Free Republic

Going to work these days for Martin Miller means carpooling in an armored Humvee. He's also adjusting to life thousands of miles from his Kansas home - living in an 18-foot-by-10-foot room in a dusty city nearly 150 miles north of Baghdad. Not that Miller minds. The Hutchinson resident has gotten used to the way of life. It's all part of his new duty to bring a war-torn Iraq into the 21st century. "I'm part of something that is making a difference," Miller said Monday during his short visit to Kansas. "There's a little bit of progress going on, and...

My work here in Kirkuk, Iraq is falling into a normal routine that I, and probably everyone else who is aware of my current U.S. State Department Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) employment, would not have thought possible. The normal Iraqi work week is Sunday through Thursday. On those days, I travel to the KGB (Kirkuk Government Building) to work with local Iraqis. Friday and Saturday, I stay back at the PRT office to work with all of the PRT staff. The PRT staff is divided into several smaller sections focusing on infrastructure, rule of law, education, economics, agriculture, governance and...

Hutchinson’s Martin Miller, Kansas Department of Transportation public affairs manager, left in December to take a one-year post as a public diplomacy officer as part of the U.S. State Department’s Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Iraq. PRTs are the civilian component of the U.S. surge strategy – designed to support and reconstruct Iraqi neighborhoods. Miller writes about his experiences based in Kirkuk, Iraq’s fourth-largest city, with a population of about 700,000. The city is 155 miles north of Baghdad at the foot of the Zargos Mountains in northern Iraq. Hello All, I tried to stay up to watch the Super Bowl,...