The Boo Radleys V.

The story began here, latest entry here.

There is a near-permanent quality to the air in Iraq - though perhaps lack of quality is a better description.

Smoke from factories, smoke from battles, smoke from the burning of crops...

Exhaust from vehicles, many new, many more some years from professional repair...

...all mix with the dust and sand lifted up from the ground by the winds, or the passing of those same vehicles, or the tread of a million feet, to form a near-permanent haze that obscures the view of things at distances at which they should be plainly seen. Outlines blur and colors vanish and everything takes the hue of the desert until somewhere in the all-too-near horizon the earth merges with the sky at a point undeterminable to the human eye. (Michael Totten's latest includes a picture that captures that here.)

That's on most days...

On others the real dust rolls through, and visibility is limited to hundreds of feet - or even tens. If you've been following the story I've woven throughout this ongoing ramble, you might suspect that it's a story of one of those days. You would be right.

We'll get back to it, soon enough. But first...

...an earlier entry from Michael Totten:

A large man wearing shorts and no shirt opened the door. An old man in a dishdasha stood behind him. They weren’t armed and didn’t seem threatening.

“Salam aleikum,” said the shirtless man.

“Can we come in?” said the soldier who knocked.

Shirtless beckoned us in, and so we went in.

Soldiers dispersed throughout the house and rounded everyone – four men, three women, and two children – into one room. Everyone, soldiers and Iraqis alike, were mellow and cool. No one seemed to be angry at anyone. Shirtless seemed to be the head of the household, so the soldiers spoke mainly to him instead of to the young man they had captured outside.

“You’re right, he was bad,” Shirtless said.

“The curfew is for your safety,” said a soldier through the interpreter. “We’re hot, too, okay? Finding an air conditioner isn’t a good enough reason to go outside after dark.”

“Sorry,” Shirtless aid. “Please forgive us. Anything you want, we are with you.”

“Want to walk past your favorite house?” Lieutenant Lord said to Sergeant Lizanne.

“Let’s do it,” said Sergeant Lizanne.

“What’s your favorite house?” I said.

“It’s a house we walked past one night,” said Sergeant Lizanne. “Some guys on the roof locked and loaded on us.”
<...>
“What will you do when you get to the house?” I asked Lieutenant Lord.

“We’ll do a soft-knock,” he said. “We’re not going to be dicks about it.”

Flashback:

And when it does, it gets hot.

There is an ever-present quality to the breeze on a hot day in Iraq. If you've ever stepped too close to a large fire, to that point where you feel uncomfortable and instinctively taken that small step back to your comfort zone you know what I'm talking about. It's the sort of heat that produces an immediate sweat, then evaporates it just as fast.

In Iraq, as opposed to near a fire, that small step back gains you nothing.

And then the sun sets, but the heat persists.

And one fine night I sat in a passenger terminal and waited for my flight home. Said passenger terminal would have had the average American swearing to never fly again - a tent with a wooden floor and benches - but also with the ever-present big-screen TV along one wall (once again the obscene amenities rear their ugly little heads).

And eventually the official word came down: all flights cancelled. The dust from Syria had spread wide enough and far enough and with enough intensity to lower visibility to the point where routine aircraft operation would be hazardous beyond the point of acceptable risk. I would remain away from my home away from home for at least 24 more hours.

I had a place to sleep, and nothing to do. And I wondered for a moment about the guy who was supposed to go on emergency leave, who had taken my seat on my original ride, and who's flight was cancelled as well. There are many reasons for emergency leave to be approved in time of war. None of them are good.

I stepped out into the night. The heat was there, and darkness near complete. No lights illuminated this desert outpost, and silence was broken only by the ever-present hum of generators in the distance, a background noise at any camp and one you scarcely hear until they stop and the roaring silence announces that something's wrong.. But that was not tonight's problem. Tonight, above, the dust had blotted out the stars.

And that would only be part of the problem.

I wandered into the TOC, because it was nearby, and because I could, and because I was tired of watching the news and wanted to see what was going on in the war. I hoped the answer was "not much". I was wrong.

As you may recall, In Iraq, a group of young men armor up and arm themselves and prepare to go outside the wire. As much as any one of them might want to relieve himself of obligation to his fellows, none will. Each knows they might not come back. Because this is part of a flashback, I can tell you now that one of them won't.

He was in fact wounded. He was, in fact, in need of urgent medevac - meaning by helicopter.

And you may recall: all flights cancelled...

There were two options - and a couple variations - available. One, hope ground evac would be fast enough (not likely - or the helo request wouldn't have been made) or two - launch the medevac bird and risk a crew and an aircraft to (maybe) save his life.

"Whoever does not have the stomach for this fight, let him depart."
-- Bill S., Henry IV

This is Bill, a real Hippie:

If Haight-Ashbury is the centre of the American hippie world, then Yorkville is Canada's hippie heartland. Full of coffeehouses, boutiques, longhairs, draft dodgers, and freaks, Yorkville is a tourist attraction — one where the tourists prefer to watch the excitement from the safety of their cars. A 19-year-old draft dodger named William Gibson conducts CBC Television on a tour of the village, where Beatle-haired kids, drugs and free love are rampant.

It had much more to do with my wanting to be with hippy girls and have lots of hashish than it did with my sympathy for the plight of the North Vietnamese people under US imperialism. Much more, much more to do with hippy girls and hashish.

Consequently, when I got to Toronto, much to my chagrin, I really, really couldn't handle hanging out with the American draft dodgers. There was too much clinical depression. Too much suicide. Too much hardcore substance abuse. They were a traumatized lot, those boys. And I just felt frivolous.

Any non-veteran readers might be surprised to learn that those who fought in Vietnam were probably glad not to have the company of the sorts of folks described above. And now, 40 years later, I'm quite glad to have some of Gibson's work to read in Iraq.

And I can think of at least one "writer" today who could have done us all a favor and sat this war out - and perhaps launched his career in fiction a few years later.

More back to school stories:

Juvenile detainees gain second chance through Dar Al-Hikmah

BAGHDAD — A juvenile detainee education facility opened at Camp Victory, Iraq, Tuesday.
Dar Al-Hikmah, or “The Wisdom House,” is designed to give juvenile detainees an education, which would benefit their eventual release and reintegration into society.

“Al-Qaeda and other extremists are using juveniles against us,” said U.S. Army 1st Lt. Rob Glenn, the Dar Al-Hikmah education program manager. “As a consequence, we’re detaining many juveniles.”

“In order to prevent another generation of insurgents and those who would do harm (against) the future of Iraq or Coalition forces, we’re educating them,” he added.

Dar Al-Hikmah, or “The Wisdom House,” provides basic education instruction for approximately 600 detainees ages 11-17. The education center features classroom spaces, a library, a medical treatment facility and four soccer/athletic fields.

“Time on a detainee should not be wasted,” said Glenn. “It should be turned into an opportunity for that juvenile so when he leaves, he’s ready to enter the new world of Iraq as a wiser and more educated person and hopefully build his own family and future.”
<...>
Currently, approximately 800 detainees are juveniles captured during operations in Iraq.

“That’s 800 lives we have an opportunity to impact,” said Glenn. “We ensure when the detainees are released that they pick up a book instead of an AK-47.”

Extremists destroy one school, rig a second

Baghdad Soldiers, responding to a tip, were investigating two schools that were rigged to explode in a rural area in northern Baghdad when one exploded Aug. 16.

Soldiers with 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, were investigating a tip gathered by Iraqi Army forces operating in the Al Awad area of northern Baghdad and conducting a deliberate clearing operation of one school when a second school nearby exploded.

The unit then started receiving small arms fire from insurgents in a tree line across the road from the school. The Soldiers then called in attack aviation to clear the tree line and the small arms fire ceased.

The Soldiers then proceeded to clear the school damaged by the explosion. There they found containers filled with high explosives planted in several areas around the school, some of which had not exploded. The school was assessed to be a complete loss.

The second school which the soldiers originally were trying to clear was also rigged with multiple containers of high explosives, but none of them exploded. All of the unexploded containers were removed and destroyed by an explosive ordnance disposal team.

Al Qaeda extremists operating in the area are responsible for the emplacement of the explosives, according to Lt. Col. Peter Andrysiak, deputy commander of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division. He said extremists are attempting to disrupt Coalition efforts to facilitate the restoration of services and stop insurgent activities in the area.

This incident marks the fourth and fifth time insurgents have targeted schools in the northern Baghdad area this year.

Story continues here