Well I was in Afghanistan and not Iraq. Everyone seems to ask about Iraq - so I have no info for you if that is what you were looking for. As far as Afghanistan goes -
I worked detainee operations, dealt with suspected or known enemy combatants/terrorists that were caught/captured. The stuff that happened at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq affected us in that we had a lot of inspections to make sure we weren't doing anything wrong. Lots of brass around all the time but they were happy with the way we were running things and complimented us on it all the time. I got to travel out to some Afghan villages in convoys to do some humanitarian aid type stuff on my off days, and for the most part the Afghani people liked us and wanted us there. They are afraid the Taliban will come back if we pull out and don't want us to leave tham hanging. I got to go on several helicopter missions (CH-47 Chinooks) to forward fire bases to pick up detainees - that was more fun than being at the "prison".
The base I was on was pretty safe for the most part. We were under rocket attack about 17 different times during the year, all you can do is go to the nearest bunker and wait for the rockets to stop coming. Fortunatley, the people shooting them usually just propped them on a rock and set some kind of crude timer (since they didn't want to be waiting around for an ass - whoopin). So thank goodness their aim was poor and hardly ever came close to us. Closest one was about 100 yards from me, and that was close enough for my liking.
The area outside our wire was heavily mined. One night I woke up to big boom about 150 yards away and heard a guy screaming. It was a local national outside our perimeter who went walking in the dark and ran out of luck....
I was glad to be in Afghanistan as opposed to Iraq, it was much safer for the most part. And we had a small PX on the base and later on got a little trailer with a limited burger king in it. Now thats not too bad for a combat zone!!!
