The JVB or Joint Visitors Bureau, Camp Victory Baghdad.  Guys like me rarely ever get to come here.  I'm not sure what I would do here anyway.  I prefer to get to a Brigade or Regiment, then get dropped into a Battalion and go to work.

But this mission is different.  A lot different.

I can't help but feel that I do not belong here.  This is where network anchors operate out of.  Where VIPs stay.

I'm just a dude with a camera.  I keep waiting for someone to say, "Lt. Colonel Russell, you can stay.  Brian Bennett, you can stay.  JD, go find some outpost to live at."

But that is where I am most comfortable--outside the wire.  There is no video to shoot here at Camp Victory Baghdad.  Maybe an interview or two.  But those will be meaningless without the real footage of grunts on the ground.

So much of Victory is off limits to photography.  One of the great ironies of combat reporting is that I can go some pretty intense missions, shooting video of everything from the classified briefing to the classified intelligence gathered on the way.  But I am not allowed to shoot video of a big base.

When I'm with a Battlion or infantry company I become a member of the unit.  Here, I am treated as something else.

I have also always disliked the sheer scale of Camp Victory.  The SUVs,the restaurant style dining facilities, the gyms the Walmart like PX.  Oh and did I mention all the SUVs?  Parking lots filled with them.

Give me OP Omar, COP Battle or some patch of canal country.  That is the war.

Yes, this place may help us get to some really intersting places--and that is the mission this time.

I just hope to get back outside the wire where I belong.

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