Category: War

  • Telling War Stories

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    Telling War Stories: “Jeff Bundy, a photographer with the Omaha World-Herald, covered a Nebraska Army National Guard unit in Iraq during fall 2005. Bundy said books he has read about Vietnam suggest it was a much easier war to cover simply because of mobility. ‘When you talk to those guys, they’d just jump on a…

  • MediaStorm: Rape of a Nation by Marcus Bleasdale

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    MediaStorm: Rape of a Nation by Marcus Bleasdale: “The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is home to the deadliest war in the world today. An estimated 5.4 million people have died since 1998, the largest death toll since the Second World War, according to the International Rescue Committee (IRC). IRC reports that as many as…

  • Frontline Blogger Covers War in Iraq With a Soldier’s Eyes – New York Times

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    Frontline Blogger Covers War in Iraq With a Soldier’s Eyes – New York Times: “Instead, he has spent most of the last three years in Iraq, writing prolifically and graphically, and racking up more time embedded with combat units than any other journalist, according to the United States military. He has been shot at, buffeted…

  • Getty Images – News Blog » Blog Archive » The Assassination of Benazir Bhutto

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    Getty Images – News Blog » Blog Archive » The Assassination of Benazir Bhutto: “As the former prime minister’s car surged forward, I pushed out of the way, ahead of her vehicle. I needed to adjust my camera. In the melee, the shutter setting had been bumped down to 1/15th and 1/8th of a second,…

  • Artist's war depiction has many faces, rough edges

    Artist's war depiction has many faces, rough edges

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    LA Times: In every war that Britain fights, the Imperial War Museum selects an artist to render that one image. Steve McQueen was chosen for the task at the start of the Iraq war, and he struggled for months to come up with it. Then he realized that it didn’t have to be just one…

  • Beyond Baghdad, Beyond ‘the Surge,’ War Still Simmers

    Beyond Baghdad, Beyond ‘the Surge,’ War Still Simmers

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    NYT: The letter from Al Qaeda in Iraq to the members of the local police was clear. Come to the mosque and swear allegiance on the Koran to Al Qaeda, the letter warned, or you will die and your family will be slaughtered. Also, bring $1,200. It had the desired effect on American efforts to…

  • Prewar Intelligence Unit at Pentagon Is Criticized

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    NYT: The long-awaited report by the Pentagon’s acting inspector general, Thomas F. Gimble, was sent to Congress on Thursday. It is the first major review to rebuke senior officials working for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for the way intelligence was used before the invasion of Iraq early in 2003. Working under Douglas J. Feith,…

  • Cranberg wants a serious probe of why the press failed in its pre-war reporting

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    Nieman Watchdog: The shortcomings of Iraq coverage were not an aberration. Similar failure is a recurrent problem in times of national stress. The press was shamefully silent, for instance, when American citizens were removed from their homes and incarcerated solely because of their ancestry during World War II. Many in the press were cowed during…

  • The Importance Of “Seeing” The War

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    CJR: The most shocking, and simultaneously compelling, aspect of the Baghdad dispatch in the New York Times this past Monday was its intimate close-up of one soldier’s death. It was impossible not to feel frustrated by the story of Hector Leija, an Army staff sergeant who was struck down by a sniper while on a…

  • In a New Joint U.S.-Iraqi Patrol, the Americans Go First

    In a New Joint U.S.-Iraqi Patrol, the Americans Go First

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    NYT: When the Iraqi units finally did show up, it was with the air of a class outing, cheering and laughing as the Americans blew locks off doors with shotguns. As the morning wore on and the troops came under fire from all directions, another apparent flaw in this strategy became clear as empty apartments…

  • Darfur, War Without End

    Darfur, War Without End

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    VII Photo, Photos by Gary Knight: Since 2003 a war has been raging in Darfur under the watchful eye of the world’s political elite. Well-meaning politicians and celebrities have beaten a path to the refugee camps, been photographed with raped women and orphaned children, wrung their hands and called for something – anything – to…

  • The Making, and Unmaking, of a Child Soldier

    The Making, and Unmaking, of a Child Soldier

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    By ISHMAEL BEAH, NYT Magazine: After that first week of going out on raids to kill people we deemed our rebel enemies or sympathizers of the rebels, our initiation was complete. We stayed put at the base, and we boys took turns guarding posts around the village. We smoked marijuana and sniffed “brown brown,” cocaine…

  • 1,373 miles into the heart of Afghanistan

    1,373 miles into the heart of Afghanistan

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    LA Times: GUL slowed for a speed bump, and instead of accelerating when a militiaman jumped up with an AK-47, he stopped. Gul opened the driver’s window, apparently weighing the comparative risks of getting shot and getting kidnapped. The gunman stuck his head in, saw me in the back seat and smiled like a dog…

  • Somalia’s Islamists and Ethiopia Gird for a War

    Somalia’s Islamists and Ethiopia Gird for a War

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    NYT: The stadium was packed, the guns were cocked and even the drenching rain could not douse the jihadist fire. Thousands of Somalis, from fully veiled, machine-gun-toting women to little boys in baggy fatigues, gathered Friday to rally against what they called foreign aggression. As a squall blew in, they punched wet fists into the…

  • Iraq’s Biggest Failing: There Is No Iraq

    Iraq’s Biggest Failing: There Is No Iraq

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    NYT: “I am facing the most difficult times of my life here in Baghdad. Since I am a Sunni, I became a target to be killed. You know that our army and police are Shia, so every checkpoint represents a serious threat to Sunnis. During the last three weeks, two of my friends were killed…

  • Rumsfeld Memo Proposed ‘Major Adjustment’ in Iraq

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    NYT: “In my view it is time for a major adjustment,” wrote Mr. Rumsfeld, who has been a symbol of a dogged stay-the-course policy. “Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough.” Nor did Mr. Rumsfeld seem confident that the administration would readily develop an effective…

  • Anbar Picture Grows Clearer, and Bleaker

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    Washington Post: But the contents have not previously been made public. Read as a complete assessment, it paints a stark portrait of a failed province and of the country’s Sunnis — once dominant under Saddam Hussein — now desperate, fearful and impoverished. They have been increasingly abandoned by religious and political leaders who have fled…

  • The Wars of Perception

    The Wars of Perception

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    NYT: What does this mean for Iraq? At the least, Tet and Somalia suggest we should be very careful before concluding that Iraq is a defeat. There is real evidence of failure, especially the escalating sectarian violence. But our perceptions are nevertheless easily manipulated. Iraq looks like a defeat in part because the Bush administration…

  • Perfect Killing Method, but Clear Targets Are Few

    Perfect Killing Method, but Clear Targets Are Few

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    NYT: In theory, Western snipers are a nearly perfect method of killing Iraq’s insurgents and thwarting their attacks, all with little risk of damaging property or endangering passers-by. But in practice, the snipers say, they are seeing fewer clear targets than previously, and are shooting fewer insurgents than expected. In 2003, one Marine sniper killed…

  • END OF THE AFFAIR

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    New Yorker: When Adelman went to see Rumsfeld in his office, he knew that Rumsfeld wanted him out. “He said, ‘Ken, you’ve been my friend for most of my adult life,’ and he said that I was going to be his friend for the rest of his life,” Adelman recalled. “Then he said, ‘It might…