In the Desert

(This is an email that Rob sent to his office, to give an update. I loved reading it and asked if I could share the email and the pictures. Grace and I love the last one of him in the helicopter!)

Before leaving for deployment, one piece of advice I read was to expect to do things that do not fit into your usual job description. It was good advice. After a week of training at Camp Bullis, I flew out to Qatar and on to Baghdad, settling in at Camp Victory near Baghdad International Airport. Victory is located on the grounds of one of Saddam's "Sporting Palaces", built around various man-made lakes filled with leaping fish. Not what I was expecting from the desert. When Saddam initially filled the lakes, he diverted water from the Tigris, shutting down Baghdad's water supply for three days. When his people complained, he blamed the Americans.

Task Force FOIA (we get a lot of heck for our name) is comprised of 14 service members: 10 AF, 4 Navy. Our members include a weather officer,an AF Academy advanced calculus professor, and a surface warfare officer(Navy LT). We've had to scrounge, beg, and cajole for office space, equipment, and transportation. I've learned a lot about how the Army does business in a deployed environment. I am the team leader for one of our small teams responsible for traveling to different legal offices to gather documents. So far my team has been to a legal office on the Victory Base Complex and one in Tikrit. We're one of two teams that has gone outside the wire. We rode a Blackhawk on the way to Tikrit and a Chinook on the way back. Both were experiences that will stay with me. We also took a short MRAP convoy to the International Zone to see the Crossed Swords and other sights. The pictures I attached are of me in a throne-type chair in Al-Faw Palace on Victory. The chair was a gift to Saddam from Yassir Arafat. In the middle of the throne is a model of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, with the Arabic words "Jerusalem will be ours" on the side. The next picture is in front of Saddam's "Victory Over America" palace, still under construction during the '03 invasion. (The cranes in the pictures belong to the French company who was building the palace. They have demanded the U.S. pay to ship them to France. As you can see, that hasn't worked out so well for them.) There's also a picture of me in front of the Chinook I rode on, and the mandatory picture beneath the crossed swords in Baghdad. The work has been very simple. When we arrived in Iraq, we expected that we would need to travel to every little FOB and search their legal office records for responsive documents. It turns out that the Army has decided to have each of their brigades (FOB level) search through their own documents. Which leaves us with just the division-level records to search through; only 5 legal offices. Additionally, it turns out that most of the units at the divisions take their records home with them when their deployments are complete. So the records we've seen have not gone back farther than 2006. Our most valuable contribution will probably be the next step in our mission. We will head to Kuwait within the next two weeks to begin declassifying and redacting the documents we found. We don't know what to expect from our living conditions there. Things haven't been too bad here. The DFAC food is pretty good. 8 kinds of Baskin-Robbins ice cream served daily, with all the toppings you could think of. I balance out that portion of my diet by faithfully following CrossFit, something I know MSgt Ragsdale would appreciate. I understand that things are pretty busy at Sheppard. I wish I was there to help. Though I'm glad to be contributing to the Iraq mission,there's nothing like non-legal work to make you appreciate what you do every day stateside. Even when things are crazy. Kristi is due any day now and everything has gone well for her so far.We're praying that the labor and delivery goes well. Please pass on my best to everyone in the office. I do miss the place.

Very respectfully,

Capt Black