Download PDF. Humanity: How did you decide to cover the invasion of Iraq from the Iraqi side? How did this relate to your experience as a journalist? Kael Alford: By , I had been covering countries in conflict on and off for about seven years. For most of that time I was living in the Balkans, not jumping from one region to another but digging down deep, seeing a continuum of events. Those experiences were fresh in my mind when I imagined U.
I suspected that the American-led war would not be as simple as the U. I thought that the presence of American soldiers in Iraq could easily bring about a backlash from Iraqis and throughout the region. It struck me as strange at a time when radical Islamists were using the U. I thought the war was going to have a whole host of unintended consequences. Anyone who covers modern conflict knows that civilians bear the brunt of the majority of violence and I suspected the war in Iraq would not be an exception.
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These dangers seemed evident to me as a casual observer. Yet the decision makers in Washington, whose advisors were certainly more experienced than I in warfare, Middle East politics, and foreign policy, would go ahead with the plan to invade despite the obvious dangers. I wanted to be on the ground in Iraq during the air campaign and the invasion to document events as they unfolded to test the pre-scripted narratives and intentions of the U.
I thought that among Iraqi civilians, the immediate consequences of the war for Iraqis would be most evident. H: The Iraq war has certainly blurred the distinction between reporting and waging war, turning information into a strategic weapon.
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KA: I was aware of the history that led to the embedded journalism program of the U. We journalists must be vigilant if we want our reporting to stand independent of the powerful sway of wartime propaganda. Recent psychological operations by the U. During the lead-up to the war in Iraq, much of the American media failed to ask the most difficult questions or challenge the justifications for war thoroughly enough, but the tactics employed by officials were nothing new.
