damage assessment and Nick Berg

Last night around nine o’clock the KBR rep and I went up to the room where the mortar hit to assess the damage. Clean up had already started and plywood applied and the real heavy work will begin today. Missle damage freaks people out if they look at it too long.
I was technically there to assess what kind of work orders would be put in for the repair work but lets face it…we love to rubber neck and gawk. I’d always imagined rockets and mortars scratching the surface and then bouncing around on the palace roof/ But this one blew a two foot hole in the roof then blasted out an eight foot whole thru the plaster and rebar of the ceiling. My jaw dropped, not the least because this happened 60 feet from my second story office. When I walked into the room I couldn’t believe the people lived thru it. In fact the only reason the woman wasn’t killed is because she had walked over to the copier.
After looking at the damage and being amazed that the AC was still flowing thru the smashed up duct work I walked on back to my hooch. I sat outside drinking Tuborgs with my neighbor Mike. He’s an older guy, retired Air Force who is here now as a contractor. He told about being in Somalia and Vietnam then we talked about Iraq and rebuilding the infrastructure etc. Then we laughed at all the people who work in the compound and carry around pistols, even when they don’t go out. I told him all I carried a hunting knife because no SOB was going to cut off my head. He said he carried a machete in Vietnam for the same reason. “Speaking of cutting off people’s heads I worked with Nick Berg back in the winter. We were up in Mosul together.”
He said that Nick came to their compound and stayed with them for a few weeks.
“He was a free spirit, well, read and smart but he didn’t have any sense…One day we were out looking at the comms tours up around Mosul and he said he was going to climb to the top of the tour to check out the wiring. I told Nick, you can’t go up there, there’s an inch of ice on every rung of that ladder’, well he climbed it anyway, part of the way then came back down and told me I was right.”
Berg had an uncle by marriage who taught at the university in Mosul. He went out to visit him sometimes, said he’d just catch a cab. I told him not to do it. I said, “Nick you got curly hair and that Jew nose, and light skin, you’ll stick out like the balls on a dog. But he went anyway.”
Mike said he couldn’t believe it when he saw Nick Berg on television, being held hostage.
So often Iraq seems harmless but then you have to do damage assessments, figure out what needs to be done, and how much Americans will have to pay.