The Baghdad Follies

Roubicek is sitting in his room on the third floor of the Sheraton, drinking red wine and getting high on Afghan hash. You can buy excellent hash in Iraq. It's one of the perks of reconstruction. Before the war, getting high was punishable by a long stint in one of Saddam Hussein's jails. Now you can send an e-mail order and have hash delivered right to your hotel room. Roubicek's dealer is a cigarette salesman in the compound.

Roubicek is having a really bad day. Like everyone else in Baghdad, he wants to get embedded. It's not the military's perspective he's after -- it's the protection. Given the violence raging outside the hotel, embeds are often the only way to cover the fighting. Roubicek listens as his producer, Doug Luzader, speaks to a Marine Corps major on his cell phone, trying to talk his way into Fallujah. Since four private military contractors were killed and mutilated there by an angry mob a few weeks earlier, the city has been the scene of the fiercest fighting since the war began. Roubicek and Luzader, who are producing documentaries for a small outfit called HDNet, want in -- but the only way to get there is with the troops.

"I think there's been some kind of mix-up," Luzader says into the phone. "We wanted the embed for this weekend." He listens. "Look, Major, we were told yesterday . . . Yes. Right. But. . . ."

Roubicek, dressed in running shorts, a T-shirt and flip-flops, launches into a rant: "There's a list. We've gone from number thirty to number sixty, no explanation. We're getting shafted. I mean, fuck, what's the deal?"

Luzader paces, his face getting red. "What do you mean there's nothing you can do? Fine." He hangs up.

"What," Roubicek says morosely.

"Basically," Luzader says, pouring himself a drink, "until the mujahedin start their own embed program, we're shit out of luck."

The Sheraton is the spookiest hotel in Baghdad. When I arrive in Iraq, a rocket has turned the lobby into a construction zone. A quick-fix reconstruction soon restores the hotel's marble floors, and the lobby features a wide-screen TV, a cushy bar and a large white, goddesslike sculpture. Nevertheless, the place always seems deserted. The elevators work when they feel like it. "I'd rather commit suicide than live at the Sheraton," says Melinda Liu.

The alternative is the Al Hamra Hotel, across town and a world away. It's smaller and quieter, with far fewer blast walls and no U.S. troops. Instead, the Hamra is home to a small army of private military contractors, hired guns who have come to Iraq to get in on the action. The men are walking arsenals, brandishing assault rifles and packing flash grenades. The cowboy aesthetic of the contractors is so offensive, most journalists refuse to sit, or even stand, anywhere near them. "These guys freak me out," says a British journalist who scurries inside whenever he spots one. "We are living with trained killers. You might as well walk around with a big red target on your head."

Perhaps another reason journalists resent the contractors is because they are so nerdish themselves. Josh Hammer, Jerusalem bureau chief for Newsweek, is not exactly the image of a war jock. He frets over every line of his stories, angsts over his career path and spends entire afternoons shopping for Persian carpets. In May, he returns from an interview with Maj. Gen. David Petraeus feeling dejected. "I could tell Petraeus thought I was a wimp," Hammer says mournfully.

For protection, virtually every major newspaper and network employs its own battalion of contractors. Some accompany reporters to interviews, openly packing. Some hide inside the vehicles with an arsenal. All wear flak vests and are built like Humvees. In a sense, journalists have become prisoners of their own bodyguards. "You're unable to walk on the streets," says Kevin Sites, a freelance reporter for NBC and MSNBC. "We don't go out trolling for news anymore -- not here. You have to plan your route with your security, you bring along your security, do your interviews and come right back. It sucks. I remember this bombing that happened a few months ago, and we had to wait for our security before we could go cover it. By the time they arrived, the entire area had already been cordoned off."

Reporters at NBC, who use the Hamra as their bunker, are so put off by the military contractors that they hardly ever come downstairs to socialize. The network has even set up a gym for staff next to its makeshift broadcast studio. The bureau is sealed behind a white metal gate, guarded by Iraqi security with metal detectors. There is no in or out without passing the gauntlet.