So why, exactly, are you here?

U.S. Army Capt. Charles Ford plays a video game with seven-year-old Wa'ad, who lost an arm and a leg to an improvised bomb, during a visit to the child's home near Muqdadiyah, about 90 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad in Iraq's volatile Diyala province Sunday, Aug. 3, 2008. Soldiers from Hammer Company, 3rd Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment are arranging for the child to be fitted with prosthetic limbs. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

I tried counting the number of people I met who were getting divorces, the number who'd been in Iraq longer than they'd been married, the moms who left behind toddlers to be cared for by their own mothers, the young fathers who'd yet to hold their babies born while they were gone. I thought of the two guys who died from the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment over the past month. I thought of the Iraqi kids I'd seen the day before.

And the answer to Stepp's question suddenly didn't matter that much.
I was there.
I got out my notebook and started writing.

Scott Hadly

Afternoon...

Here is the report from Scott Hadly, Ventura County Star that I spoke about last week. It is a recap of his time as an embedded reporter in Iraq. The title of my blog will make sense once you read the article.

I think it is safe to say Mr. Scott Hadly felt the sacrifice our warriors are making every day...read his story and see what you think.

Needless to say, I am very proud of Chris and the entire 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment. They are my heroes...end of discussion.

Before you jump in on the article, here are a few shiny objects that might be of interest:

Air force looks to a new drone to keep peace in Iraq

Iraq calls for doctors who fled violence to return

Photo by James Lee
Special to The Star

Staff writer Scott Hadly flies in a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter on July 14, in Iraq, where he is interviewing soldiers, Marines and Seabees.

Reporting from Iraq: War steals comforts, sometimes tears families apart

By Scott Hadly
Sunday, August 3, 2008

Dogs barking and cascading calls to prayer cut through the predawn silence.

We hid in the reeds, looking for the enemy. Pvt. Dan Stepp peered through his night vision goggles, down the scope of his M-4 machine gun, scanning the area for movement. Spc. Brittney Griffy, a medic, lay close by in the dirt.

I stayed hidden, waiting for something to happen.

Stepp and Griffy bet on whether they'd make it back to the base by lunchtime or whether this patrol would be another "12-hour cluster."

As Capt. Ryan Johnson scurried along the lines in a low crouch, making sure everyone in the squad remained alert, I wondered if I should be nervous.

"Do you have a gun?" Stepp asked me.

I didn't bother explaining the rules concerning noncombatants and reporters remaining unarmed.

"They don't care if you're a reporter, you know."

As we waited, Stepp, a skinny guy with wire-rimmed glasses and a deep love for all 26 of the guns he had at home, kept talking in a low whisper.

"So did they say you had to come here?" he asked, speaking about my editors back in Ventura County.

"I didn't have to, no."

And then Stepp asked the one question I kept hearing since the moment I arrived in Iraq.

"So why, exactly, are you here?"

Good question.

You would think that after spending three weeks with soldiers, Marines and Seabees, I'd know. After being asked that same thing a dozen different ways — including by my wife on the phone in hysterics upon hearing of a double suicide bombing attack nearby saying, "I just don't understand why you are even there" — you would think I'd have a pat answer.

But I didn't have anything for Pvt. Stepp.

A short list

This summer I could have been covering the lead-up to the Ventura County Fair or perhaps something to do with highway improvements on the 101, but — thank goodness for my editor — I got to go to Iraq.

The most obvious answer to why I — along with photographer James Lee — traveled to Iraq was because of the Seabees. We came to Iraq to tell their stories, both big and small.

For a little over three weeks, we embedded with military units first in Anbar province and then in Diyala.

We spent almost two weeks with the Seabees of Ventura County's Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 3 at Camp Ramadi.

The remainder of our time was with the Army's 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment based at Forward Operating Base Warhorse in Diyala, considered the breadbasket of Iraq and currently the most violent province in the country.

I was in Iraq to report on what Seabees, soldiers and Marines were doing, but I think the reasons why I was there went deeper.

Soon after arriving in Baghdad, awaiting credentials from the Combined Press Information Center for the Multi-National Force Iraq, I talked briefly with Seth Mnookin, a writer for Vanity Fair magazine. He was there shadowing a New York Times reporter and asked me who I was and what I was doing.

"The Ventura County what was it again?" Mnookin asked.

As a guy who's written extensively about the media, and was working on a story on the Iraq coverage and Times Baghdad bureau, he was a little curious.

The Star has embedded a reporter in Iraq before, sending Dani Dodge there in 2003. But that was during the invasion, when there were more than 700 journalists embedded with U.S. troops.

At the end of last year, there were only nine journalists embedded with the U.S. military in all of Iraq.

When I arrived in Kuwait a month ago, I talked briefly with one of the soldiers who coordinated getting journalists in and out of Iraq. He pulled out a list of every reporter who'd come through the base since the beginning of the year.

It was a very short list. There were 16 names.

'So you're going to write about this?'

The oddity of this war — costing anywhere from $5 billion to $12 billion a month and taking more than 4,000 American lives — is that it is considered the most pressing issue in the coming election, while garnering the least attention from the media or the public at large.

Part of the reason I was asked about why I was there had to do with that disconnect.

Some of the troops I'd talked with felt the public had moved on and wasn't interested.

Army Lt. Justin Magula, a fast-talking squad leader with an admiration for '80s hair bands and the HBO series "Entourage," said that disconnect, and the mess deployments made of relationships, had inspired some of his fellow West Point grads to pen a movie script called "14 Days."

It's all about soldiers coming home for the short two weeks of R&R; one guy finds his wife cheating on him, others find people oblivious to what's going on in Iraq.

Utilityman Joshua Quitmeyer was a little surprised to be interrupted by a reporter one day last month while unloading cheap, warped "haji" lumber at a remote camp near the Syrian border in western Iraq.

"So you're going to write about this?" asked Quitmeyer, his face caked in a fine dust and lined with salt where the sweat had dried in the hot desert wind.

Three days before, Quitmeyer and his crew had come to the aid of a group of Iraqi Army soldiers critically injured in a suicide bombing. The Seabee crew regularly put in 12- and 14-hour days in intense heat, and the idea that somebody wanted to talk to them for a newspaper story sounded a bit like a con.

"OK so are you going to quote me?" he asked again.

"Well, yeah."

We talked not just about his work and helping the injured Iraqis, but about the war.

He marveled at all the contractors working in the country, making good money. We talked about the irony that the Seabees were created back in World War II because the Japanese had overtaken civilian contractors working in the Pacific.

The Defense Department was compelled to create Naval Construction battalions, and the Seabees were born.

Now civilian contractors outnumbered troops in Iraq.

While I was there, the Seabees were working on rewiring living areas. A contractor had botched the job, resulting in several deaths by electrocution, they said.

Another Seabee, BU 1 James Davenport, a 33-year-old convoy security team leader whose brother and future sister-in-law were also in the battalion, wanted to show off his team's work.

Gung ho about the war, he worked seamlessly with guys with the opposite point of view. The only thing that mattered was how they did their job.

Davenport, with a deep voice and 10 years in uniform, wanted people to see how many hours his fellow Seabees spent on the road. He wanted people to understand the risks Seabees took and know how men and women just out of high school were making life and death decisions every day.

"They make me look good," he said.

Sitting with Davenport, and Petty Officers Chris Bishop and Dan Johnson before heading out on a midnight convoy to a remote outpost, I got to hear their take on the war.

"Those guys who think this is over are wrong; it's never going to be over," Bishop said.

Families torn apart

Those dark predawn hours in a field near an abandoned village in Diyala province, I pondered Pvt. Stepp's question about why I was in Iraq.

Before sunrise, an explosion rocked us when a big mine-resistant ambush protector vehicle hit a bomb. I listened to rounds popping off as fire burned the hulking armored vehicle.

A day or so earlier, my wife had told me my 5-year-old son had gotten a picture of me, put a little hole in it and strung it around his neck because he wanted to see his dad.

I got to think about that while we waited in the reeds.

I thought of the men and women I met on their second and third deployments. I thought of their families apart — not weeks like me and my family — but months and months.

I tried counting the number of people I met who were getting divorces, the number who'd been in Iraq longer than they'd been married, the moms who left behind toddlers to be cared for by their own mothers, the young fathers who'd yet to hold their babies born while they were gone. I thought of the two guys who died from the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment over the past month. I thought of the Iraqi kids I'd seen the day before.

And the answer to Stepp's question suddenly didn't matter that much.

I was there.

I got out my notebook and started writing.

==================

I love you Chris and we remember your sacrifice every day! We will continue to support you and the entire 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment in all that you do...count on it!

Be safe!

v/r,
- Collabman