CJR Daily’s Paul McLeary is reporting from Iraq on how the press is doing its job there. This is his first dispatch in a series.

KUWAIT CITY, KUWAIT — In retrospect, after landing at Kuwait City airport, groggy from the daylong flight from New York, I probably wasn’t the best judge of my options.

The initial plan was to get my visa, collect my backpack and find the shuttle to the Hilton Hotel, the spot where journalists catch a bus to the Kuwaiti Air Force base for flights to Iraq. I tried to call Capt. Paul Edwards, the U.S. Army media relations officer who handles travel for embedded journalists, to let him know I made it, but I couldn’t get my satellite phone to work. Frustrated, I suddenly forgot about the shuttle, and instead stumbled over to the cab queue and headed to the Hilton. After losing a full day to travel, I’d had it, and just wanted to make it somewhere to put down roots for a bit.

I had little idea how futile that goal would prove to be in the days ahead.

Reporters can choose from any number of hotels in Kuwait City, though only a handful are recommended by the American military. Given that the Hilton is the place where ur-contractor Kellogg Brown & Root stages its buses to the airport — which I needed to take to make it to Baghdad the next day — I figured it would be easiest to stay there.

The Hilton, after you get past a checkpoint staffed by armed guards, is a curious mix of wealthy Arab businessmen sprinkled with a handful of Western airline crews and denim-bedecked Americans in NASCAR jackets and baseball hats, some with wives...

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