E-mail

I get a lot of crazy e-mail about projects I've worked on. The crazies come from all sides of the political spectrum and seem to think I have a special pipeline to Bush, Maliki or the CEO of my company (none of these things are true). Here are some favorites:

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(CCed to the CEO of my company, president@whitehouse.gove, vicepresident@whitehouse.gov)
Of course you hid the report on the devastating conditions in Iraq as a result of George Bush's war that you love and support. You don't want people to know how he and you murdered and maimed innocent people and destroyed a country for no good reason. George Bush, Dick Cheney and you make America sick. And that's nothing compared to what you've done to Iraq.

SD

Alexandria, VA

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(in response to an Oxfam report about declining humanitarian conditions in Iraq)
Oh yes life in Iraq was much better before we came and screwed it up. The practice of towing a power tree shredder into a family yard and putting the wife and kids in feet first, while dad watched the goo spraying all over the side of the house, was much better than now .... don't ya think? Or how about the 500 person mass grave yards, where people were buried alive clutching their children? Or the village gas killings? Just harmless play ... right?

John

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I'm not sure if you can help me but maybe you can send me in the right direction. I'm writing a screenplay involving international military operations both covert and public. Where do you go when you want to find specific details of international military operations for example ex-military personell.

Thanx,
Demetrius

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(the CAPS are his, not mine)
You are now saying what I have tried to tell my political representatives since 2003 when I retired and started researching the Iraq debacle. Reference to Senator Durbin and O/Bama regarding letters attempting to get them to inquire within their own experience why the way out of Iraq has left completely the WHAT ABOUT THE PEOPLE out of consideration.

Second, another bump in the road that U.S. is constantly hounding the Parliament with is the Oil Project. This is very important to the Iraqi process of survival due to their income for operations and distribution - 95% of which comes from OIL. . The OIL PROJECT document as written by U.S. is an indicator of not serving good will with favor. Over 75% of the oil revenue would be distributed to U.S. and 4 large oil companies. Results: financial suicide if the Parliament permits this instrument to live. Thus the reason the Oil Project is shelved by the Parliament until adjustments are agreed to.

Which brings about another problem for Bush since he has his STAY THE COURSE mantra blaring but not considered by most WHY.. The WHY is the OIL PROJECT. Without this document being signed, there can be no representation of even perhaps exiting Iraq. This due to the promises at the inception of the invasion or prior. The PNAC handbook states that all will share richly in the protection of our assets - OIL. To those who had an inkling otherwise, the only reason for the invasion was OIL and is still OIL or the revenue of.

My hope is that you and other reporters can use the IRAQ CONDITION issue to awake those who only think military and political to attain another view more directly related to success in Iraq FOR ALL IRAQ.

WC

A must-read

I'm totally exhausted from the soccer madness today, so I'll let somebody else do the talking: Steve Fainaru, a Washington Post investigative reporter (and 2006 Pulitzer Prize finalist), has a phenomenal in-depth look at a private security contractor that was working in Baghdad until last spring. Five guards were kidnapped last November, which Fainaru conclusively shows was the result of poor training, mismanagement and bad decision-making. Private security is a huge, multi-billion-dollar industry in Iraq, and I can't believe Crescent is the only company making these types of dumb choices. The full article is here; part two runs tomorrow.

Money quotes include:

"Schneider oversaw Crescent's security operations for more than two years, despite having pleaded guilty, according to court records, to misdemeanor charges of breaking and entering and domestic violence in Michigan in the mid-1990s."

"Crescent crafted its own military identification badges to enable its employees -- including unscreened Iraqis -- to gain admittance to U.S. bases."

"Reuben, the company medic, was a self-described alcoholic who was not certified as an emergency medical technician and had resigned as a suburban Minneapolis police officer in 2003 after a drunk-driving violation."

The trouble with love

In Iraq it can be the simplest things that cause all the trouble. I just spent an hour consoling D, who was in tears because of her boyfriend. The man in question lives next door, but they rarely see each other because another man in his office has connections to the Mahdi Army and has made threats toward them. They talk on the phone almost every day, but he regularly tells her that he is moving out of the country soon and won't take her with him. Today, she asked him to write down her parents' contact info in case something happens to her, and he didn't want the commitment (although he tells her all the time how much he loves her). D's parents live in Basra, a few hundred miles away, and most of her close friends from college have moved out of the country, so she's very lonely--and this boyfriend doesn't seem to be helping matters.

Dating and love are incredibly complicated matters around here. It makes me grateful for what I've got, even if it is 7,000 miles away. If you're in the same place as someone you love today, give them a hug, okay? For D and me.

Food

I like Middle Eastern food, I really do (Iraqi food isn't very different from that of any neighboring country). Hummus, babaganoush, lamb, bring it on. In general, I'll eat almost anything. But the food at our house is truly terrible.

The main problem is meat products I can't identify. Often I'll get a plate with a grayish, shiny piece of something. I try to avoid consuming any piece of meat whose animal of origin is unknown. Around here, that means I eat mostly vegetarian. Let me be clear in saying I don't think this is a problem common to all Iraqi food, but specifically created by our lousy cook (I feel bad about saying it, because she's very sweet, but...) I was surviving basically on flatbread and hummus for a while, but inexplicably we haven't been served hummus in a week. Consequently I think I'm a bit protein starved.

And oh, the oil. Everything is cooked in gallons of the stuff. It makes it fairly unappealing to look at, and it doesn't feel so good sitting in my stomach an hour later. Some of these dishes could be fairly tasty if not for the overpowering taste of canola oil.

Today for lunch I was served unrecognizable meat in a sauce that tasted like ketchup, rice and cucumber and tomato salad. I ate the salad and rice. For dinner it was the oiliest sausage patties ever, another unidentifiable cut of meat, bread and more cucumber and tomato salad. I ate bread and salad. We've got to bring back the hummus around here.

Art for art's sake

Today I visited an art gallery in northern Baghdad, where I got to spend an hour chatting (in English, no less) with several painters and sculptors. We talked about how art has changed since the war began, the difficulty in trying to sell art in Baghdad and the reasons they choose to remain in Iraq. One man estimated that 80 percent of Baghdad's artists either have been killed or have fled the country. He told me he hated Saddam, but that he has to admit life was easier for artists before the Americans overthrew the dictatorship. Art for art's sake is no longer respected, he said--now, Moqtada al-Sadr might hire an artist to paint his portrait, but nobody wants to buy a beautiful abstract painting.

Several artists also lamented the role religion has begun to play in artistic expression. Paintings that show women without their heads covered, for example, are frowned on in many circles. People tell artists that they're wasting their time, that they should be "doing something useful." Almost all of the galleries in Baghdad--once considered the cultural capital of the Middle East--have closed. Just three students graduated from Baghdad's Academy of Fine Arts this year.

But despite the solemn tone of a lot of our discussion, I found the visit somewhat inspirational. In the outdoor cafe behind the gallery, two dozen artists and students sat around drinking coffee and talking about art. The women wore jeans or knee-length skirts and removed their hijabs.
They spoke passionately about the role of art in a troubled country, about their love for Iraq and their dedication to expressing that love through sculpture or painting. As I walked back to my armored car and retied my hijab around my head, I felt a little less confined.

Soccer

The Iraqi soccer team beat Vietnam 2-0 in the quarterfinals of the Asia Cup yesterday, setting off a wild celebration across Baghdad. Every television in the city would have been set to the game if it weren't for the lack of electricity, so instead people crowded around TVs in homes or businesses with private generators.

The significance of this team to the people of Iraq probably cannot be overstated. As we're often reminded, there are Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds who play, and Iraqis love them all because they bring pride to the country. The celebratory gunfire after the big win yesterday lasted for more than an hour (12 people were accidentally killed, but we try not to let this diminish the celebration). On Wednesday, Iraq will play the winner of today's Iran-South Korea match in the semifinals.

In a soccer-crazed country, it's hard not to get excited about the team's success. Yesterday I found myself cheering a brilliant goal by Iraq's star striker along with all of the Iraqis in our office. I'll tell you one thing: thanks to our generator, we'll all be watching Wednesday!

The visa question

Today's Washington Post has an important article about an unusual memo from the American ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker. Crocker is asking the Bush administration to provide visas for all Iraqis working for the U.S. government, including everyone from translators to service workers. Crocker wrote that he fears the government will lose its entire Iraqi staff unless they have the promise of a U.S. visa at the end of their service. ""Our [Iraqi staff members] work under extremely difficult conditions, and are targets for violence including murder and kidnapping. Unless they know that there is some hope of an [immigrant visa] in the future, many will continue to seek asylum, leaving our Mission lacking in one of our most valuable assets."

Crocker is certainly correct in his statement that Iraqis working for Americans risk their lives every day. As I've mentioned before, even those working for Americans unaffiliated with the government must lie about their employment even to their closest friends. Still, millions of Iraqis have been displaced--2.2 million to neighboring countries and another 2 million within Iraq, according to the U.N.--thousands of whom quit their American jobs out of fear that they would be killed. The promise of a one-way ticket to the U.S. would likely go a long way toward the ability to maintain a stable Iraqi workforce. But the article raises an important question: if you admit Iraq is unsafe for these people, what message does that send to everybody else? Shouldn't the goal be to make Iraq safe enough for Iraqis to live here?

The proposal has interesting ramifications for those of us working in the private sector, whose Iraqi coworkers would not be covered. Several staff members in our office are increasingly bitter that our company has not arranged for them to move to the U.S. By the time American security contractors, media companies, etc. leave Iraq, they will have to confront a difficult question about they level of responsibility they should take for the welfare of their staff members.

Argh

D and I were just told by our security chief that the main place we wanted to visit for a project we're working on is off-limits. M said that D could go, but it'd be too dangerous for an American.

We'll get the project done through other means, but it's still so frustrating to hear the list of things I'm not allowed to do. I'm clearly not going to fight M's decision--I'm not interested in risking my life more than necessary--but that doesn't make it any easier to accept. I came to Baghdad to see Baghdad, but without being in a military Humvee I get to see very little. I feel the same way I did when D and I left for their shopping trip the other day; like I'm a six-year-old who's not quite tall enough to ride the cool roller coaster or a 16-year-old who still has to sit at the kids' table. Rationally I get it, I really do--please don't post comments reassuring me that this is for the best. If you know me, you know I want to see and do everything for myself, and having that privilege taken away is difficult no matter what the circumstances.

Presumably I'll get used to this, but right now it sucks. And no, I don't really care that I sound like a petulant child.

Fun

Several friends and family members seem to think I'm working too hard and not having enough fun. Others have asked some variation of the question "What in the world do you do for fun in Baghdad?" The answer is not much, at least outside our tiny little neighborhood. But that's not to say we don't have any fun at all!

I've mentioned the swimming pool in the back yard, which feels pretty great when it's 115 degrees. Although everyone in our house is very liberal when it comes to social customs (I wear jeans and a t-shirt, not an abaya, in the house, which I wouldn't normally be able to do in a house full of Muslim men not related to me), a bathing suit would still be pushing the comfort limit for some of them. Consequently, I wear shorts and a t-shirt in the pool, which makes it difficult to swim laps but is fine for floating around. My friend and co-worker D had never been in a swimming pool before she started working here, so she asked me to teach her to swim. She's perfectly comfortable getting in the water, but the idea of actually swimming scares her a bit. I taught a few swim lessons back in my lifeguarding days, so I have some idea of how to do this, but D is going to be a challenge. I started by having her hold on to the side and kick her legs, but as soon as I let go, she stopped kicking. We've got some work to do.

Tonight the people in the hotel next door (who all work in "the industry") are throwing a party, which will be a rare chance for me to socialize with people who don't live here. They're almost all Americans, and almost all of them have been here for several months, so I'll be the new kid in the group. I don't think this will be a huge rager, but it should be fun.

Still, even though I'm having fun I realize there are so many things I don't get to do. Yesterday afternoon the two women in our office, D and I, went out shopping in the downtown neighborhood of Karrada. They very kindly asked me if they could bring me anything (and D ended up bringing me a very cool light-reflecting Iraq paperweight), but I didn't have anything else to do and wanted to go out with them. Of course I couldn't; it's too dangerous for an American to walk around out in the open, but it made me fiercely jealous.

The Republican Palace

Wow.

Today was my third trip to the Green Zone, but today was different. Today I got to see the Holy Grail of Americans in Iraq. The Republican Palace was the largest and most ornate of Saddam Hussein's many palaces until it became the American Embassy. I had heard stories about the miles of marble, the plush sofas, the intricate details in the architecture. Seeing it was a whole different story.

I went through 16 checkpoints to get from our front door into the palace, including close to a dozen full-body patdowns (in many cases, inexplicably, a privilege reserved only for women). Our car was searched three times, my ID was checked more than 20, and the whole process took nearly 90 minutes. Then, to get in the door, we were required to have an escort from one of the offices there (ours was a very lovely woman from State who was hosting us for lunch).

We didn't get much time to walk around inside, but I was in awe of what I did manage to see. Say what you will, Saddam had style. The place is obviously huge, with several great halls that were each 10 times the size of my apartment and many, many smaller rooms. Most of the space has been turned into offices now, but some of the larger rooms still have open space with fancy furniture. And the chandeliers... unlike anything I've ever seen.

We ate in the embassy's dining hall in the palace, which was set up college-style, but on a much larger scale. The options were plentiful, and all of it very American--hot dogs, hamburgers, subs, ribs, salads, etc. etc. Plus, there was a full Baskin-Robbins ice cream bar! It didn't seem to fit in with the grand display that was the rest of the building, but my pasta, salad and ice cream were delicious, thank you very much.

We passed by the (outdoor) palace pool on our way out, which was also gigantic and very elegant. A few embassy employees were swimming laps while a few others floated on inflatables. Apparently in the early days there was essentially a frat party going on there 24/7, but that doesn't seem to have lasted. Still, though, not a bad way of life.

Sadly, there are almost no photos of the palace online (probably because taking photos around the embassy is forbidden--more security restrictions). The one at the top is a view of the back of the palace with the pool in the foreground; the one further down is a lame shot of one of the giant ballrooms.

Dust storm

I actually can't believe that I'm writing two weather posts in one day, but this is just insane. As I acknowledged in the first post today, I've never spent time in a desert, so I didn't really understand what a sandstorm/duststorm/call it what you will was. Now I do, and it's both bizarre and disgusting.

Around 5 p.m. our time today, the sky turned brown. Not gray, as in to indicate a storm, brown. Khaki-colored, to be precise. I heard the wind whipping around and noticed a layer of sand on top of everything. Being the adventurous sort, I walked outside. Big mistake--by the time I came back in, I was covered in a very fine layer of dust. My hair had turned lighter, my navy blue shirt looked filthy, and my mouth tasted like sawdust. Very appealing, all of it.

A few minutes ago, M came back after taking a quick dip in the pool. The water on his body combined with the sand had made his entire body muddy. He proceeded to gleefully waddle around in a towel offering to hug everyone while we ran away and threatened him with pool cues.

So now when my glorious little weather widget (thanks again, MMS) says there's a duststorm, you know to avoid this place in July.

Welcome to the desert

If I were technologically savvy, I would insert some sort of little plug-in to this blog page that automatically displayed the current temperature in Baghdad (it occurs to me that I have friends, some of whom may even be reading this blog, who are technologically savvy. Just sayin'.) In layman's term's it's really freaking hot.

Now, I knew before I got into this that Iraq is a hot place. It's the desert, after all, and deserts are typically warm. But I guess I thought hot meant D.C.-in-August temperatures--100, maybe a little over on a bad day. And then I found this web site. There I learned that the average high temperature in July is 110 degrees. Yikes. A couple of weeks before I left, I looked at a huge worldwide weather map in USA Today and noticed that Baghdad was the hottest place in the entire world. This heat doesn't mess around.

Fortunately our house is air-conditioned, with the exception of the hallways and the bathrooms. I don't spend much time hanging out in the hall, but walking from the cool sanctuary of my bedroom to go take a shower is a rough transition. Even while taking a cold shower I can feel the hot air.

On Saturday, when I had to wait outside while the Green Zone's identification staff took an extended lunch break, I learned what 114 degrees feels like. People keep telling me that it's a dry heat, that it's so much more manageable than the humidity of D.C. Well, they're wrong. 114 is not manageable. 114 is brutal, cruel, inhumane. Especially in an abaya and hijab.

UPDATE: MMS wins the geeky friend prize, and I now have a weather display. Awesome.

Friends!

In addition to a couple other Americans, I work with a fairly large Iraqi staff. Some of those people I only speak to on the phone, others work in my office every day. They're an interesting group of people. Although the majority of them are middle-aged, there are also a few 20-somethings. I haven't learned everyone's name yet, and I won't publish their names here, but I thought I'd share a little about the ones I do know.

S was a captain in Saddam's military. When we went to the Green Zone the other day, he pointed out a building he wanted me to notice. In halting English he told me "That's where I worked for Saddam. I was captain!" Although S is hardly pro-Saddam, he likes to remind people that he was a major military figure. His wife and 5-year-old daughter live a few hundred miles from here, and he misses them constantly. Although he has a college degree, he's still taking classes, this time to earn a degree in Hebrew. He doesn't think this will have any practical application, but he's always wanted to learn.

M was a pilot (though I'm not sure if he flew commercially or militarily). He loves his job now (which involves a lot of risk-assessment work), but he says he misses flying.

K was a driver for an Egyptian company before the war. His son is a security officer who patrols a Baghdad home with an AK-47. K speaks very little English, but he loves to try. He thinks American civilians are totally fascinating and likes news about sports stars.

D is the person here that I've become closest to. She's the only female in the house with solid English skills, which she earned studying English literature in college. Now she's 25 and living with her cousin, her cousin's husband and their four children. She hates it there because it's so crowded, but her parents (both artists) moved a few hundred miles away and she has nowhere else to live. She's very chatty, loves pretty things (the cursor on her laptop is a rose) and is crazy about YouTube. She loves talking about how beautiful I am, although she's strikingly gorgeous. She's whip-smart, too.

SA rules the roost. He's worked here since the war started, is clearly brilliant, and is so good at what he does. Although he was also an English major in college, he learned the bulk of his English (which he speaks flawlessly, slang and all) from American movies. For several years, his job was to translate Hollywood films from English to Arabic for Saddam--I kid you not, Saddam told SA what he wanted to see, SA made it happen. Consequently, he's seen everything, and he can recite a ridiculous number of movie quotes because he's translated it all. He's a frequent customer of Baghdad's market for bootleg films, and currently sitting on his desk are several movies currently being shown in theaters. He seems a tad uncomfortable talking to women, but once you get him engaged he'll go.

The Green Zone

I got inside the Green Zone for the first time on Saturday to apply for an identification card. It was a long process. The most direct route from our office to the zone is closed to everyone without proper identification, and only two such identifications are issued per office, so I must take a much longer route. The advantage is that it winds through much of Baghdad (relatively safe neighborhoods throughout), which gave me a rare opportunity to see life outside. Non-government cars may not drive into the Green Zone, so we got out of the car just outside the gate and walked in. By the time we got to the building we needed, we had probably passed through a dozen checkpoints, all operated by soldiers with assault rifles. Since I didn't have the proper identification (that was what I was coming to get), I had to show a U.S. passport and company identification at each stop.

After about 15 minutes of walking, we arrived at the correct building. Sorry, the soldier out front informed us, they're out to lunch. When I asked when lunch was over, he politely informed me that it was from 12-1. I glanced at my colleague's watch and saw that it was 11:35. The soldier helpfully suggested that they had left early because "sometimes they want to go further away for lunch." Right.

So, we waited. And waited. I learned exactly what 112 degrees feels like, even if it is a "very dry heat." My colleague doesn't speak all that much English, and my Arabic is non-existent, so conversation was not really an option (although I did see a picture of his very beautiful 5-year-old daughter). At 1:05, they let us in.

Getting the ID was a relatively painless process--fingerprinting, mug shots and the like went pretty quickly. But by the time we got back to the office, a trip to accomplish one simple task in an area just a few miles away had taken nearly four hours. Ahh, Baghdad.

I have just one thing to say

Drinking salted buttermilk? Not very tasty.

Seriously now.

Thoughts on Khalid

Khalid W. Hassan, an Iraqi reporter for The New York Times, was killed Friday morning as he drove to work. His murder came the day after an Iraqi photographer and driver for Reuters were killed. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 110 reporters--the vast majority of them Iraqi--have been killed since the war began.

From all accounts, including from the people I work with, Khalid was one of the good guys. My boss recalls him laughing and joking at public events, showing people the coolest new feature of his cell phone and talking about his family. He was the sole breadwinner for his mother and four sisters, and he was planning to marry his girlfriend. He was 23 years old.

I'm only beginning to understand how dangerous it is for Iraqi reporters working for American media companies. They are seen as traitors and as supporters of the American military. Objective journalism has had no role in Iraq, and the concept of doing it "for the Americans" often is not understood. It's unclear whether Khalid was specifically targeted for his job as a reporter, but it seems likely.

Reporters here are told to lie to their friends and family about what they do during the day, to vary their route to work, not to leave at the same time two days in a row. Many of them will not have their names printed in the paper, even on stories they wrote, because of the fear that somebody will find out. And still, there's a community of journalists in Iraq who are inspired by the power of the written word, who get a rush out of reporting, who admire the work of organizations like The New York Times and The Washington Post so much that they will risk their lives to be a part of it.

Rest in peace, Khalid.

Arrival

I landed in Baghdad today at about 5 p.m. local time (that's 9 a.m. for you East Coasters). The landing, which I have told many of you about, was a bit harrowing. To avoid anti-aircraft fire, the pilot guides the plane in a very tight spiral for the final 8,000 feet. It made me somewhat dizzy, but lunch stayed in my stomach (which you may know is an impressive accomplishment for me!). After I got off the plan, a taxi driver met me at the airport. He took me a few miles out to a parking lot behind a military checkpoint, where I got in an armored vehicle being trailed by a regular vehicle. We got to our residence around 7 p.m., where I met more people than my sleepy brain can remember names of. Since then, I've been hanging out, chatting with our female translator and a driver who decided my name was "veeeeeeery pretty!" I have my own bedroom, which is twice the size of mine in D.C. and is well air-conditioned, so life is good.

I feel like I haven't seen enough of Iraq to describe yet, but I have a few initial impressions. The first is that there are so many guns here. Police and military officials obviously use weapons, but there were also several ordinary citizens wandering around with AKs. Concealed, revealed, it doesn't really matter.

I was told to avoid eye contact with people, especially men, as we drove to the residence, out of modesty. A "good Iraqi woman" would not look a man directly in the eye. It's a difficult thing to avoid, especially when the sight of people riding in the back of pickup trucks is common, since they're at eye level. The result is a weird form of reverse tunnel vision--you can see everything except what's in front of your nose. I don't like being a good Iraqi woman.

Okay, that's enough rambling for the moment--it's 1 a.m. and I think I'll go to bed. Future posts will be a bit more thematic and less train-of-thought, I promise.

A brief respite

Just a quick update, since I'm completely wiped and am about to fall into my plush Four Seasons bed. I'm now on a later flight to Baghdad tomorrow, which is the best news I've heard in days. My original flight was at 9, which would require leaving the hotel at 6:30--not welcome news for someone who's been traveling for 36 hours. I definitely need a full night's sleep tonight, and now I'll get it. My plane leaves Amman at 2 and gets into Baghdad at 4:30. It'll take a couple of hours to get through customs and get to our house, but I promise to post something here as soon as I'm back--should be around 7 or so (11 a.m. EDT).

Itinerary

Several people have asked, so here's a copy of my itinerary for the next two days. I won't have internet access in Frankfurt, but I will post again from Amman and then Baghdad.

Much love!

===
From:
WASHINGTON DULLES, DC (IAD)
Departs:
5:18pm Tue, Jul 10
To:
FRANKFURT, GERMANY (FRA) (no. 916)
Arrives:
7:10am Wed, Jul 11 (12:10 a.m. EDT)
Duration:
7 hours and 52 minutes

From:
FRANKFURT, GERMANY (FRA)
Departs:
2:10pm Wed. July 11
To:
AMMAN, JORDAN (AMM) (no. 0126)
Arrives:
7:40pm (12:40 p.m. EDT)

Duration:
4 hours and 30 minutes

::insert night at the Four Seasons Amman--niiiiiiiice.::

From:
AMMAN, JORDAN (AMM)
Departs:
9:00am Thurs. July 12
To: BAGHDAD, IRAQ (BGW)
Arrives:
11:30am (3:30 a.m. EDT)
Duration: 2 hours and 30 minutes

People

I have a tendency to underestimate how much I depend on the people closest to me. In this case, I'm only now (T-minus 2 days) realizing how difficult it will be to live in a war zone--an already challenging situation--without the people who mean the world to me. Obviously I will miss my family, but that's nothing new for someone living 3,000 miles from most of her relatives. Over the last five years, I've developed an East Coast family made up of my closest friends, and this is the longest period of time I've been away from them too. I've never gone two months without seeing MHG or IVK in the last five years, and I'm not really looking forward to the idea of it. Even since I've moved down south, I've had a relatively easy 4-hour drive to see most of my closest friends, and after a bad week I've been able to sprint straight into OFH's arms.

And as much as I complain about the new city, there are at least a few people I'll miss here too. KH, MC and AK have kept me sane for a whole year, and I'm still counting on MMS to help do it for the next year. I never thought I'd hear myself saying I'll miss this city, but there it is. There's a William James quote that says "Wherever you are, it is your friends who make your world," which sum up my feelings about my current locale exactly. By that logic, I suppose I can handle Baghdad too. I'll be putting uite a few minutes on that international cell phone, though.

Body armor

I picked up my body armor today. My organization has sent about 90 people to Iraq, each of them with their own vest at a cost of $1,600 each--evidently it is supremely important that each one be custom-fit. Mine is level III armor, which combines Kevlar, ceramic and steel plates so that it is resistant to military rifle bullets, handguns and sub-machine guns like AK-47s. The only thing it won't stop is armor-piercing bullets, which require a special set of plates. Mine looks very similar to this, with a removable groin protector and lots of velcro-attached pockets on the front. It has plates in the sides to prevent injury from shrapnel, a ceramic collar for the same purpose and a spiffy little "Press" tag that can come off if necessary.

It's also unbelievably heavy.

My vest's creator estimated it's a 25-30 pound vest; for a relatively slight woman, that's a huge percentage of my body weight. It took a surprising amount of strength just to lift it over my head, and by the time I hooked the Velcro around my stomach all I wanted to do was sit down. And this was in an air-conditioned office, a far cry from the 130 degrees of Baghdad in August. I know it's better than the alternative, but wearing this thing is going to be a major challenge.

Hotel journalism

I have been spending a lot of time thinking about the concept of what some have dubbed "hotel journalism," press critics' term for what they see as lazy reporting in Iraq and other places. Instead of going out and getting the story, the accusation goes, reporters sit in their improvised newsrooms letting Iraqi stringers do the real work while the Westerners take the credit. Most recently, one of my hazardous duty training instructors grilled me in our hotel bar about why American journalists are in Iraq at all. "They're not doing the first-hand reporting anyway," he said. "Wouldn't it be easier for all involved if they just compiled their Iraqi staff's feeds sitting in D.C. instead of in a walled compound in Baghdad?"

Perhaps not surprisingly, the criticism generally comes from overtly partisan people. Do you think the left-wing media is being too tough on Bush and his administration? It's probably because reporters aren't actually experiencing all the positive work going on. If you think major media outlets are the lapdogs of the neocons, blame it on the fact that they don't see all the real danger in Iraq. Experienced reporters hear it constantly from both sides. And as someone with more first-hand experience than any of those partisan bloggers, I know for a fact that they're wrong. There isn't a lazy American reporter in Iraq, nor one who has a political agenda. Contrary to popular belief, American reporters don't live in the Green Zone or receive protection from the military.

Yet the idea of hotel journalism still gnaws at me constantly. The reality of the situation in Iraq is that reporters often can't do their own reporting from the streets. It's not laziness, it's common sense; an American wandering through Sadr City, for example, would surely be killed. When reporters do go out, it's with bodyguards, translators and an armored vehicle. We all take risks to go to Iraq, but we must make sure they're calculated ones. Sometimes even a great story isn't worth it, and that's a difficult thing for a hard-nosed journalist to accept. This can be troubling: does the need to avoid so many areas mean the American press isn't getting the whole story?

Former UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism Dean Orville Schell is emphatic in his argument that reporters are doing an admirable job under the circumstances. "But while Western journalists are relying on surrogates, what I observed at the bureaus I visited in Baghdad was far from a dereliction of duty," he wrote last year in the New York Review of Books. "If anything, it showed how the old overseas bureau model of independent reporters has been forced to evolve under very extreme pressure to survive."(Full article is pasted here; scroll down a bit to see the top)

I am constantly inspired by journalists who manage to capture stories of life in Iraq under the pressure Schell describes (one of my recent favorites is here). I know hating on the mainstream press is trendy on both sides of the aisle, but I think reasonable people must concede these guys are doing the best they can.

Oh, the details

I board a plane to Frankfurt (then Amman, then Baghdad) nine days from today. Yesterday I began to think that this does not give me enough time to take care of all the details that must be taken care of, or at least not by using the calm, thorough method I might prefer. For obvious reasons, going to Baghdad requires a whole slew of complicated arrangements. I still don't have an Iraqi entry visa or the letters from my employers asserting my right to be there. I don't have a prescription for Cipro or the updated shots I need, I haven't done my prescreening for PTSD, I haven't backed up my computer's contents on an external hard drive (which I need to buy) and I don't have appropriately modest clothing. I also am working three days this week, entertaining my mother, who is in town from Tuesday through Monday and trying to see everyone who wants to hang out one more time before I go. Oh, and my car desperately needs an oil change.

Yikes.