Questions from another friend: Logistics

"If you're still taking questions, I'd like to know more about the logistics of the trip. How do you fly out, who 'manages' you while you're there, how do you plan on moving around the country, do you have security planned... things like that. Meat and potatoes stuff. "

Here's an overview of my itinerary:

1. Northwest Airlines: Minneapolis, Amsterdam, Kuwait City
   
2. Meet SSG Bravo (not his real name), a tall white guy with a short haircut wearing civilian clothes at Starbucks in the Kuwait Airport (I'm not making this up).
3. He'll take care of clearing me through Kuwait and putting me on a C-130 to Baghdad.
4. Once I land in Baghdad, I sign up for the "Rhino Ride" into the Green Zone.
5. Deal with paper work at the Combined Press Information Center (CPIC) in the Green Zone.
6. Catch a helicopter to Al Assad Air Base (a big hub), and then catch the next helicopter to Fallujah.
7. Three days before my plane is due to leave Kuwait, I catch another helicopter to Al Assad. From Al Assad it's a direct flight via C-130 to Kuwait.
8. Catch a bus to the Kuwaiti International Airport.
9. Prepare to drink my first beer in weeks.

The itinerary above is paraphrased from an email from CPT Mark Lappegaard of the 1/34 Brigade Combat Team, Public Affairs Office. Mark has been my primary contact in Iraq while we were working out the details to really make this trip happen.

Physical Security:

I will be wearing comparable body armor to the troops I am embedded with, and I will never be "outside the wire" on my own, or traveling in unarmored vehicles. If I visit any Iraqi civilians it will be in the company of a bunch of Bravo company soldiers loaded for bear. I'm not worried about security...

Who manages me, do I have a "minder"?

Short answer no. There is no official filter or censor of the photos I take, or the stories I write. I'll have a satellite phone and satellite internet access 24x7, and it's my responsibility to follow the rules. At a basic level these rules are pretty common sense:

• Don't report details that might damage operational security, such as operations currently in progress, or the exact locations and numbers of American troops.
• Don't release personal or casualty information without approval. Particularly bad examples would be publishing the name of an injured soldier before their family has been notified, or publishing that an unnamed soldier from a specific unit has been killed in action prior to the family being contacting (you can image the stress of every family in the unit waiting to find out if it was their soldier).

I'll be work directly with the local commander as I go to make sure I'm staying inside the lines, but ultimately it's "on me".

CNN dropped in on the Minnesota National Guard today

Here is an entertaining post from a soldier who works in 1st Brigade HQ back here in Minnesota about CNN dropping in on them this morning.

Today in Iraq

Since I'm not there yet, here is post from another independent journalist and blogger, Bill Ardilino, who is currently embedded with the Marines in Fallugah. At the moment it seems there is a surge in embedded blog coverage of American forces in Iraq too. There are three independent journalists that I am aware of currently embedded: Bill Andrilino, Micheal Yon, Michele Malkin. This is a serious improvement over the average of <1 over the past 4 months that I've been paying attention.

I've swapped a few emails recently with Bill, and he is hoping to still be in Fallugah when I get there. If he can get somebody to pay him to stay (read: mainstream media paying to pick up his coverage).

Comment policy

I appreciate comments from anyone interested in the Iraq war and my mission, and I welcome spirited discussion. But please keep your remarks civil. If you have a personal message for me please email it or call me (my email and phone are in the "About Me" section in right hand nav bar).

I've turned on comment moderation for anonymous comments. You can still make an anonymous comment, but it won't appear on the site until I approve it.

I reserve the right to delete comments at any time.

Thanks

An interesting request from a friend

"I would especially appreciate it if you would as completely as feasible articulate your impressions of the entire situation prior to going and then do it again after your trip. I want to know how the direct experience alters and informs your views. I think if you wait til you get back the experiment will be flawed."

My impressions are already changing as I go through the process of getting ready to go. I've been talking to people about the project for almost two months, and corresponding for several weeks with a few of the soldiers in Iraq that I will be working with.

Here are some of my impressions and assumptions prior to departure:

• It seems that the level of animosity towards Americans in general, and the military in particular, in Iraq precludes a successful unilateral solution. Or stated more simply: It seems like most people in Iraq hate us, and it's too late to change that.
• My impression, as a poorly informed outside observer, is that the US military is playing "wack-a-mole". Basically, running around endlessly smacking the enemy in one place while they pop up somewhere else. It doesn't seem like there are nearly enough troops to really pacify the country militarily. If that were even possible...
• Without exception every official communication I've had with the Army has been supportive and pleasant. I get the strong sense that military people in general feel that they have a message that they want to get out to the public, and that the American public (myself included) doesn't really understand what is going on.
• The picture I have of the Iraqi government, police, and military from the media is one of complete incompetence and corruption. Obviously this is broad generalization, but my current opinion of official "democratic" Iraqi organizations is very poor.
• My gut feel is that the right military strategy would be to pull American troops out of urban areas, and let the Iraqi government have them, for better or worse. While we focus on securing borders, transportation corridors, and critical infrastructure. And meanwhile work diplomatically to involve other Muslim countries in creating viable solutions that lead to a stable Iraqi government (democratic or not).
  

I hope that some of these impressions turn out to be incorrect, but that's the current perspective I have today based on the information I have.

UPDATE: A reader has pointed out that the correct spelling of "Whac-A-Mole". See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whac-A-Mole

125 days

According to Forbes Magazine: "a brigade of National Guard soldiers from Minnesota will have its yearlong tour in Iraq extended by 125 days, to July"

No surprise, but a month longer than I predicted yesterday.

Another sad day

Fort Snelling National Cemetery, Minneapolis, MN

Yesterday was another sad day for the Minnesota Army National Guard family and Bravo company in particular. SGT James M. Wosika Jr. was killed in action in Fallugah by an IED while on foot patrol. SGT Wosika was the seventh soldier from the Minnesota members of the 1st Brigade Combat Team to die in Iraq. He was also the third soldier to die from Bravo company 2/136 in less than a month.

Bravo company is just a small piece of the whole Minnesota deployment. They are a few hundred soldiers out of 2,600 Minnesota National Guard soldiers in Iraq, but they have suffered three of the seven deaths on this one year deployment.

Bravo company is going to be "my" unit while I'm in Iraq. I'll be focussed pretty much exclusively on this small group of Minnesota soldiers who have been paying a terrible price in the past few weeks. I've been planning for about a month to go to Bravo company specifically, and yesterday's news definitely struck me in a very personal way that it wouldn't have just a few short weeks ago.

My hope is that over the next month of reporting I can effect this change in your perception of these soldiers as well, and make the war more personal for you. This isn't somebody else's war, and these aren't somebody else's friends and neighbors, they are are ours.