On My Way to Baghdad

My request to embed with the U.S. Army in Baghdad has been approved, and it turns out that I need to leave a bit earlier than I expected. It will take a while before I actually get there — I need to be in Kuwait four days in advance for paperwork and “processing,” and I’m going to stop in New York City for two days on the way to Kuwait. But I’ll be there soon enough and will have a large batch of fresh dispatches for you about what is hopefully the end of the war.
I haven’t spent any quality time in Baghdad for over a year. The first time I visited Iraq’s capital was shortly after General David Petraeus unleashed his surge of counterinsurgency forces. It was impossible to determine whether or not he would succeed at the time. Sometimes the surge seemed “a smashing success”:http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2007/07/in-the-wake-of-the-surge.php in the making. Other times Iraq looked “despairingly broken beyond repair”:http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2007/08/the-future-of-iraq.php. The country was still so “mind-bogglingly dysfunctional”:http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2007/08/an-iraqi-interpreters-story.php it was sometimes hard for me to believe it was real.
A year ago I went to Fallujah and had to spend a day in Baghdad’s Green Zone filling out paperwork to get myself credentialed. While waiting to be processed I sat outside on the lawn next to the Iraqi parliament building and listened to a 45-minute fire fight just on the other side of the wall in the Red Zone. The BRRRRRAP of automatic AK-47 fire was punctuated by the sound of explosions. Police car sirens wailed, and I remember feeling relieved that at least the Iraqi Police were rushing toward, instead of away from, the fight. I remember hearing a car bomb explode two miles away. It sounded like it exploded mere blocks away. Baghdad in 2007 was still not a place you would want to be.
I’m told the city will be unrecognizable to me now. I know this is true. It is beyond controversy at this point that the war has wound down. But I still have a slightly difficult time believing it on a gut level. News reports from Iraq have been so few and far between lately that I can’t help but picture the old Baghdad in my mind. My experience hasn’t yet caught up with reality. This trip will remedy that.
So stay tuned for an in-depth tour through Baghdad after the surge. I will learn as much from this adventure as you will. The United States will have a new president soon, and a new Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government. Will Iraq and its government survive the next phase? I do not know, and I probably still won’t know by the time I get back. But I’ll do the best I can to figure out where we are at the end of 2008.
I leave in 24 hours.
And I need your help so I can purchase airfare and combat zone insurance. Food and lodging are thankfully free in Iraq as long as I’m with the Army, but I still need to spend some money to get there and to keep myself insured just in case. Please consider a contribution and help make independent writing economically viable.
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Michael Totten
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