My name is Echo Three Bravo and I live in Iraq.  Not permanently, I am assigned here with the Marine Corps. I live in a corner, a very volatile little place, next to an angry country.  This country does not like us, it likes those that want to cause us problems, and it helps them out every chance it can get.  This country helps the bad guys escape and enter through the three nearby towns.
Time is limited here at the internet cafe.  The wait is about an hour for only twenty minutes of computer time, and with the emails and the posts, that goes by awful quickly (makes me amazed out how flippantly I could waste hours staring at a screen at home).  Anyway, I will give, for the sake of getting it out of my own mind, an account of a new Iraq related subject when I can.  The words in the entries that will follow are my own interpretation of this confusing, awful, and glorious land (see, told you it was confusing), and I by no means wish to offend.  It is just how I see it. 

I have seen two distinctly different deserts in the middle east, one in Kuwait and one here. 
Kuwait is a deserts desert.  It is one of the hottest places in the world, it is flat, it is dry, and there is nothing but the finest of sand everywhere.  That is what I got out of Kuwait, and the small section I saw of it on base.
The desert here is a little different.  It is still amazingly hot, but more affected by the changing of seasons.  It is supposed to go up to 113 today, but for the fall time we are spiraling into that is considered out of the ordinary.  When we first got here though, it could go up to 125 without even giving so much as a tiny fuck, and those days were especially rough since we still didn't have power.  But now it can get down as low as 60 at night, and that feels like a breeze on a witches tit.  The winter will hold more changes for us, such as possible precipitation (there has not been a cloud in the sky yet), and even frosty mornings. 
The horizon is endless.  If you go on a drive you may see ancient, decaying mountains here and there, but for the most part the sky meets the land uninterupted.  You feel like you can see for ever, and it is easy to get lost in reverie when your eyes wander.  Sometimes you can even catch yourself giving yourself the finger.

The war should never have happened, but it did.  And then there is the thousands of years of morbid, tumultuous history that have led us to this point.  And neo imperialism, and Israel and a backwards culture, and a religion in the midst of reformation, and of course, plain old revenge issues.
That's what got us here.  No one was right, ever, and all the crazy wrong turns have left us with this land that is just disintigrating into blood right in our hands and slipping through the cracks of our fingers.

Back home I always love when a friend who has been smoking for ten years tells me, "I could quit if I wanted to, but I don't want to."  It makes me chuckle, and then argue with that person because I argue too much.
Anyway, here there is nothing but time.  There may be a few hours of ass clenching terror, but in between missions there is nothing to do except run, read, write, smoke, or sit in line for the internet/phones.  People will do odd things just to stay afloat.
I am quiting smoking for a month.  Not because I want to, mind you, but because it is something to do.  When I am giving furtive glances to the sides of the roads as I drive through an IED blast, my mind steadily thinks, "I NEED A CIGARETTE I NEED A CIGARETTE I NEED A CIGARETTE" and in a wierd way this makes the time in the field go by quicker.  And in the rear the extreme needs and desires brought about by an addiction to nicotine will be something new; a brand new emotion that will be something different for a change.  Despite the fact that it sucks, it is something to do, and somehow it passes the time.
Like growing a mustache.

The Camp is a small FOB that was a train station during Saddam's reign.  Most of the personnel up here are Grunts or OGA, with a small speckling of Comm and Cooks.  There is a chow hall in what used to be the Station Lobby, with a Tv that is always tuned to ESPN Orbit.  The chow hall is connected to the COC, which is the place where all the command element stuff goes down.  Next to the COC is the internet/phone center, complete with 4 phones and 10 computers.  The wait is long for a few minutes but much worth it; but the center is usually unavailable because of a thing called "minimize."  "Minimize" occurs when a Marine from base either dies or is injured, so the government can contact the family before a friend does.  "Minimize" happens about three times a week, and it lasts as long as it takes to reach the family. 
Behind the COC there is the supply area, which is built into an old railcar storage area.  There you can find gigantic stacks of "Mozn," which is a Saudi ba
There is one main drag, aptly named "Chesty Puller Dr."  It is used for all patrols leaving the compound, and also for all non-casualty related Helo landings.  It is about 4 miles long and a great route for a sunset jog.  Along the drag there are four or five living areas, a vehicle yard complete with tanks and LAV's (Light Armored Vehicles), and a large dustbowl used to store helo's and fuel pillows for vehicles to fill up at.  Parrallel to the compound is the rail line that is still operational.  People shoot off the trains as they pass, but no one has been hit yet.  Luckily, the Iraqies are notoriously bad shots.
Besides that, there is not much else.  The camp is surrounded on all sides by the endless sands of a shitty land.  Out there there is a test fire range, and beyond that there are angry towns filled with angry people.

Last night I put off taking a shower until late because I was playing a game of Feudal (the Avalon Hill board game) with a kid in my platoon named Squirelly.  Eventually, more later than earlier, the game came to and end.  I frantically put away the game, grabbed my towel, pistol, hygene bag, and a change of clothes, then threw on my shower shoes and ran out the door. 
I moved post-haste for good reason.
The season is changing up here, and that means only one definite in the desert.  Sandstorms.
But the night was clear and crisp when I stepped outside, and I breathed a sigh of relief.  I walked out of our living area, up the hill, past the COC, past the makeshift chapel that is built out of an old rail car, through some wire and inbetween some other rail cars and finally I was at my destination - the little known, existence speculated, yes, the only showers with hot water on base.  Distance from my hooch:  250 meters as the crow flies.
So I enter the showers and immidiately my shoulders fall.  It seems the secret is out.  Every one of the six stalls are occupied by grunts of varying size and social disposition.  Great.  I wait for a while, trying not breath in the lecherous smell caste out by stagnant pools of water that are mixed with piss and other unknown bodily fluids. 
A few minutes pass and then a stall is left unoccupied by a lumbering Marine with a rash of pimples on his back and a smell that made me wonder why he bothered showing in the first place.  But there is no second guessing what stall I want to use... beggars can't be choosers and besides, every stall sucks! 
I proceed to do the shower tango; a delicate series of movements that involves staging your gear in whatever small clean and dry area you are lucky to find and undressing without any part of your bare skin touching the nastiness that lurks at all angles around you.  At last I find myself in the stall commensing my Navy shower (turn water on, get wet, turn water off, lather, turn water on, rinse off, turn water off) and within a minute I am done.  It seems like a lot for so little, but the feeling of cleanliness in Iraq, albeit generally short lived, is a godsend. 
I get out of the stall and do the shower tango in reverse, dancing around angry "active duty" stares until I have on a pair of small green shorts with a towel around my neck, a holster around my shoulder, and a hygene kit in my hand.  With a pair of eccentric BC glasses on my face and a mustache I grew for shits and giggles under my nose I look pretty tardo re re.  I looked nothing short of someone asking to be attacked viciously, and irony would not disapoint.
Upon exiting the showers I immidiately am confused.  Did I leave the showers at all?  Because I can't see... maybe the power went out.  No, I can feel the outside air on my hairy legs, and I would be able to at least see my hand in front of my face inside with the lights out.  Ah well, I said to myself, I'll just step around this corner and sort it out back home.
The best way to describe the events that followed would be to draw your attention to the physical comedy of Three's Company.  Say, something like Jack is working in the kitchen and he gets into a tug-o-war over a bag of flour with Janet.  The bag rips and the flour covers Jack instantly, and he stands there with a listless expression until he sighs and a puff of powder ruffles his bangs and swirls into the air.  Any Three's Company fan can relate, no?  Now put me in that situation as Jack, and instead of me being coated with nice soft flour, I am hit with a wall of sand.  Repeatedly.  And it hurts. 
I groan and walk a few steps forward and fall over something God found humorous to place in my path.  Then I rise to my knees, blind and sandblasted, and make a cinematicaly stupid sounding guteral sound.   This is responded by nature by there now being an inch of sand caked across my teeth.  It feels like I have just eaten a bag of Oreos, except they were made from sand instead of chocolate.  Chocolate tastes better. 

On base all we have are port-a-shitters.  They are nasty, nastier than the barrels of shit that were burned during the war. 
Think port-a-potty.  Think apocolypse, so there are no more people with the unfortunate job of maintaining the shitters.  Then think that right before everyone was decimated they overdosed on laxatives.  Then you can understand where I pee and poop.

Town U1 is right on the border. In fact, the border passes right through the western half of the town. It is the most problematic of the three nearby towns.

There is a limited number of routes into the town. Most of the time we are limited to traveling up a route lovingly dubbed "IED alley." The most traveled alternate route is an unimproved road that is a haven for mines. In fact, not even 45 mikes before these words are being written I was part of security for an Explosive Ordinance team's controlled detonation of an anti-personnel mine on that very same route. Our gunner spied what looked like a cylander in a man-made hole on the side of the road, we called it in, and then got to sit back and watch the EOD team's show.

But I am straying.

Town U1 is probably the worst of the three towns because of its proximity to country 1. Town U1 serves as a supply route for the out-of-country insurgents. It is projected that thousands of dollars of weapons, money and personnel cross in and out of Iraq through U1 every day. This is the first stop and possibly the most used entry point for the out-of-country insurgents on their way down to Fallujah, Baghdad, and other media spotlights. Ba'ath party members escape through here, then settle down and fund the mujadeen (so-called freedom fighters) that enter through here.

There is a small camp on the border. It takes mortars daily, and I hate having to go there.

Of all the times we have been hit, 3/4 of the attacks probably occured in town U1.

Town U1 is a ghetto with very little rhyme or reason in regards to it's construction. Alleyways are very thin, some a mere 8 feet in diameter. This creates problems traversing the streets and even more problems when we are "punching through," i.e., under attack from an indiscernable force.
indiscernable forces wreak havoc on this town by taking advantage of the narrow alleys, low lying buildngs and ever present populace. It is pretty much a labrynth that grins with death.

The local population is generally indifferent towards us.

The police station, which my platoon used to run, is gone.

All the IPs have quit.

Freedom is not on the march in this town.

The seasons are changing in my neck of the desert, and that can only mean one thing.  Well, it means many things actually, but the most ever present is the insurgency of the flies. 
They are everywhere.  Fly strips look like an insectoid highway after a 100 victor pile up, and still there is no end to the disease carrying annoyitoids.

Town K is more or less of a suburb of Town U1, which is more or less a city. The town itself is more coherent and easy to traverse than Town U1, and unlike Town U1 the buildings aren’t the building blocks of a labyrinth. Basically, there are only two roads, a main drag and a market street. The people are more receptive here, as they don’t look at us instead of looking at us in disgust.

This town lost it’s police station recently to a seemingly insider bomb job.