Kuwait

So I know it has been a while since I last wrote and many of you are probably wondering why I am updating my blog as I should have been back in Texas as of the 15 October.  Well we were redirected to Kuwait instead of coming home.  I am currently stationed at Ali Al Salem Airbase in Kuwait where it is about 15 degrees hotter than Iraq and literally 10 degrees cooler than the surface of the sun.  As we are setting up the site for us to work at, we are in the sun all day long and we are all covered in sunburns.  I told Amber I have a great tan, except it stops at my T-shirt line.  There is so much sand and it is so fine you would think you were at the beach except there is no water anywhere.  We are living in tents where there are 12 of us per tent.  I am including a picture of the tent as it looked when we first got here, but now it is covered in everybody’s junk.   We are working out of an old bunker that the French built for the Kuwaitis back in the 1970’s.  It isn’t that bad of a location as it stays considerably cooler in the HAS (Hardened Aircraft Structure) and it has A/C with running water to a bathroom.   I would have included a picture of the bathroom, but we do not have any lights in there so it wouldn’t have mattered.  We had to leave everything in Iraq that we bought with money allocated for the Iraq war (which is weird because we fly to Iraq everyday and I am pretty sure we are still fighting the war) so we have no furniture.  As you can see my office is pretty pathetic, but I am also the only Soldier with an office as I am the commander, so everyone else has it worse than me.

The great part of being in Kuwait, is at least we are out of harms way.  The last night in Iraq got a little crazy and so we have a lot to be grateful for since we are here.  As for an update on school, I just finished statistics (a course required for all Texas medical schools even though every other medical school accepts Calculus which I took at BYU) and I am at the midterm for my other two courses.  While I got an A in Statistics and I worked really hard, I hate Statistics.  Some of it was interesting, but most of it was really too in depth for what I need.  I definitely understand why Doctors need to know statistics as you can make a study or a drug’s side effects trials say anything with statistics so it is important to understand how they came up with those probabilities.  

I will try and keep you posted on how everything is going and I will post more photos once we get up and running.

This is the Bunker we are working out of.  I will post a picture in a few days of what it looks like now and it will blow your mind at how much we have changed the site.  Our unit is like locusts, taking over and destroying everything.

This is the inside of the bunker.  There is plenty of room for whiffle ball home run derby. 

This is my office and it is pretty nice.  I have a computer and a phone, so what else could I need?  I spruced it up a little after I took this photo with a BYU flag.

This tent is empty now, but with 12 grown men living in it, it is pretty smelly and cluttered with personal gear, supplement containers and all manner of electronics.

As we were leaving Iraq, they got rid of all hot meals except dinner.  There were over 10,000 people that went through this dinning facility in four hours to eat.  I compare the time spent in line to the time it takes to get to the Finding Nemo ride at Disneyland.  The line wraps around the building and the food was really horrible so it made it worse to wait so long for it.

This is a typical Iraq sandstorm.  You can see on the right it is clear and blue, but there is a wall of sand blowing our way that is 2000’ high and 30 miles wide.  Five minutes after this photo you couldn’t see the vehicles in the parking lot visibility was that bad.

This is the group of us pilots right before everyone redeployed home and I moved to Kuwait.  I am the fourth from the left and no I am not a midget the guy next to me is 6’7”.

Move to Kuwait

This is our one working indoor toilet.  It doesn't have a door, a seat or

toilet paper, but it sure beats a porta potty when it is 126 degrees

outside.  I bet you can imagine the smell of a 126 degree porta potty.

My room is 12'x 10' and for the moment I do not have a roommate.  We try to

keep people from messing with our rooms by flat out lying.  The refrigerator

says it contains pharmaceuticals and must not be unplugged (we are in

rolling power outages in the day) however if you were to open it you would

find skim milk, chocolate milk and a diet sprite and no pharmaceuticals.

The windows are blacked out as I sleep until 1000 am and at 0530 it is so

bright outside it will temporarily blind you.  When you have a roommate you

have to get up and go to the porta potty outside to take a leak.  It is very

hard to go back to sleep after walking 100 meters in the blinding sun and

heat.  Since I don't have a roommate I don't have to go outside anymore,

which is why I have so many empty bottles in my room.

Well it is official, we are moving to Kuwait.  Apparently all US troops

pulling out of Iraq means we are pulling out of Iraq for Kuwait where we

will fly into Iraq daily.  I think that is splitting hairs, but technically

our unit has not troops in Iraq.  Above Iraq, yes, but not in Iraq.  I will

keep you posted as we know more, but right not it doesn't look so well for 

us getting home in time for the holidays.

2011 Deployment

Hello to all from Iraq!  I have been here for about four weeks already and I will be here for a little while longer.  The stay here has been almost the same as the last couple times, however there are a couple of annoying changes.  First of all we don't have any heated water, the water heaters are all off.  The showers are pretty much unaffected since the water is stored above ground in black tanks and with the heat of a 110+ day, the shower is actually pretty nice.  This will definitely be a different story in October.

Second, everything is shutting down as we are getting ready to leave.  The dining facility, the post office, the barber shop and the commissary are all on limited hours and will be shutting down in a couple weeks for good.

The flying is great and the time is slowly creeping by, but we actually have things pretty well right now.  Right now the biggest thing that we are worried about is whether or not we will be coming home in October or January.  Things are up in the air and unfortunately there are about a

hundred rumors floating around right now.

Other than that, things are going well. I will try and update this blog on a

regular basis.

 v/r

Michael "COUGAR" Weipert

CPT, AV

TF 239, S-3

"Nighthawks!"

NEW UNIT

Well, it is almost time to get out of COB Adder and back up to my unit so I can start flying again. I wanted to pause and reflect upon what the new unit has done to me over the last month.
At first it looked like the unit and I would butt heads a lot over some issues, but it turns out they have completely left me alone. I haven't been tasked to do anything for them except to provide slides and aviation information. That being said, I did have three issues.

1. After asking everyday for mail and explaining that even though I was part of the last unit for a couple of months, I was still here and my mail would be coming to them. Well, they sent all my mail back to the old unit because they thought I wasn't here anymore, they didn't even mark it return to sender, and so I won't get it until I get home to Fort Hood.

2. They gave away my room. One day there was someone new in my room moving stuff around. They thought it was wmpty so they put someone in it. When I made a comment to the Brigade Commander, they got me a new room right away. So now I have my own room, but it is in a different part of the base. The shower trailer doesn't have any hot water and there are no latrines so I have to use the Port-a-johns.

3. After extensive discussions with the new unit it appeared the Commander was willing to let me go back and they would do without a liasion officer. However all the rest of the staff was upset and said I needed to stay here since they enjoy my briefings so much. They said that my humor and interesting briefings were the highlight of their day. So now they get dry humorless briefings. One Major made the argument that I don't need to be here since I can send the slides from Balad and they should let me go back so I can fly. Then another officer said no it was important to have me down here because our unit does so many amazing things that the information needs to be desseminated down to all the soldiers so they know how well things are going. He said it was a big morale booster to see on a daily basis all the great things the unit does. The major then responded that we only have 8 pilots total and I am down here. That leaves 7 pilots and 2 pilots per aircraft mean that we can fly 3 missions a night. If they are so happy with what we are getting, then why not send the pilot back so can fly more and get even more intelligence?
It has honestly been a very rough 3 months. I know that I haven't done a lot here and that some people would kill for a job where they work for 3 hours a day and then just spend the rest of the day waiting for it to end so you can do it all over again. However, I didn't join the ARMY to sit on my behind at a desk making slides. I can't wait to get back to Balad and fly.

Scandal in Iraq

I will admit that the Army has had a couple black eyes with respect to our involvement in Iraq. Abu Ghraib was an embarrassment to the Army. The WMD never materialized in the capacity we expected. These two events pale in comparison with what is currently occurring right now in Iraq and the Liberal media is not covering it. President Obama can say the failing economy and Afghanistan are problems he inherited, but this occurred on his own watch. He allowed this to happen and I think that our political leaders should be held accountable. While I could get into a lot of trouble for writing this, the truth must come out.

For the last 5 days there has been no Diet Coke at COB Adder. No one can explain why there is no Diet Coke, but it has significantly impacted my morale. I would understand if the only thing we had was Diet Pepsi, while I am not a fan of Pepsi I could live with it. However there is no diet soda in the whole dinning facility. No Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi or even Diet 7-Up. I have been looking in the national papers and this isn't even mentioned by the media. No one is holding our leadership accountable. What do they expect me to drink when I eat my lunch? Water? I drink 2 gallons of water a day, but as human beings we have come a long way from living in huts in the jungle and I will not go back to drinking water with meals. Our ancestors came to this country because they wanted a better life for their families. I happen to think that part of a better life is the ability to drink a sugar free beverage instead of having to settle for water.

I know when many of you read this you will be so angry you will be called to action. While I know it may seem like a good idea to take up arms and march on Washington, violence is not the answer. Instead write your congressman, go on a hunger strike and remember this when you take to the polls in the future.

If I was able to ask the media one question it would be: Why is it that you haven't held the administration responsible for this mistreatment of America’s troops? I know the answer would be: well you can just buy Diet Coke at the shoppete 100 feet from where you work. So I am supposed to pay 45 cents for a can of Diet Coke? I don't think so! That's not the America I want to be a part of.

Regime Change

The unit I am currently with is switching out to redeploy back home. It has been 11 months for them and they are anxious to get home. I however will remain here for the next month. There is a generally distrust amongst units that are replacing one another. The outgoing unit thinks that they have done so much in the last year there is no possible way the new unit can keep up with their accomplishments and that they will drop the ball and lose some of the momentum that was created. The incoming unit thinks that the leaving unit is trying to push all their problems onto the incoming unit. For instance last time I was here we worked to get a new hangar built for our airplanes. We did almost all the work and then we left to have the new unit come in. I thought that they were going to mess it up, but they thought oh great CPT Weipert is leaving us his hangar mess so we can finish it for him. This is experienced by all incoming and outgoing units, so it isn’t new. This new unit coming in is a reserve unit, so they aren’t real Soldiers. This is pretty evident by the way they look. A lot of them probably haven’t seen a gym since they were in basic training. They are already whining and complaining, and I have to get stuck in the middle of it. The outgoing unit complains about them all the time and the incoming unit complains all the time. I imagine this situation is very similar to when Bush and Obama changed places at the white house. The two presidents were very professional, but their staffs probably acted like what I am seeing.
The new unit also doesn’t want me here. They said that they don’t need me to be a Liaison Officer and that they want me to do something else here. I just know we are going to butt heads the whole time. The last time I was the Liaison Officer on the last deployment the unit and I had a really hard time working together. Imagine that a bunch of people in an office are all really busy (not working hard, but busy) and as a boss you see one officer worker who is better trained than the rest and has been there for a while studying over in the corner. You are obviously going to try and task that person to share the others work load so you are as busy as they are. In my case though I am like an outside contractor that is contracted to do a very specific job and nothing else. So I realize why this annoys the other people, but like we always say, if you want to be pilot, flight school starts every two weeks. We picked our branches and I got aviation and you got Military Intelligence. We have different jobs, so that is why I am over here studying Physics and you are putting together power point slides.
BYU Football
I love BYU football, however they let me down a lot. This year when they beat Oklahoma, they were ranked high enough to get air time on our cable over here in Iraq. If you are in the top 15, they show your football games in the dining facility. When we lost to Florida State that was the last football game we will see until playing TCU. I am annoyed because I just got done eating breakfast and watching TCU beat Air Force. Seriously BYU, I don’t think you should have been ranked that high, but you couldn’t hold on and beat FSU? Oh well, I wont have to speak of this again until I get a phone call from the BYU alumni association asking for money. Oh you want a donation? How about you stop spending millions on an average football team and use it at the school. I have no problem with you spending the student’s money on the football team as long as you win. BYU you have one last chance this season, beat Utah and I will forget about the FSU loss. Lose to Utah again and you are dead to me (until next year).

Reflections...

I thought I would take a minute to reflect upon all the little aspects of life that you take for granted until you have to live without them.

Running Water- You can’t drink the water in Iraq so everything is in bottles. You brush your teeth out of a bottle, you wash your hands with purell, you clean things with bottled water (like when you use your pocket knife to cut up a piece of fruit and need to get it clean).

Indoor Plumbing- While there are quite a few hard stand bathrooms, they are not located where you live or work. To go to the bathroom at night I have to get out of my room, put on shoes and a reflective belt and walk 100 meters to the bathroom and then 100 meters back to my room. Just to give you a mental picture, imagine how nice those porta-johns are after a couple hundred Soldiers use them in 100 degree heat.

Your Own Food – Every day you go to the Dining Facility to see what is for dinner. You have no control over what they serve you. Some days there are a couple choices that seem okay, other days you have to decide what sucks the least. Either way, you can’t decide you are going to have Chinese or Mexican food, you are stuck with what they serve you. The other great part of the dinning facility is when the group of guys who suck out the porta-potties sits down right next to you and asks you to explain why you think American football is better than their football. Also sometimes you have meetings during the two hours they are open for dinner. You can’t just go back and make something, you have to wait until midnight chow or you need to go to the Shopette and buy a candy bar or a bag of chips.

Alone Time- While I am not a solitary person, I would like a couple minutes to myself each day. I wake up in a room with a roommate, I take community showers, the bathrooms are community, I eat in a dinning facility with hundreds of people, I work out in a community gym, I can’t even get in a car and just drive because we don’t have vehicles. I do get alone time on my way to and from work, but in the two mile walk I end up having to salute close to 300 people. Unless that person is a Captain, I out rank them and they salute me, or I have to salute them because they outrank me. I end up having to salute them and say, “Good Morning” a couple hundred times or if I can see their patch I reply with “blood on the ax or steel tigers lead the way or never quit or always ready or rise above it”. That gets annoying after a couple hundred times in a row.

Having a Vehicle – Walking everywhere really makes you appreciate how nice it is to be able to drive somewhere in the heat of the day. It doesn’t happen very often, but when you forget your id card inside your computer (all computers have an id login required) and walk the half mile to the dining facility and can’t get in, you wish you had a car to make the trip back and forth. I haven’t seen the statistics, but I think that the dining facility guards probably turn away 100 Soldiers a day and 0 terrorists.