Global Policy Forum

Hunkered down with the press corps in Iraq

By Janet Reitman

No one wants to go to Iraq -- it's not a fun war. Afghanistan was fun. It had colorful resistance fighters on horseback. It had Al Qaeda bases. There were moonscape mountains and green river valleys. You could get in your car and head off to the Hindu Kush. "You felt as if you were in the back of beyond," says Alissa Rubin of the Los Angeles Times. "I'd probably move to Afghanistan in a heartbeat."

Iraq, by contrast, is a place reporters can't wait to leave. Baghdad has choking dust storms, two-hour traffic jams and rubble. Even buildings not devastated by last year's "shock and awe" look as if they were. Most nights, military helicopters fly deafening, unlit missions over the city, like huge whirring bats. The "resistance" -- which seem to comprise a good portion of Iraqi society -- drive pickups, wrap their faces in kaffiyehs and see Americans as occupiers whom they have a duty to kill. There are lots of dry, scrubby bushes. There are allegedly some luscious date-palm groves south and west of Baghdad, but given the danger on the roads -- kidnappings; ambushes; and the poor man's land mine, the "improvised explosive device," or IED -- people aren't exactly spending a lot of time there.

"Iraq is like a prison," says Melinda Liu, acting bureau chief of Newsweek. One of the most seasoned war correspondents in Baghdad -- she's got a bullet-wound scar on one leg -- Liu serves as a sort of den mother to the other reporters, reminding them to take their flak jackets when they go on the road. "When things are manageable, you think, 'Hey, maybe it isn't so dangerous after all.' Then when things are rock-bottom terrifying, you think, 'I'll fucking die on the way to the airport.' You can wake up and not know if, by the end of the day, you'll be eating dinner by the pool or dealing with a kidnapping. It's stressful -- even if you're hunkered down in a hotel room."

When I arrive in Baghdad in April, most American journalists are holed up in their rooms, reporting the war by remote: scanning the wires, working their cell phones, watching broadcasts of Al Jazeera. In many cases, they've been reduced to relying on sources available to anyone with an Internet connection. Editorial writers might like to compare Iraq to Vietnam, but reporters on the ground say there's no comparison. In Vietnam, journalists rode Hondas to the front. In Iraq, they rarely venture into the streets. When they do, they hide behind the smoked windows of their armored vehicles, called "hard cars." At least nine Western journalists have been killed since the occupation began, not because they are reporters but simply because they are Westerners. Fear has become an accepted part of life in Baghdad, as inevitable as military roadblocks. While Arabic and European media such as The Guardian and Le Monde manage to cover the war on the ground, American reporters seldom interview actual Iraqis. Instead, they talk to U.S. officials who are every bit as isolated as they are, or rely on local stringers and fixers, several of whom have been killed while working for Americans. "We live in a bubble," grumbles one AP reporter. "If we know one percent of what's going on in Iraq, we're lucky."

Most of the journalism coming out of Baghdad is produced within the fortified compound that contains the Sheraton Ishtar and the Palestine Hotel. Together, the two buildings house the bureaus of Fox, CNN, several major newspapers and wire services, as well as a rotating crew of photographers and independent journalists of all stripes. Towering side by side over the Tigris River, the hotels are a virtual fortress, ringed by coils of razor wire and surrounded by fifteen-foot-high cement barriers known as "blast walls." To enter the compound, one must endure body searches at two checkpoints, navigate a corridor that runs alongside a fortified lane for armored vehicles and answer questions posed by the U.S. troops that patrol the compound day and night. The Sheraton -- the tallest building in Baghdad -- has been struck so often, some journalists call it the Missile Magnet. "More rockets have hit this place than any other building in the city," says Paul Roubicek, an Australian cameraman who has done segments for Fox News.

Roubicek is sitting in his room on the third floor of the Sheraton, drinking red wine and getting high on Afghan hash. You can buy excellent hash in Iraq. It's one of the perks of reconstruction. Before the war, getting high was punishable by a long stint in one of Saddam Hussein's jails. Now you can send an e-mail order and have hash delivered right to your hotel room. Roubicek's dealer is a cigarette salesman in the compound.

Roubicek is having a really bad day. Like everyone else in Baghdad, he wants to get embedded. It's not the military's perspective he's after -- it's the protection. Given the violence raging outside the hotel, embeds are often the only way to cover the fighting. Roubicek listens as his producer, Doug Luzader, speaks to a Marine Corps major on his cell phone, trying to talk his way into Fallujah. Since four private military contractors were killed and mutilated there by an angry mob a few weeks earlier, the city has been the scene of the fiercest fighting since the war began. Roubicek and Luzader, who are producing documentaries for a small outfit called HDNet, want in -- but the only way to get there is with the troops.

"I think there's been some kind of mix-up," Luzader says into the phone. "We wanted the embed for this weekend." He listens. "Look, Major, we were told yesterday . . . Yes. Right. But. . . ." Roubicek, dressed in running shorts, a T-shirt and flip-flops, launches into a rant: "There's a list. We've gone from number thirty to number sixty, no explanation. We're getting shafted. I mean, fuck, what's the deal?"

Luzader paces, his face getting red. "What do you mean there's nothing you can do? Fine." He hangs up. "What," Roubicek says morosely. "Basically," Luzader says, pouring himself a drink, "until the mujahedin start their own embed program, we're shit out of luck."

The Sheraton is the spookiest hotel in Baghdad. When I arrive in Iraq, a rocket has turned the lobby into a construction zone. A quick-fix reconstruction soon restores the hotel's marble floors, and the lobby features a wide-screen TV, a cushy bar and a large white, goddesslike sculpture. Nevertheless, the place always seems deserted. The elevators work when they feel like it. "I'd rather commit suicide than live at the Sheraton," says Melinda Liu.

The alternative is the Al Hamra Hotel, across town and a world away. It's smaller and quieter, with far fewer blast walls and no U.S. troops. Instead, the Hamra is home to a small army of private military contractors, hired guns who have come to Iraq to get in on the action. The men are walking arsenals, brandishing assault rifles and packing flash grenades. The cowboy aesthetic of the contractors is so offensive, most journalists refuse to sit, or even stand, anywhere near them. "These guys freak me out," says a British journalist who scurries inside whenever he spots one. "We are living with trained killers. You might as well walk around with a big red target on your head."

Perhaps another reason journalists resent the contractors is because they are so nerdish themselves. Josh Hammer, Jerusalem bureau chief for Newsweek, is not exactly the image of a war jock. He frets over every line of his stories, angsts over his career path and spends entire afternoons shopping for Persian carpets. In May, he returns from an interview with Maj. Gen. David Petraeus feeling dejected. "I could tell Petraeus thought I was a wimp," Hammer says mournfully.

For protection, virtually every major newspaper and network employs its own battalion of contractors. Some accompany reporters to interviews, openly packing. Some hide inside the vehicles with an arsenal. All wear flak vests and are built like Humvees. In a sense, journalists have become prisoners of their own bodyguards. "You're unable to walk on the streets," says Kevin Sites, a freelance reporter for NBC and MSNBC. "We don't go out trolling for news anymore -- not here. You have to plan your route with your security, you bring along your security, do your interviews and come right back. It sucks. I remember this bombing that happened a few months ago, and we had to wait for our security before we could go cover it. By the time they arrived, the entire area had already been cordoned off."

Reporters at NBC, who use the Hamra as their bunker, are so put off by the military contractors that they hardly ever come downstairs to socialize. The network has even set up a gym for staff next to its makeshift broadcast studio. The bureau is sealed behind a white metal gate, guarded by Iraqi security with metal detectors. There is no in or out without passing the gauntlet.

Sites, a forty-one-year-old surfer from California with reddish-brown hair and a goatee, is preparing to do a one-minute live shot from the NBC studio -- a set of black curtains rigged with a small opening that offers a view of the city. The scenic backdrop gives his broadcast a you-are-there feeling, but Sites is frustrated: He has spent the day at his desk in the hotel, assembling news gathered by others. "God, I hate these," he says, peering into the camera and fixing his hair. "In so many ways we're just giving headlines." He squints at a cheat sheet taped to the side of the camera and begins to read: "Today's violence reaches in nearly all directions. . . ."

Sites says he envies print journalists who, unencumbered by heavy gear and private guards, can move about more freely. David Enders, a twenty-three-year-old freelancer, takes taxis around Baghdad, lives in an unfortified hotel and has many Iraqi friends. Instead of traveling with armed goons, he relies on a much cheaper form of protection: He tells people he's French. "No one wants to kill French people," Enders says. "Plus, they charge you less if they think you're French. My taxi bills have been cut in half."

But Enders is the exception. Outside the Hamra, veteran war photographer Robert King lounges by the pool. He and Josh Hammer are awaiting an embed in Fallujah. "Basically, Baghdad sucks," he says. "It's just a bunch of white guys sitting around their hotel rooms, drinking beer. In every other war -- Rwanda, Chechnya, Kosovo, Afghanistan -- the fighters were more than happy to take you to the front. They respected you for it. Here, the U.S. soldiers will accuse you of being a liability if you want to see what's going on. We just want to cover the reality -- which is not them handing out candies to little kids. The reality is that people are dying here every day because of this war."

For some reporters, the only foray out of the hotel is what they jokingly call the "Five O'Clock Follies" -- the daily press briefing by the Coalition Provisional Authority held at the Baghdad Convention Center. To get to the briefing, journalists leave their fortress and enter another fortress. First there is the drive across the Tigris from the hotel compound to the Green Zone, the headquarters for the American occupation. Then there's a military checkpoint, where signs warn, in both English and Arabic, that "deadly force is authorized." Past the razor wire, sandbags, camouflage nets and several more checkpoints, you arrive safe within a compound some call the Bubble.

The convention center is the nerve center of the CPA's propaganda machine. In Conference Room Three, where the briefings are held, two plasma screens project upbeat messages in English and Arabic. Interspersed are photos of happy-looking Iraqis interacting with U.S. soldiers. While everyone waits for the briefing to begin, lite jazz is occasionally piped in to serenade the room. "I used to laugh at people who'd come to these," says Karl Vick, a Washington Post correspondent. "Now, I'm one of them."

John Burns, bureau chief of the New York Times, strides into the room. Standing more than six feet tall, with a mane of wild, curly gray hair, piercing blue eyes and a hawk nose, Burns walks among his lesser colleagues like a king. The Bush administration seems to believe that journalists are little more than anti-war activists in disguise, ready to take up placards to oppose the war. But Burns, the son of a NATO general, supported the war. "The United States has been overwhelmingly a force of good in the world," he says. "This is very unfashionable talk, but I think this ought to be remembered here. I grew up in a world where the survival of democracy depended on the military and economic power of the United States. If that power became less credible here, I think the world would be a lot less safe. The stakes are extraordinarily high. I think this is a tipping point in the fate of the American empire."

Shortly after five, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt delivers the exact same line he uses to open virtually every briefing. "Good afternoon," he says. "The coalition continues offensive operations to establish a stable Iraq in order to repair infrastructure, stimulate the economy and transfer sovereignty to the people of Iraq." If Kimmitt were given the option of being stuck on an iceberg off Antarctica, you get the feeling he'd prefer it to the podium of Conference Room Three. His pronouncements often sound like something out of Dr. Strangelove. In response to a question about Iraqi children being frightened by the sound of low-flying U.S. helicopters, Kimmitt replied, "What we would tell the children of Iraq is that the noise they hear is the sound of freedom."

Luke Harding, a thirty-six-year-old British correspondent for The Guardian, attends the briefings for entertainment. Once clean-cut and clean-shaven, Harding now has shaggy, shapeless blond hair, and his face is hidden behind a reddish-blond beard. Though he spends half of his time at briefings with his hand in the air, he has only been called on once. Instead, coalition spokesmen choose journalists who lob softball questions, like the American reporter who, as the scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison was breaking, wanted to know about political negotiations that day in Najaf.

"Unbelievable," Harding says, as reporter after reporter ignores Abu Ghraib and asks about cease-fire agreements and weapons buybacks. "I really hate the lack of criticism in the American media. Things that Kimmitt says are reported as if they were true." Harding puts his head in his hands. "It's so depressing." Iraqi journalists are even more disgusted with the briefings. They don't even bother with questions half the time -- they lecture Kimmitt and once walked out in protest. "In the beginning, the Iraqi journalists were very simpering toward the coalition," says Vick. "Now they ask increasingly hostile questions. Which, I suppose, reflects the feeling in society."

Their questions often go directly to the heart of the matter. One afternoon, an Arabic reporter catches Kimmitt off guard: "Are the coalition forces ready and capable enough to maintain security for the Iraqis by the 30th of June -- without making any violations or offending or inflicting harm to the Iraqi people?" Kimmitt, looking startled, responds that the coalition forces, "side by side with their Iraqi security partners," would "continue to provide a safe and secure environment here in Iraq, not only this month, next month, but also post-30 June as well."

That seems unlikely, even to the most lightweight reporters in the room. The coalition's standard line is that the majority of Iraqis -- "the good people of Iraq" -- are supportive of the occupation, even while half the country seems to be in flames. At one briefing, Jim Chu of NBC News notes images of "ordinary Iraqis" cheering attacks on coalition forces. "How does this jive with what the coalition has been saying - that this is essentially a small minority that's supporting these insurgents?" Chu asks.

Without skipping a beat, coalition spokesman Dan Senor assures Chu that those "select images" in no way reflect the majority of Iraqis. "If you look at the polling" -- Senor often brings up polling in his briefings -- "while there are some who cheer on violence, the silent majority of Iraqis express grateful appreciation for the liberation." Reluctantly, he concedes that quite a few Iraqis also expressed opposition to the occupation. "Which we understand," Senor says. "It's not nice to be occupied."

After the photographs of Iraqi prisoners being abused at Abu Ghraib surface, it takes almost a week for American journalists to realize just how big the story is. "This is going to drive people insane," predicts Stephen Farrell of the Times of London. "Just give it a few days." Abu Ghraib, in fact, turns out to be the best thing to happen to the press corps since the fall of Saddam. Because many of the prisoners held are from Baghdad, journalists can actually get to them. Within a week, reporters have not only found some of the naked men in the photographs, they have interviewed them and conveyed their stories across the United States. It is a military nightmare.

Hoping to contain the damage, the Army offers the press a tour of the prison. Some of the press, that is. Harding, whose paper regularly bashes George Bush, isn't invited. Newsweek is also left out of the trip, as are Time, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. The military says there simply isn't room for everyone. In fact, there are two buses for reporters, one of which is completely empty. Kimmitt claims it's a spare, in case the other bus breaks down on the way to the prison. No one believes him. Several reporters jump into their own cars and head for Abu Ghraib, arriving ahead of the press bus. "We're probably the only assholes in history who've tried to break into Abu Ghraib," says Babak Dehghanpisheh of Newsweek.

When the bus arrives, the reporters file off and approach a massive expanse of tents, each housing twenty-five prisoners. A soldier screams, "No talking to the detainees!" But as soon as the prisoners catch sight of the press corps, pandemonium erupts. Dressed in rags, the Iraqis press their bodies against double layers of barbed wire. There are hundreds of them: shouting, holding up crude signs or crutches. Several wave prosthetic legs. "Where's the freedom?" they shout in Arabic. "Is this the freedom?" A prisoner with a bullhorn denounces Americans in English: "They've taken away our freedom, our liberty, our rights!" The military's staged press tour has devolved into unscripted chaos. Farnaz Fassihi of the Wall Street Journal stands frozen. "I feel like I'm in a bad dream," she whispers. "God, what have the Americans done?"

Trying to control the damage, the MPs quickly herd everyone back on the buses. "Get the hell on that bus!" an MP orders Anja Niedringhaus, an AP photographer trying to photograph the scene. But when the tour reaches the "hard facility" where the infamous photos were taken, the screams are even more horrific. Female detainees, who, like most prisoners, have not yet been charged with any crimes, shout down to reporters from the second tier of the prison. "I've been here five months!" one woman yells from her cell. "Why?"

"This is a sin!" another cries, in Arabic. "I have five children, and they're alone!" As the screams echo and bounce against the cement walls, the MPs push the reporters along. One soldier grabs a journalist's camera. A prisoner shouts that soldiers in the prison stripped her naked. "What's your name?" an Iraqi radio reporter asks. "Jamilla," she says. "Please help me."

The journalists invited to Abu Ghraib are not allowed to do anything journalists normally do: ask questions, take pictures. "Why are we here?" wonders Fassihi. Every accredited reporter in Iraq must sign a seven-page document agreeing to the U.S. military's ground rules. Essentially, the military has the right to kick you out of the country if you don't behave. It can seize your photographs. It can revoke your press ID. It can put you on a plane back to America. Some reporters joke that perhaps the military should have required its own soldiers to sign the document: One of its rules specifies, "No photographs or video will be taken of detainees in a demeaning manner in which individuals can be identified individually or in which they are made an object of public curiosity or subject of public ridicule."

Josh hammer and robert king are missing. It is Sunday evening, May 9th, and no one has heard a word from either of them since morning. Melinda Liu, Newsweek's acting bureau chief, nibbles on a plate of fatoush salad at the Hamra and looks at her phone, as if willing it to ring. "He should have called by now," she tells her colleague, Babak Dehghanpisheh. Both of them have been calling Hammer's cell phone and satellite phone for hours. Nothing. "I'm not sure whether to go into full crisis mode yet," says Liu. "Just wait a little bit longer," says Dehghanpisheh.

For the past week, Hammer and King have been quietly venturing out of Baghdad to cover the siege in Fallujah. They made an attempt the previous Saturday but turned back at a Marine checkpoint outside the city. Gray plumes of smoke were billowing on the horizon outside of Baghdad, where a fuel truck had fallen victim to an ambush. "I think it's too soon," Hammer concluded.

That evening, as they returned, word began circulating in Baghdad that several other journalists had actually entered Fallujah. "Fuck," Hammer said, looking at King over dinner at the Hamra. "I guess that means we're going back," King said. The two bicker like college roommates thrown together in freshman year. Hammer tends to assume everything will always work out. King, a self-described hillbilly from Memphis, assumes disaster at all times.

"To think I was planning on spending the day at the pool," King jokes when I join them on their way out of Baghdad the next morning. The fuel truck they saw the previous day is still on fire. By now, half of the frame is burned into the ground. Military sharpshooters stand watch on an overpass as a convoy of Bradleys rumbles by. Hammer, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, calmly opens a bag of beef jerky. "This place is really deteriorating," he says. "Rapidly," King agrees.

The road to Fallujah runs past Abu Ghraib, not far from where a Reuters cameraman was recently killed. King looks at Ala'a, our Iraqi driver. "Got any rock & roll?" he asks. "No, habibi," Ala'a says. He puts on some Iraqi pop music. The road is deserted. "We are driving to hell," Ala'a mutters. Outside of Fallujah, a line of cars idles before a checkpoint. The city is quiet and empty. Hammer peers at the low-lying buildings, most of which show scatter damage from U.S. bombing, as the car cautiously moves along the deserted main drag. "We're in Indian country now," he says under his breath.

At the soccer stadium in the southern sector of town, Fallujans are busy burying their dead. "Jesus, check this out," King says, walking onto what used to be the main field. It is now a mass grave; a bulldozer cuts long trenches in the soil. Several loud booms echo across the cemetery, followed by the sharp staccato of gunfire. Upon seeing the foreigners, a group of Iraqi men in dishadashas starts talking furiously in Arabic. Following procedure, Ala'a introduces Hammer and King as Canadian journalists. This satisfies the elder of the group, who begins waving his arms, denouncing Americans. "Those graves," he says, pointing at the cemetery. "It's not enough for four people?" he says, referring to the four military contractors who were killed in the city.

The anger among the men is palpable. One woman, they say, was in labor when a bomb hit her home. One family lost all of their children, who were buried together in a single grave. In the embattled Jolan neighborhood, where most of the fighting is taking place, a family of thirty lie under the ruins of their house. "What do you think?" Hammer asks King. "Should we try to go to Jolan?" King looks at him like he's crazy. "Bad idea, huh?" Hammer persists. "Trying to get into the neighborhoods that are still held by the muj - "

"Bad idea," says King. "I think we should wait a day or two, but that's just me -- chickenshit." The men argue about the risk. "There's too much shooting," King says, as more gunfire erupts from outside the stadium. "That's outside the city," Hammer says. "Don't be so worried." King gives up. "If you want to go, we'll go," he says. Hammer looks at Ala'a. "He probably thinks it's crazy."

"Not a good idea," says Ala'a. "OK, it was a bad idea to come here today," King says. "But we're here."

"Yes," Ala'a says. "But there is worse and better than worse." To get to Jolan, the men need to cross the Euphrates. With Iraqi guides in tow, they drive along the river, past a wasteland of collapsed structures. The air is heavy with thick clouds of dust. Suddenly, they are at the bridge. "Jesus," Hammer says. The contractors, who were ambushed on the main road, had been strung up on this bridge. The photographs of the incident are some of the most infamous of the war. Since that day in March, King and Hammer are among the first journalists to visit the site. The area is a pile of rubble, bombed beyond recognition by the Americans. A hand-painted sign over the bridge reads in Arabic: welcome to fallujah, city of mujahedin. A rank odor permeates the air. Hammer pulls his shirt up over his nose.

"Let me get out -- I want to get a picture," King says. He walks toward the bridge. Suddenly, the Iraqi guides start yelling. Across the river, a convoy of American APCs is moving closer, training its guns. In a second, the street is deserted as the Iraqis scramble for cover. "They're not going to shoot us," Hammer tells King, but the fear is contagious.

"Let's get the fuck out," King says. Afterward, Hammer sulks. There was something oddly tentative about the whole trip -- it felt more like a reconnaissance mission than reporting. "We pussed out," Hammer says. "We didn't puss out," King says. "I think we did pretty good for the first day."

"We fucked up," Hammer insists. "We should have crossed that bridge. We have to go back." It is now almost 9 p.m. on Sunday, and there's still no word from Hammer or King. The two men had returned to Fallujah that morning, headed for Jolan. Their driver and translator have arrived back at Newsweek without them, the vehicle -- stripped and ransacked by Iraqi fighters -- in shambles. The driver, who never wanted to go to Fallujah in the first place, is shaken.

Finally, Melinda Liu's cell phone rings. It's Hammer. "Josh?" she yells into the phone. Then the call ends abruptly. "Shit," she says. When Hammer and King arrive a few hours later, they recount what happened. Almost as soon as they reached Jolan, they were approached by a group of young fighters with guns. "Sahafi," King said, raising his hands. Journalists. "Mukhabarat," the fighters said. Spies.

Hammer and King were ordered, at gunpoint, into separate cars. Hammer told his captors he was French. The jihadi wanted proof: "Let me see your passport." Hammer had failed to leave his U.S. passport at the house -- a standard procedure to prevent identification. "You are American," said the jihadi. "My mother is French," Hammer improvised. The jihadi looked at him. "You are American."

It was touch and go for eight hours. The two journalists were shuttled from house to house by fighters armed with pistols, rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikovs. One, whom the journalists dubbed Suicide Bomber, informed the men he was a terrorist, lifting his shirt to reveal a white suicide belt with two triggers. During a lunch of kebabs, yogurt and tea, their captors discussed Balzac and Victor Hugo. They also talked about the siege of Fallujah. "My mother was shot and killed by a sniper's bullet," said one young fighter. "My sister and my brother were killed." A young man in his twenties named Mohammed pulled out his .45 and started fiddling with it. "We are filled with grief," he said. "Grief has taken over our lives."

And then it was over. One of the town's religious leaders had intervened. "You're lucky we got you," one of the fighters told Hammer as he and King were released. "There are some very bad people in Fallujah." The next morning, the head of Nicholas Berg, an American civilian contractor, appears on the Internet. Word in Baghdad is that he was killed in Fallujah.

After Robert King returns from Fallujah, he locks himself in his room. He remains there for three days, afraid to leave. Newsweek's drivers had spilled everything to their captors during the ordeal, including inside information about the magazine's housing and security arrangements. Within a day, the entire bureau has left its villa in the Baghdad suburbs and moved to the Sheraton. Hammer returns to Jerusalem.

Paranoia has settled over Baghdad. At the Fanar Hotel, a low-rent dive that's part of the Sheraton compound, freelance journalists are scrambling to get out. Nicholas Berg had lived at the Fanar, in Room 602, before he disappeared. It is rumored that Berg had been sold out -- by a jealous contractor, a journalist hoping to score points with the insurgency, one of the hotel's Arab employees -- no one knows. A Tunisian photographer switches hotels every night. Whether anyone is really after other Fanar residents is immaterial. People believe it. In Baghdad, that's enough.

Liu has spent the day attempting to report on Berg's death. An ominous-looking gray parrot with red tail feathers sits on its perch in the Fanar's lobby, bobbing its head like a yo-yo. There is, allegedly, a monkey on the roof that no one has seen for quite a while. The timing of Berg's execution -- on the heels of the Abu Ghraib scandal -- strikes many reporters as suspicious. One popular theory is that the footage of Berg's execution was made public on American orders, to deflect world attention from Abu Ghraib. Liu doesn't rule it out. "That's how I know I need to take a break," she says. "That theory actually makes some sense to me."

As other journalists leave Iraq, however, King signs up for an embed with the First Cavalry Division at Camp War Eagle, in Sadr City. "You know," he says a few days before the embed is set to start, surveying the empty courtyard at the Sheraton from his balcony, "at least in other wars you knew who the enemy was." In Iraq, the list of enemies seems incalculable: Shia militia, Sunni mujahedin, Saddam loyalists, Syrian jihadis, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah - all determined to fight occupation.

In the days leading up to the June 30th hand-over, many journalists are skeptical that much will improve after the Coalition Provisional Authority is disbanded and the new interim Iraqi government led by Iyad Allawi takes charge. Blast walls continue to appear throughout the city, popping up at the sites of suicide bombings, scrawled with English messages warning Iraqis to stay away. Several journalists are ambushed on the outskirts of Baghdad. Four more contractors are killed, this time on the road to the airport. In Fallujah, the U.S.-supported Iraqi Brigade is camped outside the city, while inside, insurgents rule.

"This is our doing," King says, looking out at the Green Zone across the river from his hotel. He seems unable to believe that his country has created such a disaster. "This isn't America, what's going on in Iraq," he says. "It's not the America I know. This is scary. If this is America, then we're in deep shit."