bluewater, can I suggest you add your post to the "You can tell when you've been in the Middle East too long..." thread on jet blast? After some years in the desert, I'm as paranoid as the next bloke about my (expat) lords and masters, but I think you've been reading too many Robert Ludlum novels, mate.
Andu – affirmative, been around ME and other more clandestine areas in my 20+ aviation years, which reaffirms my “speculation”. As an aside, occasionally get the MRS to slip into an abaya for our evening distraction, which makes me think (and you I suspect) the ETD is not too far-away! PS. Who’s Robert Ludlum?
bluewater - having read your post I wanted to ask you what you thought about the Twin Towers conspiracy documentary?
Nicholas49 – I think you know my answer to that. Curiously, we just had an interesting topical conversation over dinner on my latest night stop, over exactly that. Worthy of note, the Americans recently opened there biggest Embassy (outside of the US) in IRAQ, being somewhat self-evident that there’s going to be a fairly sizable commitment to Iraq by the U.S. government in all forms, for several years, 21 buildings on 104 acres.
I am diverging from topic at hand and Andu, yourself and foxandfirkin will want me locked up.
thefoxandfirkin – heaven forbid, not suggesting for a minute there was any “tea and bikies” and they gave the poor bloke a brief! That would be ranked next to the lunar landing!
BTW – its only a theory...a bloody good one
PS. "You can tell when you've been in the Middle East too long when you know which end of swarma to unwrap.
Best of luck to the crew. Whatever caused the predicament, it seems they solved it very well.