Crawling with soldiers, media and Iraqi Police, I visited the two premiere hotels in downtown Baghdad, the Sheraton and this one, the Palestine. After a routine security check and frisking, I strolled around the inner drives of the two facing hotels, protected from outside traffic (and hopefully suicide bombers) by 3-metre-high concrete barrieres, razor wire, tanks, humvees and soldiers with guns.
Although not permitted to photograph US Army vehicle and tank positions within the make-shift compound, I managed to chat up and photograph a number of soldiers. Many were 18-19 years old, from every area of the US, on their first tour of duty and didn’t have much of an idea about what they were doing there, other than to stand around and guard the hotels.
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