Veterans day

I went on a Camp tour on Tuesday (Nov. 11th). Or rather a tour of the former Abu Gurhaib Palace complex. We started a Uday's house, went to the Victory over Iran and Victory over America palace(s) and then ended at the Ba'ath party HQ. It was three hours total. The main takeaway that I got from the tour was this... Saddam (and his sons and the Ba'ath party bosses) exemplified human garbage. These were horrible people. I know there are plenty of meglomaniacal, sociopathic despots still ruling countries (quite a few in Africa it seems) and that there were worse rulers back through history. But these guys were pieces of work.

The whole area on Camp Slayer (former AGPC) is surrounded by and run through with lakes and "stream/channels". The palace I work in (the perfume palace) was the Ba'ath party's brothel.

Brothel? you ask yourself? How could that be in a Muslim nation? Well aside from being a cynical realist with minimum regard for spiritual truth, SH was also sly. In Islam, there is no sin on water. Soooo... there are all of these little buildings built on islands in the lakes. They are love shacks. House boats would pick up the ladies from the brothel, then pick up the scumbags from the Ba'ath party house and then deposit them at these little islands and presto chango, no sin.

The lakes are entirely man made. As I stated in a previous entry, the Baghdad population never knew what was on the other side of the outer walls to the complex. SH would divert the water from 9 of the 10 Baghdad water pumps (the cities drinking water) to fill his lakes. Baghdad might go w/out water for weeks, and yet thousands of gallons were just sitting on the otherside of the Complex walls. Several Iraqis have been given the tour that I took since the invasion and none of them knew about the water until they came on the tour. Apparently some had even asked why we brought all the water and made the lakes. They cried when they found out that it had been here the whole time.

The VOI and VOA palaces were built to commemorate the successes of the Iraqi army over the two main enemies (Iran and US). Like I said, not much for the truth. Most of the ornamentation that I have been impressed with in the few places I have seen (my office's ceiling for example) are fakes. He "created" the marble from composite materials. None of the interiors were really as nice as they seemed. If there was gold it was usually painted on, stuff like that.

If you notice the cranes in this picture, those were left by a French company that was helping SH build the VOA. The US Army offered to pack and ship the cranes to the company after we took control of this area. The company's response was to bill the US for the cost left on their contract to build the palace. So the cranes are now a permanent addition to the VOA palace.

Uday's house, the VOA and the Ba'ath HQ (BHQ) all took JDAM ("smart bomb") hits in the initial stages of the 2003 invasion. Uday's house cause they wanted to get him at home (missed, but got him later), VOA because the US military does not appreciate it when other nations falsely claim (especially when they falsely claim) a victory over the US, and finally the BHQ cause there was reports of a large gathering of upper level party members in that 48 hour window/deadline GWB gave SH to surrender. Sent in a Tomahawk cruise missle to take out the whole snakes nest, thinking it might make things easier. Well they were gathered in one place at BHQ, and they were watching a film, but it was not war planning or stategerizing. They were all watching "Pretty Woman". We know cause after the USA secured the facility, they found the projection room mostly intact and the movie was on the reels. The rest of that wing of the BHQ was destroyed. Recovery could only retrieve 45 bodies. The remaining 150 or so are still buried in the rubble. The room truly felt like a tomb...