1."0900: Link up with 2-4 IN patrol at Cross Sabers in IZ," read the message from the press center of the Multi-National Force–Iraq. That meant that at nine the next morning I should show up at the crossed-sabers monument— the giant pair of arched swords erected by Saddam Hussein on his military parade ground—in the International Zone (aka the Green Zone) to meet a convoy from the 2nd Battalion of the 4th Infantry Regiment of the 10th Mountain Division. The convoy was to take me to a neighborhood in southern Baghdad, where I was to spend the day embedded with the US military.
The embed had proved surprisingly easy to arrange. No one had objected to the three New York Review articles I had sent in as samples of my work. On the application form, I had written that I wanted to visit a typical Baghdad neighborhood to see how the surge was working and to get a sense of what more had to be done before the US could begin to draw down its forces in any significant number.
Though I didn't say it, I also wanted to see what the embedding process itself was like. This was introduced by the Pentagon at the start of the war to allow journalists to attach themselves to invading military units and see the fighting up close. As Iraq grew steadily more violent, embedding became one of the main ways journalists could get out into the field. Baghdad continues to be a very dangerous place for journalists, with kidnapping an ever-present concern. (Whenever I traveled outside the CBS News compound where I stayed, I had to go in three cars, two of them armored, accompanied by eight armed guards.) Embedding thus remains an important means of seeing the country.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21617
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