Read Online Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival by Anderson Cooper - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Anderson Cooper
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EXPLODES .
At first I was pissed off that I had missed it, stuck on a patrol that had gone nowhere. Then I realized that there was a lesson to be learned about what gets covered, what we see about Iraq at home. Not all of Iraq had exploded that day, at least not the part of Baghdad I was in. The headline could just as easily have been “200 Gallons of Water Delivered to Neighborhood Near Baghdad Airport.” It would have been just as accurate, though arguably not as important. Perhaps the soldier I spoke to earlier was right: sometimes Iraq is not like what you see on TV.
IN BAGHDAD IN 2005 the list of what you can’t do is much longer than the list of what you can. You can’t: eat in a restaurant; go to the movies; hail a taxi; go out at night; stroll down the street; stand in a crowd; stay in one spot too long; use the same route; get stuck in traffic; forget to barricade your door at night; neglect to speak in code when using walkie-talkies; or go anywhere without armed guards, communication devices, an ID, a Kevlar vest, or a multi-vehicle convoy. You can’t forget you’re a target.
Other than that, it’s not so bad.
It’s two days before the interim presidential elections, which will be either a milestone of democracy or a meaningless gesture, depending on what edge of the political spectrum you hang from. The security situation seems a bit better, but it’s hard to know. There are more Iraqis manning roadblocks, but how good any of them is in a fight is impossible to tell.
There are true believers to be sure, holed up behind high walls and concertina wire, camped out in the “Green Zone,” the most protected spot in the center of town: civilians and soldiers, planners and plotters, trying to respond to events on the ground. The Green Zone is a city within a city. Walled off. Cut off. Miles of blast screens and barriers several feet thick. You meet with military officials there, and they give you briefings with bar graphs and pie charts: number of operations, number of insurgent attacks. It all seems so neat and clear, but outside the Green Zone it’s anything but.
I’m in an up-armored Humvee, barreling down the center of a Baghdad street.
“Locals put shit out in the road all the time to slow us down,” Captain Thomas Pugsley says.
Already tonight one soldier from his brigade has been killed, and another one is in the hospital undergoing surgery. “You lose soldiers, and it sucks, but you just have to drive on,” he says, his eyes constantly scanning one side of the road, then the other. “I don’t think there’s a unit in this brigade that hasn’t lost at least one if not more. It’s always in the back of your mind when you go out, but you got a job to do and the whole highlight of our time here will be based on the outcome of these elections, so we’re trying to put our best foot forward, and make the best of it we can.”
Captain Pugsley’s got a couple of platoons of Iraqi National Guard troops to check on. They’re supposed to be guarding polling stations in advance of the elections.
“It seems calm,” I say to no one in particular.
“It always seems calm until the first bullet flies by,” a voice says out of the dark.
Captain Pugsley is with Alpha Battery, Fifth Brigade, First Cavalry. He’s a field artillery unit battery commander, but Baghdad doesn’t need those. It needs bodies on the ground. So after a brief “transitioning,” Pugsley and his soldiers were rebranded mechanized light infantry.
“I thought it was going to be all frickin’ desert,” Pugsley says of Iraq, “but it’s not.” He interrupts himself every few seconds to shout instructions to his gunner, Specialist Chris Maxfield, who’s sticking halfway out of the roof of the Humvee behind a fifty-caliber machine gun and clutching a spotlight.
“What do we got? Spotlight!” Pugsley also yells directions to his driver: “Go around! Watch it! Go wide left! Stay away from it!”
They are constantly
At first I was pissed off that I had missed it, stuck on a patrol that had gone nowhere. Then I realized that there was a lesson to be learned about what gets covered, what we see about Iraq at home. Not all of Iraq had exploded that day, at least not the part of Baghdad I was in. The headline could just as easily have been “200 Gallons of Water Delivered to Neighborhood Near Baghdad Airport.” It would have been just as accurate, though arguably not as important. Perhaps the soldier I spoke to earlier was right: sometimes Iraq is not like what you see on TV.
IN BAGHDAD IN 2005 the list of what you can’t do is much longer than the list of what you can. You can’t: eat in a restaurant; go to the movies; hail a taxi; go out at night; stroll down the street; stand in a crowd; stay in one spot too long; use the same route; get stuck in traffic; forget to barricade your door at night; neglect to speak in code when using walkie-talkies; or go anywhere without armed guards, communication devices, an ID, a Kevlar vest, or a multi-vehicle convoy. You can’t forget you’re a target.
Other than that, it’s not so bad.
It’s two days before the interim presidential elections, which will be either a milestone of democracy or a meaningless gesture, depending on what edge of the political spectrum you hang from. The security situation seems a bit better, but it’s hard to know. There are more Iraqis manning roadblocks, but how good any of them is in a fight is impossible to tell.
There are true believers to be sure, holed up behind high walls and concertina wire, camped out in the “Green Zone,” the most protected spot in the center of town: civilians and soldiers, planners and plotters, trying to respond to events on the ground. The Green Zone is a city within a city. Walled off. Cut off. Miles of blast screens and barriers several feet thick. You meet with military officials there, and they give you briefings with bar graphs and pie charts: number of operations, number of insurgent attacks. It all seems so neat and clear, but outside the Green Zone it’s anything but.
I’m in an up-armored Humvee, barreling down the center of a Baghdad street.
“Locals put shit out in the road all the time to slow us down,” Captain Thomas Pugsley says.
Already tonight one soldier from his brigade has been killed, and another one is in the hospital undergoing surgery. “You lose soldiers, and it sucks, but you just have to drive on,” he says, his eyes constantly scanning one side of the road, then the other. “I don’t think there’s a unit in this brigade that hasn’t lost at least one if not more. It’s always in the back of your mind when you go out, but you got a job to do and the whole highlight of our time here will be based on the outcome of these elections, so we’re trying to put our best foot forward, and make the best of it we can.”
Captain Pugsley’s got a couple of platoons of Iraqi National Guard troops to check on. They’re supposed to be guarding polling stations in advance of the elections.
“It seems calm,” I say to no one in particular.
“It always seems calm until the first bullet flies by,” a voice says out of the dark.
Captain Pugsley is with Alpha Battery, Fifth Brigade, First Cavalry. He’s a field artillery unit battery commander, but Baghdad doesn’t need those. It needs bodies on the ground. So after a brief “transitioning,” Pugsley and his soldiers were rebranded mechanized light infantry.
“I thought it was going to be all frickin’ desert,” Pugsley says of Iraq, “but it’s not.” He interrupts himself every few seconds to shout instructions to his gunner, Specialist Chris Maxfield, who’s sticking halfway out of the roof of the Humvee behind a fifty-caliber machine gun and clutching a spotlight.
“What do we got? Spotlight!” Pugsley also yells directions to his driver: “Go around! Watch it! Go wide left! Stay away from it!”
They are constantly
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