This is the Perfume Palace on Victory Base Complex in Baghdad. The story I heard was that this was once where Saddam and his boys kept their extra-curricular female companions. Now, it houses contractors.

This a friend of mine, working for EODT security. He was actually deployed with me, but retired as a Sergeant Major after coming back and starting working for EODT back in Iraq. He's striking a tough-guy pose, but he's really the nicest guy you could meet

QWBC, the FOB I was on, was an old Iraqi air force base and there were some of these old, beat fighters still lying around.

Here I am during a trip to Qayyarah to check on a water-pumping station.

This mosque, I was told, was Saddam's personal mosque near the Al Faw palace. Now, it's located on Victory Base Complex.

Me with one of the local kids in a nearby village.

This is me getting the upper hand on one of the guys in my unit. We were learning search techniques for a hand-cuffed suspect.

I took this photo while flying over Baghdad. It is the Grand Mosque which Saddam was building when the invasion occurred. When finished, it was supposed to be the largest mosque in the world. I doubt it will ever be completed.

This is a typical truck driven by private security. It's armored to some extent, and features a "gun bucket" in the back for a rear gunner's position.

The extension on the front of this HMMWV is used to set off IEDs prior to the HMMWV actually passing by. These have been used in Iraq for some time, so I don't think I'm giving away any secrets here.

Here's a couple of the Iraqi Army soldiers we had living on our base. Not exactly Western standards, but they tried.

We went through training on how to search a suspect and I got to play "suspect".

During training, we fired our weapons many times. Here I am getting in some practice firing three-round bursts for accuracy.

This gentleman was herding sheep around our FOB. The area we were in was predominantly farm and sheep-herding country.

Here's what it looked like as we boarded the plane to fly to Iraq. I remember being both excited and nervous at the same time.

This is a mosque located on our FOB. No American was alloowed inside - even if you were security (like me) or an American Muslim.

A collection of rocket launchers. Hajji will often set these up, put a rocket in it, set up some sort of timer device, and then leave the area for the rocket to fire at a later time.