Date: 2006 - exact date to be determined.

Location: Miami / Ft Lauderdale - exact location to be determined.  If you have suggestion please email the webmaster with suggestions for locations in the South Florida area.

Where In the World....

Apparently our good friend Sgt. Weiss has found himself in the middle of all the action.  John is currently instructing the newly formed Iraqi police as a civilian contractor. 

Sgt Weiss                                                        Ali Al Salam Hilton (Deluxe Suite)

e-Mails From John Weiss in Iraq...

        Hey Everybody! I know I haven’t written to many (most….almost all) of you in quite some time. So let me begin by apologizing first for the delay and second for this rather impersonal mass mailing. Think of it sort of like “spam”, but from someone you actually know and sans the Viagra offers, home refinancing deals, or weird German schitze porn! There are reasons I haven’t written, but no excuses. Allow me to explain some of the reasons, and that should fill you in on some of happenings in and around Ramadi, shimmering jewel of the Euphrates.

        Just over a week ago, about an hour or so after leaving the highway patrol station, as I walked through the little courtyard of our hooch I heard a very loud explosion. Explosions are a common occurrence around these parts, and for the most part we simply tune them out as background noise, or make a brief remark. “Wow that was a pretty good one.” “Whadaya think? Sounded like an 80 millimeter to me.” However this one caused everyone to stop in their tracks. We initially thought a 122mm rocket landed close by and we climbed the ladder to our roof for a better view. I know this doesn’t sound like a particularly good idea, but you have to know that rockets come in one at a time, while mortars come in groups. So once a rocket lands, the show’s pretty much over. As we gathered on the flat roof we could see a white mushroom cloud rising from the horizon in the afternoon sky. Only one thing blows up like that, a truck bomb. I borrowed the rifle from the marine next to me to see where it went off. By now we could hear the staccato chatter of gunfire and a second, less intense, but still respectable explosion from the same location. The white smoke from the initial blast turned into thick, black smoke, a sure sign that something petroleum, like a car bomb, was burning. As I glassed the area with the ACOG sight, I recognized the top of a small minaret over the berm which surrounds the base. I tracked left a hair then realized the police station we had left not an hour earlier and that is next to that small mosque, was on fire and under attack.

        Immediately I climbed the homemade ladder down from the roof to tell the major that Iraqi Highway Patrol station six was getting hit. I suggested we call the moqaadam (lieutenant colonel) on his sat phone to see if they were alright. The major went into the office to call the brigade TOC (tactical operations center) while I went to find an interpreter for the call to Moqaadam Hamid. Hamid, a normally reserved man, was yelling incoherently into the phone about the coalition not letting him get back to the station. The major confirmed what we already knew and ordered us to move out. In a sort of organized frenzy of flack jackets, fifty cals, and phone calls we were mounted up and ready to roll in what seemed like a time suitable for the Guinness Book. We went to the TOC for  permission to head to the station.

        The TOC was chaotic. People talking into radios, staring at computers, yelling across the room, phones tucked under their chins while they held a radio handset, people pointing at maps discussing potential targets, and the colonel standing off to one side of the room listening intently, issuing an occasional terse order. We were ordered to wait until the battle space was clear before moving out. Well, I gotta tell you. All my years as a cop and former marine, and now I’m told to sit and wait while there’s a gunfight going on. Holy crap! That chafed against everything I train for, but I ain’t got chickens on my collar, so we sat. And we sat. Then sat some more. Then after an impossibly long forty minute wait we got the go ahead.

        The police station sits alongside a six lane highway. After all it IS the highway Patrol. Behind it is a farm field. A tanker truck loaded with ammonium nitrate/ fuel oil crashed through the Jersey barriers protecting the station and detonated alongside the wall surrounding the police compound. Everybody from the other side of the station came running to help. When they did, they left that side of the station unguarded. Then some insurgents hidden in an irrigation ditch in the farm field opened up on the station with machine gun fire while a late model Chevy Suburban loaded with artillery shells and ANFO crashed through the station’s gate and blew up. While this was happening, a nearby American Observation Post was watching, calling in help. Another group of insurgents snuck up and threw two grenades into the open gunner’s hatch of one of the armored humvees, then opened fire on them to prevent the soldiers from assisting the police. The insurgents cleverly placed themselves between the Americans and the neighborhood where most of the cops live. When the cops at home heard the attack they grabbed their AK’s, their relatives, jumped into their cars, and headed towards the station. The post had one dead and two dying. All they saw was a bunch of Iraqis with guns headed their way. They unwittingly opened up with fifty caliber machine guns on the plain clothed police. The surviving police were all arrested by the very angry friends of the dead soldiers who didn’t exactly follow prisoner handling protocols when cuffing and loading these guys.

        In the end, we were left with three dead soldiers, one dead Iraqi policeman, and one seriously fucked up police station. I didn’t know the soldiers, but I knew Sgt Tariq. He was the cousin of the chief, and always wore his uniform neatly pressed. He really enjoyed being a police officer and was good at it; that is exceptionally rare out here. His brother was murdered by terrorists two years ago for being a cop, leaving him as the only child. His chief swore an oath to Tariq’s parents to protect their son. Tariq died from gunfire while trying to rescue his fellow officers. We all miss him. The day after the blast we delivered his flag draped coffin to the sheik’s house where the family carried it inside. I hope I never have to do that again.

        That was the beginning of days which start early and end late. Repairing the damaged station, resupplying the shorteh, constantly soothing their frayed nerves, and still maintaining our other obligations while moving forward with our other missions have eaten up any free time. Being the only cop on my team right now (the two others are on vacation) doesn’t exactly help; neither does being the new guy on the team with virtually no real training before everyone else left for home. I got a haircut today and it felt like a luxury, almost as if I was cheating someone out of their time.

        This morning we got back from three days at Ramadi’s Government Center, an hour and a half later we were back out in town at the highway patrol. Ahhhh…the Government Center, now there’s a shit hole for you! It’s like camping without any of that pesky fun getting in the way! While sitting in a meeting with the new provincial police chief, four mortars landed a little under 100 meters outside the office window (which not surprisingly has no glass). The Iraqi staff all got up to leave, but sat nervously back down when they saw their chief and us simply look out the window, and continue our conversation. Later, there was a 45 minute gunfight while RPG crews fired at the center and the marines in the guard posts fired EVERYTHING back at ‘em. It was loud. Oh, by the way, we won they lost.