That's me flying in a UH60 between bases.

A McDonald's sign I saw at Ali Al Salim base in Kuwait.

Here's one of my soldiers manning the gunner's post. This was during one of our trips into Qayyarah.

Here's my section training in house clearing.

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.

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.

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.

Here I am at the infamous Abu Ghraib. While in Baghdad, I ran into a friend of mine and was able to join one of his unit's convoys to this prison. This is, of course, prior to this facility being turned over to the Iraqis.

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.

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.

The FOB I was on was a former Iraqi Air Force base. As a result, we had a couple of these old Mig-21s laying around. The former commander of the base told me the more modern planes were buried - and then dug up for scrap by the locals.

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

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

House clearing training.

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".

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.

While in Iraq, you get a one-week MWR trip to Qatar. On one of the trips we were allowed to take, this Qatari was selling camel rides. I didn't bother with it.

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.