'Last Embed' Chronicles Cleanup in Iraq

By: Dennis Anderson Editor's note: On March 31, E&P profiled the only chief editor in the U.S. who had signed on as an embed to cover the attack on Iraq. Dennis Anderson, 50, editor of the Antelope Valley Press in Palmdale, Ca., was then in training with the 1498th Transportation Company of the California National Guard. He said he planned to use an old E&P promo item as his "embed kit bag," and when he finally arrived in the war zone this month, there it was. He sent us this dispatch last week.

I think I'm just about the last in the "chain" of embedded press, and remain the last man standing as "innocent editor abroad."

At the last moment, some paper-pusher deep in the military maze tried to keep me off the flight after I'd spent more than two months training and living with these extraordinary next-door-citizen soldiers. A wonderful sergeant major intervened and called in a two-star general as an "air strike" to get Editor Anderson on the plane with his 250-plus "Battle Buddies."

Nobody on this side of the pond believes the fighting is over. Our vehicles that return are coming back riddled with bullet holes. Bandits, paramilitaries and restive crowds continue to take a casualty toll.

Meanwhile my unit, the "Big Awesome Truck Company," is gearing up to stage operations from Camp Victory halfway between Kuwait City and the Iraqi border, trying to clean up "The Big Mess." They will take their trucks up the Main Supply Route some 400 miles to Baghdad.

It's nice that the threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction was a genie that stayed in the bottle. It's also nice that the massive destruction of hot combat is over. Still, the mood is tense and nervous.

Most information gets passed by the last guys who passed through, and it tends to be pretty accurate. The shooting continues daily, with GIs killed one and two at a time, usually because they did something really stupid, like stop on the road for any reason at all. A distressed child waving in the middle of the road could be an ambush setup. This is guerilla stuff.

A Kuwaiti friend told me, "The Iraqis are the most difficult of all the Arab peoples. Democracy? They are not ready for it. With them you need the big stick."

The new Al Quaeda alerts here, like the upped terror alerts stateside, are an indication that as Churchill once said, "This is not the beginning of the end ... it is the end of the beginning."

To leave camp we still wear full "battle rattle" flak jackets and Kevlar helmets, and we carry loaded M-16s. And for me, the enjoyment has been in proving the template of Joe Galloway's "war journalism playbook" published in E&P in March.

Simply everything Joe mentioned or advised has proved true. Keep your boots on. Always be ready to go. And living with soldiers provides some of the best community journalism -- not to mention one of the most interesting communities to live within for however long a time.

I am also reminded of a very funny "Doonesbury" strip a month or so back, in which B.D. advises that "Working with our media friends does create bonds. I'm expecting the Stockholm Syndrome to kick in pretty soon."

I have to admit, it did -- but not to the sacrifice of general objectivity. Some pieces I've filed made the higher command's teeth hum. But it's hard not to love a couple of hundred Joes and Janes who make it so abundantly clear they love having their story told, warts and all.
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