Quad City Scale Modeler

November 2007

Meeting minutes:

            Despite lower than hoped for attendance, the October meeting went well.  SGM Dan Bowman of the 2nd Battalion 123rd Field Artillery, Illinois National Guard spoke on his experiences in Iraq, and it was incredibly interesting and enlightening.  The slide show presentation gave us a view of the country, people and daily life that we rarely, if ever, get to see.  We are generally presented with the rather myopic evening news view of nothing but a war-torn area.  While that absolutely exists, there is also the reality that life goes on.  He presented video clips of downtown Baghdad with no fighting in sight, open stores, city traffic and vendors going about their normal routines.  There was one scene of a US convoy traveling into Baghdad on a four-lane highway lined with palm trees, with very American-looking on/ off ramps and overpasses.  If you take out the obviously European cars and trucks this area could easily pass for parts of Florida or southern California (without the bikini-clad babes unfortunately!).  There were also views of some local children he and his group befriended.  One picture showed a girl holding a pair of flip-flops.  Dan’s wife had sent a large box of them as the children, particularly girls, do not wear shoes.  There were shots of Dan and friends having tea with the local Mutar, who is essentially the equivalent of a village Mayor, and he gave Dan a lesson on the order of Iraqi priorities.  They are tribe, religion, family country.  I’ll let the readers draw their own conclusions on the ramifications of that.  There were also a number of pictures of Saddam’s former palaces, in Baghdad and his home town of Tikrit, which he had built for himself and his cronies.  In one area there were five or six in what amounts to a “compound” of sorts.  Dan said that during their construction any needed materials were commandeered from local suppliers, and those suppliers were forbidden to sell materials to anyone else unless and until Saddam’s needs were met. The pictures of the insides showed high-end marble tile virtually everywhere, with bathroom fixtures that were actually gold-plated.  In interesting contrast to that were pictures of the mud brick huts of the average Iraqi.  Dan mentioned if anyone had seen the movie “The Ten Commandments” and remembers the scene where the slaves were slogging away in a pit making mud for bricks, then they know the way it’s done to this day.

A big Thank You to Bob Horton for arranging with SGM Bowman to be with us.  It has been a monumental effort on Bob’s part to make this happen.  With the less than stellar turnout I’m not sure Bob will be willing to put this kind of effort into another event.  Also, another thank you to him and his wife Elaine for providing soda, cookies,

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