Baghdad Diary

...The visitor is escorted from the convention center to the palace aboard an embassy vehicle and cannot gain entry without entrusting his passport to a Marine guard at a checkpoint in another sandbagged wall...

...A few privileged passengers were met by official vehicles: SUVs equipped with full body armor and radios, not to mention their own private security people...

...We were greeted by the reassuring smiles of a few ruddy-faced Britons hefting automatic weapons— former military personnel hired as private security guards at high wages to protect the airport and environs...

...Allawi himself operates from an imposing building within the Green Zone, behind the convention center where the coalition set up a press office and international press center...

...In reality, while Bremer was around, the CPA drafted rules, regulations, laws, and codes involving every facet of the governing system...

...You drive past Iraqi policemen in blue uniforms and Iraqi National Guardsmen in brown-hued camouflage fatigues...

...Meanwhile, in the palace the Americans occupied after chasing Saddam Hussein out of Baghdad, U.S...

...That is not to suggest the Iraqis cooperating with the Americans will change course...

...The man was lying beside the burgundy Honda Accord he had been driving...

...soldiers, as well as Iraqi police and soldiers—a U.S...

...High marble walls and marble staircases suited Saddam Hussein's tastes, but I am told he did not favor this particularpalace, preferring his more ornate quarters to the north in Tikrit...

...soldiers had blocked off all the streets to the entrance...

...My attempt to get back to sleep ended with another much louder blast...

...You develop the habit of looking over your shoulder when you walk into homes or offices for interviews...

...But the most frightening aspect of entering the Green Zone is the walk from the drop-off to the first layer of sandbags...

...They said they did not know what was happening and ordered me to stand back...

...When I ran into Allawi in a hall of the convention center, three or four bodyguards, all in civilian garb—possibly U.S...

...This was the gathering where "the Iraqis themselves," some 1,300 of them representing various political parties, religious factions and ethnic groups, selected a 100-member National Assembly...

...diplomats operated in such opulent surroundings...

...There, under the blazing sun, waiting taxi drivers implored us to hire them for the ride into town...

...Like all the other fictions perpetrated here by the Americans, Saddam's "transfer" from U.S...

...Donald Kirk, a longtime NL contributor, is a CBS News correspondent in Baghdad...

...The embassy hopes to perpetuate the fiction that the Iraqis are busy carrying out thenown reforms and that the Americans are only on hand to steward the process...

...A dozen people were killed, including the driver and the guard...

...One morning around 9:20 A.M...

...There is no parallel for the democratization of Iraq in the Vietnam experience...

...In this city of more than 5 million people, in fact, you sense an overwhelming desire for peace, normal life, and a return to the ancient pursuit of making money...

...soldiers, possibly employed by aprivate security firm—tried to keep me from getting near him...

...THE REAL center of power in Iraq remains the palace that served as Bremer's headquarters and now houses Negroponte's embassy...

...After the contortions, and a landing free of incident, the assortment of journalists, U.S...

...Your driver navigates quickly through traffic, running red lights whenever he can, pausing only at military and police checkpoints or traffic jams...

...to Iraqi custody soon after the "transfer" of power from the CPA to the Iraqi interim government was carried out only on paper...

...It was June 28, and I heard over the taxi radio, tuned to the BBC, that the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was no more...

...Actually, they are drinking beer imported from Turkey that is sold cheaper on the street than in a store, but is still far more expensive than gasoline...

...Others stand in long lines at what my driver assures me is "Iraq's best ice cream restaurant...

...You are a moving target, even though you are not exactly in a war zone...

...It is not advisable, though, for a foreigner to join these lines...

...The process was artificial, a make-believe attempt to begin installing democracy in a culture that has no real understanding of the concept...

...Cars are lined up for blocks to buy gasoline sold at the world's cheapest prices, 50 Iraqi dinars per liter—just a few cents at the exchange rate of 1,450 dinars to the dollar, and about a quarter of the price of a cup of Turkish coffee at a roadside stand...

...Stay here a few days, and you are sure to encounter scenes that are more than disconcerting...

...An interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, was now in charge, at least nominally, and he had appointed a cabinet that was assuming the appurtenances of authority...

...Uniformed U.S...

...One day, when I stepped out of my hotel, I saw a small crowd gathering around a column of American Humvees...

...bureaucrats and contractors on board trooped into the nearly deserted terminal...

...Four days after my arrival, staying at the Sheraton before moving to the Al Mansour, I was awakened one morning by an explosion that seemed close but not too close...

...The Iraqi guards were posted a few yards further from the entrance, lengthening the walk into the Green Zone, while American soldiers gazed from atop nearby Humvees...

...Such meetings are inevitably labeled "for background" or"off-the-record...

...Don't I have a right to cross a street, and isn't Iraq now under control of the interim government of Prime Minister Allawi...

...A car containing an enormous bomb had exploded at the checkpoint where vehicles with permission to enter the Green Zone are inspected...

...The Green Zone in Baghdad, by contrast, exists as a world unto itself, behind layers of sandbags, penetrable only through a gauntlet of checkpoints where both American soldiers and Iraqi security personnel examine passports, search visitors' belongings, pat down their pockets, and ask to see anything that looks suspicious to them—in my case a wallet stuffed with airline mileage cards and other pieces of mostly useless plastic...

...Entry to the palace—the inner sanctum of the war, where generals and counselors and senior diplomats and highly paid consultants plot the future of the country—requires meetings with public relations staffers, conferences with various aides, leading, perhaps, to a closely monitored appointment...

...ambassador to the United Nations, to take over what is now the largest U.S...

...We knew pretty well how far we could venture on roads to outlying provincial towns, and we could fly anytime aboard a military aircraft to Danang, the port city on the northeastern coast of South Vietnam...

...A few minutes later the pilot, also South African, warned passengers that he was about to perform a series of sharp corkscrew turns during our descent...

...Maybe tomorrow," he responded as the bodyguards shouldered me away...

...Ten minutes after the Humvees roared off the man's relatives arrived, weeping, chanting, shrieking...

...I happened to arrive on what seemed an auspicious day...

...The maneuvers would make the plane a more difficult target for snipers who often fire at aircraft approaching Baghdad...

...The second was a rocket misfiring and exploding in a van, blowing it up and killing two of the people firing the rockets, in nearby Firdous Square, where the statue of Saddam Hussein was famously yanked down after the American arrival in Baghdad...

...Embassy in the world, both in terms of physical space and the size of its staff...

...You notice how easily insurgents can plant bombs outside strategic targets, how simple it is for them to ambush cars and kidnap or kill drivers and passengers...

...diplomats and Civil Service officials still performed much the same functions as they had under the CPA...

...The rest of us were taken by van to a parking lot a couple of miles away...

...Ice Cream, Democracy and Car Bombs Baghdad Diary By Donald Kirk Baghdad WITH A LAUGH, the South African attendant on the Royal Jordanian Air flight from Amman told me not to bother reading the Jordanian newspaper she was handing me...

...That question invites an ambiguous response...

...You do not stroll around the central bazaar, tempted though you are to browse for rugs, jewelry, silverware, or works of art, ancient and modern...

...They are determined to hold elections for a bona fide National Assembly, and no one expects the process to happen without bloodshed...

...in the dining room of my hotel, I was startled by the sound of an explosion that shook the building...

...The news, mostly from Iraq, was all bad and might spoil my flight...

...There are constant reminders, however, of the violence that meets those snatched up by insurgent groups and gangsters in search of a few dollars—or, for that matter, anyone who runs afoul of edgy, suspicious U.S...

...The staff is quartered in nearby trailers: four to a trailer in the case of junior people...

...or to any of a number of villages and bases whose names are forever engraved in my mind...

...That incident has been the worst I have personally encountered, but hardly the only one...

...When I told her the soldiers tried to prevent me from seeing what had happened, the major snapped back with a question of her own, "Why did you violate orders...

...Heading to an appointment, we veer under a bridge where young men are hanging out...

...to Cantho, the central city of the Mekong Delta...

...For a distance of about 100 feet, you feel exposed to bombers and snipers—a sensation that is not altogether paranoid...

...When I reached the Green Zone—which the Americans have since formally renamed the International Zone—30 minutes later, U.S...

...But most of the time there is precious little real security...

...Soldiers told me not to approach them...

...In the late 1960s and early 1970s, when I spent much of my time in Saigon, reporters could travel just about anywhere inside the city and throughout much of the surrounding region with little chance of being shot at...

...On Friday evenings after prayers, crowds gather along the Tigris River at the restaurants serving masgouf, a delicious fish indigenous to the Tigris and the Euphrates...

...Army major I interviewed did nothing to relieve the sense of tragedy...

...Instead, you findadriver who comes recommended by others...

...Wherever you go in Baghdad these days, you are taking a calculatedrisk...

...Upward of 2,000 people, including officials, soldiers and contractors, work in the embassy, shielded from outside temperatures that routinely exceed 120 degrees Fahrenheit by a vast air-conditioning system installed soon after the Americans stepped in...

...The noise is the best evidence he could ask for that "loyalists" still fight on his behalf...

...Nevertheless, I joined the people walking around the Humvees toward several Iraqi policemen who were hovering over the body of a man wrapped in a white sheet...

...two to a trailer for senior officials...

...The event was one more small tragedy in a conflict that has made such catastrophes routine...

...It turned out that he was on the way to my hotel to arrange for his wedding reception and had made the mistake of cutting in front of one of the Humvees...

...Nothing I had read prepared me for the perils facing foreigners working in Iraq or the realities of covering a war that is like none other in my experience...

...On the few occasions that I have seen him—at press conferences, and once while he was walking through the convention center—he has been guarded not by Iraqis but by sternlooking Americans...

...Assassinations and kidnappings are bound to increase as elections approach and the Americans press democracy on a people that has never known anything but dictatorship...

...Between them and spectators converging on the scene, mostly journalists, stood Iraqi National Guardsmen...

...you see them from time to time, columns of three vehicles, each with a flak-jacketed, helmeted GI peering through the top, manning a machine gun...

...The driver advises whether or not certain streets are dangerous, and you don't argue with such judgments...

...But its problems are likely to be dwarfed by the challenge of nationwide democratic elections, slated for next January, when voters are supposed to choose a set of leaders to replace the "interim" government now in power...

...So my driver leaves me in the taxi and eventually presents me with a threedip, three-flavored parfait, dripping with chocolate and bits of fruit...

...The restraints placed on journalists, who once visited outlying scenes of conflict unimpeded, are almost unprecedented...

...The soldiers thought he might bea terrorist about to toss a bomb, and one of them shot him...

...Somewhere near the machinery of American power lurks this war's most famous captive, Saddam Hussein...

...Saddam stayed where he was, reportedly writing poetry, without a television or newspapers, comforted no doubt by the sounds of the explosions so disturbing to everyone else in this privileged enclave...

...soldiers ready to shoot first and ask questions later...

...You know that American Humvees and larger Bradley fighting vehicles are patrolling the streets...

...all of this legislation remains in effect...

...You hear a bomb go off in the distance—sometimes not as distant as you would like—but you also see crates of luxury goods, computers, refrigerators, and television sets piled high in front of shops...

...Later, in the confines of the Green Zone—the enclave of military and civilian American officialdom protected by high sandbagged walls and U.S...

...L. Paul Bremer III, who ran the CPA following the abrupt departure of Lieutenant General Jay M. Garner in May of last year, had taken off that morning...

...You do not even consider hailing a taxi on the street, much less jumping aboarda city bus...

...Never before have U.S...

...In Saigon during the war, U. S. officials never exercised that kind of control over South Vietnamese leaders...

...When I asked her about the incident, how it happened and why the soldiers did little to help, she had no answers...

...This cleared the way for John D. Negroponte, fresh from a stint as U.S...

...Those I encountered— first Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky and then President Nguyen Van Thieu—were never guarded by American soldiers, nor were the offices of ministries...

...I managed to skirt them—but only long enough to shake the prime minister's hand and ask him when he would be talking again to the foreign press...

...and single-occupancy units—or apartments within the palace—for those at or near the top...

...soldiers control access to press conferences, and you have to show up well in advance or they will bar you from attendance...

...In the elevator some contractors told me the first explosion was a rocket that hit the wall of the hotel four floors below my window...

...You tend to sit back in your seat, away from the window, so no one will suspect you are a foreigner, and you hope your car will fade into the heavy traffic...

...The explosion forced some changes in security...

...Are they planning acts of terror, a revolt, a holdup...

...He is believed to live in an armor-plated trailer—just outside the Green Zone, amid a sprawl of military structures beyond still more checkpoints, concrete barricades, barbed wire, and heaps of sandbags near the international airport...

...It was at the convention center that the Iraqi National Conference, a Bremer brainchild, convened...

...The driver, we learned later, had detonated the bomb when an Iraqi guard peered through his window for a closer look...