"Who's Your Baghdaddy?"

Strolling across the TQ [US military camp Taqaddum] at dusk, I see Marines playing softball, basketball, returning from the gym. Can this truly be modern war? What about the T-shirts I see worn around the base ("Who's Your Baghdaddy?" and "Co-ed Naked Camel Watching" among the more popular), or the Hotel California fitness center, or the dispensers of coconut-scented soap in the shower trailers, or the flyers posted all over for Bible study, or the AT&T phone center, or the mountains of snack-sized bags of Lays and Baskin-Robbins ice cream available in the chow hall? How, finally, to account for the PX? TQ's PX is a virtual Kmart that sells the Hooah! Nutritious Booster Bar, bottles of Starbucks Frappucino, DVDs..., Nintendo Gamecubes, twelve-packs of Coca-Cola, Spam, Sugar Smacks, and item after item in the Operation Iraqi Freedom line of garmentry and housewares. For instance, the Operation Iraqi Freedom beach towel. The Operation Iraqi Freedom soft-collar shirt. The Operation Iraqi Freedom coffee mug. The Operation Iraqi Freedom shot glass. The Operation Iraqi Freedom tote bag. Surveying the PX's aisles of these items, many of them marked down, feels somehow archaeological, almost as if one were examining the leavings of a P.R. push for some botched and disastrous product such as New Coke: The Iraq War, now half price.

- From "Improvised, Explosive and Divisive - Searching in Vain for a Strategy in Iraq" by Tom Bissell, in Harpers Magazine (January 2006)