Traveling; Historic and fun

What an awesome week!! I had the opportunity to travel and see another part of the country. This week, I went west towards some historic lands and what is currently owned by the Marines. I had the opportunity to visit two airfields, Al Asad and TQ, both of which are historic for good and bad reasons.

My first stop was Al Asad which is a huge airfield which used to home to Saddam's Air Force. It is also famous because it has the soccer sadium where Saddam and his son tortured the soccer team in a very publicized event. The stadium is still here, although I was not able to get any pics. More recently, a very famous picture floated around about a rolling sandstorm. Since I have been here, I have not seen this type, but that is because I live in the city.

This must have been an amazing sight.


After Al Asad, we moved over to TQ, which at one time, used to be a place where the British executives would come for relaxation. There is a massive lake here and BOAC float planes would land here in this kind of desert oasis.

Well, it is no longer an oasis and the lake does get any traffic, but we were bound to have some fun. This is the welcome sign. The top line says "Welcome to Camp Al Taqaddum" (TQ).

TQ has there very own mascot, which has a lot of irony. Remember, this is Marine country, so the Mascot is a Donkey, which happens to be the Army mascot as well and if you follow politics, you know that the donkey is teh mascot of one of the political parties; the one that does not want us here.

TQ is also famous for being one of Saddam's Air Force bases, but this one more so, because this is where he buried his planes. They were eventually found and this is a picture of them digging one out.

And this is a picture that I took. I actually did see the plane above, but could not stop. It was all an amazing sight.

After dinner, we had some time to kill, so our hosts got out their hookah (who-ka) pipe as this is their after dinner routine instead of cigars. Now, let me say that this is all legal and this was just tobacco; actually grape and apple flavored tobacco, so it was all very nice.

This is a hookah pipe. Yes, I know what it looks like.

The room of fun...........

No, I did not inhale....... Hahahahaha

See, out come the smoke.........

All in all, it was a very good trip and we made some good friends.

Ta dollars at work on the front line.........

One of the C130 planes had this flag hanging in the back and I just had to get a picture. What a great feeling.

We continue to count the days till our departure and we are all looing forward to it. Thanks for all of your support both to me and to HH6.