War Stories (10 page)

These words from our troops may have shocked and surprised the editors of the
New York Times
, the
Washington Post, Harper's
, and
Time
. Just because a young American goes live on FOX News Channel and tells America that he believes his country is doing something right doesn't mean those of us who held the microphones and cameras have lost our objectivity. The media elites may not like hearing young Americans raised on a steady diet of political correctness, inane sitcoms, and video games talk about virtue, values, and valor—but that's the way they are. That's reality television.

Here is an eyewitness account of the war in Iraq, not as the negative mainstream media and defamatory politicians would like you to see it, but as it actually happened, and often from the perspective of those who should know, because they were there—the men and women of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division.

CHAPTER ONE

THE ROAD TO HELL

   
OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #1

      
Kuwait International Airport, Kuwait

      
Thursday, 6 March 2003

      
2330 Hours Local

“A
re you here as a member of the Armed Forces or as a member of the media?” asks the neatly uniformed but unsmiling Kuwaiti immigration official.

“I'm here to cover the war for FOX News Channel,” I reply. “Does it matter?”

“Oh yes,” he says, trying to be both firm and polite at the same time. “If you are here with the media, you are limited to a sixty-day stay and you must be escorted by the Ministry of Information. If you are here with the American military, there is no time limit and your visa will be stamped by the Ministry of Defense.”

“Well, this time it's the media,” I respond, hoping that my honesty won't precipitate an inordinate delay in passing through the immigration and customs bureaucracy.

It's my first mistake on this trip and entitles me to a two-hour wait for an absent civil servant from the Ministry of Information.

I had been through this same airport in November 2001, traveling back to Bahrain after covering the U.S. Air Force pilots flying over Afghanistan from Kuwaiti bases during Operation Enduring Freedom. Then, I had been asked only for my passport and U.S. military identity card, and had been amused when a Kuwaiti customs official dryly observed, “It's nice to see that you are traveling on your own passport these days, Colonel North.”

Back in the 1980s, when I served as the United States government's counter-terrorism coordinator, I had been issued a U.S. passport with the name William P. Goode next to my picture and an Irish passport under the name of John Clancy. Whether the Kuwaiti official had remembered or a computer warning entry had alerted him to the fact, I had been reassured that by 2001, my prior use of “alias” travel documents wasn't reason enough to have me miss my flight.

Tonight it's a different problem. Without the appropriate Ministry of Information official on hand, no American media representatives are being allowed to enter Kuwait. The people of the tiny, oil-rich emirate may be grateful to us for liberating their country in 1991, but that gratitude doesn't extend to members of America's fourth estate.

The Kuwaitis aren't alone in their distrust of the American media. Most of our own military have a justifiable concern that the decision to embed reporters with U.S. units preparing for combat is unwise at best and a formula for disaster at worst. Many senior NCOs (non-commissioned officers) and officers can still vividly recall how the media turned on them in Vietnam, and since then, the less they have to do with the press, the better off they feel.

“Think about it,” a Marine colonel challenged me before I left the States. “If you were a battalion commander in combat, would you
want a guy with a TV camera and a live mike walking around talking to privates and PFCs?” I had to admit to him that I wouldn't.

“Do you remember the bogus CNN ‘Tailwind' story?” an Army brigadier had responded when I asked him about his attitude toward having print and broadcast journalists traveling with front-line units and filing uncensored reports. “They [CNN and
Time
magazine] created that story out of whole cloth,” he said of the discredited and now admittedly false account that U.S. forces had used sarin, a nerve agent, in Vietnam in an attempt to gas American deserters. CNN first broadcast the story on June 7, 1998, only to retract it a month later, but I could sense that the wound was still raw. The brigadier shook his head and muttered, “There wasn't a shred of truth to ‘Tailwind,' but we're still answering the mail on that one. Just imagine the stories of atrocities, needless casualties, and bungled ops your pals in the media will spin from Iraq.”

These thoughts are much on my mind when the appropriate Kuwaiti official finally arrives and carefully peruses a long printout of “approved” media representatives. He finds my name on the list and, with a flourish, slams a hand stamp with purple ink on my passport, my visa, and a “special media” pass.

As I walk out of the airport's customs-and-immigration restricted area, my field producer, Griff Jenkins, who flew to Kuwait several days earlier, greets me. I'm introduced to another Ministry of Information official, who hands me a sheaf of papers explaining, in several languages, the rules of behavior for “guest journalists,” along with suggestions for a “historical perspective” on the region. As he drops us at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Kuwait City, he politely says, “Welcome back to Kuwait, Colonel North.” Then, almost as an afterthought, he adds with a smile, “Please remember, correspondents aren't allowed to be armed.”

As we enter the hotel, dawn is just beginning to insinuate itself over the Persian Gulf. In a matter of minutes, the sun will be casting long shadows over the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, 120 miles to the northwest—in Iraq.

   
OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM SIT REP #2

      
Ad Dawhah Port Facility, Kuwait

      
Saturday, 8 March 2003

      
1300 Hours Local

It is clear that the people here are worried. Ali, our driver, lent to FOX News Channel by the Ministry of Information to “facilitate” getting around the emirate, talks about little other than the imminent onset of hostilities. “It has to start soon,” he opines. “There is no more space in the hotels here for reporters.”

He's right about that. In the Marriott, where the FOX News Channel bureau has been set up, every room is occupied. It's the same in every other hotel in Kuwait. The Sheraton and the Inter-Continental—just down the street from where FOX has its headquarters—have now taken on the appearance of network affiliates. Commercial Humvees, brand new 4×4 Ford Excursions, and GMC Suburbans with satellite dishes secured to their roof racks line every hotel parking lot. Many of them have “TV” emblazoned on their sides with duct tape. Some are even painted to match the military's flat desert tan. There are so many U.S. and European reporters, producers, writers, and technicians here that the streets outside every hostelry look like those of a major American city.

As we approach the port area, Ali has to negotiate a series of military checkpoints. At each, Kuwaiti soldiers and interior ministry police inspect the inside and outside of the vehicle, using a mirror on
a long wand to peer beneath the van. Ali produces his license and a yellow travel pass for the vehicle, and Griff and I hand over our passports, visas, press credentials, and a sheet of paper signed by the Ministry of Information official at our hotel, giving us permission to visit the port area.

Ali endures this ritual three times without complaint before we actually arrive at our destination. “Yesterday they caught an Iraqi spy trying to get into the port,” he says. Then he adds with a sigh, “It's going to be this way until you finish Saddam. I hope you go all the way and do it right this time.”

I ignore Ali's iteration of the frequently repeated Kuwaiti gibe at the United States for leaving Saddam in power at the end of the 1990–1991 Gulf War. Instead I press him on the apprehension of this Iraqi spy. I had not heard about the arrest, and it's precisely the kind of story we want FOX to break—if we can confirm it. But Ali claims he doesn't know any more about the spy and changes the subject.

“Were you afraid during the missile attack last night?” he asks, referring to the sirens that had gone off all over Kuwait City at about one in the morning.

“Not especially,” I answer, instantly concerned that my reply sounded foolhardy. The fact is, I had grabbed my network-issued gas mask and lightweight chemical suit and raced for the FOX rooftop “studio,” not out of bravado but because I knew that it was a safer place to be than the hotel basement bomb shelter if the Iraqis were firing chemical-laden Scud missiles at the city.

“I understand that one of your new Patriot missiles shot it down before it hit. Is that true?” Ali asks.

“That's the way it sounded to me,” I reply, recalling the deep boom off to the north of the city. “According to the news this morning, it dropped into Khalj al Kuwayt,” I add, referring to the bay just north
of the capital—and falling into the trap of providing a recycled story I'd heard on the radio earlier in the day.

“But is that what really happened?” Ali presses, once again reflecting the uncertainty he and his countrymen are feeling as the allied buildup in Kuwait enters its fourth month.

“I don't know what really happened, Ali,” I say, as sympathetically as possible. He had told me the day before how he and his family had to flee when the Iraqis invaded in 1990 and how anxious his little girl was over what might happen to them.