By Noah Shachtman: Wired Magazine
It's not simple, getting to Baghdad. To start, you wait it out for 36 hours, minimum, in Kuwait's phantom outpost. Then, once the pixie dust has been spread over your passport, and all the proper paper has been pushed, you pack your bags, head over to the makeshift flight terminal... and get ready to be treated like cargo yourself.
Gear and grunts alike are carried up to Iraq by barrel-throated, turbo-propped C-130s. First us people file into flight "Chrome 34," sandwiching knee-to-knee in two sets of rows. We face the sides of the plane, staring at the padded blankets and exposed wires that line the interior. To my left is a blond corporal, headed up to Iraq for the first time. He's worried he won't see enough action in his new post, near Baghdad's Green Zone. His sergeant and captain – a dead ringer for Liev Schriber – were each hit by IEDs twice during their last tour. "The quieter, the better," Liev says, staring at the ceiling.
Then, slowly, the pallets of equipment are brought aboard. A "loadmaster," wearing a khaki jumpsuit and on oversized black helmet, directs. And then we wait, as the combination of body heat and Kuwaiti sun turn the C-130 into an oven. We sweat like bad sausage. I'm on the edge of a netted "row," with only half a flimsy butt-cheek hanging off. It goes numb.
Finally, the props begin to mmspin. Their roar engulfs all other sound. And we take off. For eleven minutes. Then, we're back at Kuwait commercial airport – to pick up "a couple of generals," the rumor goes. After an hour wait, it turns out to be Bing West, the writer and former Pentagon official.
Finally, we roar back off of the tarmac. It's not long before everybody passes out, me included.
When I come to, the plane is gently rocking. Nothing awful – especially given the Baghdad run's demon reputation. Even a wimp like me, who grips armrests at the slightest turbulence, isn't bothered. I open up "A Feast for Crows," the latest George R.R. Martin geek opus.
Then the loadmaster straps on night vision goggles. And the lights go out.
We spin – first chest-first, then counterclockwise, sending knees above shoulders. I could swear flying perpendicular to the ground. We straighten out. Then we drop, fast and flat. I squeeze the netting beneath me until we stabilize. I exhale, and tell myself it's nothing too bad. Suddenly, our nose dips. We head for the ground, screaming, like we've lost power. Then, just as quickly, we change directions, and shoot back up.
The tilt-a-whirl continues for what I'm guessing was ten more minutes – but what felt like a hundred. Then it's once more with the drop-nose routine, until we finally scrape the ground. Welcome to Baghdad.
I run out, grab my bags, and dash for a shuttle bus to take me across the massive U.S. military base that rings the airport here. That bus drops me off at a second shuttle stop, which is supposed to bring me down to the Green Zone. When I first got to the airport terminal in Kuwait, at quarter-to-four, I was under the impression that bus left at eight PM. But now that I've shown up -- at eleven thirty – no one will tell me what time it leaves. Security concerns, I'm told. Keep the bad guys guessing.
Finally, it – or, rather, they – arrive: a team of five, heavily-reinforced, armored-up Rhino buses. They look like jails on wheels. I can't tell you much about the drive – I was passed out the whole time. But I woke up in the middle of the Green Zone.
Now, watching TV, you might get the impressions that this is some little, walled-up compound, with a single ring of defenses. Not so. There are checkpoints, everywhere. During the four-minute ride from the Rhino stop to the press center, IDs must've been demanded a half-dozen times. The center itself is a former parking garage ("Hey, at least you got two feet of concrete overhead," quips one Marine). To enter, you have to prove your identity on at least five more occasions.
Then, us reporters need to be issued IDs. Which means getting a scan of your index finger, and a having a standard, passport-style picture taken. At two-thirty in the morning, it took seven tries to get a shot where I didn't look stoned out of my mind. After that, they take scans of both your irises. Five more headshots – for the facial recognition software. And scans of all ten fingerprints.
Finally, I'm approved as an accredited member of the press in Iraq. Just that easy.
