It is the last official day of summer. It's only 112 degrees today. There might even be a hint of fall in the air. Today is our celebration of Labor Day and we're as close to closed as this place ever gets. Unfortunately, someone forgot to give the day off to the crew who started stacking sandbags outside my trailer early this morning.

Although it now seems like an ancient memory, I had a great trip to Jordan a few weeks ago. I don't know that you'd want to fly halfway around the world just to go to Jordan, but it was a delightful getaway. Compared to Baghdad or even San Salvador, it felt very safe. I saw maybe five guns the entire week I was there. Maybe I just hadn't read all the proper security warnings (remember that it was in Jordan that a USAID employee was assassinated in his driveway a few years ago) but I was never worried about safety. I took a short bus trip up to Jerash to see Roman ruins one day, and then took a 3.5 hour bus trip down south to Petra. It was great to be on a minibus, rubbing elbows with the sweaty masses, not wearing a bulletproof vest, complaining when the bus driver tried to charge me $2.50 rather than the actual $2 fare.

Jerash (see Snapfish pictures attached) is impressive, but it was my first Roman ruins and I have no standard of comparison. The city was part of Rome's Decapolis, the 10 cities of the Roman empire in the Arab world, as was Amman (known in days of yore as Philadelphia). It has the presumably standard grand plaza with columns, ancient stone road with chariot ruts, temple of Diana with more columns, amphitheatre with Jordanian bagpipers, and of course a church built atop a mosque built upon a temple.

The real reason to go to Jordan is Petra (see Snapfish pictures attached). It is stunning: a world of ancient buildings carved into rosy sandstone cliffs. The site is naturally beautiful and would be worthy of a long hike even without the ruins. To get to Petra, you have a walk a mile down the Siq, which is a long narrow canyon. The main excitement here is Jordanian kids riding their donkeys, camels, and horse-drawn buggies full-speed, weaving in and out of the tourists. They wait down below, offering "taxi, taxi" to tourists too tired to walk back out.

The Siq deadends into the Treasury, the emblem of Petra. It is the best preserved and perhaps most elaborate of all the buildings. It stands alone. It is a grand facade several stories tall, with columns, niches for statues, and all sorts of architectural detail carved into the red sandstone. The books and tour guides generally agree that all the buildings, including the Treasury, were built as tombs.

From here, the valley opens out. Everywhere you look, there are facades. Some are huge, others are not, some are well-preserved, some are melting away after 2000 years of wind and a little rain. Generally there isn't much "inside" the rock - only a small square room where the family was buried. In addition to the original tombs, there are some later additions, including several free-standing churches.

I spent a total of about 12 hours, spread over two hot, sunny days in the site, and it really wasn't enough. It takes a while to adjust to the scale and verticality of the place. The second day, I kept finding stairs, carved into the rock. Looking for a chance to get away from the hordes of tourists, I always climbed them, and had some amazing views from up above. Wow. Thank you, ancient Nabateans.

Back in Iraq, the Security Office says that August was the worst month yet in terms of bombings, mortar attacks, etc. Fortunately, I was in Jordan the day that a rocket hit the Palace. Even more fortunately, Saddam built nice strong walls here, and no one was seriously injured in the attack. Then, on my first morning back, there was an electrical fire in one of the computer rooms. (see Snapfish pictures attached) Again, no one was hurt, but the fire burned bright and hot through a couple of adjacent plywood offices. They gave us the morning off.

The attacks have slowed considerably since Moqtada Sadr left the shrine in Najaf. Thanks to Sistani for bringing a moment of calm, but no one thinks that the Sadr issue is resolved. I talked to a colleague who toured Najaf yesterday. He said that the old city area around the Shrine of Ali is completely decimated. The US and Iraqi militaries are largely responsible for this physical destruction, at least in the literal sense. However, he reports that the people who live around the shrine were friendlier than ever towards Americans, stopping them in the street to thank them for driving Moqtada out of Najaf.

Democracy-wise, we've still got a long way to go. We briefly believed that the government had eliminated the local councils that my office has worked so hard to create. In fact, the government's plan is still a draft and for the moment the councils continue. In the middle of a long loud meeting in which the councils were trying to figure out their future, they told me to get a letter from the Ambassador declaring that the government couldn't eliminate them. I told them that the Ambassador doesn't run Iraq, and that if they wanted such a letter, they should ask the Prime Minister. This didn't make them happy. The City Council chairman said, "fine, if the Embassy won't support us, maybe John Kerry will" and he pulled from his wallet the card of a Kerry staffer whom he had recently met.

This is a funny place.

Wish you were here.
Rob