Camp Liberty, Baghdad _Today I got a taste of just how hard it is for Fort Lewis soldiers in Baghdad to communicate with home by email.
The only Internet access for most of the soldiers I’ve met here from the 1st Battalion of the 23rd Infantry Regiment is at the Morale, Welfare and Recreation center at Camp Liberty.
It’s about a half mile walk from the tents where these soldiers live. Tony and I walked out to the MWR today to check out the Internet access for ourselves. Our wait for a computer was about a half hour (it’s more like an hour during evening peak times after missions.)
But the real issue is the slow Internet connection.
Soldiers can only use one of the computers for 30 minutes if there is a line, and there almost always is. The connection is so slow that it took over 15 minutes just to log on to email. Then it took the rest of the allotted half hour just to read and reply to a single email.
It’s not a big deal for Tony and me. The News Tribune rented us a satellite modem to send our stories and pictures back home. But the soldiers here in Baghdad don’t have satellite modems. I understand the Internet situation is a lot better in Mosul, where most of the Fort Lewis Stryker soldiers in Iraq are stationed.

-- Sean Cockerham

CAMP LIBERTY, Baghdad -- Sometimes there is a close reminder that the bullets here are real. A soldier who lives in the tent next to mine got shot in the neck on patrol yesterday.

Pvt. Nathan Bratager was incredibly lucky and is actually going to be fine. But a few millimeters difference would have taken the life of this 20-year-old.

Bratager, part of the 1st Brigade of the 23rd Infantry Regiment from Fort Lewis, was riding outside the hatch of his Stryker when the sniper’s bullet caught him.

His headset saved his life. A piece of bullet shrapnel, which he now keeps in a jar as a reminder, passed in and out of his neck. He said he “lit up” the rooftop where the shot came from but the sniper had an escape route.

I saw this soldier at the chow hall, bandage around his neck and head, just a couple hours after he was shot. He said that he will be back on Stryker missions in just a few days. I can’t believe how quickly these guys go from something like that back into combat.

We're naming him because he assured us that his family had all been notified.

-- Sean Cockerham

Photographer Tony Overman of The Olympian rides on patrol through the Ghazaliyah neighborhood of Baghdad on Monday with the 1st Battalion of the 23rd Infantry Regiment Strykers from Fort Lewis.

CAMP LIBERTY, Baghdad -- I’ve heard some readers call for more positive news from the war in Iraq.

My approach to this assignment is to do what one soldier recommended just as Tony and I were getting on a Stryker for a mission into Baghdad.

“Just tell it like you see it,” he said.

What I’ve seen so far is Fort Lewis soldiers working very hard in an extremely difficult environment.

They are risking their lives and learning quickly who the local leaders are and how to work with them to try and get things done. One soldier described the effort in Baghdad as trying to change a tire on a truck that is going down the highway at 60 miles an hour.

Lt. Col. Avanulas Smiley, commander of the Tomahawk battalion from Fort Lewis, believes that his men are making progress in Baghdad. His soldiers have gone door to door seizing weapons and searching for insurgents. Now they are trying to help facilitate neighborhood trash pickup and sewage projects. Maybe the most important effort is the ongoing attempt to get the Iraqi security forces able to stand on their own two feet.

Smiley is under no illusions about the nature of the challenge. The Americans are attempting to overcome generations of hate and fear in Iraq.
Is this positive news? I don’t know. It is what it is.

-- Sean Cockerham

CAMP LIBERTY, Baghdad -- Mail is a big deal here, especially from wives and girlfriends. It seems like every soldier carries a picture of a girl left behind in the states.

Some soldiers also worry whether their girl will still be there when they get back. A year’s deployment in Iraq is hard on relationships. I met one soldier here whose wife left him during his last tour in Iraq. He said he went home to Fort Lewis and she was just gone.

This soldier still wears his wedding band, just not on his ring finger. He said it’s still special to him. The band says “love forever” in Gaelic,
Another soldier I traveled to Iraq with could talk of nothing else during a layover in Germany than his worry that his girlfriend would leave. Getting mail helps ease those worries.

Soldiers also email, of course. But Internet access is hard to come by at this camp. The guys in my tent have to walk a half mile or so to the Morale, Welfare and Recreation center and then wait in line for an available computer.

Some soldiers burn their mail in a barbecue grill outside my tent after they are done reading it.

The soldiers said that, if they just threw it away, insurgents can find the mail and get the addresses.

What insurgents do is write the families and tell them their loved one is dead, soldiers said.

-- Sean Cockerham

CAMP LIBERTY, Baghdad -- It can be hard to plan stories around here. For the past two days in a row, Tony and I went on Stryker missions bound for a Baghdad police station.

The Iraqi police have a reputation for sectarian murder and general shadiness. I wanted to get a sense for how Fort Lewis soldiers are working with Iraqi police investigators to clean out killers within the police ranks.

Both days began with stops at the station. But the guy the soldiers needed to talk to never seemed to show up when he was supposed to.

Then, both days, word came over the radio that IED's were found near “RPG Alley” on the main freeway that runs from Jordan into Baghdad.

So we all piled back into the Strykers and headed to RPG Alley. The Fort Lewis Strykers blocked traffic and pulled security while ordinance experts safely blew the IED.

The first day this happened, Saturday, an insurgent sniper round hit our Stryker as we waited for the ordinance people to finish disposing of the IED. The shot was about a foot and a half too low to hit the guys riding outside in the hatches and could not penetrate the Stryker armor to hit those sitting inside.

Today, Sunday, we were back at almost the exact same spot to deal with another IED. No sniper drama this time, just a wait while ordinance experts blew the thing with a loud boom.

It seems like the insurgents might be stepping up attacks for the holy month of Ramadan.

I guess my story on the police will have to wait a bit.

-- Sean Cockerham

CAMP LIBERTY, Baghdad -- American soldiers at most major bases in Iraq seem to live in trailers that generally house a couple guys apiece. But Camp Liberty ran out of trailer space when President Bush ordered more troops to Baghdad to try and stop the sectarian violence.

So the Fort Lewis troops here have been living in tents and sleeping on cots. It looks like there are maybe 25 guys living in the tent where Tony and I will be staying for the next week or so.

It’s 9:30 p.m. here and a couple of guys are playing football on a video game system set up in the corner. Others are reading or just listening to their iPods. Most of the cots are empty. Their occupants could be at the gym, grabbing some food, or out in the streets of Baghdad.

Missions outside the wire go 24 hours a day here.

-- Sean Cockerham

CAMP LIBERTY, Baghdad -- Finally, we’re embedded.

It took almost six days from the time we left Tacoma to make our way to Baghdad, get our press credentials from the Army and link up with the Fort Lewis troops we’ve come to Iraq to cover.

Anyway, I can now finally start writing some stories. We’re embedded with Comanche Company of the 1st Battalion of the 23rd Infantry. These are some of the Fort Lewis Stryker soldiers who were diverted from their planned deployment in Mosul to help with the fight in Iraq’s dangerous capital.

These guys are responsible for the predominately Sunni neighborhood of Ghazaliya and the mainly Shiite neighborhood of Shulla. The two neighborhoods are divided by a creek which doesn’t really flow because it’s overloaded with sewage.

Comanche Company lost two soldiers in late August when a massive improvised explosive device tore into their Stryker vehicle. Things haven’t been as bad since. But the wild card is that the Muslim holy month of Ramadan starts on Sunday. A lot of people expect an attempt to step up attacks on U.S. forces during the holy holiday.

-- Sean Cockerham

Reporter Sean Cockerham rides with U.S. Army soldiers as they fly in a Blackhawk helicopter over Baghdad on the way to the Green Zone on Thursday morning. Photo: Tony Overman/The Olympian

GREEN ZONE, Baghdad -- Given all the news outlets in the world and the historical implications of the Iraq war, one might think there’d be a lot of journalists embedded with the U.S. military.

One would be wrong. The Coalition Press Information Center says there are only 13 embedded reporters in Iraq right now. That doesn’t include me and Tony, who won’t be formally embedded with the Strykers until tonight.

I’ve run into some other reporters here and talked to them about why there are so few embeds. More than one said they think editors and the public are becoming “Iraq’d out,” -- weary of hearing the day to day news of the war. Another answer is probably the danger. Kimberly Dozier and her CBS crew were embedded in Baghdad when a car bomb blew up near them in May, killing the two camera crew members and injuring Dozier.

That incident led to a lot of publicity about how dangerous a place Iraq has become for journalists.

One military public affairs officer told me he thinks there are so few embeds because the media is more interested in Lebanon right now.
It is extremely expensive to send reporters here. Travel, body armor, insurance, and satellite phones are some of the major costs involved.

Of course, there are many reporters in Iraq who just don’t happen to be embedded with the U.S. military at the moment. Major news organizations maintain high security Baghdad offices with multiple reporters, who might go in and out of embeds while in Iraq.

Embedding has advantages and disadvantages. It’s very difficult to get the perspective of regular Iraqis as an embedded reporter. But you do get a close look inside the U.S. military and what soldiers face on the streets.

-- Sean Cockerham

GREEN ZONE, Baghdad -- There were cars zipping down a freeway, rows of satellite dishes on apartments, and some new construction of what looked like government buildings.

From the vantage point of a Black Hawk helicopter skimming over the most dangerous city in the world, I was struck by how Baghdad almost looked like a normal third world city.

Staff Sgt. John Gilbert of the 166th Support Group looks out at Sadaam Hussein's man-made lake and former palaces in southeast Baghdad as he flies to the Green Zone on a Blackhawk helicopter on Thursday morning. Photo: Tony Overman/The Olympian

But there were bombed out buildings in the shimmering heat. And Tony thought he spotted green tracers of something flying past our Blackhawk. We later found out the helicopters automatically fire the flares when they get low to the ground to confuse heat seeking missiles. Iraq, I’m beginning to understand, is a mix of the routine and the horrific.

We were on our way from Camp Victory to the Green Zone, where we have been stuck for several hours getting our press credentials. Both places are highly fortified and reasonably safe. But you have to fly over the “Red Zone” which is basically the rest of Baghdad, in order to get between them.

Tony and I met some soldiers yesterday from the former Soviet republic of Georgia. They are part of the “Coalition of the Willing” in Iraq. Anyway, one of these guys, Otari Saneblidze, asked if we were planning on going into the Red Zone.

We told him we were, as embeds with Stryker soldiers from Fort Lewis. He asked if we were scared. Yeah, I’m scared. This is Baghdad for Christ sakes. I think a little fear is healthy here.

Paranoia, people keep telling me, will keep you alive.

CAMP VICTORY, Baghdad -- Saddam Hussein was living the sweet life before the U.S. knocked him out of power. I saw some evidence Wednesday at this sprawling American military encampment that was a favored residence of Saddam's before the war.

Saddam actually had the Euphrates River diverted to provide water to his residential area, said Lt. Michelle Matthews, a public affairs officer who showed Tony and I around.

“You can see how beautiful it is,” Matthews said. “Other people had to live in sewage and trash.”

Saddam created a big artificial lake in this land of scorching desert. His Al Faw palace (now a U.S. corps headquarters) sits at one end of the lake.
Surrounding it are former lakeside villas for the families of his favored Republican Guard officers. At another end of the lake is what Matthews said was a palace to house Saddam's concubines. Apparently the former dictator has a bunch of illegitimate children running around Iraq, although they aren't eager to advertise themselves as Saddam's kids nowadays.

There are palm trees and a big swimming pool next to the concubine's palace. It's kind of an idyllic spot in the midst of this blighted country, and it's easy to imagine Saddam and his buddies boating around the lake. He would have chefs prepare great feasts around the lake and boat out to the food.

The rest of what is now the U.S. Camp Victory/Camp Liberty complex is far from idyllic. The dusty roads are choked with Humvees and Strykers. The residential trailers are in mazes of big concrete blast barriers.

The soldiers here are engaged in heavy combat operations and are getting hit often as they go outside the wire to patrol the dangerous capital. Tony and I will go to the Green Zone tomorrow to get our press credentials, then come back here in the evening to start our embed with Fort Lewis Stryker soldiers trying to help pacify Baghdad.

-- Sean Cockerham

Camp Buehring, Kuwait -- It feels like living under a heat lamp. Or like standing in front of a jet engine pushing out superheated air. The temperature in Kuwait is well over 100 degrees and it's expected to be the same in Baghdad.

Tony and I arrived at Camp Buehring after a 23-hour flight from Tacoma followed by a three-plus hour bus ride through the desert. It was about 5 a.m. by the time we, and the Fort Lewis soldiers we're traveling with, hit our cots. Some of the soldiers had been up for 36 hours.

Kuwait feels like an alien land, but it's safe enough. Within hours, though, Tony and I are getting on a flight to Baghdad International Airport. Baghdad is where body army and helmets will be added on top of the searing heat.

We first have to go to the Green Zone and get our press credentials. Then we will embed with a unit of Fort Lewis Stryker soldiers who are patrolling neighborhoods in the capital.

-- Sean Cockerham