Camp Liberty: Day 10
We got to go to a Toby Keith concert on Monday. He was here as part of the USO tour. I've never been a really big country fan, but it was an excellent show. A lot of the 3rd Infantry is from the south, so they all loved him. Later that afternoon we took a tour of Liberty South, the other side of the base. This base is huge, so none of us in my group had been to this part of the base yet. Liberty South is where [one of] Saddam Hussien's "Hunting Palaces" is located. The word "palace" is misleading though. "Compound" would have been more appropriate. This little section consists of many man-made lakes. About a dozen "Guest Houses" line these lakes. These Guest Houses are larger than most of the average homes in the U.S.. We drove by his personal Mosque, which was far from small, and his son's palaces, which were slightly smaller than his in comparison. He had murals carved in stone which lined a few parts of his private road. The murals depicted triumphant Iraqis in war situations, but looking closely, you saw that each of the faces in the murals were in Saddam's image (older face, mustache). Talk about an ego... Saddam's Palace is a little bigger than the size of a conventional U.S. estate house. We didn't get to go in, but got to walk around outside a little bit. You could see where some of the bombs landed. It was a pretty cool site.
During a tour of the rest of the base, I saw green for the first time in almost two weeks. Liberty South is much more beautiful than Liberty North. There are trees and many of the buildings that they military uses are old buildings that survived the bombing. Liberty North, on the other hand, is a bunch of metal buildings and tents. Liberty South was a sight for sore eyes.
A bunch of people in my group got their assignments yesterday. They will be heading out on Saturday. Those of us who are still in class will be getting our assignments sometime next week. I can't wait to finally know where I am going...
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