Reporting Iraq AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE WAR BY THE JOURNALISTS WHO COVERED IT
EDITED BY MIKE HOYT, JOHN PALATTELLA, AND THE STAFF OF THE COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW
MELVILLE HOUSE PUBLISHING HOBOKEN, NEW JERSEY
Fallujah, November 13, 2004. AP Wide World/Anja Niedringhaus
The Journalists
This oral history knits together excerpts from interviews with forty-four journalists. Noted below are the periods during which these journalists have reported on the war from Iraq and the media organizations for whom they have worked while in country (unless otherwise indicated) through June 2007 (the “present”).
HANNAH ALLAM
JANE ARRAF
REPORTER
SENIOR BAGHDAD CORRESPONDENT
KNIGHT RIDDER
CNN
(McCLATCHY)
March 2003–present
July 2003–September 2005 LUKE BAKER CHRISTOPHER ALLBRITTON
BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF
FREELANCE WRITER, BLOGGER
REUTERS
Back to Iraq March 2003–present
February 2003–December 2005
TIME,
ANNE BARNARD GHAITH ABDUL-AHAD
REPORTER
REPORTER, PHOTOGRAPHER
THE BOSTON GLOBE
THE GUARDIAN,
March 2003–December 2005
GETTY IMAGES
March 2003–present
YOUSIF MOHAMMED BASIL STRINGER, TRANSLATOR
DEBORAH AMOS
TIME, CNN
FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT
September 2004–present
NPR
May 2003–present
JOHN BURNS BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF
JON LEE ANDERSON
THE NEW YORK TIMES
STAFF WRITER
October 2002–May 2007
THE NEW YORKER
February 2003–present
REPORTING IRAQ
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ANDREW LEE BUTTERS
ALI FADHIL
FREELANCE WRITER
TRANSLATOR, REPORTER
NEW YORK SUN, PEOPLE, TIME
NPR, FINANCIAL TIMES,
October 2003–July 2004
THE GUARDIAN, THE NEW YORKER
October 2003–January 2006 THANASSIS CAMBANIS REPORTER
FARNAZ FASSIHI
THE BOSTON GLOBE
REPORTER
March 2003–December 2005
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 2003–December 2005 RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN REPORTER, BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF
DEXTER FILKINS
THE WASHINGTON POST
REPORTER
March 2003–October 2004
THE NEW YORK TIMES
March 2003–August 2006 PATRICK COCKBURN REPORTER
ANNE GARRELS
THE INDEPENDENT (LONDON)
CORRESPONDENT
March 2003–present
NPR
October 2002–present BORZOU DARAGAHI REPORTER
MARCELA GAVIRIA
LOS ANGELES TIMES
PRODUCER
September 2002–present
FRONTLINE
July 2003–December 2006 WILLIAM DARLEY FORMER U.S. ARMY PUBLIC
PATRICK GRAHAM
AFFAIRS OFFICER, EDITOR IN CHIEF
FREELANCE WRITER
MILITARY REVIEW: THE PROFESSIONAL
OBSERVER (LONDON) ,
JOURNAL OF THE U.S. ARMY
NATIONAL POST, THE NEW YORK TIMES
August 2003–March 2004
MAGAZINE, THE GUARDIAN, OUTSIDE, HARPER’S, CBC RADIO
THOMAS DWORZAK PHOTOGRAPHER MAGNUM PHOTO
October 2002–December 2005 RICHARD ENGEL CORRESPONDENT NBC NEWS
February 2003–present
November 2002–September 2004 CAROLINE HAWLEY CORRESPONDENT BBC
April 2003–December 2005 JAMES HIDER REPORTER THE TIMES (LONDON)
May 2003–present
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THE JOURNALISTS
PAUL HOLMES
SCOTT PETERSON
EDITOR, POLITICAL AND GENERAL NEWS
REPORTER, PHOTOGRAPHER
REUTERS (BASED IN NEW YORK CITY)
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR,
September 2002–present
GETTY IMAGES
September 2002–present CHRIS HONDROS PHOTOGRAPHER
MITCH PROTHERO
GETTY IMAGES
REPORTER
March 2003–present
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
April 2003–present LARRY KAPLOW REPORTER
NIR ROSEN
COX NEWSPAPERS
FREELANCE WRITER
March 2003–present
TIME, ASIA TIMES, THE PROGRESSIVE, PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE, THE NEW YORKER,
TOM LASSETER
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE
REPORTER
March 2003–present
KNIGHT RIDDER (McCLATCHY)
March 2003–February 2007
ALISSA RUBIN REPORTER, BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF
PETER MAASS
LOS ANGELES TIMES
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
April 2003–present
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE
March 2003–April 2005
ANTHONY SHADID REPORTER
GEORGES MALBRUNOT
THE WASHINGTON POST
REPORTER
March 2003–present
LE FIGARO
February 2003–December 2004
LIZ SLY REPORTER
DAN MURPHY
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
REPORTER, BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF
March 2003–present
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
September 2003–December 2006
MARTIN SMITH PRODUCER
ROBERT NICKELSBERG
FRONTLINE
CONTRACT PHOTOGRAPHER
April 2003–December 2006
TIME
March 2003–present
VIVIENNE WALT FREELANCE WRITER
ELIZABETH PALMER CORRESPONDENT
USA Today, Time, The Boston Globe September 2002–present
CBS NEWS
December 2002–present
NANCY YOUSSEF BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF KNIGHT RIDDER (McCLATCHY)
April 2003–January 2007
I
IN THE BEGINNING DEXTER FILKINS | THE NEW YORK TIMES
If you look at the whole arc of this thing, it used to be easy in the beginning, but it was never easy. I remember literally the first day I went into Iraq, and it was the day of the invasion. I drove in on my own; I was one of a very small handful of people that actually got across the border in Kuwait. And I was what the American military called a unilateral [laughing], which is, I just had my own car. I think it took about twelve hours that day to find my way across the border into Iraq. In the invasion I was on my own completely; I had an Arabic translator and I had a photographer, and we made our way to Baghdad by ourselves, basically, and it was pretty insane, and I probably wouldn’t do it again.
I remember, literally the first day, driving into Safwan, which is the first town on the border when you cross over. It’s where they signed the surrender in 1991. And I went in there thinking that this is probably going to be something like what I saw in Afghanistan, which was cheering crowds and people throwing their turbans off, and everybody happy to see the American forces. And that wasn’t the case at all. To me, it looked like we’d pried the doors off a mental institution, and there were a bunch of people standing around with their jaws hanging open. Some people were absolutely horrified, people were crying, some people were cheering, some people were—you could tell how afraid they were. Some people, you could sense that there was emotion that they didn’t want
REPORTING IRAQ
to express, so they didn’t. There was a lot of uncertainty. But it was pretty scary, too. I remember that moment when I arrived in Safwan: the great concern of many of the people there—they were all Shiites—was that there were secret police all over the place, and as soon as the Americans left, the secret police were going to come in and arrest everybody and kill them. So everyone was totally horrified and really afraid to talk to us, and it was really, really dangerous because there were Iraqi Army people all over the place, and there were guys taking their uniforms off, there were tanks up the road and stuff going off, and it was really, really crazy, and it wasn’t anything like Afghanistan. I mean, Afghanistan was like a tea party compared to Iraq, just in terms of size and just insanity. Iraq was just orders of magnitude greater. Whatever expectations that I brought in across the border that day, I just chucked immediately because it was totally different. It was clear immediately that it was going to be a lot harder to work. It really was. PETER MAASS | THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE
The marines took a bridge [on the way to Baghdad], and then took the other side of the bridge, and seized the road that went from Baghdad to the bridge, and they set up a perimeter. And unfortunately, because this road was actually an escape route for civilians who were trying to leave Baghdad, there were cars that came up the road to leave Baghdad
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by the bridge that the marines had just taken. And, because the marines had not been able to drive vehicles over the bridge, because the bridge was damaged, civilians who were driving up the road to flee Baghdad over the bridge did not see any American military vehicles and thought, “Fine, it’s safe,” because the marines were dug in, into camouflage positions, setting up their new perimeter on this road. So what happened was, civilian vehicles drove up this road, and the marines shot them up. I was two hundred or three hundred meters back. The road bends just a little bit, and there are some small houses and stores on the side of the road. So I could not see what was happening down the road. I was with the commander. I knew that there were vehicles coming up and they were taken care of. We assumed they were all military vehicles. Or ordinary vehicles carrying Republican Guard or whatever, because, you know, we didn’t really know the situation. But the marines, particularly the snipers who were on the front line, who were looking through scopes and could see faces in vehicles, knew what was going on. And the photographers were there. So, the photographers heard the sniper commanders saying, “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot.” The snipers would fire to disable the vehicles, hit the engine block, hit the tire so the vehicle can’t go forward. Even though the orders were, let the snipers handle it, when the marines, the ordinary grunts, heard one or two shots from a sniper, they’d all open up.
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IN THE BEGINNING
So, you had all these civilians, women and children, getting killed on that road. [In the morning] I just kind of walked down there and looked at the vehicles and saw the civilian bodies. And on the side of the road there were a couple of civilians who were burying the bodies, and one of them spoke a little bit of English. He had been in one of the vehicles and told me what had happened. And so I was able to see with my own eyes the result of what had happened. I was able to see dead civilians, cars along this road that were shot full of holes, the bodies were still there, and there were witnesses there. The title of the story in The New York Times Magazine was “Good Kills,” because the battalion commander, [Lieutenant Colonel] Bryan McCoy, when I was with him during the battle, I had asked him, “How are things going?” And he had a cigar at that moment, I think, and he said, “Oh, you know, it’s a day of good kills.” And that, “good kills,” is kind of a military term that officers and soldiers will use, meaning their job is to kill people, the right people. But he didn’t know, at that time he didn’t know that there were civilians being killed. He did realize afterwards. And a lot of people in that battalion knew, not just the ones who shot those vehicles. And I think, actually, when they were shooting, they didn’t know whether there were civilians in them or not, they were just scared. There was one marine who I quoted in the story, who was on the road checking out the bodies. And one of the photographers was with me at
that moment, and the photographer was saying, not in a whisper, “This should not have happened. This was wrong.” And, this particular marine heard that and swore, said something. So I went up to him and said, “Well, what do you think about what happened?”—because he was amid all the bodies, as I was—and he kind of said, “Look, you know, you can’t second-guess it. We’ve got to keep ourselves safe. We didn’t know who was in the vehicles. This is war, and this is what happens in war.” And so I put that in, paraphrasing his words, into the story. Two days later, Baghdad falls. This battalion, by the way, was the battalion that took down the statue of Saddam. DEXTER FILKINS | THE NEW YORK TIMES
This is during the invasion, and I was hanging out with some soldiers and these two very young guys came back, and their eyes were burning, they were really, really pumped up. They’d just been in a big firefight, and I remember—I can’t remember the guy’s name—he said, “Yeah, we were just mowing people down. We were just whacking people.” And I said, “Are the insurgents mixing in with civilians?” And he said, “Yeah, and we just shot the civilians too.” And I remember he said this remarkable thing. He was describing some woman who had kind of stepped in front of—the insurgent had stepped behind her, so he said, yeah, he shot this woman, and he said, “The chick got in the way,” and so he killed her. He wasn’t especially troubled by it.
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