Vanity Fair: The New York Times’s Lonely War

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The New York Times’s Lonely War

In 2003, even small daily papers rushed to send embeds to Iraq, the “starter war” that could make a rookie reporter’s reputation. Today, The New York Times is one of the few U.S. news organizations that haven’t significantly cut back their presence, spending more than $3 million a year to maintain a heavily fortified Baghdad bureau. Talking to John F. Burns, Dexter Filkins, Alissa J. Rubin, and other Times correspondents, the author explores the day-to-day toll—the infighting, isolation, and near-death experiences—of covering the most important story no one wants to read.

by Seth Mnookin December 2008


John F. Burns, whose work for The New York Times over the past 33 years has made him one of the best-known foreign correspondents of his generation, was in the kitchen of his Cambridge, England, home reminiscing about his time in Iraq during the weeks leading up to the war. In January 2003, two months before the American invasion began, Burns had written a provocative story titled “How Many People Has Hussein Killed?,” which compared the level of terror among Iraqi citizens to that among Russians under Stalin. “It wasn’t so brave, by the way,” Burns said of his article. “A New York Times correspondent in a situation like that wears a suit of armor. If they had done anything to me at that time, they would have, in some measure—maybe a small measure, but in some measure—hastened the road to war.”

But once the first bombs fell on Baghdad, on March 20, all bets were off. Within days, Iraqi defense minister Ali Hassan al-Majid—better known as Chemical Ali—began referring to Burns in news conferences as “the most dangerous man in Iraq.” Thinking back to that time, Burns went on: “I knew what they were saying. They were saying: We’ll see how brave you are when we come for you, when you no longer have that suit of armor.” Burns, who at 58 was among the oldest of the dozen or so reporters still in the country, remained hunkered down in his room on the 15th floor of the Palestine, a once impressive hotel on the banks of the Tigris. He taped $7,000 in cash to the inside of an air-conditioning duct and stocked up on Earl Grey tea and Smarties, a chocolate candy similar to M&M’s.

Burns does not look or sound like a very dangerous man. At six feet two, he has a small paunch that ripples underneath his shirt. He is somewhat bowlegged, which makes him bob slightly from side to side when he walks. His defining physical characteristics are a cascade of loose white curls and an often unkempt beard. When he’s in need of a trim, as he usually is, his hair takes on the appearance of a slightly dirty cotton ball that has been teased apart and thrust on the top of a pencil. There’s something oddly feminine about his face, and even when he’s telling one of his epically discursive tales—as he was that day in Cambridge—his steel-blue eyes betray a barely perceptible mixture of wariness and anxiety rather than the mischievousness (or portentousness) you’d expect from someone who takes such delight in his own words.

He paused to take a sip of his well-sugared tea and to bite the end off a Cadbury Finger, a pinkie-size shortbread biscuit dipped in milk chocolate, before resuming his story. It was in the middle of the night on March 31, he said, when “the thugs” came to his hotel room and accused him of being a C.I.A.-sponsored provocateur. “I told the chief thug that if anything happened to me, the American military, then probably 200 miles from Baghdad, would come for him.” It was, Burns acknowledged, at best a half-truth. “I said, ‘You will be put in front of an American military firing squad.’ I said, ‘You’d better know what the realities here are.’ ” Burns looked up from where he was sitting. “ ‘You do not,’ ” he said, accenting each word by jabbing his index finger into his kitchen table, “ ‘kill correspondents of The New York Times with impunity.’ ”

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http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/12/nytimes200812

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1. The disaster in Iraq is only beginning

The temporary reduction in violence came about only because the US started bribing the Sunni insurgents not to attack us (the so-called Awakening Councils). Now, like any group being bought off, the insurgents are demanding more cash, and splintering with more groups preparing to cause us misery. Plus, Kirkuk is about to explode. Iraq fell off the headlines only because the economic crisis has become so severe. When Iraq does return to the headlines, it's going to be for the ugliest of reasons.