Topic: The US Military
It is hard to ignore the presence of helicopters while living inside the Green Zone. Although I now work inside a building with super thick walls that makes it nearly impossible to hear them, whenever I leave that little hardened building, I hear and see them. They fly very low to the ground in an effort to prevent the bad guys from seeing them until they fly right overhead. This makes it really hard for the bad guys to get enough time to properly aim their weapons at the helicopters.

The other night, as I watched two helicopters fly right over my compound, I noticed that the red nighttime warning light on my compound's communication tower had burned out. I realized that because the helicopters fly so low, there was a chance that they could hit the tower and crash into my compound. The idea of an American helicopters crashing inside my compound did not give me a "warm and fuzzy" feeling.

And in somewhat related news . . . the US Air Force's top general recently said that American warplanes would have to support Iraq's fledgling security forces well after American ground troops withdraw from Iraq. This long-term presence of US airpower is reminiscent of the British insistence for keeping their airports inside Iraq long after its international mandate ended.