The World According To Chris Brewer

First off, just really quick, someone at work today brought to my attention that something I had posted in a previous entry could be construed as violating the military’s operational security policy. Even though the fact I posted was “common knowledge,” still it came close to violating the OPSEC guidelines. I had no clue that what I posted was a sensitive topic, and I apologize for it…action has been taken to correct it and the sentence that was put into question has been removed.

Moving on…

Today I covered U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad’s visit to the newly renovated Al-Huriya Youth Center in Northwest Baghdad. It was a pretty neat place to visit, and it was a youth center and athletic club combined. It wasn’t an ordinary athletic club as Olympic athletes from sports such as boxing, wrestling and soccer trained there.

I shot footage of the building, of people touring it, of the athletes training…and let me tell you, I guarantee you won’t see anything other than the fact that the Ambassador spoke about getting an Iraqi government formed, on any civilian news station. It’s sad because I shot footage alongside CNN, AP and Reuters photographers and videographers, and the only video reports they gave focused on the fact stated above. Sad, because there were a lot of good stories to come out of the day.

All the Iraqi athletes were handed gold rings for their participation in the 2004 Olympics, and it was really neat to see the Olympic Committee chairman up on the podium as well. Just think….four years ago, Uday Hussein was running the Olympic committee and torturing athletes if they didn’t do well. Now, they play for national pride, and the people I talked to said they need to give their nation something to hope for because, in their own words, “right now is a difficult time.”

I talked with the only Iraqi soccer player I met who knew English, and he told me of their victory over Portugal in the Olympics. I remember watching that game…Iraq accidentally kicked in an own goal to start the game out but somehow pulled out a 4-2 victory over Portugal (who I might add, played in the finals of the Euro 2004 soccer championships that year). It was exciting to recap the game with the gentleman, and you could just see that even though Iraq didn’t win a medal — they lost in the bronze medal game — they were still proud of what they had done.

In other news, Senator John McCain brought a delegation to the IZ today. I got a photo with Sen. McCain and will post it as soon as I can.

Right now though, it’s the middle of the night, I can’t sleep, but I’m gonna try to again. Peace.

[tags] Iraq, senators, war [/tags]