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We're at a U.S. Air Force base in Balad, Iraq, 50 miles north of Baghdad and a world away. The 332d Air Expeditionary Wing has assembled here an enormous force of people and machines that looks to me anything but temporary.
One of the unit’s many missions is the transport of injured U.S. troops “out of theater” to Germany and then on to hospitals at home. Tonight alone, the five beds in the emergency room and the two operating rooms have turned over again and again as waves of wounded U.S. troops and Iraqis arrive by helicopter or airplane. I’ll have lots more to say about the amazing care here online and on Nightly News soon, but back to Balad.
This was Saddam Hussein’s air base and the American military first bombed it in 2003, then took it over and have been rebuilding and expanding it ever since. The commanders here like to brag that, including helicopter flights, this is now the second-busiest airport in the world after London’s Heathrow. F-16s slam off the runway in shifts day and night with their afterburners blazing for surveillance missions -- and often to scramble to bomb a target. Giant transport planes bring in cargo that is then distributed in smaller planes to “forward operating bases” throughout the country. This avoids increasingly dangerous road travel whenever possible. A massive fleet of Black Hawk, Chinook and other helicopters ferries troops and material throughout the country.
The place looks like any Air Force Base in the U.S. or around the world with its PX, Difacs (dining facilities) and base housing in trailers. You just can’t go out the gate. The vast majority of the service people here will see nothing else of Iraq, and what they see here is a lot of dust that now turns to mud with the occasional winter rain. Concrete blast walls surround every building closely. Everyone jokes that they wish they had the contract for the concrete. (Kellogg, Brown and Root is building and maintaining the place.) Mortar rounds still hit the facility almost daily, but cause little damage.
And I’ll close with some good news: We just made contact with doctors at the Army hospital in Baghdad. The 6-year-old Iraqi girl I described here on Friday is doing great. A second surgery is giving hope that she will keep the use of her arm. Her parents found her and I’ll have lots more to say about her story in the days to come.
Read more from Robert Bazell, Robert Bazell in Iraq
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RISING TEMPERATURES
Well my friend you should be concerned.We are entering Ezekial 38. Read it. As everyone should know we are at war with Russia. They are supplying Iran which trickles down to Syria.Remember Putin is a communist and dos not like Jews.
Franklin Kiser, Greenville,PA (Sent Feb 4, 2007 7:05:30 PM)
I still have never heard Bush tell us exactly how the
"Iraqi Air Force", which has no armed aircraft and only four transport planes, will ever take over the massive US air support operations in Iraq, and nobody has ever asked him that question.
When is NBC news going to investigate that aspect
of the "training of iraqi forces"?
Iraqis will have to use trucks to supply their own
forces and they will have to drive the dangerous roads the US has avoided through airlifts.
Air attacks were critical in the recent Najaf battle and againg Iraqi forces could not have pulled it off
without CENTAF.
rex, Los Angeles CA (Sent Jan 31, 2007 6:07:27 PM)
My brother is a helicopter pilot who was deployed to Balad in 05/06. Fortunately for us he returned uninjured. As a vietnam era veteran and ex-social studies teacher I have been following the "war" fairly closely.
I am covinced that, not only the removal of Sadam in Iraq, but also the netralizing of Iran was in George Bush's "plans" from the time he began thinking about running for president. He is, after all, an apocaliptic, dominionist, Christian who wants to expidite the "end times." I cought on to this when he first diverted troops to Iraq under false pretenses, and I realized that we suddenly had US forces on the west as well as the eastern border of Iran. Militarily, we have Iran in a pincers. All that is required now is to provoke Iran into some act that will justify an attack. I can't imagine what that would entail, but I fear that Israeli forces might be involved. I am not normally paranoid or an alarmist, but this current business has me very concerned.
Wayne Morrow, Columbia, MO 65203 (Sent Jan 30, 2007 10:43:38 PM)
I had no idea things were so active. I wonder how strategic the position is with regard to Iran. Thanks for the report!
Chris Eldridge, Harrisburg PA (Sent Jan 30, 2007 4:58:05 PM)
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