thedrifter
09-11-08, 11:10 AM
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Columnist Dillow returns to Iraq to tell Marines' stories
GORDON DILLOW: He reports from war zone for the 4th time in 5 years.
Gordon Dillow
Columnist
The Orange County Register
GLDillow@aol.com
I’m back in Iraq.
It’s my fourth time here as an “embedded” reporter with our troops in the war zone – and what an honor and a privilege it is for me.
I was here at the very start of the war in March 2003 with Marine infantrymen from Camp Pendleton. (As far as anybody can figure out, Orange County Register photographer Mark Avery and I were the first embedded journalists into Iraq on the first night of war.) I went with the “grunts” all the way from Kuwait to Baghdad – and like a lot of other people, after the fall of Baghdad I actually thought the war was over.
I came back again in the spring of 2004, with those same Marine infantrymen of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, a time when Americans in large numbers were starting to die here again. It was beginning to sink in that this war wasn’t over, or even close to it, and that nothing here was going to be easy, or simple.
I was here once more in the summer of 2006, when it seemed that this country was spinning out of control, when every trip “outside the wire” was, to put it mildly, an adventure, and the news media and the pundits all said the cause was lost. Despair was easy to find back then – and yet, every day the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines I knew sucked it up and did their hard and dangerous jobs with honor and courage.
Now, in the fall of 2008, American casualties are way down, violence in general has been sharply reduced, it’s beginning to seem as if real progress is being made – and as a result, the war in Iraq has largely faded from the front pages and the top of the news broadcasts. To most of the news media, America succeeding isn’t nearly as interesting as America failing.
I want to try, in my own small way, to help correct that.
I’ll be here in Iraq for next several weeks, mostly in Al Anbar province, west of Baghdad, the scene of some of the most ferocious fighting in the war. I hope to revisit some of the places I was at on previous trips, and to report on what has changed, and what still remains to be done.
In addition to my columns in the paper, I’ll also have a web page on the Orange County Register’s Web site – www.ocregister.com – with past stories and photos from my previous trips, and additional stories and photos from this trip.
Meanwhile, I hope you’ll all remember that even though you may not see much about them in the news these days, there are still 140,000 American men and women in uniform here who continue to do their difficult and often dangerous duty for our nation.
May God bless them – and their families, who also serve.
And bring them all safely home.
Contact the writer: GordonDillow@gmail.com
Ellie
Columnist Dillow returns to Iraq to tell Marines' stories
GORDON DILLOW: He reports from war zone for the 4th time in 5 years.
Gordon Dillow
Columnist
The Orange County Register
GLDillow@aol.com
I’m back in Iraq.
It’s my fourth time here as an “embedded” reporter with our troops in the war zone – and what an honor and a privilege it is for me.
I was here at the very start of the war in March 2003 with Marine infantrymen from Camp Pendleton. (As far as anybody can figure out, Orange County Register photographer Mark Avery and I were the first embedded journalists into Iraq on the first night of war.) I went with the “grunts” all the way from Kuwait to Baghdad – and like a lot of other people, after the fall of Baghdad I actually thought the war was over.
I came back again in the spring of 2004, with those same Marine infantrymen of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, a time when Americans in large numbers were starting to die here again. It was beginning to sink in that this war wasn’t over, or even close to it, and that nothing here was going to be easy, or simple.
I was here once more in the summer of 2006, when it seemed that this country was spinning out of control, when every trip “outside the wire” was, to put it mildly, an adventure, and the news media and the pundits all said the cause was lost. Despair was easy to find back then – and yet, every day the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines I knew sucked it up and did their hard and dangerous jobs with honor and courage.
Now, in the fall of 2008, American casualties are way down, violence in general has been sharply reduced, it’s beginning to seem as if real progress is being made – and as a result, the war in Iraq has largely faded from the front pages and the top of the news broadcasts. To most of the news media, America succeeding isn’t nearly as interesting as America failing.
I want to try, in my own small way, to help correct that.
I’ll be here in Iraq for next several weeks, mostly in Al Anbar province, west of Baghdad, the scene of some of the most ferocious fighting in the war. I hope to revisit some of the places I was at on previous trips, and to report on what has changed, and what still remains to be done.
In addition to my columns in the paper, I’ll also have a web page on the Orange County Register’s Web site – www.ocregister.com – with past stories and photos from my previous trips, and additional stories and photos from this trip.
Meanwhile, I hope you’ll all remember that even though you may not see much about them in the news these days, there are still 140,000 American men and women in uniform here who continue to do their difficult and often dangerous duty for our nation.
May God bless them – and their families, who also serve.
And bring them all safely home.
Contact the writer: GordonDillow@gmail.com
Ellie