I have been waiting for several months to get my hands on a copy of this book. In fact, I've checked bookstores downtown and in the suburbs for several months now. When Rajiv Chandrasekaran first appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to talk about the book, I was hooked. So finally, I found it in the bookstore just before my trip. I was able to read it cover to cover in about a day and a half, mostly while on the plane.

 

Rajiv was the Washington Post's Baghdad bureau chief before and during the invasion by the U. S. and subsequent rule by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), led by Paul Bremer. Mr. Bremer, by the way, has his own book out, My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope.

 

The book tells the very candid story of what it was like to work in the CPA and it tells it on several levels. Organized roughly chronologically, Rajiv focuses on specific ministries and people to build a sense of how the U. S. tried, usually without success, to improve the conditions in post-invasion Iraq. Interspersed throughout the book are shorter stories involving danger and action that illustrate the severe nature of a conflict zone.

 

The part of the book I found fascinating was the discussion of Paul Bremer's seven step plan and how it was rendered inoperable by a fatwa issued by the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. It's a long story, so you'll have to read the book, but basically, Bremer wanted to pick the people who would draft the constitution and Ali al-Sistani thought they should be elected. Bremer was lead to believe that this wouldn't be a significant issue, but it turned out that it was (partly due to his handling of it). The implications of this mis-read were profound, throwing the entire U. S. plan for creating sovereignty into crisis.

 

Good stuff. Give it a go.

Yeah, yeah, on with the story. Well, the irony is that I wasn't flying abroad, I was flying domestic. I won't tell you where I went, except to say that the size of the plane is really a red herring. It's not necessarily correlated to the size of the city I visited

 

Anyway, I have just discovered a problem with my setup here, with this photo.

 

 

Yeah, whatever. It's kindof a regular old airplane sunset photo. This plane was smaller, and probably flying at 10,000 or 12,000 feet as opposed to big jets that are sometimes three times higher (I've been up near 40,000).

 

The problem is that I've just recently started using Adobe's Lightroom and the color it renders is not the same as I see in the browser. This is even more annoying in that I am one of those rare people that actually has a color calibrated digital system. I've got a USB sensor that hangs in front of the screen to do spectrographic readings or something so that the colors match from the camera to screen to printer. But now, something is amiss.

 

Before that, though, I was ready to take pictures from the airplane. I had recently stopped by Circuit City. They seem to consistently run sales on Compact Flash memory. I picked up a couple of SanDisk Ultra II 2 G cards for something like $35 each.

 

So anyway, is that a nice dodge or what? Oh yeah, the trip. OK, I didn't go past the Rocky Mountains. It snowed while I was there. This is the control tower of the airport I flew in and out of.

 

 

And, finally, to answer the question of the guy sitting next to me, no, I don't have much from that trip to Boston that I'll use.

 

 

 

A friend of a friend raps about electronic tax preparation to win $25,000.

 

 

 

 

 

There was a bit of weather at the airport Tuesday as I headed out for a quick overnight trip.

 

 

The trip was really unusual for me after all the transatlantic flying I've been doing. For starters, I departed from terminal E, the international terminal. OK, here's how screwed up Logan Airport is. When I used to fly to London, I'd never leave from the international terminal, I'd leave from terminal B because that's where American Airlines is. I'd arrive in E, but leave from B. For this trip, I departed from E.

 

Now here is the really silly part of it all. It's late afternoon/early evening in Logan and there are a number of international departures (the red-eyes to Europe) and these planes, Aer Lingus, SwissAir, etc, large planes, are all at terminal E.

 

And then there is my gate, tucked away in a back corner.

 

 

I know, I know, that's a small plane. But I didn't say it was my plane, I said it was my gate. My plane is the even smaller plane in the upper left corner of the photo. It was waiting for this plane so it could pull in. But it wasn't waiting for the ramp. It's too small. This is a walk onto the tarmac affair.

 

Anyway, I have just returned and it is late and I'm going to sleep and tell the rest later...