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A new life among all the lives lost

There was some very bad news here today. Nine U.S. soldiers were killed by roadside bombs in the past two days. And some 90 Iraqi pilgrims were killed in two suicide attacks in Hillah, and more than 160 injured. And that was only the biggest attack today... there were several attacks on groups of pilgrims, bombs exploding near them and gun attacks on groups of people who were underway on foot, and had walked many miles already, to a sacred festival in Karbala. There was an attack on a prison, and some 140 prisoners, many al-Qaida suspects, were released. The white board in our bureau is almost covered with the list of today's violent attacks all over the country.

But we also had some good news. One of our Iraqi producers had a new daughter, and both his wife and baby are well. His immediate worry is trying to resist the pressure from both sides of the family, Kurdish and Arab, to force their choice of a name on him and his wife. And, in the longer term, he worries about how to keep his young family safe. But for now, the good news of a newborn healthy baby brought a smile to everyone's face here.

Photo caption: The whiteboard in the NBC News Baghdad bureau. Photo by NBC's Paul Stimpson.

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Meanwhile back in the Baghdad bureau

With Brian and Richard and the Nightly News team in Baghdad, but at a different location, the bureau is getting a little breathing space to do some planning ahead and do necessary chores. This morning Tom Aspell and I had to go into the Green Zone (we live in what's called the Red Zone, which is anywhere outside the Green Zone in Central Baghdad) to get our press credentials renewed. Unlike Brian and his team, who had their credentials delivered to Camp Victory, we had to make a personal appearance. No exceptions for us, who regularly work here. Every journalist must be finger-printed (all 10 fingers) and iris screened, and sign and initial every paragraph on a three-page form that gives you all the do's and don'ts of covering the military side of the story and makes you fully responsible for putting yourself in harm's way. But it gave us a chance to walk outside and, after an incident-free ride into the Green Zone, the short walk to the credentialing center in the warm sunshine felt pleasant and liberating. 

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Broadcasting from Baghdad

For the past few days this bureau and the small NBC bureau in Amman have been a hive of activity -- moving producers and crews from London and the U.S. into Baghdad, with tons of equipment necessary to go live from a remote location. I had no hand in any of it, only having arrived this weekend for a six-week period as bureau chief here. I flew in Friday night from London, after a brief vacation in Holland, where I was visiting my 92-year-old mother. She does not know I'm in Iraq. I've never told her, but call regularly from here, reporting on the weather in London after checking the Internet.

No longer was I spending a day relaxing in Amman after arriving at 05:30 on Saturday, I had to fly straight through to Baghdad. Several other producers and crews had arrived last Thursday. Sunday's flight would have most of the Nightly team, including Brian Williams and Gen. Wayne Downing. Plus 40-50 cases of gear, the last lot of which gave our Amman bureau chief headaches trying to book space on the few flights there are, and had our local staff here driving up and down the airport road as if they were cruising down State Street. We also moved our satellite uplink truck to Camp Victory. It's called OddJob, because it's the oddest looking old pickup with a satellite dish, nothing like the state of the art sat trucks your local TV station operates.

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