The little things....

... do make a difference. Last week Col Abbas and I were summoned to see the Iraqi Army Minister of Defense. The equivalent in our government is the Secretary of Defense (the post formerly held by Donald Rumsfeld). For a Colonel to be called to the Minister's office is generally not a good thing. However, in this case, it was. It seems the sheiks from the local area got together and wrote a letter to the Minister, telling him about the work that Col Abbas and I are doing in the area. We made our way to the MOD (Ministry of Defense) building in the international zone (IZ) and proceeded to wait. For a very long time. We finally got to see the Minister at 3:30PM. It was, as you might imagine, a short meeting. He is, as you also might imagine, a very busy man. He did invite us to join him for lunch, which was a nice gesture since we missed lunch waiting for him and there's no place to get food in the MOD.


Col. Abbas is presenting a Besmaya Plaque to the Minister, Mr. Abdul-Qadar.

Me, the Minister of Defense and Col Abbas. The Minister has a very large and very nice office.

This picture was taken just after lunch. While I'm smiling, I was not feeling so well. As one of my favorite comic strip characters, Satchel Pooch from Get Fuzzy, would say, I was feeling kind of "growly in my bowely". When this was taken, at about 4:30 in the afternoon, I was about 45 minutes away from the onset of a particularly nasty case of food poisoning. I'm reminded of the time when Pres. Bush 41 threw up on the Japanese Prime Minister. Fortunately I made it out of the Minister's office without embarrassing myself or causing an international incident.