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I am back in Baghdad, having driven with Command Sergeant Major Jeffrey Mellinger more than 1,200 miles up and down Iraqi roads over a ten-day period. CSM Mellingers direct boss is now General David Petraeus, and although the general has only been commanding the war in Iraq for three weeks, changes hes made are already apparent. More on that during subsequent dispatches.
In a place where a single day could sometimes make an interesting book, I often go days without writing a word because I am out with soldiers running missions. When I return to base, reality is not respectful to readers or writers, and many important dispatches will never be published simply because I was unable to get internet connections. For the soldiers and their families who wonder why I never published something about this or that mission, or never published even a single photo of a good unit I did a mission with, the breakdown is most often an internet connection that does not work. Full stop.
Today, the logistics challenges entailed in finding a suitable place to live and work (in Baghdad) afford only about one hour for this quick overview of my experiences in the past couple of weeks.
Often the most dangerous places in Iraq are at the front gates of bases where suicide attackers roll in. Outside the wireand often inside the wireis bad-guy country. A block away from a base might as well be a hundred miles away.
Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno was there. Odierno is a serious general who runs a huge portion of this war. Next time Odierno comes on the news, it can be good to stop and listen.
With the odometer running over many embeds, Mellinger has taken me about 4,000 miles (total) up and down Iraqi roads, visiting units from north to south, east to west, showing that the military truly opens their doors to writers who will stick it out. They dont even have to like you: my fights with the Army are well-known, yet they continue to open their doors. Theres a lesson in there. I wrote that Iraq was in a civil war shortly after covering the first elections. I wrote about commanders who did poorly, and ISF units that couldnt shoot straight, and I wrote about the veneer of victory in Afghanistan cracking under the weight of a poppy-fueled Taliban resurgence. Yet they still let me in.
Its a reminder of why I am so proud of my country, despite our many problems.
Theres a lot of talk back at home that morale among American forces is low here. While writing this, I called Rich Oppel from the New York Times, who is in Baghdad, to ask him how morale looked from his vantage. Rich said that a lot of the soldiers are not happy with the extensions of their tours, something I have heard soldiers complain about also. However, I watch morale very closely. More closely than all else. Low morale in a particular unit can be the result of poor leadership in that unit, or just not getting mail, for instance. But gauging morale is not a simple affair of asking a few soldiers. A person has to live with them across Iraq. Having done so, my opinion is that overall troop morale is good to high. (If their morale could be bottled, it would probably would sell like crack, then be outlawed.)
