More news from Iraq: Me, the Light Brigade & John McCain

By Jane Stillwater
http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com

Good grief!  Iraq is just BRIMMING with news.   I don’t even know where to begin.  At 4 am this morning, a huge armored vehicle moved us from the Baghdad airport to the Green Zone in a convoy composed of vehicles that looked like they had just came out of a Toys R Us catalog. 

Nobody in Iraq seems to need sleep.  Not even me.  But they don’t go without food.  Did you know that the average American soldier in Iraq gains 26 pounds — while the average insurgent lives on rice and beans?  If that doesn’t give our troops an edge here, then what will?  If we are now entering the fourth year of this war and it still is bogged down even despite our tremendous Cheesecake advantage, the Bush guys are in big trouble.  But I digress.

I’ve been here in Iraq for three days and this is the first day I have even seen — let alone talked to — an Iraqi.  So I started at the top and interviewed an Iraqi general.  His basic message seems to be that the Iraqi army now has about 25 new ways to kill people and/or make them go to their rooms.  “We have more troops, more joint security stations, more ammunition, more tips from informants, more security….”  Then his translator went on and on about how the Iraqi army is eliminating tourists. Tourists?  Oh, he meant TERRORISTS.  My bad.

Letters from Iraq: The Charge of the Light Brigade, Part 1

By Jane Stillwater
http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com

March 30 — we finally received our orders to fly out of Kuwait and into Baghdad.  Hurray!  Now all I have to do is get my passport back from the Kuwait visa inspectors and I’m good to go.

“Stillwater?  Here’s your passport.”  Whew.  “Now line up here and wait.”  I did.  This is exciting.  And perhaps a little too real.  Two hours later, we boarded a plane.  It was a big one, a real  work of art.  It was as big as a football field inside, no windows, no frills — just one big warehouse.  The pallets with our gear on them were stored in back of us and troops lined the walls and took up seats in the center.

This plane is spooky.  Forget everything you ever experienced on Continental, United or Delta.  This plane is weird.  Exposed pipes run along the 20-foot-high ceiling.  Wires hang loose.  There’s a plywood floor.  There’s NOTHING decorative about this plane at all — except that they gave us nicely-colored earplugs to baffle the sound.

While waiting in some tent or other for the plane to take off, the soldiers I sat next to took turns telling stories.  I love