With 1% of the votes in, we are prepared to declare a winner….

And the Winner is:

TOO CLOSE TO CALL.

Unfortunately, it appears that my mustache must have roots in Florida, because this election may just have to be sent up to the Supreme Court to be finalized.

In the mean time, a few comments:

· Any person whose husband and/or father has a goatee, is not allowed to make comments about my mustache

· I do NOT look like "Pedro" from Napolean Dynamite

· Say what you want about the mustache, but at least it increased activity on this blog (100 additional hits in only a week’s time)

Don’t worry, we still have over 10 months to cast your votes!

All is well here, will be posting about my new job in a day or so

Let Your Voice Be Heard!

Fellow citizens of democracy, it is time to go to your polling stations and take part in the democratic process.

The issue at hand: Should Bill keep his mustache?

As you can see, my facial has been allowed to run free, free of the oppression that forced it not to see the light of day back home. Dare I say that it has been liberated!

So the time has come to allow the masses to voice their opinion, so please take a moment to register your vote on this referendum.

Once all the votes are in, I will adhere to the voice of the masses.

By the way, the polls will remain open until sometime in March 2007. :-)

Vote NOW, Vote OFTEN

Should Bill keep the Mustache?
	Absolutely
	No Way
	Only in a Combat Zone
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Over 100 Hits!

Hey, how did that happen?

Somehow, this little blog of mine has been viewed over 100 times according to the counter on the bottom. Never would have thought that would happen. I guess I'll add it to my list of milestones for this deployment. I'll keep adding posts when time permits.

All is fine over here. I'll be getting a new job starting tomorrow. I'll write more about it later. I'll still be living in the IZ and my mailing address won't change.

Thanks again for taking the time to read this and feel free to leave any comments.

All for now.

The Land of Opportunity

I just got back from attending a conference for the contracting officers in country. While there, I had the opportunity to hear an Iraqi businessman (who has multiple contracts with the military) speak about his experiences dealing with the US. He painted a great picture about the future of his country that I don’t know is being projected by our media back home. Being the son of a self employed businessman, I took to heart what this man said and knew that the future of this country will depend heavily on entrepreneurs like him. I jotted down some of his quotes during the “question and answer” period.


Are the Iraqi people really ready for democracy?
“Iraqi people have now tasted freedom, they have now tasted democracy, and that is a hard taste to take away from them.”

Doesn’t the insurgency show that most Iraqis want us out of Iraq?
“Only 1% of the people want the US Army to leave. They want you to leave so that they can re-occupy the palaces and keep the other 99% of the population out. If the US Army were to leave today, then we really would have a civil war starting tomorrow.”

What do you tell other Iraqis who say that they want the US to leave?
“Why would we want the US out of our country? Japan, Germany, Korea, Italy, and so on all have the US in their country and they are all living good lives. Why wouldn’t you want the biggest kid in school to be your friend so that the bullies won’t bother you?”

What about the high unemployment rates we hear about in Iraq?
“High unemployment rates in Iraq may be due to the perception within our population that if you are employed and have money than Saddam’s government could come and take that money away from you, therefore, you will see Iraqis stepping out of limos wearing nice suits and when asked they will tell you that they are unemployed and poor.”

Finally…
“Iraq is the new land of opportunity. I now own part of a bank, a hotel, an insurance company…..”(the list went on and on)

GO CAPITALISM!!!

An Army of One (coincidence after another)

I should stop being surprised at this point in my career. That is, I should stop being surprised when I run into somebody in the Army that I had know from a previous assignment. Like the time in Kuwait when I met up with my beer drinking buddy from 15 years earlier when I was a newly commissioned Second Lieutenant. Or just recently here in Iraq. Since I got here I have ran into no less than 4 fellow officers that I had know while I was going to school in Monterrey. But tonight's reunion takes the cake.

I was having dinner with an Army Doctor that I met back on March 26th when this whole trek of mine began. His name is Mike and he and I boarded the same plane in Atlanta to go to CRC at Fort Bliss. We spoke every so often while at Bliss (where this picture was taken) and we just so happened to both be assigned to the International Zone only blocks apart from each other. But that's not the strange part.

While having dinner, Mike mentioned that he had gone to Med School at Penn State. That sparked my interest because I got a master's degree from Penn State at the Harrisburg Campus. Apparently Mike had gone to the main campus for Med School, but had lived in a small town right outside of Harrisburg. That sounded familiar to me because Mara and I lived in New Cumberland, PA (right outside of Harrisburg) for 3 years right when we got married.

Mike was shocked to hear this, because he too had live in New Cumberland. As it turns out, we lived in the same town at the same time and within a quarter mile of each other! We even attended the same church, drank beer at the same taverns, and saw movies at the same theater in town. Chances are we walked right passed each other numerous times without knowing it.

The Army is indeed becoming a smaller and smaller place, at least from where I'm sitting. It seems like every place the Army sends me, I run into people I served with in the past or people (like Mike) who were, unbeknownst to me, right there by my side.

Perhaps it’s the fact that I’m being sent all over the place to new places and work with new people that makes me appreciate it when I see a familiar face. Even though I wasn’t able to sit down and eat Easter Dinner with my family tonight, at least I was able to sit down and eat dinner with someone who shared some common experiences with his family. Meeting up with someone like Mike makes me realize that even though I'm far from home, I still have some ties with what I left behind.

One down, 51 more to go!

Hey, its my first week anniversary of arriving in Iraq! Yippee! Only 51 more weeks to go!

This will be just a short post in order to mark such an important occasion.

One interesting tidbit:

While I (like most Army personnel) am here for 1 year, the other services have different lengths for their deployments. Most notably, the Air Force generally only sends their people here for 4 months! 4 Months? That's nothing! That's like a long business trip! Well, tonight I got to talking to an Air Force Colonel and this subject came up. I was surprised when he acknowledged the disparity between the two different tour lengths. He then said, "I hate to admit it, but we in the Air Force, have no real culture of sacrifice like those in the Army do".

GO ARMY!

Dinner at the Palace

OK, sure I would have like to have had dinner with Mara and the kids tonight, but sitting down in one of Saddam's old palaces and eating a nice turkey on wheat with lettuce and tomato wasn't too bad at all. The photos here are of the palace that is just down the road from where I'm at and is now being used as the American Embassay. I can assure you that these photos do not do the place justice. The craftsmanship that went into this place was unbelievable. Marable everywhere you looked! And here's the question, for a guy who supposively did not have WMDs, why was there a huge mural of 6 missiles being launched into the sky?

BTW: I set up a gmail account. Address is william.lockard@gmail.com

use it often.

Hope all is well on the home front. All for now.

Bill

Initial Impressions and Mailing Addres

Hello All, well at least I'm over the jet lag. I've had 3 nights in a row of decent sleep and I am in the middle of establishing a routine for myself. I'm still shadowing the man that I will replace, so I still am becoming familiar with what my responsibilities are. The way I see, I still have 11 months, and 21 days to figure out what I'm suppose to be doing here, so why rush?

Although I live in Baghdad, my view of the world is limited to only a square mile or so. I only travel to a few different places to work, to eat, to attend meeting, and to go to the PX, so I can't say I am aware of everything that is happening in Baghdad. Case in point, I was watching CNN this morning at breakfast and heard the news about a car bomb "in Baghdad that killed over 70 people." If I hadn't seen it on the news, I would never of known about it. Didn't hear a large boom, didn't see a blum of smoke rising in the air, didn't see ambulances racing by. Baghdad is large enough, and I'm in a secure enough area of that large city, to be sheltered from many things. From my own standpoint, this is a good thing.

I did make one interesting observation yesterday. I was standing on the roof of a building looking out over the city. I was able to see the famous "crossed sabers" and many other landmarks I had seen on the TV. But then I noticed something else that I hadn't heard about or seen on the news. I counted at least a dozen large building cranes. The type that you see at construction sites in urban areas that shoot straight up in the sky and have an extended arm to lift God knows what.

It struck me that Baghdad is indeed a city being reborn and that no matter how many car bombs blow up, these construction cranes are still being put up. And so long as the skyline is marked with these cranes, Baghdad will remain a city progressing towards a better day.

OK, enough of me on my soap box.

Here is my mailing address, but please send NO cookies. I'm determined to stay on my healthy diet started a little over a year ago and don't want to use this deployment as an excuse to get off of it. If you find the time for a hand written note or a card, I would love to hear from you. But an email or a comment on this blog is also a great morale booster for me. Anyways, heres the address

MAJ Lockard
DOS/PCO-JC
APO, AE 09348

Take care

Bill

Let the BOG begin!

Hello from Iraq! So that means I have finally put my Boots On the Ground, or in Army Speak, my BOG time has begun. Once my BOG time hits 365, I can go home. Perhaps I should rename this site to be my BOGblog.

We left Fort Bliss on Saturday, but it feels like many weeks ago. Not do due the stress of the deployment, but because of the jet lag. I'll be honest with you, I have been awake now for 23 hours! But I think I will have this monster off my back once I get to bed tonight at a civilized hour.

One big highlight of my trip over here. We made a stop at Bangor, Maine before heading over the Atlantic. When we got off the plane we were greeted by a dozen or more local people who really went out of their way to welcome us and wish us a safe journey. It was late at night, and these people greeted us with hugs and kisses. They also had snacks for us and had about 15 cell phones for us to use to call home. As we were getting back on the plane, one lovely lady came up to me and said, "we'll see you again in a year on your way home". I have no doubt that she will be there waiting for us. You gotta like those people from Maine.

Once in country, we made our way through Kuwait and then into Baghdad on a military transport. And then I woke up the next morning to find myself in the International Zone.

I've been spending my first 48 hours attempting to get oriented to the area and my new job (and trying to get my internal clock on the right time!). All is welll with me and I feel extremely safe within the IZ.

Take care and thank all those who have left comments.

More to follow soon

Bill