Rhino Riding

On Sunday October 21st I got to ride the Rhino for the first time. The Rhino is the up-armored bus, if you can call it that, used as the shuttle between Camp Victory and the International Zone (or Green Zone). Although the IZ is only about 10 km away, it takes a Rhino and a convoy security element of four up-armored Humvees with automatic weapons at the ready to get you there and a trip that would take 10 minutes in the states, takes over an hour here. That being said, the Rhino is free, you know there won’t be any drunks passed out in the back, and it doesn’t stop for signals, so maybe they have something here . . . .

Like a fine restaurant in demand, the Rhino requires reservations at least 36 hours in advance and it has a very strict dress code. Full body armor, your helmet, ballistic glasses and your weapon. No roll-down windows or fuzzy dice when you cruise in this bad-boy machine. The only tune playing on the radio is the tactical chatter between the Rhino commander and the four Humvees as the convoy quickly rolls along the highway connecting the two zones. Nothing stops the Rhino. As we pass over “the wire” off camp, military passengers are instructed to change their weapons status and load a magazine just in case, but truth be told, almost anything will bounce off the armored shell like a pebble tossed at a frying pan.

The Green Zone is a labyrinthine construct of old roads, high walls and decrepit sidewalks. It contains businesses, embassies, residential, military and contractor operations. My colleague pointed out the transient lodging office. As ridiculous as it sounds, if you miss your appointed Rhino ride back to Victory Base, even though you are only 10km away, unless you can get on a helicopter, you are spending the night.

The drained and cracked fountain outside of the U.S. Mission, formerly Saddam’s seat of government, may prove allegorical for the end state of this country if its leaders cannot put aside tribal and religious zealotry and work towards a new Iraq.

Traffic bustles through the zone, and building access security here is handled almost exclusively by a Latin American firm employing solely citizens of that region. A well placed “Buenos Dias” seems to yield a smile, albeit certainly not any less scrutiny of the multiple credentials hanging around the necks of most

Back by Popular Demand: Word of the Week!

This week’s word of the week is the latest in trendy, cocktail party word dropping: POP. No soda in this story – just a Proof of Principal. A POP is an idea to test, a try or an attempt but it really is no fun for the military if you can’t make an acronym out of something, especially a catchy one like POP. Lets say you wanted to try out an idea for a new short cut to work. You would pretty much say to someone, “Hey, I am going to try a new shortcut to work.” Alas, that is WAAAAY too mundane for the military. We scoff at you and your simpleton ways! Instead, you would say “I am doing the power point presentation to brief-up the coordination and timing on the potential variances and asset requirements of my shortcut POP in conjunction with the route planners in section C3 before I complete the form 2985.4 in triplicate to have my power point presentation certified to be back-briefed right after the 16 person conference call discussing the font choice and logo size on page seven of the metrics tracking chart.”

Please, feel free to take notes and utilize this highly effective approach in your own home or office and you too can operate with the very same efficiency of the U.S. government.