Baghdad pre-blog 2;  On the bus to Winchester, Va.  FACT Training

• How real is this?  Is this some game we play with the world at our feet, going to the wilds of Va. (just off 81) to simulate the land of Babylon as if the terrorism of ancient Mesopotamia is only a step away from the Federal Highway and the strip mall next to Holiday Inn?  Somewhere down the back roads of the idyllic rolling countryside where the rich tend their horses, we pretend the land where the bloody Assyrians to Tamerlane's hordes and then finally murderous Sadam ransacked, pillaged, tortured and left not stone on stone in the winds of the desert. 
• There is a surreal quality to the whole thing.  As we get on the bus to go to counter-threat training, the driver calls the names.  The first one on the list is, "Mohammed" he calls out loud, without a hint of jest.  Calmly and sharply Mohammed answers and the list goes on.
• Leaving our Hotel at the crack of dawn, the world has a quiet, numb quality.  I have broken some strange wondering dream to rise to the alarm and the sun is a dull white eye as we ride down the country road.  The sun is like the sleepy eye that views it, only half awake to its world.  And then as we turn the corner and peer directly to the East we can see its rise has tinted the sky a shallow red over the dull white gray, like a blood stain that would not rinse from a bed sheet but spread itself thin across the whole wash.  I am reminded suddenly and rudely of the old adage; "red sky in morning, ...take warning..."