The Little Brown Reader

L.S.A. Anaconda is situated sixty kilometers north of Baghdad, on the site of what was formerly an Iraqi airbase under Saddam. It has been appropriated by the US Army, and they have moved into the old hangars, mess halls, and offices as if it were their own construction.

...

Not much happens for several hours. The atmosphere, to us visitors, is stifling and slightly uncomfortable. Not that anyone there is unpleasant, it's just that they are all career soldiers, conservative politically and somewhat narrow in world-view. We are also trying to watch what we say, as we don't want anyone to overhear our real opinions about what's going on in Iraq, which we absolutely have a better understanding of than these folks, the majority of whom have spent an entire year on this one patch of ground without going "outside the wire", as leaving the base is called.

One woman tells us about all the media that have already visited. "The Guardian from England was here," she says, "that's why we don't always trust journalists. They wrote about 'Iraqi resistance fighters' ". She rolls her eyes, incredulous that they would use such language to describe people that she believes are all "Saddam Loyalists".

In fact, everyone we talk to at the base thinks of the resistance in Iraq as being monolithic, an army of lunatics bent on returning Iraq to Saddam Hussein. This runs counter to everything we hear on the street in Baghdad, where it is common knowledge that there are religious groups, straight-up nationalists, and generally angry people that all take part in attacking American troops, in addition to the former Baathists. L.S.A. Anaconda is indeed a different world from the one that we have been living in.

...

Like everyone else we meet at L.S.A. Anaconda, the therapist is amazed that we move about in Iraq so freely, without weapons or security. She has been "in country" a whole year, without leaving the base. When we tell her that if a military convoy can't take us back to Baghdad, that we may return by taxi, she almost falls out of her chair. "You can do that?" she exclaims. "Sure," replies my associate. "I once took a bus all the way to Mosul."

...

Basically, life at the base seems like what every one of my friends who joined the Army after high- school described to me: an oppressive, thankless life, overworked and underpaid, the only thing holding you together being the people around you, with whom you develop incredibly strong bonds. Other than that it totally sucks, and war makes it even worse.