  Hi all!! Well, here I am in the lovely, ancient city of Baghdad! I've got a gig here with FOX NEWS. We're at the Sheraton Hotel, which is across the street from the famous Palestine Hotel! That's the hotel where all the press was that got hit during the war with a lot of ground fire. Three Journalists were killed in that. KBR, the big American contractor, has built a compound around both the Palestine and Sheraton Hotels. It's complete with large concrete blast walls, armed Ghurka guards, and a contingent of US military guys that also use the Sheraton (the taller of the 2 hotels) as a military observation post (they have an awful lot of weapons for "observing"). KBR has a lot of their employees in the two hotels so, wants them to be as safe as possible when their relaxing and sleeping! Anyway, so far things are fine with us here. We have car bombs going off about every other day around the city. The last one killed about 35 Iraqis! The same day we had a rocket attack on the hotel compound!
Two 122mm rockets came in and made a lot of noise but, only minor damage. The news in that was, it confirmed the hotels as a legitimate target for the insurgents! It's not enough that they target the contractor vehicles with their suicide bombers, they also want to kill us as we're sleeping!! The good news in all of this is that, I don't have to leave the hotel very much. My job requires me to be in the room that we call the MCR (master control room) most of the day (and night).
The only time I have to go out is when we have to use the mobile uplink kit, or what we call the SNG (Satellite News Gathering). Speaking of which, we have to take it out tomorrow to bring over to the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) to cover the preliminary hearings on the court martial of the soldiers who "abused" the prisoners at the infamous Al Gharib Prison.
Hopefully, that will prove to be pretty boring (i.e. no bombings in our area). After that, I'll still have a little over 3 weeks left (with FOX NEWS). Then it's back home to start sorting out a possible big business deal for my fledgling company, Pacific Frontier Communications, Inc. I hope it will be the type of business that will generate enough revenue that will keep me home most of the time. I feel confident that it will but, I won't fool myself into thinking it will be easy! Well, that's it for my first "Blog"! I'll write again soon. Cheers 
