I’m exhausted, jet-lagged and back in my cubicle housing unit, or CHU, at Camp Liberty in Baghdad.  After being away for several weeks to set up the On The Line project, it was good to see Carlos again.  He stayed while I was away and held up better than I would have.

Coming back is always hard.  Any soldier returning from home leave tells the same story – taking that first step away from family and friends …

Most of our time in Iraq has been spent at small bases called Combat Outposts or COPs.  COP Apache in the Adamiyah district of Baghdad is one COP we visited often.  Once, one of Baghdad’s toughest neighborhoods, Adamiyah is experiencing a time of fragile peace.  

Soldiers of the 3rd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division based at COP Apache, especially the members of Attack Company, conducted multiple daily patrols to keep the lid on potential sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites …

Getting from one unit to another in Iraq would be impossible without the Army’s UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter.  Carlos and I have spent hours moving from base to base via Black Hawks.  Without them we and the soldiers we cover would be exposed more often to roadside bombs and suicide bombers.  Those kinds of threats have diminished in the past year, but the Black Hawks, and the pilots who fly them, have saved uncounted lives since the Iraq war began.…

“War makes strange giant creatures of us little routine men who inhabit the earth”
-Ernie Pyle

One more time I am back. One last time, enshallah.
Iraq has gobbled up vast chunks of my life since 1990 when I first set foot in Baghdad in August of that year. Saddam’s Army had invaded Kuwait and NBC News sent me to Baghdad to report on the dictator’s next move. After the Iranian revolution and subsequent hostage crisis, The United States used …