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

Here's a Styker from the FOB I was on. The 'bird cage' of slats around the vehicle help stop RPG rounds.

I would love to tell you what this mural says, but I never got it translated. I'm pretty sure it dates back to when the Iraqi Army and Air Force were still under Saddam. It was located in a building on our FOB.

This is a mural I saw on Victory Base Complex in Baghdad. Obviously, it's supposed to show the heroic former Iraqi army. There's a painted-over figure on the left. I'm guessing that was Saddam.

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

If you fly much in Iraq, then you've likely been on one of these - a C-17. They are much better to fly in than C-130s.

Me in the office. 'BDOC' stands for Base Defense Operations Center.

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

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

This graffiti showed up on some walls in a local national parking lot not long before I left. I was told it is a memorial to locals who had worked for the USA and been killed.

I was able to visit the Ah Shaw(sp) palace in Baghdad - one of Saddam's old haunts and now the home of MNC-I. These columns were huge.

Everyone going overseas, no matter your job, has to learn how to do room clearing. Here we are training a "four-man stack". The squad leader is taking up the rear.

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.

This ammo can was on the top of one of our HMMWVS and took the force of a IED attack. It probably saved the life of the gunner.

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.