Camel News II: Don’t Believe Everything from Iraq

CAMEL NEWS II: Live from the Front Lines of Iraq

Don’t Believe Everything That You See Coming from Iraq

By Doug Wolf, US Army in Iraq

It is time again for the most informal news you will ever get and the best in the business. I guess you can call it business if you like or just a nice e-mail from where the action is, shall be and was. If you watch the news on television or read about it in the paper you may find more interesting stuff but as I have written before it may be inflated or just the bad as the bad is what draws the interest to many people. As I have also said before; you never read or hear about the safe landing of an airplane because it was safe. Funny how that is but it is what it is and it is what sells.

The calendar days are ticking away and that means I am getting that much closer to leaving a place I never wish to return. I was in this part of the world twice before and this is the third. I didn’t leave anything here the first or second so why am I here again? I often ask myself that question but come up with the same answer each time; I signed up to do it. It was bad before when we deployed for 6 months at a time but this 1-year stuff is for the birds. I guess it all comes down to the clock and missing loved ones, which drives us to complain about deployments (don’t leave out the bad guys). Time is an occupant in our lives that man (and woman) created and we have become a slave to and if we didn’t have the clock or calendar to complain about we would find something else.

The Iraqis are doing a number on themselves lately and shifting focus towards the locals and not as much on us. Is this good? Well for me it is in my immediate life YES but if you look forward toward what the final outcome may be, it could be grim to say the least. Not so much for me but for them. What does that mean? Who knows but I plan on leaving here in November.

Al-Jezzera news reports we dropped a 500-pound bomb about 20 miles from here on a house and killed a man. That didn’t happen I am certain. We went to the guy’s house where the report came from and found some mortar fragments that had to be at least 2 years old. We know it didn’t happen as the Al-Jezzera news reported it because for one, jets don’t drop mortar rounds and for two these fragments have a lot of rust on them. Another lesson learned as to never believe all of what you see on the news.

It happened again last night. A large explosion shook the buildings here on the FOB and we did not have a patrol out. We later learned that it was a guy putting in an IED and while doing so, blew himself up. Got some pictures but those will be kept for another time. We put a chem.-light next to all the little parts we found and took a picture. It looked like Las Vegas in Iraq after the one hundredth light was dropped. Cool picture.

We had a USO show here 2 nights ago. The featured performance was a group called The Perfect Angles. You may have or not have herd of them before as they perform at sporting events and are seen in several music videos. Some may think that it is not such a good thing for 5 women to be dancing around for a bunch of G.I.’s but I must say the moral has been high since the performance and we needed it as we are this far into the deployment and the 118-degree low weather in the shade or 115-degree at night has put a real hurting on the boys.

Well I must go for now as I have some things to do, places to go and people to see. If you drink beer, crack a Bud Light for me and if you don’t then crack open an A&W and pretend. I will say again as I have in the past I will write more later and try to stick to it this time. I thank you for your letters and packages. I also thank you for your e-mails. It’s always nice to get or read something from the world. If I have not responded to your e-mails I do apologize as the server here is up and down like a bad night at the craps table.

Love and miss you all,

Doug Wolf