Back to Baghdad: Empty swimming pools, kids playing on a grassless field, entire houses buried in

[maddezmom]

Back to Baghdad
A reporter flies over the Iraqi capital on her 10th reporting trip: Empty swimming pools, kids playing on a grassless field, entire houses buried in trash.

Editor's note: This is the first in a series of dispatches that veteran foreign correspondent Anna Badkhen will be filing from Iraq.

By Anna Badkhen


May 5, 2008 | I am on board a big-bellied C-17 military airplane headed for Baghdad. A member of the crew tells me and my fellow passengers that we are about to take off, and instructs us how to use the oxygen masks. Mine, disconcertingly, is a bag that I'm supposed to put over my head and then tie tightly around my neck -- sort of the opposite of what I'd expect to do if I wanted to breathe, but the Air Force guy promises that "the air will flow." Then he warns us to stay in our seats, with our seat belts fastened, for the duration of the flight, because most of it will be "over the combat zone." An Iraqi man sitting across the aisle from me opens the palms of his hands and mouths a silent prayer.

I examine the people around me. They are U.S. State Department officials, defense contractors and Iraqis who work for the Defense Department and for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. A gray-haired man is wearing a baseball hat emblazoned with the words, in English and Arabic: "Danger. Stay back." Another man has brought along his Martin acoustic guitar -- solid rosewood sides and back. There is an Iraqi woman, probably a contractor, with three kids, and for a moment I think: "Now here's something to remember -- flying on an American C-17 as a child." Then I realize that they, like all of us, are flying into a war that has ravaged their homeland. They will have childhood memories, and most of them are not going to be nice.

When we land, I get a text message on my cellphone. It is from my Jordanian network provider, Zain, which also operates in Iraq. "Zain JO wishes you a pleasant stay in Iraq," it reads. "Enjoy One Network Services with Zain IQ and feel at home."

Sunday, May 4

This is my 10th reporting trip to Iraq since the war began, and my fifth trip as an embedded reporter. My last trip was in 2006. When I land in Baghdad, I think I am familiar with the travel routine: I will catch a Black Hawk ride from Baghdad International Airport, where I arrived, to the Green Zone, where I will get my accreditation and continue to the 4th Infantry Division, the unit with which I will be embedded for the next 18 days. As I wait on the landing strip for my ride, I notice that since I was here last most helicopter crews have given their Black Hawks names and written them in large black letters on the helicopters' hulls. There's the Dark Angel, all covered in dust. There's the Hillbilly Deluxe. I get to ride on the Nomad, with two Iraqi employees of the U.S. Embassy.

more:http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/05/05/baghdad/index.html?source=rss&aim=/opinion/feature

[But....]

1. Defense Contractors...

I couldn't believe that even here we use that term-Mercenaries, call them what they are :spank: