In the months and years to come, there will be countless panel discussions, articles and books about the role and value of the 500 to 600 reporters whom the Pentagon allowed to be “embedded” with U.S. forces in Gulf War II.
This column is written on Thursday. So at this time the war against Iraq is only about eight days old, and much hard fighting, perhaps harder than many of us were led to believe it would be, lies ahead. It will take some time after this conflict ends before we can digest all that has happened. Yet it seems to me that the Defense Department’s gamble in allowing sustained and unprecedented access to so many combat units has meant extraordinary coverage for readers and viewers around the world. The story may be unfolding in a different and more difficult way than the Pentagon envisioned. But correspondents are providing vivid dispatches that, while conforming to security guidelines imposed in any conflict, have captured the successes and have pulled no punches in describing in real time the difficulties and resistance U.S. and British forces have encountered.
A report from central Iraq by Post correspondent Mary Beth Sheridan on Tuesday, for example, described in great detail the hail of ground fire that cut short the first large-scale strike by Army Apache helicopters. A report Wednesday by Post correspondent William Branigin, traveling with the 3rd Infantry Division, captured — with the kind of vivid, close-up reporting not seen since Vietnam — the sheer fatigue of soldiers falling asleep at the wheel of many of the 7,000 vehicles, perhaps the largest armored column in history, as they crossed a stormy desert over five days. A front-page story by Sean D. Naylor in USA Today that same day reported that two of the division’s M1-A1 Abrams tanks had been disabled, the first time in 20 years of service that any Abrams had been lost to enemy fire. A front-page Post story Thursday by military reporter Thomas E. Ricks, with help from correspondent Rick Atkinson with the 101st Airborne Division, provided about as solid a contextual report on U.S. field commanders’ reassessment of the situation as any reader could expect at this point.
Several readers, some from other parts of the country who follow coverage on The Post’s Web site, have written touching letters thanking individual correspondents for their coverage of units to which their sons and daughters are assigned.
The embedding concept has meant that hundreds of reporters have already spent weeks, and may wind up spending months, with military units. This means that many news organizations will now have a cadre of journalists who have some real knowledge and understanding of the military. Since the draft ended in 1973, the number of reporters who cover the military and also have served in it has diminished sharply.
Whatever one’s view of this war and of the reporting before it started, The Post’s coverage of its opening round — including a special section every day and reports from other correspondents who are on their own in Iraq, such as Keith B. Richburg in and around Basra and Anthony Shadid in Baghdad — has been first-rate.
There has also been brilliant work by photographers, especially those from the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters, which have blanketed all fronts with courageous and top-notch photojournalists. Their names appear only in very small print under their photos, but they’re the ones who have to put their heads, and cameras, up when many others are hunkered down in order to bring readers those startling captured moments.
Ironically, the 24/7 wartime coverage that bombards us relentlessly on television reminds me once again of the quiet intelligence and efficiency of a good daily newspaper.
It’s not surprising that the fighting has produced surprises. It was commonly suggested by war planners, and reported by the media, that southern Iraq would be easily bypassed and “liberated.” A piece by Post correspondent Daniel Williams on Jan. 14, more than two months before the war began, pointed out the fear generated in that region by Saddam Hussein’s Fedayeen militia. That organization was not mentioned in military briefings or news reports again until its fighters started shooting at rear-echelon British and U.S. troops last week.
Similarly, questions are now being asked about whether the plan of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Tommy R. Franks allowed for enough U.S. ground forces to be in place before the assault was undertaken. That subject might eventually generate even more panel discussions and books than the question of whether embedding reporters was a good idea.
