I wrote this two days ago, but wasn't able to post it until now. I am now back home in Colorado:

Afghanistan

We just landed in United Arab Emirates.  Sorry I've been slow to reply on my Iraq posts, but it was because I was in Afghanistan the last two and half days.  I wasn't allowed to announce it ahead of time but now that I am back on "friendly" soil I can share my experiences as part of a Congressional Delegation visit to Afghanistan.

From an undisclosed location somewhere in the Middle East...

I am writing most of this entry from the backseat of a helicopter bound to Mosul from Baghdad. Wearing my flak jacket and helmet, grasping my laptop and typing, I see the Iraqi landscape beneath us, my earplugs protecting me from the roar of the blades and wind.

Scratch our destination.  Due to weather, we actually didn't make it to Mosul and had to land and spend the day at an Air Force Base in the middle of Iraq.  We are near where the Tigris and Euphrates split at Joint Base Balad, home of the 332nd, the descendents of the famed Tuskegee Airmen.

We spent the day learning about the airbase (which is a likely candidate to remain in operation after the "withdrawal" and visited the air command center, saw a Predator (unmanned drones), visited their hospital, and their chapel where their chaplain happens to be one of the few Rabbis in the Air Force.

We had lunch in the expansive mess hall and I sat at a table with servicemen from other parts of the country and listened to their experiences and opinions drinking purified water from the Tigris that they bottle on campus!

Congressman Jared Polis (D-CO) Middle East CODEL: Iraq, Part I
From an undisclosed location somewhere in the Middle East...

When I first visited Iraq in November of '07, I flew commercial to Jordan and the Baghdad, crammed into coach the whole way.

This time, on a Congressional CODEL, we flew business class from Dulles to Kuwait, where I sat next to a contractor from KBR, the former Halliburton subsidiary accused of various human rights abuses and contracting abuses.

As we settled in, we started to chat and he asked me whether I was going to Kuwait for business or pleasure.  I responded business.  We are not supposed to tell anyone ahead of time about these trips, so when he asked what my business was I murmured "e-commerce" in response.

"In the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors." ABIGAIL ADAMS TO JOHN ADAMS, MARCH 31, 1776

One of the most important pieces of legislation we'll soon be acting on in Congress is a national economic recovery package. A large portion of the new federal spending--perhaps  as much as 20 percent--will be focused on infrastructure construction, including transportation and school projects, energy efficiency improvements, and green economy investments such as smart grid expansions.

While President-Elect Obama is to be applauded for proposing a recovery plan that focuses on a wide number of areas, including education and healthcare,  the proposed infrastructure spending in the plan overwhelmingly benefits men and won't be of much help to unemployed women. In 2007, only 9.4 percent of the 11.9 million workers in the construction industry were female and in major infrastructure occupations with an employment base of 100,000 jobs, women held only about 3.9 percent of jobs. Without efforts to increase workforce diversity, this could lead to a massive shift of hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth from women to men.

Today, I laid out a comprehensive policy to help all American working families pay for high quality child care - click here to watch my video announcement. I will push for a federal guarantee of help with paying for child care for families earning below $40,000 a year; a sliding  scale of assistance for families with incomes above that; greater tax help for middle income families, and strong incentives for states to improve the quality of early education, provider training, and to expand access for all children.  Today, I also met with Google, a company that has been in the news after struggling with child care costs.

Although the Bush Administration rarely amazes me with their harmful environmental policies and selective and biased approach to scientific inquiry, this one, ironically, really took my breath away:

This morning, the New York Times reported that the EPA, responding to a Supreme Court ruling to determine the extent to which greenhouse gas poses a threat to the health and safety of people and the environment, sent a full report to the White House, via email, six months ago. The email, that included a conclusion with evidence surrounding the effects of greenhouse gasses, was never opened!

That's right - "Halliburton is an American success story..."

I could hardly believe that is what Dan Deline (Vice President, Government Affairs for Halliburton) wrote to me recently. It appears my candidacy for US Congress has alarmed the corporate bigwigs at Halliburton so much that they were compelled to write me a warning letter to not criticize them (to read the full copy of the Halliburton letter click here).

It seems my efforts to shine a light on the use of armed corporate mercenaries in Iraq and the corruption and waste within contracting operations in Iraq, has struck a nerve with Halliburton's Washington, DC, special interest lobbying apparatus.

The most interesting claim they make in their letter is, "We can find no contract between the Federal Government and Halliburton."

Standing on the podium last week with fellow progressive Democrats running for U.S. Congress, introducing our plan to end the war in Iraq, was both exciting and solemn; inspiring because we have a plan that offers hope both at home and abroad, but solemn because of the massive toll that includes the 4,000 U.S. troops that have been killed, the thousands upon thousands who have been injured, and the nearly one million Iraqis who are dead or displaced.

I returned from my trip to Iraq with observations very different than the portrayal of events in the mainstream media. Since then, I have made ending the war the centerpiece of my campaign for US Congress.