BAGHDAD – I got a bit of a walking tour of FOB Prosperity, where the 81st Brigade Combat Team’s 1st Squadron, 303rd Cavalry Regiment is based. That meant stops at one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces – complete with a gym under an ornate, marble ceiling – some of the Iraqi-run businesses and a two large, iron Saddam heads.

One of them has a few holes blown into it; you can peer inside and see the steel-girder structure. And if you want to have a fun photo to send back home, you can climb those bars and poke your head out his shoulder or the top of his head.

You know the old saying: You can’t understand a man until you’ve stood a minute in his head.

BAGHDAD – A 30-second oath will likely mean a promotion for a Washington National Guardsmen serving his third deployment to Iraq.

Sgt. Rick Scidmore of Tacoma re-enlisted for another three years at his unit’s operations center in Baghdad’s International Zone on Friday. The 48-year-old journeyman floor coverer – who is the armorer for B Troop, 1st Squadron, 303rd Cavalry Regiment of the 81st Brigade Combat Team – will now obliged to serve in the Guard until 2012.

Troop commander Capt. Jason Bledsoe – wearing the trademark Stetson hat of the cav unit – led Scidmore in the oath.

His reasoning behind re-upping is simple: “I did it so I could get a promotion,” said Scidmore, who will soon become a staff sergeant.

He’s trained as a cavalry scout and an aircraft refueler. He deployed with the 81st Brigade in 2004-05 and with the Washington National Guard’s 66th Theater Aviation Command in 2007-08.

He’s not finished: Scidmore plans to deploy next year to Afghanistan with the 66th TAC.

BAGHDAD – A few of the Iraqi-run shops in Baghdad’s International Zone sell dozens and dozens of stickers branded with Operation Iraqi Freedom. Pictures of the Homer Simpson in ACUs. Unit logos. European-style car stickers.

And a flag for just about every country that has troops or contractors here. Unfortunately, that means a really, really divisive one.

Many former South African Defense Force soldiers are serving in Iraq as private security contractors. The apartheid-era flag sticker sells pretty well, the owner of the one the shops told me.

"I sell this one all the time," he told me. "All the time."

How divisive is the apartheid flag? Think the Confederate flag, and make it offensive to 80 percent of your native country’s population.