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