Embedding aside, the turnaround time for requests for basic information has gone from the same day, normally—essential for most stories—to three or four days, or more. An acknowledgement that the requests have even been received is considered a victory. Six years into the war, the public-affairs offices for entire Army divisions in Iraq send out contact details to journalists that indicate they have “no commercial number.” A note at the central press office says, “News media representatives are always encouraged to call to check on the status of their query.” The phone number listed routinely disconnects callers when they enter the extension. U.S. officials occasionally refer reporters’ queries to Iraqi officials. But some of those Iraqi officials then ask how the reporter got their name and number, and refer them back to the U.S. military. It would be amusing if it weren’t so disconcerting.

Baghdad is still a tale of two cities: the Green Zone, where most public-affairs officers and many military and State Department staff spend their entire time in Iraq, and the rest of Baghdad, where the Iraqi and Western reporters live. A mid-level officer who had been deployed in the Green Zone for the better part of a year recently wondered to me how it was that Iraqis fill their cars with gas since she had never seen a gas station (and presumably the long lines that go with them). Another embassy person admonished guests invited to a reception not to come too early, seemingly unaware that it’s impossible to determine how long it will take to get through the multiple checkpoints from what U.S. officials still call “the red zone.”

The elaborate system of controls keeping U.S. forces, embassy staff, and contractors well inside the protected zones where the U.S. military and embassy are based also helps keep journalists out. In the broad-brush view of the military rules, all reporters and their local staff are considered potential suicide bombers. At a parking lot where journalists are dropped off to be escorted into Camp Victory, the military takes away cell phones—essential for coordinating pick-ups.

American reporters since last year have been denied the access badges that are given to any U.S. contractor. The badges prevent them from having to wait in areas most vulnerable to suicide bombers in order to enter the Green Zone. That is one reason most Western reporters have boycotted the new press center inside the Green Zone. That and the several intensive body searches required before you get in. I am glad to be able to report some progress here: a letter from the Baghdad-based media hand-delivered to General Raymond Odierno in June resulted in a promise that a limited number of the badges would be issued to the Western media.

The basic U.S. message here is that Iraq is safe again. That is debatable. The twenty-minute ride from the airport to the Green Zone, on what has become one of the safest roads in Baghdad, is nonetheless considered too dangerous for U.S. officials, who fly in instead. The heavily armored shuttle used for the ride to the Green Zone by embassy staff members who can’t get a helicopter flight still requires body armor
and a helmet.

One of the ironies is that as coverage of the U.S. military has waned, the military has taken on more complex tasks. Many of the U.S. troops appear light years ahead of where they started. The first troops I covered in the spring of 2003 jumped out of planes into northern Iraq and were so badly prepared that they spent the night huddled together to keep from freezing, after being told they were landing in desert. Among the standouts I met was the sergeant who told me, “This is my interpreter,” patting his rifle when I asked how they got by without someone to translate for them. And the non-commissioned officer who told me earnestly when I’d asked why he’d volunteered to fight in Tallulah: “I like explosions.”

Jane Arraf is a correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor who has covered Iraq since 1991. As CNN's senior Iraq correspondent, she was embedded with U.S. forces during the battles for Fallujah, Najaf, Samarra, Tal Afar, and other military operations. As the 2005-2006 Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, she specialized in counterinsurgency and military-media relations.