...what?

Every so often I have these “…what?” moments with the Iraqi Army.

Case in point, I went to find an Iraqi officer who was supposed to meet me for dinner. I sat down in his office and used my rudimentary Arabic on one of his brother officers. Then an Iraqi lieutenant colonel walks in and they talk amongst themselves. The first officer proceeds to whip out a tazer, and turn it on for his boss. It sparked and made a series of unfriendly cracking noises. I’ve never had a normal conversation that ended with someone whipping out a tazer. So there’s my first “…what?” moment of the day.

I don’t speak that much Arabic, but I’m pretty sure the LTC said “Dude, that totally reeks of awesomeness, let me try.” The LTC grabs the tazer, turns it on and jokingly jabs the active tazer at his buddy. Ha ha! What fun.

Finally, the guy I’m waiting for shows up…and then he grabs the tazer and waves it around. There I am, a lone American officer in a room full of Iraqi officers who are PLAYING WITH A TAZER. The third officer took the tazer into the hallway…and chased some of the Iraqi Army soldiers up and down the hallway with the tazer “…what?”

I suppose I should have admonished the IA for playing with something that is definetly not a toy, but when a bunch of Iraqis are jabbing at each other with a tazer designed to incapacitate cattle, discretion is the better part of valor.

It would be easy to scoff at the Iraqi Army for this incident, but Coalition Forces aren’t any smarter.

A few weeks ago, some of the Soldiers assigned to my little slice of heaven decided to buy themselves a tazer. A big one, one that meant business. Thankfully, one of the senior non-commissioned officers heard the device crackling, investigated and confiscated the Mother of All Tazers. Why did they buy the tazer? One of the Soldiers wanted to zap his buddy with it, and his buddy was OK with the plan, so long as the zapping was filmed for YouTube…what?!

Ladies and Gentlemen, Coalition and Iraqi Army forces are winning the war. I leave you with that fact.