• U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop and family spend Thanksgiving with Georgia troops overseas.

CAMP ARIFJAN, Kuwait – U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop, D-Albany, and his wife, Vivian, are spending the Thanksgiving holidays with U.S. troops and support personnel at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, and Baghdad, Iraq.

Bishop, touring the region with members of the Defense Appropriations Committee, enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner at Camp Arifjan, a logistics and supply base about 40 miles south of Kuwait City, with members of the Bainbridge-based 1230th Transportation Unit of the Army National Guard.

"These brave men and women represent the very best of our nation. And on this Thanksgiving weekend, we give thanks for their service and dedication and pray for their success and safety. It's humbling to spend my holiday with them," Bishop said Friday.

U.S. investigators are currently reviewing a sample of about 6,000 U.S. military contracts worth $2.8 billion awarded by a single office at Camp Arifjan, after a U.S. official admitted before committing suicide last year that she accepted bribes to award certain contracts to an American company. The Associated Press reported Friday.

On his first visit to the area since his appointment to the appropriations committee, Bishop traveled Friday to Baghdad. The Bishops planned to be back in the United States by early this week, said Caroline Burns, Bishop's press secretary.

During the trip he was to meet with U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, Commander of Multinational Forces David Petraeus and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, the statement said.

http://albanyherald.com/archives/News/2007/front112507b.html

Susan McCord