Part of what we did in Iraq was to distribute toys, i.e. Beanie Babies and candy to the children to gain their trust, so to win their hearts and minds. I have chosen such benign objects as Beanie Babies, morphing them into creatures of malus. This is an attempt to understand my experiences in the war and how those experiences changed me as they did some of my comrades. How can you win their hearts and minds when you raid people’s homes in the dark of night? We had become the nightmare, not the saviors of civilization. My first project “Beanie Babies and Bullets” is a takeoff from an old term all you need is “beans and bullets.” I changed the characters from stuffed Beanie Babies to bronze and glass to give these benign creatures a twist of character. By changing the material of the characters from soft, cuddly stuffed animals to cast bronze and cast glass, I hope others are able to interpret this change and to create their own feelings about my art and the situations I present. I chose to display the original Beanie Babies with their bronze and glass copies in authentic army polyester butt-packs, to symbolize that the Iraqi people and US soldiers were all in the same situation together.