Winter Wonderland: The IZ

The pool at the embassy compound early one morning before the rush.

I’ve been back and forth between the International Zone (IZ) formerly called the Green Zone, a couple of times this month and the longer I am in Iraq, the more surreal the IZ feels, in a very civilized way. As always, lets compare and contrast:

Camp Victory bulletin board posting - “Safety Warning: Small Arms Fire coming over the wire [perimeter] in location xxxx”
IZ bulletin board posting – “SCRABBLE TOURNAMENT! This weekend!

Camp Victory bulletin board posting – “Ensure your weapon is on safe and you do not have a magazine loaded”
IZ bulletin board posting – “The pool is closed today” (this one I think might have actually elicited some form of organized protest, but everything returned to normal by the time “Salsa Dance Night” rolled around that evening).

Camp Victory bulletin board posting – “For sale: tactical overvest, slightly used”
IZ bulletin board posting – “For sale: Lava Lamp, like new”

The embassy is located in the palace that use to serve as Sadam's primary residence and office.


A common street inside the IZ. Many regular Iraqis live inside the IZ.

A reflection of the Rhino commander shows through the ballistic glass as the convoy makes its way to the IZ.

The road to the IZ, with one of our guntruck escorts ahead of us.

Armed Forces Network (AFN)

AFN is the official network of the military and runs eight channels. As one would expect, there is a news channel (mostly FOX News), a sports channel (mostly ESPN and games), two movie channels, a family channel, etc. But that is all secondary to the commercials on AFN. Imagine one big set of goofy public service announcements. If you were an anthropologist and you knew nothing else about the military than what you saw on these commericals, it would be a reasonable conclusion that everyone in the military was a complete moron.

We have one with an emotionless military surgeon talking about pandemic flu. His inspriration obviously came from Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller. Then there is the "how to mail a package at the post office" commercial. And the Air Force seems to constantly run commercials about how cool it is to be the Air Force, showing Air Force members in camoflauge running around the forrest with high tech guns (knock, knock Air Force - uh, who's there - REALITY!! Get back to your desks and put the paintball guns back in the closet).

But my favorite is a commercial about not letting kids play in a construction zone. It shows heavy construction and earth moving equipment and in the middle of it all, five little kids playing. So you know that this happened someplace and now the military not only has a commercial about it but I expect to soon be notified that all members must take a one hour online course about child safety in construction zones.