20100114-1842 🔈

AI-generated transcript:

Today is Thursday, January 14th, 2010 at 6:42 PM it is evening time. I'm coming back from the coffee shop right now. So today we went to the, the well, yesterday the, the visa situation looked kind of interesting. Rupa was saying, Oh, we can't we, we can't support you. We'll need someone higher than us to do it, but if you get your visas, we'll certainly be there for you.

And then this morning we went in to the Visa center, the, the Iraqi Embassy and Amman, Jordan, and they told us that there's no, there was no record of the stuff we did starting in November. With all our passports and trying to get in the early train and everything. And Muhammad, who was our guy in the, in the embassy was like, Look, whoever's, whoever's in DC hasn't been lying to you.

Someone brought up the idea that maybe the partisan politics, you know, it was a, the ambassador and DC is SUNY and the guy here is Sheia and it's either taking responsibility or taking credit. I don't know which one is. You know, in this, in this argument was, was in the air, you know, the, there are two things that could happen.

This could be a really good thing and good publicity, or it could be really bad, or we could get kidnapped and then someone would have to take responsibility for not, you know, providing a security and everything Anyway, so there's a moment that we were thinking, Holy crap, we're not getting an after all.

And this really wasn't vain. But then finally Mohamed said well, okay, let's just try the ambassador. Go sit and wait and see if you can talk to him. And so sure enough, we got escorted around the corner to the ambassador's office and we all situated. Right? Sammy sat down and he told me just to say I'm a C CPT member.

And and we waited just like we had in the morning. I think in the morning in the Visa. We sat, I think we sat for at least two hours, something like that. And then and then the ambassador's office, I think we only sat for like half an hour before a nice nice woman came in and said, Is somebody helping you?

And we were like, Yeah, we're waiting for the ambassador. And she's like, Oh, oh, let me go see. So then five minutes later she comes back down, we gets squared up to the office. Really nice office too. Jamie got some pictures and we go in. The first thing that's done is he asks us what we like to drink and he brings us we all have a Iraq tea and he warned us out a rocky tea.

It's real sweet. He doesn't speak much English where he just didn't speak English in our presence. So Sammy did all of the translating, basically gave this whole story while we sat there, ands on tea and looked important, and, and Sammy said, These are the guys that are injured. We have a filmmaker and we have an author, and he never mentioned my name.

Never pointed. In the meantime, I was real nervous. Like, cuz I asked him beforehand, you know, should I, you know, hear in the Jordan, in the embassy, in Jordan, Should I not say I'm a soldier? Because he's been flipping back and forth on this. At first, of course, I think I said in my last journal, he said, No, like we should not tell anybody.

And then I talked to him and the day after that, which was yesterday, he said, You know, I think we'll be transparent. You know, maybe we, we'll, we'll tell him I'll set you up with a family and blah. And I'm pretty sure I mentioned that in my last journal. And so then today when we were in the office and I was trying to figure out, okay, what, what's the story here?

What am I, or what should I not say? It was like, Oh, you're just a CPT member. And so in the ambassador's office, I was just sitting there waiting for him to, you know, be like, What's up with this dude? But it never did. So after listening to our story, the investor kind of made some remarks. Looking back, Sammy and Greg were both kind of surprised because what he said is that there were never any terrorists in Iraq.

There were two things that we never had, and that was terrorists and partisan divide, you know, between Shia and Sunni. We never had these, you know, the American invasion brought terrorists into it, and then, and they crossed the borders and came in. They were not there before, and he made that real clear.

And at coffee afterwards, Sammy and Greg both said, you know, that that's kind of taken a little bit of a swipe at at their allies, but you know so anyway, I, he talked about the terror stuff, and something inside me is always gonna kind of wince internally at stuff like that. Because I mean, it's, it's a horrible, horrible thing to say, but it's the truth.

And it's, it's always difficult to swallow that pill when you know you're. You're inherently complicit in that indictment, you know? And I think I'm just gonna continue to hear more of this and I didn't say, so we went out to coffee and we had sandwiches later. Sammy paid, which was a really nice coffee shop, right.

You know, within a block of the embassy. And we had a little recap and Jamie was filming and all that great stuff. Wow. And I didn't say anything and then I suggested we do a check in because, you know, we're heading in tomorrow. And everybody talked. They were all real excited and it's good group, and we got our visas.

Everybody's, you know, excited. I didn't mention one thing. I, you know, when that little, like that moment in time where we all were pretty afraid that we might not get in at all. I wasn't all that disturbed. I don't know. I mean, I have come all this way, but it would've been easy to just pawn it off on someone else and say, Well, we didn't get our visa, so we didn't get in.

And so we did our check-ins and I came to me and I'm just gonna have a very different experience. I'm not excited about going in. I mean, there's a certain anticipation that I have that is, yeah, I'm in a certain way. I'm in, I anticipate and I'm anxious to get in. , but it's, it's a cautious anxiety, It's a cautious anticipation because I just don't know what to expect and because of just the way my mind works and the way I am, as difficult as it is, you know, I, I just have to go on faith.

I did recognize a little bit more, and I, I shared this with a group, you know, I think I, I've been kind of, you know, really kind of torn up in, in talking to Greg and Sammy about this and, you know, Peggy and Cliff a little bit more in depth. Because, you know, I, I, somewhere in me, I wonder if there's something that, you know, somebody would like to say to American soldiers.

You know, me being a representation of that. And so by me not, you know, not being transparent, which I can understand I always, I'll always question if, if there's something that I could have done that could help their. resolution or closure in some way? Maybe it's just to yell at me. I don't know.

Maybe it's just a curse and yell and moan and bitch and you know, whatever. Because they have that writing. Maybe it would be good. Maybe it wouldn't. I don't know. Which is funny because Greg has had this, and I don't know if he still does, and I didn't really talk to him about it, but he has this kind of expectation or something, or belief I think, in relation to how I reacted to.

thought that I shouldn't say anything. He has this kind of belief or had this kind of belief that I want some kind of confession or I want to confess or just get it off my chest or something. And that isn't the case. Like I just wanted to have a genuine two way dialogue and let someone or some, a group of people be as honest as they can with me.

And I think that's gonna be good for me. I think it's gonna be, I would like to think it would be good for that person or that group. But if Sammy doesn't think that's best, then I think it, it is important for me to sit and to listen even if it's, even if they don't even know who I am and, and what I represent.

Because, and they may be more honest that way. Like the ambassador may not have said that about terrorism, but I think he still needed to. And if I, if he knew about my background, maybe he wouldn't have. So I don't know. I hope the spirit leads. I hope God works in ways that I can't. Because I, I, I just don't know.

I don't have any sense, I don't have any semblance of clarity about my place with this, this whole you know, this broader narrative. And that kinda, that kind of really came into focus for me today. Like I'm really just piggy. on this group. And maybe that's a self-serving purpose. Maybe it's not.

I guess time will tell, but I think it's important for me to be there and they've all expressed genuine gratitude that I'm here and able to share with them my perspective. And what, and hopefully maybe none of it will get into Craig Greg's book. I know Jamie's real excited about, He wants me to carry around an extra.

And do like audio journals from Avatar like, or VI video journals I've already been doing. It's kind of funny. But yeah. So tomorrow we go into rba. Probably gonna be early morning. Sammy said that we'll all reach, should all be wearing Kafis just to kind of, you know, add an extra layer of maybe not security, but keep, keep attention from.

And I think his, his reason was if you're not wearing and everybody sees your haircuts and your, your men are dressed, they may think, they may think, they may more quickly realize that we're westerners. Yeah. Time will tell tomorrow. Tomorrow's coming. Looks like we'll be there for three nights. Tomorrow's Friday. It's also the holy day, so that might be interesting. Might not be. So it'll be there Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday night. And then Monday we'll probably return by the afternoon.

Probably get to the border before, you know, dark. So at the very latest we'll have to leave Rupa by like three, I guess three or four at the very, very latest. Cuz Cliff will have to get to the airport that night and then I'll leave the following evening. . But yeah, I'm gonna try and keep my journal with me at all times starting tomorrow.

There's a lot of stuff that.