EDITOR'S LETTER

Over There, Over Here

You think getting into New York is a hassle? This is what it takes to get to Baghdad these days. First, there's the $630, 80-mile flight from Jordan. Dodging surface-to-air missiles, the pilot zigzags the plane into a heart-pounding landing. A convoy of armored vehicles awaits the traveler who has made prior arrangements. Thus begins the trip into town, a trip that James Hider of The Times of London describes as "the most expensive, dangerous taxi ride in the world.... Your driver is more likely to ask your blood type than if you had a pleasant landing."

The cars set off on the 15-mile ride from the airport, southwest of central Baghdad, to the coalition's Green Zone at 100 m.p.h. The highway, which used to be lined with palm trees, is now barren. The trees were cut down by U.S. forces to eliminate sniper posts. The wide-eyed passenger runs a gauntlet of roadside bombs, suicide car bombers, and charred Humvees and trucks, as well as hidden insurgents wielding rocket-propelled-grenade launchers. According to Hider, the 10-plus-minute ride will set the intrepid traveler back about $5,000.

The driver will likely avoid the Hamra district—where armed gangs prowl the streets looking for Westerners to kidnap, whom they then sell to one of the Islamist groups for some $250,000—and make a beeline for the Green Zone, the walled district of former palaces turned government buildings that is the coalition's redoubt in Baghdad. The area is a protected, isolated bubble within Iraq, but even here journalists and contractors arrange for a couple of cars and a handful of bodyguards, generally former soldiers from the U.S., Britain, or South Africa, who come armed with assault rifles and submachine guns. Two cars and four men can run upwards of $10,000 a day. It's getting so expensive to get people in and out of Iraq that it's estimated between 10 and 20 percent of the Iraqreconstruction budget is going toward this sort of security.

I think about this every time I see a Baghdad dateline in the morning paper or a television correspondent broadcasting from there. Forget the rosy picture the Pentagon is painting for the public—the situation there is in meltdown right now. And it's only getting worse.

For ground troops, of course, conditions are far worse. Those who survive their extended tours of duty may find a hidden enemy when they get home—the same debilitating and potentially fatal illness that first became known as Gulf War syndrome. The affliction affected at least 100,000 troops who fought in the first Gulf war, just as it later did soldiers who served in Bosnia and Kosovo. If the percentage of Gulf War veterans who developed disabilities is any indication, the military can expect upwards of 50,000 soldiers from the current war to file similar disability claims in coming years.

As David Rose points out in his investigation of the problem ("Weapons of Self-Destruction," page 204), one element that could escalate this number considerably is the continued use of uranium 238, or depleted uranium, on the tips of munitions carried by the A-10 Warthog attack jets and the M-l Abrams battle tanks. It is an effective addition to anti-tank and anti-bunker weaponry because it's able to slice through armor that would repel conventional artillery. (Twice as dense as lead, D.U. is also used for armor plating on U.S. tanks.) In a report prepared last year by Frida Berrigan, a senior research associate at the World Policy Institute, she noted: "When a D.U. shell hits its target, it bums, losing anywhere from 40 to 70 percent of its mass and dispersing a fine dust that can be carried long distances by winds or absorbed directly into the soil and groundwater." Because of its obvious toxicity and radioactivity, many experts believe it is one of the contributing factors to Gulf War syndrome. During that conflict, allied forces used approximately 320 tons of D.U.—which has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. By one estimate, the U.S. has used as much as 1,700 tons in the current Iraq war.

In 1997, Congress ordered the Department of Defense to medically screen American troops both before and after deployment. For years the military ignored the law altogether, and only began to provide perfunctory exams shortly before the war officially ended, in 2003. The Pentagon has furthermore been laggard in fully investigating the link between depleted uranium and the illnesses that have crippled Gulf War and Iraqi soldiers. The health of many troops returning home is already in meltdown. And they will only get worse.

GRAYDON CARTER