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The meeting minutes:
Despite lower than hoped for attendance, the October
meeting went well. SGM Dan Bowman of the 2nd Battalion 123rd
Field Artillery, Illinois National Guard spoke on his experiences
in Iraq, and it was incredibly interesting and enlightening. The
slide show presentation gave us a view of the country, people and
daily life that we rarely, if ever, get to see. We are generally
presented with the rather myopic evening news view of nothing but
a war-torn area. While that absolutely exists, there is also the
reality that life goes on. He presented video clips of downtown
Baghdad with no fighting in sight, open stores, city traffic and
vendors going about their normal routines. There was one scene of
a US convoy traveling into Baghdad on a four-lane highway lined
with palm trees, with very American-looking on/ off ramps and
overpasses. If you take out the obviously European cars and
trucks this area could easily pass for parts of Florida or
southern California (without the bikini-clad babes
unfortunately!). There were also views of some local children he
and his group befriended. One picture showed a girl holding a
pair of flip-flops. Dan’s wife had sent a large box of them as
the children, particularly girls, do not wear shoes. There were
shots of Dan and friends having tea with the local
Mutar, who is essentially the
equivalent of a village Mayor, and he gave Dan a lesson on the
order of Iraqi priorities. They are tribe, religion, family
country. I’ll let the readers draw their own conclusions on the
ramifications of that. There were also a number of pictures of
Saddam’s former palaces, in Baghdad and his home town of Tikrit,
which he had built for himself and his cronies. In one area there
were five or six in what amounts to a “compound” of sorts. Dan
said that during their construction any needed materials were
commandeered from local suppliers, and those suppliers were
forbidden to sell materials to anyone else unless and until
Saddam’s needs were met. The pictures of the insides showed
high-end marble tile virtually everywhere, with bathroom fixtures
that were actually gold-plated. In interesting contrast to that
were pictures of the mud brick huts of the average Iraqi. Dan
mentioned if anyone had seen the movie “The Ten Commandments” and
remembers the scene where the slaves were slogging away in a pit
making mud for bricks, then they know the way it’s done to this
day.
A big Thank You to Bob Horton for
arranging with SGM Bowman to be with us. It has been a
monumental effort on Bob’s part to make this happen. With the
less than stellar turnout I’m not sure Bob will be willing to put
this kind of effort into another event. Also, another thank you
to him and his wife Elaine for providing soda, cookies,
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