One of our Civil Affairs teams funded a project for a community and today was the grand opening of the complex. You might want to watch CBS or NBC and see if they show anything about a 1-star general, General Hammond at the opening of a sports complex in Al-Doura, the Al Rasheed district of Baghdad. One of our generals might be on TV, and perhaps you might see my helmet in the background somewhere. Anyway the general was on his own separate convoy.

We organized our own convoy and had the Washington Post and a Stars & Stripes reporter to accompany us to the sports complex. We are trying to gather "Good New" stories of how we are helping the local communities get together through sports sponsorship and providing the structures. There was also a drawing contest sponsored by the unit in which they were trying to introduce the ICDC (Iraqi Civil Defense Corps) to the children as people the children should be able to trust. Winners of the drawing contest were chosen and calendars were made of the artwork and distributed throughout the crowd. T-shirts were also passed out to the children. The Washington Post reporter started speaking with the general. After meeting the General, I guess the reporter was invited to travel the rest of the day with him looking at various other projects in the area. So we felt pretty good about having the asset of the reporter with us and the fact that the general wanted the reporter to accompany him for the rest of the day was a good thing...I hope.

I took tons of pictures of children. It was quite fun in the beginning and then I felt like I was in a mob after a while. Wish I could speak Arabic.