Reporting from Iraq

BAGHDAD — The four Stryker vehicles with 3rd Platoon of the 4-14 Cavalry’s Assassin Troop rolled out of Camp Stryker around 5 p.m. Thursday, just as the sun was beginning to set and the air was beginning to cool after a scorching day.

That night’s mission for Lt. Mateo Gross and his platoon was to patrol an eerily quiet southwest Baghdad street. The few streetlights and the scant illumination from shop windows would plunge people and corners into darkness.

It’s the kind of street where a visitor might think that danger dwells. And it does. The bodies of several Iraqis have been found on this street in the last few weeks. Read more »

Rolling down Haifa Street in Baghdad on Thursday, gunfire rang several times. Sometimes it was a single shot several blocks away, other times a series of shots and return fire from what sounded like a couple hundred yards away. To the scouts of the 4-14 Cavalry I was with on this day, it perks their ears up and they try to determine the direction and likely location it’s coming from. I felt foolish, trying nonchalantly to ask the soldiers I was with what they thought was up. Usually it’s Iraq army or police firing shots in the air to disperse traffic, or a single sniper taking aim at Iraq forces, they said. It might also be a firefight between Iraq forces and insurgents. Read more »