Copyright 2003, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

FIRST PERSON/OPINION

Notes on life as a soldier in Iraq, from an Army Captain we know and who will remain anonymous:

I apologize for not writing in weeks–life has been busy.

Temperature–Low One Teens.

Yep, it’s another scorcher in the land where the sun literally doesn’t set until 21:00. The locals swear it won’t be hot until August–hey, guy, what are you talking about, you could literally boil eggs on the concrete.

We’ll start off with my Sopranos since everyone
seems to love my little Iraqi mobsters sooo much.

No one has been to jail in the last two weeks, so we are doing pretty good there, but we think that one of my little deviants is a riot starter. So one of the U.S. generals makes a personnal appearence at my office and has a pow-wow with this cat. Basically threatens to throw him in jail and lose the key.

Bad press in my office is my business–so I proceed to bump heads with ’em ’cause I don’t like generals getting PO’d at my office. Anyway he is just a bad apple, but I can’t fire him ’cause we are trying to keep him off the streets where he starts riots. It’s like boxing with both hands behind my back.

Now my Sopranos are complaining that the executives need a vacation. STOP, you’re killing me. You work four hours a day and need a vacation? Need some time off to get their collective heads together, man.

I have dumped $50K into the rennovation of my
building, and since the CG is so impressed he gave
me another $100K to finish the project. Don’t worry, it isn’t costing taxpayers anything–it’s Saddam’s stolen $2 billion that we are using. Which leads me to another story, my contractors…

My contractors are the hardest-working Iraqis around. I go to their office every day to discuss the project and in return they buy us lunch and we drink tea until we go into caffeine shock. These guys rock. Their competitor is one of their brothers. He loves us so much, even
though he doesn’t have the job, that we go over to his house for dinner and, yes, some more tea. He is the neatest person here. He was accepted to MIT, Saddam wouldn’t let him go, yadda yadda yadda.

Anyhow, he owns a Nargila bar. Nargilas are the water pipes they use to smoke scented tobaccos (tobacco, nothing funny, promise). So he invites us to the bar and we smoke apple-flavored tobacco. I promise you it is amazing. Tasted like apples.

We are on the hunt for pizza, also. There are a
couple of pizza joints in town but nothing that tastes like American pizza.

Well, that’s about all that is going on.

See ya’ll not too soon.