Michael's Dispatches

Moment of Truth in Iraq

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Details: Published: Tuesday, 08 January 2008 05:00

In a counterinsurgency, the media battlespace is critical. When it comes to mustering public opinion, rallying support, and forcing opponents to shift tactics and timetables to better suit the home team, our terrorist enemies are destroying us. Al Qaeda’s media arm is called al Sahab: the cloud. It feels more like a hurricane. While our enemies have “journalists” crawling all over battlefields to chronicle their successes and our failures, we have an “embed” media system that is so ineptly managed that earlier this fall there were only 9 reporters embedded with 150,000 American troops in Iraq.

Critical Nodes: Too Close for Comfort

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Details: Published: Monday, 07 January 2008 05:00

[Note: Readers who have been tracking this morning’s news reports about a “serious confrontation” between the US and Iranian Army in the Gulf, might recall that I was the first to report on the Iraqi oil terminals in the North Arabian Gulf during my first embed in 2005. The security of these facilities is the shared responsibility of the Navy’s of several Coalition member nations. The dispatch, called “Critical Nodes,” is published in its entirety below:]

Danger Close - Chapter One

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Details: Published: Monday, 07 January 2008 00:00

JULY 29 WAS a night of celebration for many people. It was, for instance, peak tourist season and the twenty-third birthday of a man who was about to enter and forever change my life. He had dropped out of high school after a run-in with a teacher, and then drifted around the country for five years until our paths crossed on the Atlantic coast.

Bless the Beasts and Children, Part 2

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Details: Published: Wednesday, 18 July 2007 05:00

Most of al Qaeda in Iraq consists of Iraqis, not foreigners. Even the animals had been “murdered.” I saw these things with my own eyes, recorded them with my video and still cameras, and provided the map coordinates and names of American and Iraqi officials. Media ignored this massacre until pressure mounted from home to report it.

Second Chances

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Details: Published: Monday, 09 July 2007 00:00

July 9, 2007

Photo-2 General David Petraeus visits Baqubah.

When distinguished visitors come to almost-where the action is, it can be disruptive to the point of wasteful. I’ve heard commanders grumble all over Iraq about the steady streams of VIPs who, while intending to be seen observing operations, instead seize the mechanics with their clumsy footprint. These are called “dog and pony shows.”

Be Not Afraid

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Details: Published: Tuesday, 19 June 2007 00:00

Published: 18 June 2007

Be Not Afraid
You shall cross the barren desert, but you shall not die of thirst. You shall wander far in safety though you do not know the way. You shall speak your words in foreign lands and all will understand. You shall see the face of God and live.

Be not afraid.
I go before you always;
Come follow me, and I will give you rest.

[From a prayer card I found on a base in Anbar Province, Iraq.]

The Last Device

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Details: Published: Saturday, 17 February 2007 00:00

Chapter 39: The Last Device

A COUPLE OF years before the manslaughter charge, after a temporary retirement from the creation of bigger and better bombs, we pushed our luck one more time.

We decided to combine our skills to build a monster explosive device, and set the date for it’s unveiling to coincide with a Saturday night high school party that would take place on a ranch owned by the wealthy parents of a friend. There was a lake on the ranch that was large enough for us to detonate a major device on without the chance of someone being injured.

Desolate Roads Part 2 of 2

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Details: Published: Sunday, 28 January 2007 00:00

January 28, 2007

I once knew an old man who saved everything that might have an eventual use, especially old lumber and nails. He’d tear down old fences or sheds, and rip out the nails with a claw hammer. The nails squeaked as he pried them from the dry, gray wood, weathered by years of sun and rain. The man would work steadily through the heat, sweating but never slowing, dropping each nail into an old coffee can. When he’d finished sorting and stacking the wood, he’d turn to each nail, and hammer it straight as it would go.

Desolate Roads Part 1 of 2

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Details: Published: Wednesday, 24 January 2007 00:00

I pulled off the helmet and went to work. After settling on a tattered weight bench, Cavalry soldiers who did not recognize me politely challenged with a few direct questions, watching closely for the answers. Apparently I passed, and the soldiers relaxed while my fingers kept fumbling with a new dummy-cord. Just then, a Specialist wearing a uniform and clear ballistic glasses walked up and asked: “Need help with that?”

There Be Dragons

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Details: Published: Thursday, 06 July 2006 00:00

Afghanistan in the News

Deep in the Desert: Camp Bastion being swallowed.

Afghanistan

If the fire is not completely out, it’s completely burning.

The population of Afghanistan is significantly larger than that of Iraq: about 26 million in Iraq, 31 million in Afghanistan. Yet the roughly 21,000 troops in Afghanistan (according to Combined Forces Command—Afghanistan) are exceeded by the number of troops in Iraq by a factor of about seven. The Coalition and NATO have so few troops in Afghanistan that wide swaths are left totally ungoverned and uncontrolled.