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.

In this photo, I'm in the lower right pulling perimeter security during a short halt in training.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Believe it or not, this is what they served for dinner one night. I think it was a case of a Turk not translating to English correctly.

This photo was making the email rounds while I was in Iraq. Reportedly, it was a wolf captured in or around Baghdad. I don't know that wolves are indigenous to Iraq, so it could have come from the zoo.

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.

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

This is a rocket that landed on our base, detonated underground, and did no damage. I believe this is actually a rocket designed to be fired from an aircraft, but Hajji will use anything they can get to shoot.

Believe it or not, it does rain in Iraq, as these poor soldiers found out when they tried to move this large forklift over some muddy ground.

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.

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