So yeah, there's been some shit flying round in the forum here so I thought I'd post some pics of my travels to and from Iraq. Feel free to ask questions or post pictures of your own travels!

The first is a palace we dropped the bomb on, this really pretty mosque on base, then an Iraqi sunset, and a picture I just think is hillarious. So here we are on the beach in Dubai and this guy just comes ridin' threw on his camel. I had to take a picture.

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I don't miss it over there at all! (been since "91)
I will never play Volleyball, spades or horseshoes again!

Tell me about it. I've been here 2-1/2 years now. Ugh. Oh and so nobody thanks me I'm not military, nor do I get on forums and pretend to be. I work for a construction company that builds for the Army. Just doing my little part.

Here's a pic my nephew sent me on his first tour.



He said there are a lot of cars over there with bullet holes in the hoods because they did not read the sign.

He worked in on of Saddam's palaces. Here is a pic of the chandalier in the main hall.

Holy crap! I'm pretty sure I know where those pictures were taken. Heh, small world eh?

Two words for ample reason not to return to Iraq:


Camel Spider.

CAMEL SPIDER??

Is this that eight legged cuisinart that bites you as you sleep and injects a
sensation numbing venom into the area and then cheerfully gobbles down
to the bone what used to be an important part of ones' anatomy?

I watched a documentyary on the Rhuub al Khali and the conversation came
around to Camel Spiders that one of the guides went to sleep and was bitten
and woke up with half of his face gone.

So I went to the internet and puled up an image of the Camel Spider.
It is ugly and evil looking, hairless and big.

The very name gives me the willies.

I live in the Northwest where it is cold and wet. You don't tan in Western Washington, you rust.

-Griz

Yep, he sent me one of the mosque in your first post too.

I saw a couple of "motivational pictures" there, and thought I'd make a contribution. I'm near positive that Aegis Dei and Juggernaut will appreciate it. This is a piece of poetry I cooked up a few days ago, but it's lost on "domesticated" people. The title of this piece is:

Last Request
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Yes, that is my hand.










If anyone is curious: Yes, it's protected: "Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License."

I've got a few pictures from the World's Largest Ashtray:

FOB Corrigedor outside of Ar Ramadi, Al Anbar Province

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Al Anbar Province, 7 ton MTVR with fake Mercedes bling emblem


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Al Asad airbase, Al Anbar Province

Blast-resistant EOD vehicle (South African manufacture):

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Remnants of the "Highway of Death" Kuwait:

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Did someone say Camel Spider?



I'll try to post more pics of the dirt when I get home this eve.

Al-Asad airbase, I'm trying to figure out how this will fit into my dufflebag:


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Remnants of Saddam's airforce:


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Kool pix. Kepp 'em coming, and guard you'r 6.

Al-Asad airbase fuel farm fire from insurgent 105 mm rocket:

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Abandoned Iraqi twin 20mm anti-aircraft battery (General Electric manufacture)


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Another abandoned Iraqi AA gun (Soviet 37mm)

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EOD personnel preparing abandoned/captured ordnance for controlled blast:

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EOD personnel preparing abandoned/captured ordnance for controlled blast:


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Iraqi artillery shells prepped with C4 and Det cord for controlled blast:

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Great pics. Thanks for posting these. It's nice for us here to see the sandbox through your eyes. Service, contractor, or whatever, thanks for being there. It is important!

As a U.S. Navy Reserve Seabee reaching retirement age, I want to thank all of you who think about and pray for our military brothers and sisters who venture into harm's way.

Me on Designated Marksman duty at FOB Corrigedor's ECP (Entry Control Point)

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Wow you've got quite a few there Ronswin. I've only got a few here at work, most are at home. Camels spiders, yeesh. Those things get BIG. Like football size big. And screw Anbar province, that place is a hole.

Wish I could say these from the sandbox were my travels but ALAS we don't maintain large numbers of nukes over there so my job had no reason to leave base.

Instead, these belong to the guy who rented out my garage for storage while he was over there.

From my understanding they are going to deploy the Air Forces very special forces once again. They have not been activated for quite some time now. I have seen them doing touch and goes here for the past week getting ready for there deployment. I few photos of "Operation Great Job II" have leaked out.

78 tons of explosives!

DDDDDDAAAAAAYYYYYYYUUUUUUUUMMMMMMM!!!!! That's a big boom. Such a waste though, personally I'd love it if the 2nd was infrindged upon and I could own a T-72 or one of the new BTR-90s. I just have a thing for Russian military vehicles.

If you really like Russian vehicles, have I got a deal for you:
One Soviet-era P-40 Long Track Radar half-track. Slightly used by a former Mid-Eastern dictator (now deceased) with very few miles and no bullet holes. Great conversation piece as you effortlessly track F-16's from the nearby Air Force base. Or set up your own radar trap for speeders and kids drag racing in the neighborhood. Microwave entire Holiday dinners in seconds. Make offer!!


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Disclaimer:
Your mileage may vary, void where prohibited. Vehicle guaranteed not to pass local EPA smog testing.

That's hilarious!! I appreciate the nice pics guys!

Saint Barbara is, of course, the Patron Saint of Artillery and is honored by the US Army with a day dedicated to the observance of her 'day' (at least among arty types). In Spain, the very name 'Santa Barbara' is what they call an ammo depot. Saint Barbara has a special place here in this house.

What in the crap is that thing, anyway? I presume it's not a Piper Cherokee...

Soviet era Iraqi MiG-25C minus the wings! Iraqis had several of these buried around the airbase under tarps and sand to look like sand dunes. Some, like the one below were hidden in date groves. I tried send one home piece by piece (kinda like Radar O'Reilly with the jeep on MASH) but the Tumansky turbojet engines wouldn't fit on the postal scales.


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Afterburners on the Mig-25 Tumansky engines are almost 6 ft. in diameter. This was one fast mother****** in it's day!


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Soviet-era Iraqi Su-24MK Fencer-D. These were very capable swing-wing fighter/ground attack aircraft. This one has seen better days.

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Here are some pics from Kuwait in the first gulf war.
A long time ago in a land far far away.

A much younger and thinner me sporting my DM combat boots and a Remington!!

Wow, that is so freaking cool looking.

Controlled detonations of captured/abandoned ordnance is a daily event in our A.O. The E.O.D. use a junkyard several miles east of our main base and it had one major blast at least once a day. They got really behind one time and set off a backlog of explosives that must have registed on the Ricter scale. It cracked windows all over the base and when it first went off, it had this weird orange glow followed by an incredible shock wave that eventually turned into the classic "mushroom cloud". Base C.O. (after changing his underwear) told them to tame it down a bit from then on.

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here are a few from the other perspective, the photo-chopped ones were done by a friend of mine who was grounded 'cause he couldn't shit for a month. They stuck him on the radios and he got bored. On a side note, he got the finger like 4 times, and he's a complete fag. (He'll be reading this later )


BTW, the EOD pics are BADASS!! Didn't get to see many controlled det's this time, heard lots though.

Edit: The first one is a pic a crew chief took of me right before a 50mph wall of sand hit us. We had to wait something like 4 hours to take off. Notice he named the pic ahole......

Hey, Deamon

As a Contractor, are you responsible for your own security?
If so is that why your a Saiga fan????

Cool pics ALL!

Is there anything beautiful in Iraq? The land, the people, the buildings, even the critters are freaking fugly in every picture I have seen. No wonder the place is filled with suicidial people because the place just plain looks like hell. What about the north where the mountains are?

Just making light here but maybe next time we can do go after chavez in venezulea. The beaches are great and the women pretty and easy Before 9-11 I was getting convinced we would be in Columbia but now you do not hear a thing about that place.

Good work men INCLUDING THE CONTRACTORS.

I've seen pics from up north from guys who had taken pics there, green rolling hills, really nice supposedly, but I never got to go up there. I've seen some pretty sights at sunset, but that's extremely low light. Everything else looks like a shithole, and it's too damn hot & miserable. No wonder they hate everyone.

BTW, that pic of Babylon is probably the nicest place I'd seen there.

Three things:

Holy $#!7 Juggernaut! You guys were still being tortured with K rations during the Gulf War? That's "Cruel and Unusual" right there. No wonder you look so... "disturbed," holding that shotgun....

I know I told Aethelbert, but I wanted to mention it to the rest of you as well. St. Barbara has a special place in our house too: the reloading bench. Somewhere along the line, she managed to pick up patronage of arms and ammuniton manufacterers. So, I found a St. Barbara figurine and planted her firmly where our personal ammo is manufactured. I'm nearly ashamed to say that she's lost an arm (fell from the top of a tool box to the concrete floor), but she's still there, serving proudly.

Everyone else: cool pics. I love seeing this stuff. In particular I like being able to show pictures like this to people who think soldiers are somehow... not as good. Show the domesticated civies a cool explosion though, and they always admit they would have taken a picture too.

not exactly sure they're from Iraq, but they fit




(last one is shopped ofc)

While our A.O. was no garden spot, we pretty much agreed that there were some spectacular sunrise and sunsets:

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