'Orange County Register' Cancels Embed Plans Due to Violence

By: Shawn Moynihan Escalating violence and fighting in Iraq in recent weeks has led The Orange County Register of Santa Ana, Calif., to cancel its plan to send writer/former embed Gordon Dillow and photographer Daniel A. Anderson to be embedded with Marines based at Camp Pendleton.

In a strange twist, Dillow resigned from the paper soon after the assignment was cancelled and has returned to Iraq on his own as a freelance embed. He began his journey to Fallujah on April 16, and the paper plans to carry Dillow's dispatches.

Dillow and Anderson had originally been scheduled to leave for Iraq on April 9, and begin their reporting from Fallujah to chronicle the challenges of the people of Iraq and the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces stationed there. Their dispatches had been slated to appear in the Register and on its Web site.

Orange County Register Senior Vice President/Editor Ken Brusic said, "I think it was an appropriate decision, given the ongoing events in Iraq," adding that it was "the company's decision" not to send them.

In the weeks following the ambush and murder of four American security contractors on March 31, Fallujah has become one of Iraq's most dangerous and unstable cities. On Wednesday, Marines backed by planes and helicopter gunships killed 20 insurgents during a day-old attempt to bring peace to the besieged city.

When asked whether the assignment was going to be postponed or cancelled altogether by the newspaper, he replied, "We have cancelled it now."

Dillow's wife Tule died of breast cancer on March 3 in Brea, Calif., at the age of 57. In his final column, Dillow wrote, "I know that grief-management experts will tell you that after losing a loved one you shouldn't make any big decisions for six months or a year. It's excellent advice -- but I'm afraid I'll have to add it to the long list of excellent advice I've gotten in my life that has gone unheeded."

Dillow and Register staff photographer Mark Avery journeyed to Kuwait in late February 2003 and covered the first hours of the ground war and ensuing battles. They crossed the southern Iraqi border in mid-March with the infantry unit Alpha Co. of the 1st Marine Battalion of the 5th Marine Regiment, based at Camp Pendleton.

Avery said Dillow "became very connected to the story the first time around. ... I was impressed with the level of empathy he had with grunts in the foxhole. He was a guy who really wanted to hang out with the Marines. He thought they were great. He wanted to listen to their stories, have a smoke with them."

In terms of relating the daily details of America's fighting men and women to their families and other readers back home in California, Dillow said, "He was a great tool for the job."

Pam Eisenberg, photo librarian for the Register and a friend of Dillow, said he had "a mission" to return to Iraq because there are still plenty of stories to be told. She added, "I think it comes from something inside of him that's bigger than just a story."