Basra, 7th February 2007

First things first, if anybody knows Jack Bauer please tell him to get his ass over here. We have a serious situation over here and a lot of people demanding and deserving some hot lead and lack of mercy from Jack Bauer- I've been doing my best to impersonate him but find the gunshots a little taxing on the ears and feel it highly irresponsible to drive whilst taking a phone call. Sorry for lack of e-mails, I know that you've all been waiting with baited breath for my next instalment, unfortunately tempo of ops (good non-sensical Military excuse that none of you will understand and therefore will be unable to question) and a Commanding Officer who will be found hanging off Waterloo Bridge if he doesn't appear in the New Years Honours List have kept Al Bauer's, not inconsiderable (i hear you say), nose to the grind stone. Anyway now he's gone on leave, in the spirit of true professionalism I've slackened off somewhat- so his, and Basra's loss. is your gain. Not that I imagine you will see it that way- and I doubt the Baswari's will realise

Anyway jesting aside it has been a somewhat taxing and depressing few weeks. The Baswaris, or more accurately the Baswari leaders, are proving exasperatingly duplicitous- only vague acquaintances with the truth but good friends with corruption, extortion and medieval thuggery. It's very hard to enforce law and order when the biggest crook is the chief of police and the main perpetrators of crime the policemen underneath him- we have created a monster. Having agreed wholeheartedly prior to the event, and even begged us to do it, once we actually blew up the Police Station before Christmas they all publicly denounced us and refused to talk to us for three weeks. No great loss, they only agreed to 'swallow their pride' when we stopped their monthly allocation of US reconstruction money. It is unfortunate that the way to reduce crime is to arrest every single policemen and throw them into the Shatt Al Arab with bricks attached to them- last week in the space of three days they blew the head off one of our Platoon commanders and then shot our 72 year old interpreter in the hands legs and head- so I'm afraid the stream of mercy is running a little dry at the moment. A medieval society trying to get to grips with a newly enforced democracy is a delicate and largely unappetising prospect. I perceive the main effort amongst the US and British hierarchies now is to extract ourselves with minimum humiliation and embarrassment...my how the Iranians must be rubbing their hands...and supplying the weapons.

In the meantime we continue to meander around the streets trying to buy friends with American money and wait for Tony to come up with some form of meaningful policy on Iraq rather than just blindly following the Americans. On a lighter side today, for the first time since prep school, I was kissed by another man. (you see all those he have stubbornly persisted and read this far are finally rewarded with a nugget of gossip). He was early fifties, probably quite good looking in his day, and wearing a fetching tea-towel on his head- but considering we had just given him $30 000 I thought that I was a little short changed with only a kiss. Beefcake seemed to get way more than that for this 150 pounds in Vauxhall. All you ladies out there will be glad to hear that it was not a road to Damascus moment, a bolt of realisation did not strike me from behind, the path to happiness did not suddenly appear all pink and fluffy before me...so sorry lads- and you know who you are- the 'love that dare not speak its name' obviously had a bit of a tickly cough on the day the Arab sheik kissed me, though a budding Arabist and ardent self publicist I felt unable to follow in the footsteps of Lawrence of Arabia.

Anyway enough school boy illusions to homosexuality- must remember that I'm thirty. Oh yes and at the end of the tour I will be unemployed so if any of you know anybody who needs to employ somebody and pay them lots of money to do not a great deal then I think I'm your man.