Baghdad

There's an excellent article by Orville Schell in the New York Revew of Books that should not be missed. While it's basically a survey of the state of the Western journalist in Iraq, it's also a commentary on division. Those with security, and without. With T-Walls, without. Inside the wall, or out. Byline, no byline. Everywhere and nowhere.

Fascinating to read. And as hard as it might be to believe, makes me wish I could travel there to see what it is he saw--not all of which I suspect he has put into words.

Baghdad: The Besieged Press

The Baghdad International Airport terminal is full of armed guards and ringed by armored vehicles. I saw no buses or taxis awaiting arriving passengers. Almost everyone is "met." I am picked up by The New York Times's full-time British security chief, who has come in a miniature motorcade of "hardened," or bomb-proof, cars, escorted by several armed Iraqi guards in constant radio contact with each other.

As America approached the third anniversary of its involvement in Iraq, I had gone to Baghdad to observe not the war itself, but how it is being covered by the press. But of course, the war is inescapable. It has no battle lines, no fronts, not even the rural– urban divide that has usually characterized guerrilla wars. Instead, the conflict is everywhere and nowhere.