Photos of Iraq Trip

So I got unexpectedly called to Baghdad for a particularly fun trip with Mike Pflueger (my boss and our Deputy Director). September 11 (fourth anniversary) may not be the best time to leave by plane, for Iraq no less, but…

See all the photos here (start at the bottom of the page and work up, I posted them chronologically with comments).

Traveled with Pflueger and Jason Stahl, one of our senior communications specialists – Jason and I will stay in country after Pflueger leaves. Turns out Jason has done this kind of “specialized install” numerous times before – many odd places around the world. Nice guy… he had just saved up and bought a new gadget for the trip — new Sony PSP.

On the British Airways flight from London to Bahrain and then Qatar, I read the papers I’d bought at Heathrow – England’s Daily Telegraph and Financial Times, the International Herald Tribune, and the Wall Street Journal Euro edition. Then, I fell asleep – woke up and discovered on the seat-back real-time map display that we had just passed over Istanbul and the Turkish Black Sea coast and were heading for Syria and northern Iraq. I looked out over the west of Iran, which I could make out on the horizon.