Time’s Baghdad bureau chief, Aparisim Ghosh, in an August 2006 cover story, devotes five long paragraphs to the alleged horror of landing there. It’s “the world’s scariest landing,” he insists, as if he were an expert on all the landings of all the planes at all the world’s airports and military airfields. It’s “a steep, corkscrewing plunge,” a “spiraling dive, straightening up just yards from the runway. If you’re looking out the window, it can feel as if the plane is in a free fall from which it can’t possibly pull out.” Writes Ghosh, “During one especially difficult landing in 2004, a retired American cop wouldn't stop screaming ‘Oh, God! Oh, God!’ I finally had to slap him on the face – on instructions from the flight attendant.”The AP devoted an entire article to the topic. Fumento, however, has flown into the airport three times and found the landing "smooth as a baby's behind" each time. Could this be because he flew in military transports, he asked?
But Ghosh is describing a descent in a civilian Fokker F-28 jet, on which admittedly I have never flown. (It’s $900 one-way for the short hop from Amman to Baghdad, and therefore the transportation of well-heeled media people.) So I asked a reporter friend who frequently covers combat in the Mideast and Africa, and has also frequently flown into Baghdad on those Fokkers. “The plane just banks heavily,” he said. “It’s not a big deal.”He includes a picture of the plane another reporter claimed did a "corkscrew" and then pulled out. See for yourself if you think that ever happened. At any rate, the airport's not that dangerous:
As to the overall dangers of flying into or out of Baghdad, one civilian cargo jet was hit after takeoff with a shoulder-launched missile, but landed safely; and one Australian C-130 was hit by small-arms fire, killing one passenger. That’s it. No reporter has been injured or killed flying into or out of Baghdad International.
Then there's the dread "Highway of Death," which Fumento reports is dubbed that only by reporters (everyone else calls it "Route Irish"), and ain't that dangerous (he offers stats). After the treacherous road from the airport, the poor reporter dears must face the deprivations of the Green Zone, which one reporter describes thus:
The situation inside the [IZ] is scarcely better. Heavily armed troops guard government buildings and hospitals, menacingly pointing their weapons at anyone who approaches. Soldiers manning checkpoints can use deadly force against motorists who fail to heed their instructions, so the warning signs say, and I have no doubt they’d exercise that right in a heartbeat if they felt threatened. All this fear and tension, and inside a six square mile area that’s supposed to be safe.
Sounds like he's afraid of the mere sight of guns to me. Fumento describes his impressions of the same place within the same time frame.
The real IZ represents opulence in the midst of war — with terrific chow, huge post exchanges that stock an amazing array of products, the best medical care in the country, and large, sumptuous swimming pools built for Saddam but now open to anybody who works in the zone. Nor have the grotesque exaggerations of the dangers of the IZ gone unnoticed by soldiers and their loved ones. “Dear Chain-smoking, Unwitting Stooges,” military blogger Jason Van Steenwyk began an open letter to the Baghdad press corps. “So how come we can get mortared several times a week out here and it never makes the news, but the pogues [rear-echelon soldiers] in the Green Zone can catch three measly mortar rounds and I get my dad emailing me asking why the Baghdad press corps is covering it like it’s the second Tet Offensive?”And let's not even speak about the horrors of the unstarched sheets:
Then you have those awful, oh just awful, hotels! CNN’s Jane Arraf dared me to visit one. I was stunned; it was as if somebody had dared me to zip my pants. Really, I thought, just how often do you get mortared while inside one of those hotels? She did point out that reporters have been killed inside Baghdad hotels. But they were not Americans and were not killed by enemy fire, but rather errant American fire during the seizure of Baghdad way back in early 2003. I recall another reporter complaining that the hotels were so bad that you felt compelled to go out and buy your own linen.(Should we tell them that New York hotels are fighting a resurgence of bed bugs?) Not to say the "Bagdad Brigade" never gets out:
Despite the danger, Nancy [Youssef, Knight Ridder bureau chief] and her colleagues do venture out and do find inventive ways to talk with ordinary Iraqis,” then–Knight Ridder D.C. bureau chief Clark Hoyt wrote in a column. He explained that Nancy says, “When I go grocery shopping, I listen to people’s conversations. What are they talking about?”Ahh, the in-depth insight that comes from overhearing conversations you can't understand. Fumento's not the only one who sees this by the way:
The London Independent’s Robert Fisk has written of “hotel journalism,” while former Washington Post Bureau Chief Rajiv Chandrasekaran has called it “journalism by remote control.” More damningly, Maggie O’Kane of the British newspaper The Guardian said: “We no longer know what is going on, but we are pretending we do.” Ultimately, they can’t even cover Baghdad yet they pretend they can cover Ramadi.With the exception of Stephen Vincent (whose informative posthumous book the Red Zone I've just finished), the only American reporters to be killed in Iraq are embeds, and Fumento closes with a nice tribute to them. How 'bout we ignore the Bagdad Brigade and listen only to embed reporting? Read the whole thing and keep it in mind when you read the papers.
