This is the third installment in a series of posts about the life of an embedded journalist in Iraq.

BAGHDAD, IRAQ — Camp Stryker is a place where travel plans go to die.

After waking in the late afternoon to the thunder of a steady downpour on the roof of my tent, I decided that heading out in the rain was preferable to hanging out in the heavy, dank air created by 15 guys napping in a confined space. I couldn’t think of anything better to do, so I hopped the bus back to Camp Sather to see if someone couldn’t tell me a little more about getting on a chopper to the International Zone the next day.

No luck.

Waiting for the bus back to The Stables, I started talking to Spc. Dave Seymour, who was having the same bad luck getting out, though he was more excited about heading out for two weeks R&R in Brazil than he was disappointed in having to wait around. Like many of the soldiers I met, Seymour was a big, friendly kid with some great stories about his tour in Iraq, and it was good to talk to someone I wasn’t trying to get to do something for me. We were heading to the same place, so we took the bus back and grabbed some Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) in the travel tent. (The beef ravioli is superb; the chocolate chip cookie, not so much.)

With a few hours to kill before trying to board the Rhino into Baghdad, I grabbed some couch space and settled in for a couple hours of Fox News Channel, which seems to be the only thing carried on military televisions here. The...

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