Michael Yon in Iraq & Bloggers

I am so impressed with Michael Yon's accounts of being in Iraq -- an independent journalist worth reading. Then read Kate on journalism, blogging, and why bloggers post.


Michael Yon October 13, 2005

The Embed Baghdad

I've returned to Iraq.

People ask how journalists get embedded. This seems a fair moment for synopsis of some firsthand experience.

[. . . . Much detail here -- how to become an embed, independent of mainstream media, costs--exorbitant--See what you get for $590 per night, $35,000 worth of gear, etc.-- all worth reading ]

I started with the premise that this war was extremely important, whether or not many people agreed. While I hear radio and television crews often lamenting about how it takes a whole day just to file one story, it can take me two weeks of dangerous research, photography and writing to get a single major dispatch out. I am not a war correspondent or journalist. I am only a writer who came to Iraq after it became apparent that we might be in trouble, and I did not trust the news. I had never covered a war before and, with any luck, never will again.

[. . . . ] Apparently the terrorists like it better when fewer reporters are around to peel back the layers of their insurgent press machine and reveal its rotten core.

[. . . . an interview with Dr. Farid Ayar, one of the Iraqi election commissioners]

Dr. Ayar explained that the security for the election sites will have three rings. . . .

October 04, 2005

The Battle For Mosul IV
Soldiers, Spies, and Sheep

[. . . . ] They fled. It was all over the news. When the bullets flew, they fled. Leaving stations, abandoning posts, forgetting duties, hundreds of police fled. When the police response to gunfire was to simply run away, the city fell into lawlessness. Pundits rushed to the airwaves, proclaiming the city’s future hopeless. When the news of Hurricane Katrina first reached Mosul, the parallels were uncanny.

[. . . . ] I was actually witnessing Iraqi commanders aggressively deploying their own men, isolating the enemy. [. . . . ]

You Know You’re Good When…

I wasn’t the only man in Mosul to notice the skill spike among Iraqi police. As the big kinetic fights were drawing down, cooperation between Iraqis and Americans expanded. In just under six months, the main resistance was squashed and the Iraqi Police and Army in Mosul had strengthened to the point where the enemy could no longer mass. This harbinger of eventual success wasn’t lost on the insurgents. With the ISF becoming a formidable force in Mosul, the ever-adaptive enemy shifted from large kinetic attacks against Americans, and came gunning instead for the new sheriff. [. . . . ]

Suffer the Little Children

[. . . . ] Early during the war, the Iraqi kids were good predictors of attacks. In neighborhoods where insurgents enjoyed protection from residents, the sudden lack of children on the streets greeting the soldiers was a bad indicator. Sadly, in Mosul, the magnetic pull of a convoy on kids was also noted by terrorists.

[. . . . ] When the foreign terrorists targeted kids, the citizens of Mosul grew to hate insurgents. [. . . . ]

Details and perspective we don't get from the MSM.



Are Canadian Journalists Deaf? Kate McMillan October 14, 2005

Check her site for the dog show photos.

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