Where am I?

Took a chopper ride today from the Green Zone north to Camp Taji. In about 15 minutes each way I got a low altitude peek at Baghdad. It was strange the way it reminded me of home. Baghad almost looks like Kansas City from the sky, except grander and more forlorn.

A muddy river snakes through. Traffic clogs in spots. There's plenty of cranes looming over construction sites.

It's just that most of the cranes aren't doing anything. The bridges are mostly empty, and many are collapsed or shut by bombings to a lane or two. Indeed, craters are the most distinguishing landscape characteristic. It's a city of blast walls and blast damage.

Move out of town and you pass over fields not unlike those where soybeans and corn are shooting up now along the Missouri.

Went on the trip to talk with a Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the chief spokesman for the U.S. military. He's leaving the country in a few days and will soon be the commander at Fort Leavenworth (short profile coming soon to a quality newspaper near you).

I sat in on his briefing at the in-country counterinsurgency center (advocates of winning hearts and minds, of getting soldiers to get out of their humvees and talking to people, making friends and gathering intelligence).

Flying over the terrain you can get another sense of how tough the job is. There's square mile upon square mile groves that give cover to insurgents. The neighborhoods stretch on into a horizon smudged out by brown, dusty breezes.