I am truly surprised about the lack of American flags inside American compounds located inside the Green Zone. Limiting the number of American flags outside of American compounds makes sense; no one wants to remind the Iraqis that the Americans are occupying their country. However, I don't ever remember seeing an American flag in the Palace (though their must be one), and my compound only recently got its first American flag - perhaps a year after the compound became the home of my agency.

And in other news . . . no one seemed to know what was happening with the constitution, which I found shocking considering that some of my coworkers are on democracy issues. Rumors seemed to abound, but in the end of the day I got the sense that most people were relying on news articles from the web rather than anything concrete. The bad guys didn’t seems to really care whether Iraq's leaders were making progress or not; they launched three mortars into the Green Zone last night to make it clear that they weren't too happy with the whole process.

The U.S. government provides most of my basic needs, which is surprising considering how difficult it is to get anything into Iraq that meets the Western standards that Americans demand. As an added hassle, if the items are bought from an Iraqi, a brave person has to drive through the streets of Baghdad, pass through the often-deadly Green Zone check points, and then get through the occasional military shakedown to reach my compound. What makes it all the more surprising to me is how ad-hoc the whole process seems even though it successful. For example, the other day I came across a truck stuffed with toilet paper in a fashion that reminded me of the third world.

And in other news . . . it appears that the Bush Administration might be ditching some of the unrealistic expectations it had about the reconstruction.

While some people in America believe that reporters are only focusing on the bad stories in Iraq, many reporters in Iraq are doing everything they can to find a positive story. Sometimes they even ignore some of the facts surrounding a story to keep it positive. Here are two examples.

The Americans are building a large power plant near Kirkuk. Transporting the plant's 700 ton new turbine from the Jordanian border to Kirkuk was a major challenge and took the combined efforts of over 300 soldiers. The turbine went on a 640 mile journey through some of the most dangerous areas of Iraq, yet it arrived without a scratch. The reporters who covered the story didn't mention that the project now costs about twice as much as originally expected and is months behind schedule. In fact, the reporters didn't even mention that although this plant is a significant achievement, it will do little to truly solve the electricity shortage in Iraq. In essence, the reporters left out a number of important facts to maintain the positive spin of the story.

A few weeks ago CNN ran a nice piece about an educational cartoon that will be used to help educate the children of Iraq. During the news story, the CNN showed a number of small children watching clips from the program. CNN didn't mention the fact that most Iraqis don't have enough power to run their televisions, and the CNN also didn't clearly explain where it was when it filmed the footage. CNN had come to a staged event inside the Green Zone - far from any classroom, probably because of the level of security needed to protect everyone involved. If that wasn't enough, because the key US government employee involved in the event ran into some technical difficulties, one of the editors had to use this own computer to show the television program so the kids could see a sample of the show. Thus, in my opinion, it seems like CNN did a nice job of leaving out some key little facts that could be used by a cynic to question the results that this program will achieve.

And in other news . . . soldiers from Hawai'i posted in Iraq can't show the shaka anymore!

Topic: Scary Stuff
A few days ago, the insurgent killed a profile Iraqi who worked for the Americans. I don't know what happen, but this individual's death so deemed so significant that the Regional Security Officer discussed the issue at the senior staff meeting and the State Department sent out a notice about how to deal with the grief associated with losing someone special. I believe that U.S. government officials are especially worried that this killing will affect the morale of Iraqi employees and ultimately convince a number of Iraqis quit rather than continue to take the risks associated with working for the U.S.

It is surprising how little it takes to bring a smile to someone's face in Iraq. At last night’s party, I hid a bucket filled with little squirt guns. Eventually someone found them and started squirting people. Then, everyone tried to get their hands one of the thirty squirt guns I had purchased. After that, someone foolishly squirted a man who had a trio of very large squirt guns. Needless to say, the whole party quickly escalated into a small scale war and everyone ended up getting a least a little wet. It helped them blow off the steam that had built up over the last few weeks.

I am throwing another big party at my house tonight. As usual, I am discovering that organizing a party is very, very difficult. I have to order all my decorations online weeks in advance, and if at the last minute I suddenly discover that I am missing something that I needed for the party, such as rope of duck tape, I cannot simply go to the corner store and buy what I am missing. (Sadly, Walmart hasn’t opened a store inside the Green Zone.) I am forced to ask around to see if someone else has what I need, or I have to find some type of makeshift substitute.

Outside of almost every major American compound, the U.S. government has installed large barrels filled with sand. Soldiers, mercenaries, and anyone else authorized to carry a gun must "dry fire" their weapon into this barrel to make sure there isn't a round primed in the chamber that could come out if the weapon accidentally went off.

Supposedly, back in the good old days of the occupation, tons of civilians carried weapons, which accidentally went off all too frequently. The old timers around here talk about how guns even went off in the Palace cafeteria.

And in other news . . . Michael Rubin from the American Enterprise Institute, in a sharply critical OPED, explained why it may be time to reduce the number of American diplomats and reconstruction contractors in Iraq.

A friend recently heard a general say that the U.S. had spent $900 million on t-walls in Iraq. T-walls are 12-foot high reinforced and blast-proof concrete slabs. Somewhat doubting that t-wall could cost so much money, I tried to research how much money the U.S. government spent on t-walls, but I couldn't find anything specific. In fact, I was surprised to find how little the internet had to offer on this topic. I am disappointed that reporters haven’t spent more time examining this topic. T-walls are the more unignorable part of life in the Green Zone. They are everywhere. Almost every street is flanked on either side by a set of t-walls, and every compound is surrounded by a ring of them. Most compounds even have inner rings of t-walls separating different areas inside their compound.

I have heard that most of Iraq's t-walls come from Kuwait, but I also heard that an Iraqi company in Basrah makes some t-walls for the U.S. government. I don’t think companies are making t-walls overseas and then shipping them to Iraq. If anyone has heard any differently, please let me know.

My compound hired four Filipinos to work in various program-related positions relating to the reconstruction. They left Iraq about a month ago to take a short rest break in their home country. Now, they are no longer able to return to Iraq.

When they left my compound in July, they knew they were taking a risk. When the Philippine government withdrew its soldiers from Iraq, it did so to save the life of a Filipino truck driver. The Philippine government agreed to leave Iraq forever and subsequently issued an order for all Filipinos working in Iraq to come home and prohibited anyone else from going to Iraq. Nevertheless, many Filipino defied the ban because they could make a lot of money working in Iraq.

Some Filipinos had fooled the Philippine government by traveling indirectly from the Philippines to Iraq through places such as Thailand. In an effort to catch people using this tactic, the Philippine government has asked countries in the Middle East to deny exit visa stamps to Filipinos traveling onto Iraq. This is how my coworkers were caught.

While eating dinner at the Palace a few months back, someone told me that he was concerned that a US subcontractor may be paying bribes to a gang. The payments were essentially "protection" money to prevent the thugs from attacking a reconstruction site. These thugs were connected to the insurgency, which means the protection money probably helped finance the insurgency. Thus, US money was probably being channeled back toward killing Americans. Of course, I don't know the name of the company and this person would not talk about it on the record, so essentially all I heard was a rumor. All the same, this rumor seems very probable and troubling.

I live near the United Nations compound. When I first arrived in Iraq in January 2005, I never heard any noises from their compound. It was eerily silent. Apparently, they had pulled out almost everyone after the bad guys attacked them in August 2003. Shortly after the attack, the Secretary General said that the United Nation would not return until the security of its staff was assured.

Nevertheless, over the last seven months, I have slowly heard more and more noise from the United Nations compound. Occasionally I have heard the sounds of people having parties, and every so often I hear the sounds of soldiers and guards practicing with their weapons. Almost every time I leave the compound I now see a soldier (Mostly Fijians) wearing a blue United Nations badge. Whenever I take a Rhino bus to the airport, I generally see a handful of United Nations civilians.

I think the United Nations was trying to keep a low profile, but it is hard to deny that over the last few months it has significantly increased the number of agencies, and consequently the number of people, it has in Iraq.

I had to get a haircut about three weeks ago. Thankfully, the US military has established barber shops at military exchanges throughout Iraq, and the U.S. State Department has built a small barber shop in the Palace. Hair cuts inside the Green Zone only cost $3, and for the most part, they aren't too bad considering that fashion is not the top concern in Iraq and most people are getting military flattops.

My barber was Indian, but to be honest, I not very surprised that the Americans have trouble finding Iraqis who are willing to cut the hair of Americans. Being a barber in Iraq is already tough enough without adding in the risks of working with Americans.

Now that my compound has lost its dedicated intelligence analysis, I am forced to get intelligence assessments from Aegis Defense Services, who is the primary company tasked with analyzing what is happing in Iraq. Every day Aegis puts out a 30 page assessment that includes a short recap of the headlines from the pervious day.

Even though Aegis is currently providing intelligence assessments to the US government, the company was not on the State Department's list of recommended security companies, and the chief executive office has been implicated in numerous human rights abuses and violations of international law." If that wasn't enough to lose sleep over at night, apparently "the British firm had failed to verify that employees were properly qualified for the job."

And in other news . . . the CIA is making lots of new friends in Iraq.

A few months ago, I worked in a flimsy trailer, and I could hear everything. I heard small arms fire. I heard distant mortar attacks. I heard helicopters flying overhead all day long.

About two months ago I moved into a large reinforced concrete bunker. Inside my nifty new office building I can barely hear anything. Even though the violence in Iraq has stayed fairly constant since March 2005, yesterday was the first time I heard any hint of the violence raging throughout Baghdad while working inside the building; I heard a large car bomb that blew up on the east of the Tigris. The "boom" was so soft that is sounded like someone dropped a magazine on a carpeted floor.

Everyone is watching everyone in Iraq. Here are two brief examples.

Al Ittihad recently reported that a Ministry of Interior captain (essentially a police captain) that worked at the Baghdad Convention Center was arrested because he was cooperating with the bad guys. The officer was apparently providing terrorist cells with information on the Transitional National Assembly (TNA) members' movements in Baghdad.

Yesterday, one of my coworkers told me that every time he leaves the Green Zone, there are men watching him. These "spotters" take notes, which are sometimes passed onto the bad guys, who in turn try to kill individuals working for the Americans.

The Second Iraq Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Bill (Public Law 108-106) requires the Bush Administration to submit a report to Congress every 90 days that updates the estimates and assumptions for the $18.4 billion appropriated to help rebuild Iraq. Preparing this report, which is known as the 2207 Report, is a massive undertaking that is hated by almost everyone in Iraq.

Sadly, according to a recent Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIRIG) report, almost $7.9 billion of obligations reported in the report could not be verified. This means that roughly 43 percent of the financial information include in the report was unreliable and unverifiable. Moreover, even though Congress requested estimates on a project-by-project basis, the April 2005 report did not include estimates on a project-by-project basis. This makes it difficult to determine if sufficient funds are available to complete ongoing projects or start new project.

Even if the detailed data in the 2207 report is unreliable, the executive summary is still an interesting read. No matter how deftly the government tries to spin the state of the reconstruction in Iraq, the challenges facing the US and its allies show up fairly clearly in the executive summary.

Almost everyone who manages a contract in Iraq complains about security issues. When a contractor wants to buy something related to security, it is very hard to know what is justified and what is excessive. Most of the time, the contract manager errs on the side of caution and approves the security-related request regardless of how expensive it is. As a result, security costs are consuming a large part of the Iraq reconstruction funds. According to Heather Layman, spokeswoman for USAID, security costs account for an average of 22 percent of a project's cost.

The cost of security guards is one of the largest components of any company’s security costs. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) estimates there are 60 private security firms with as many as 25,000 employees in Iraq. Some elite personnel with these companies make $33,000 a month. As of December 2004, the agencies and contractors in Iraq recently reviewed by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) had obligated more than $766 million for private security providers in Iraq. (GAO didn’t look at every contractor, so that total cost is probably much higher.)

According to the GAO, "contractor officials acknowledge that the cost of private security services and security-related equipment, such as armored vehicles, has exceeded what they originally envisioned. In some cases, increased security costs resulted in reducing or canceling the scope of some reconstruction projects."

To help deal with the significant increases in security costs, GAO recommended that the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, and the USAID Administrator should help reconstruction contractors obtain reliable security services (rather than wasting their money on untrustworthy security contractors) and develop a plan to handle security costs in the future. The State Department disagreed with the "recommendation to explore options to assist contractors in obtaining private security services, citing concerns that the government could be held liable for performance failures." Additionally, the State Department did not clearly explain how it intends to "track and account for private security costs, which is essential given that DoD and USAID are the principal agencies responsible for awarding and managing the majority of reconstruction contracts."

Topic: Scary Stuff
About two months ago, the Regional Security Office on my compound sent out an email warning that "the small alcohol store close to [checkpoint 3], of the International Zone, is being targeted. The owner was threatened a short time ago by a group of unidentified Local Nationals. It is highly recommended that you avoid this venue and use caution in the area and other areas that sell alcohol."

Almost immediately, the people on my compound began emailing her to find out if the liquor store in question was the White House, which is probably the most popular liquor store in the Green Zone. Oddly, she didn’t know exactly which store had been targeted. Without any specific information from the security officer, most people ignored her warning.

Mood:  hungry
Topic: Daily Life
An Iraqi newspaper (Azzaman) recently reported that the director of the Market Researches Center at the University of Baghdad prepared a study about cell phone usage in Iraq. The study note that Iraqis are now spending about 25-50% of their incomes on their cell-phones.

Almost every Iraqi on my compound has cell phone. It seems to have become some type of status symbol, or perhaps my coworkers are just addicted to the idea that they can purchase and use a cell phone without the fear of someone from the government spying on them.

Most American civilians and soldiers drive around the Green Zone in SUVs. However, the US government has also established a small bus system for those who can’t gain access to a vehicle.

The busses hold roughly 20 people. Each bus is driven and maintained by KBR, a major military contractor. The busses travel on set routes and go to all the major locations in the zone, including the hospital, the Presidential Palace, and the Chancery. KBR built large wooden bus stops at each major stop so the people waiting for the bus do not have to wait with the hot sun beating down on them.