heineken, Amstel, and others, including a very dusty case of Budweiser on one occasion. You just never knew what they would have in stock at the time that you visited. They usually had a steady supply of hard liquor and wines too, since they took up less room than cases of beer in their small supply closet. Alcohol was a way to soothe the pain of tent-living and relax a little, and no one in our group ever got out of line with it. There’s nothing wrong with relaxing with a drink or two in the evening after a long day of… relaxing and doing nothing.
We jokingly called the trips to Café Napoli ‘tactical beer runs’, because they took on some elements of a military operation. When we arrived, one person would stay outside with the vehicle to make sure nobody tampered with it, while the other two entered the restaurant. Once inside, one person would haggle with the proprietor while the other stood armed watch over any Iraqis that happened to be inside.
Café Napoli was situated in the middle of some high-rise apartment buildings. It was a rather nondescript building from the outside, and if not for the sign identifying it in English, no one would really know that it was a restaurant and, more importantly, a liquor store in the heart of Baghdad.
As we arrived and parked our SUV outside the café, there were no other vehicles parked anywhere nearby. I went inside with Don while a guy named Bill, who had accompanied us on this trip, stayed outside with our vehicle. Don and I entered the café and my radar immediately went up, as there were several Iraqis seated inside at tables, having coffee or a bite to eat.
We walked up to the unsmiling Iraqi proprietor behind a small counter and he asked in good English, “How can I help you?” Don kept a wary eye on the diners as I asked the proprietor if I could get a case of beer. He nodded, stepped away from the counter, walked over to a doorway and opened the door. From what I could see inside there were cases of beer stacked atop each other, as well as bottles of alcohol and wine. I saw a case of Corona right on top and said “I’ll take the Corona. How much do I owe you?” The proprietor said “Thirty dollars.” I reached into my pocket, pulled out a wad of cash, peeled off $30 and handed it to the man, who simply nodded and took the money. I grabbed the case of Corona that he had set onto the counter and Don and I walked out. Never once did the man break a smile or really make much eye contact. Some of the Iraqis sitting inside had looked on passively while our haggling took place, some with a bemused look on their face, others with barely hidden hostility. It was not your typical shopping trip to the local liquor store back in the United States.
Many Iraqis still lived inside the Green Zone, in high-rise buildings and single standing structures. They hadn’t been displaced simply because the U.S. and coalition forces had selected their part of the city for the embassies and military headquarters, but you had no way of knowing where their loyalties might lie. There had, in fact, been isolated attacks against Westerners inside the Green Zone, and some people had even been killed. A year or so earlier, an American who had been working out at a gym had been walking home after dark when he was stabbed and killed. As far as I know, his murder was never solved.
We loaded into our SUV and headed back to the Adnan Palace. As we arrived, we had to go through the checkpoint again and then we drove over to our tent and unloaded. I took my case of Corona inside and put it in the large refrigerator—a nice cold beer was going to taste good later that evening. There was a lot of sharing among our group, no one ever really kept track of who drank what. We figured it would all even out in the end.
The routine at the Adnan Palace didn’t vary greatly from day to day for the first week of our stay, and intense boredom began to set in. You can’t take cops who are Type A personalities, used to ‘doing something’, and shove them into a tent with little or no distractions without them becoming antsy.
When we arrived there was no such thing as an orientation program in place, but the management, in their wisdom, eventually determined something needed and put a program together. Like much of what we had experienced so far, it was less than memorable, but at least they had made the effort, and they deserve credit for that. There really should have been a regular and more formal new-arrival orientation, one that addressed all the questions someone might have when landing in a war zone. Instead, we got a steady stream of ‘window or aisle’ responses, and few questions were ever answered. There was simply no interest about what anyone outside the Green Zone clique had to say.
Though we did have a television inside the tent, you can only watch so many DVDs before that too begins to grate on your nerves. There are always differing tastes on what programming to watch as well. The internet café inside the palace was always a challenge too. There were too many newly arrived instructors, not to mention the palace cadre who were also vying for computer time. Everyone tried to be courteous and limit their internet use to family emails, but at times it got frustrating, waiting for your turn. Some people would wait until the wee hours of the morning, since there were fewer people up and about at that time of night. The time difference between Baghdad and the U.S. was around 12 hours, so you might even catch your loved ones up and be able to chat using instant messaging. Since it was an unsecure system, you had to keep in mind ‘OPSEC’ (operational security), and avoid too much detail about your location, surroundings, movements, and what you were doing. It was also a good idea to limit information about your loved ones back home as well. You just never knew who might be listening in.
The best word I can use to describe the rest of the facilities at the compound is ‘austere’. We had a Porta-Potty right outside the tent, which was always disgusting to use. The smell alone was usually a good reason not to go in there. It did, however, provide us with one diversion from the boring routine, which was watching some local Iraqi empty it. It wasn’t done as it would be back in America, where they have trucks with vacuum pumps that suck out the filth. These Porta-Potties were emptied out by hand.
One of the Iraqi workers would use a hand-held cup, fashioned out of an old bleach bottle, and reach into the bottom tank of the Porta-Potty to scoop out whatever solids were inside. Others used a tin can that had been soldered to a straightened-out wire clothes hanger. We called them ‘shit-dippers’, and many off-color jokes were made about this being a job they would hand down from father to son, a generational kind of thing. Jokes were also made about ‘parents’ career day’ at school. We would double over in laughter as one of our group would explain, in great detail, how it would play out at an Iraqi elementary school.
“Let me introduce my dad Abdul. My dad is a shit-dipper. He empties out portable toilets for a living. He has brought along some of the tools of his trade to share with you all. This is his ‘bleach bottle’, which he sometimes uses to reach down into the bottom of the Porta-Potty to scoop out poop. He also uses this metal clothes hanger with this Campbell’s soup can soldered onto the end of it. This allows him to reach down deeper when necessary. Don’t touch anything!”
Needless to say, the jokes were almost endless. After dipping the Porta-Potty out, the Iraqi would then spray it down with chemicals to sanitize it. Though no one ever felt comfortable actually sitting down inside one of them, they did come in handy in the middle of the night when that beer you’d consumed started wanting to come out.
There were regular toilet facilities inside the palace, which most of us used for longer, ‘sit-down’ visits. The bathrooms in the palace were quite ornate, with gilding on the sinks and commodes and marble everywhere. You almost felt like you were taking a ‘royal dump’ when using them.
One evening, a night-time visit to the Porta-Potty by one of our group provided us with one of the more memorable moments. Roy woke up in the middle of the night and got out of his bunk in order to pay a visit to the ‘PP’. When he returned, as there were no lights on inside the tent, he misjudged which was his bunk and tried to climb into bed with another of our group, a fairly large male named Wallie. Since Wallie was a happily married man and wasn’t really interested in sharing his bunk, or being ‘spooned’ by Roy, he very loudly objected.
“What the hell are you doing?” he shouted, breaking the silence of the night. All of a sudden there was a very loud ‘thump’, the sound of something large hitting the floor. Kenny, who was in the bunk above Wallie, had laughed so hard at what was happening below him that he’d fallen out of bed and landed directly on his head. Kenny let out a yelp, and needless to say the situation attracted much attention from the rest of us. The story has been told and retold ever since, with many embellishments I’m sure, but I swear my telling is probably the most accurate. I’ve always wondered, though, how someone loses their balance while lying down in a bed.
There was also a small shower trailer next to the Porta-Potty. It was ‘co-ed’, so Stan had to remain outside and guard the door while his wife was inside. It certainly wasn’t the nicest shower, but it was better than nothing. It consisted of about five stalls, as well as sinks with wallmounted mirrors for shaving and brushing teeth. The water wasn’t safe for drinking, so you had to bring a bottle of water to rinse out your mouth after brushing your teeth. These shower trailers had something of a reputation in Iraq, since some had been improperly installed by cheap labor recruited from Third World countries. KBR cutting costs had resulted in a couple of American soldiers being electrocuted while using such shower trailers at bases in Iraq. I always made sure I took my showers in daylight so I would not have to flip the light switch.
After over a week, we were finally advised that the staff had developed a new presentation, and we would have the privilege of being the first group of new instructors to attend the ‘ICITAP Iraq Orientation’. One of the Adnan staff, a guy named Melvin, stopped by the tent one afternoon and asked me to spread the word.
“Have everybody report to the Palace tomorrow at 10,” he said. “We have an orientation program finally put together and tomorrow will be day one. We’ll fill in the schedule for the rest of the week at that time.”
By now we were all looking for something to break the monotony so we welcomed the change in our schedule. Unfortunately we would find out that the orientation wasn’t very useful and only took up a couple of hours of the day. Created more to give us something to do other than just lay around, it was certainly not memorable. Little of the content has stuck with me, but one thing I do recall is that some of it would now be considered very politically incorrect. The PowerPoint presentation was interspersed with a few photos of naked women, some funny video clips, and other more ribald and off-color humor—not much different from the police roll calls many of us had attended when we worked back in the States. Oh yeah, and the slogan they opened the briefings with would become more or less the motto of the ICITAP program in Iraq: ‘Never have so many done so little for so much’.
I recall one day, sitting in the theater conference room and watching a steady stream of uninformed, unhelpful, pompous asses from the Green Zone ICITAP staff standing before us and trying to fill up time. The briefings were simply not done well, as though they had been thrown together to give us something to do. They answered few of the questions we all had about the Baghdad Academy, or the other places we were headed in the Iraqi Theater of Operations. And ‘window or aisle’ was repeated regularly if any of us asked a question they didn’t want to answer.
On one day, an Iraqi police officer was invited to speak (with the help of a translator) about how the police operated in his country. He appeared quite ill-at-ease in the position he’d been placed in, and though his heart was in the right place, little of substance was gleaned from this exercise. Our interest was in how the police operated, patrolled, and responded to calls for service. What we got was an explanation of the Iraqi police rank structure. The gist was that Iraqi police operations weren’t even close to what we had experienced with our own departments back home. Responding to calls for service was basically unheard of. Citizens would have to come to the police station to report a crime or express a grievance. There were no real neighborhood watch or patrols by police in squad cars. It was a very unresponsive service. This was what we were supposed to build upon. It was certainly a challenge, and one made even harder because of the early decision by the Bush administration to disband the Iraqi police to rid it of any Baathist Party holdovers.
During a question-and-answer period, my colleagues tried to elicit more practical information from the Iraqi police officer, with little success. He was unresponsive, since our questions were based upon our own experiences and were concepts he just didn’t really understand. At the end of his briefing, our understanding of the Iraqi police force was pretty much what it had been before he’d started—minimal.
During a brief break in the presentation, I asked the ICITAP briefer about when we would be receiving weapons, as we had been promised they would be waiting for us when we arrived. He told us that we’d get them soon and if we didn’t want to wait, then ‘window or aisle’. We continued to be assured that we were safe in the Green Zone and didn’t really need weapons anyway—but these assurances came from staff who were walking around with 9mm pistols strapped to their thighs. It was easy for them to say we were safe and didn’t need anything.
During one orientation session, while being put to sleep by one of the presenters, Ruby received a visit from an unwelcome guest. As the presentation droned on we suddenly heard a screech of terror from where Ruby was seated. “What the fuck!” she screamed. It seems that a large rat had fallen from the ceiling, about 20 feet above where she was seated, and dropped right into her lap. Needless to say, it got Ruby’s attention and then she got ours. The rat scurried away, giving our group our first experience with Iraqi insurgents. In this case it’s probably good that we weren’t armed because Ruby, and a few others, might have popped off a few rounds at the rat as it ran away.
The days seemed to run into each other as the boredom of our existence wore on all of us. The U.S. government was paying us over $13,000 per month to sit on our behinds in a tent in the Green Zone, watching DVDs, surfing the internet, visiting the PX, eating, and drinking a few beers in the evenings. Finally, after about a week, we were advised by Melvin that the following day a representative from the large civilian contractor DynCorp would be bringing our weapons. “You all need to be up at the Palace at 11 for weapon issuance,” he told us.
The CPATT staff had been telling us that it was generally pretty safe where we were and that we shouldn’t make a big deal out of not having weapons yet, but that’s not something to tell street cops who had grown accustomed to the feel of a weapon on their hips. We were all used to deciding for ourselves where, when and how we were ‘safe’. Had we not been told back in Virginia that we would be issued weapons upon our arrival, it might have been a bit easier to deal with, but we felt that we had been misled and we were all uncomfortable being so close to a war while unarmed. We were all volunteers and knew the dangers when we signed up, but we at least wanted to be able to defend ourselves if ‘Haji’ came over the wire and into our compound. As it was, about the only thing we could do in an insurgent attack would be to toss rocks or maybe a few empty beer bottles at them. Not much defense against an AK-47 or an RPG.