“Have fun with it.”

Doug suits up

You like fun.  You much prefer it to the mayhem that fills out much of local news.  You’re a team player.  You smile and salute.  And as you return to your desk, you ask yourself:  What the fizzle am I gonna do with this?

One such stroke of genius sends you to Manuel’s Tavern, a renowned Atlanta watering hole.  You’re sent to stalk a film crew shooting Anchorman 2.  Your boss is somewhat obsessed with Georgia’s emerging filmmaking industry, no doubt reflecting a similar fascination held by the audience, whose American dollars sustain your advertising / ratings-supported news operation.

You arrive at Manuel’s to see production equipment in a parking lot, but no crowds of spectators, no actors standing around waiting to be interviewed by the local news, no invitations to get close to the action.  Your assignment looks to be a bust.

You’re having a “make it work” moment.

In this instance, the TV station has given you two valuable resources:  An agreeable photographer in the person of Steven Boissy, and an even more agreeable co-talent in the person of 11 Alive’s Elle Duncan, who loves this assignment much more than you do.

You alter your approach.  You decide to produce the piece documentary style, a first-person “here’s us trying to cobble together a story with almost no elements” approach.   You try to do stream-of-consciousness narration on scene, woven amongst bits of on-camera schtick.  Thanks largely to Duncan, the story is watchable, somewhat amusing, and accurately reflects what happened outside Manuel’s that day.

You become a victim of your own success.  Another opportunity emerges from another editorial meeting.  This time, the boss is intrigued by a Youtube video shot in Whitesburg, Ga.  It shows a man leaping from a 100 foot bungee platform with a basketball, and sinking a shot in a standard 10-foot-high hoop.

Elle Duncan saves Doug’s story

The agreeable Al Ashe pilots a vehicle to Whitesburg.  Because you are cowardly, you conclude there’s no way in hell you’re jumping from a hundred foot platform to try to replicate the shot.  But there are zip lines available.

You’ve decided to do the piece documentary style, again.  Trace bits of on-scene narrative, flavored with schtick, will tell the story of a Youtube video shot days earlier in the same location.

You interview a guy who eyewitnessed the Youtube shot.   He has placed a basketball goal near the end of a zip line.

You’ve made a comedic decision to keep your suit on as he straps you on, then hands you a basketball.

You squirt out of a tower on a zip line, holding a basketball, wearing a Go-pro.  You spend the first half of the ride trying to manage holding the zip line and the basketball at the same time.  As the hoop comes into sight, you figure it out.

You hoist the ball with one hand, hurl it toward the hoop, and watch it clank off the rim.

Yet the story is watchable, somewhat amusing, and accurately reflects the story, which wouldn’t have been much of a story without your heroic effort.

“The story isn’t about you,” you hear your readers saying.  And they’re right.

Except for when it is.

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed meets with AABJ members

For one brief, exciting moment last week, I was a walk-on member of the Atlanta Association of Black Journalists.

It was exhilarating.  It was awkward.

A face in the crowd

I needed to talk to Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed about the Peachtree Road Race.  My station, WXIA, had gotten results Monday morning from a scientific poll which asked, among other things, about the public’s desire to see increased security at the Peachtree.

Reed has a 10:30 meeting with the Atlanta Association of Black Journalists, somebody said.  Off I went with Mike Zakel.

Neither of us was a member of the AABJ.  Though both of us may be categorized as “journalist,” and we both gather news in Atlanta, we appeared to lack the third key qualification of membership.

We arrived in the lobby of the mayor’s office.  The receptionist pointed to a door off the lobby.  “They’re in there,” she said.

“Is Kasim in there?” I asked.  She answered affirmatively.  It was 10:33 am.  Reed is famously punctual, unlike me.

Morse Diggs, WAGA

I opened the door.  The first person I identified was Mo Diggs, the WAGA reporter who has spent decades rattling cages around city hall.  Scanning the conference room table, I recognized at least two AJC reporters.  The mayor was at the head of the table, speaking informally.  There were no notebooks on the table.  It was clearly an off-the-record chat.

There were about a dozen people in the room.  All of them appeared to have the key AABJ qualification that I lacked.

I closed the door behind me and sat at a chair along a wall behind the table.  If Mo Diggs was in the room, then by gosh, I was gonna be there too.

My eyes met with those of Sonji Jacobs Dade, Reed’s communications director.  She was seated next to the mayor.  Sonji has a lovely smile, and she directed it toward me.  But the smile and the gaze lingered.  I could detect wheels turning in her head.

I sat and listened.  Act like you belong there is a rule that often guides me in the news biz.

Sonji Jacobs Dade

It took about three minutes for Sonji to rise from her seat.  She and Eric Sturgis, the workhorse AJC reporter and president of the AABJ, walked toward me.  They led me out of the conference room.

This is a members-only event for the AABJ, Sonji started.  The mayor’s office put this together at their request.  It’s a private meeting.  This isn’t a press conference.  Though she wasn’t kicking me out, she appeared to be laying the factual groundwork to convince me that I belonged outside.

“So you’ve checked the membership credentials of everybody in the room?” I asked.

I’m pretty sure everybody in there is a member, she answered.

“How do you know I’m not a member?” I asked.  There was an awkward pause.

Sonji regrouped.  Here’s the deal.  There are ground rules.  The first part of the meeting is off-the-record.  Midway into the meeting, we’ll open it up for on-the-record questions.  I just want to make sure you’re aware of the ground rules and that you’ll abide by them.

“Works for me,” I said.  We returned to the room.  I took my seat against the wall.  I also took the opportunity to imagine myself in the shoes of Sonji and Sturgis.  Reed has private meetings all day long.  This was, admittedly, a gray area.  On one hand, they were generous for allowing me to crash their private meeting.  On the other hand, I’d kind of backed them into an uncomfortable corner.

That afternoon, I sent Sonji an email acknowledging the awkwardness of the encounter, and thanking her for handling it as well as one could have hoped.

Later in the week, I saw Mo Diggs at another story.  When I worked at WAGA, Diggs’ cubicle was two seats from mine.  “I need you to sponsor my membership in the AABJ,” I told him.

He laughed.  “Oh, I’m not a member either.”

The voice on the other end of the phone was very irritated with one of my competitors.  The reporter was producing a story about a government worker who had some issues in his personnel file — some citizen complaints, some reprimands.  The caller was a friend of mine and a friend of the worker.

The reporter is trying to trick him into an on-camera interview– claiming the interview would be about his reinstatement.  It’s a set-up to ambush him about all the other stuff in his file.

It’s bullshit!  The reporter is lying in order to get an interview.

Outside the Fulton Co. Courthouse, 5.3.13

I was sympathetic to the argument.  I’m not a fan of smarmy reporter behavior.

But I was torn.  I can understand why folks would expect reporters to be completely up-front about their intentions when approaching subjects for interviews.  Reporters demand the truth from newsmakers.  If we aren’t completely truthful ourselves, then we’re hypocrites.  If we’re willing to shade our own honesty, then we deserve our rankings of distrust among car salesmen and members of Congress.

On the other hand, it’s a really lousy way to get interviews with people who’d prefer to sidestep the truth.

There’s no doubt that subjecting scoundrels to our  questioning is part of our job.  If we don’t do it, then we fail to hold the powerful accountable.  Not to mention, the public expects to see deserving people squirm under uncomfortable questioning. It’s part of the theater of TV news, as perfected by 60 Minutes.

But how do you get them in front of a camera to ask those questions?

You have to be honest.  Put all your cards on the table, I hear you saying.  In a perfect world, sure.   But it’s not realistic.

Pitching interviews with “targets” of stories is an age-old challenge.  You have to phrase your pitch honestly, but you don’t have to include every detail.  Earlier this year at the state capitol, I approached lawmakers about their thoughts on public financing of a new football stadium.  I knew that some of them had taken free Falcons tickets from the Georgia World Congress Center, and asked them about that too.  The latter topic was a legitimate line of inquiry honestly related to the initial pitch.

After they agreed to the interview, I told them I also intended to ask them about the tickets.  It was a way to fully state my intentions without scaring them off, giving them a  moment or two to frame an answer to a potentially uncomfortable question.

Public servants are fair game for such stuff.  For that matter, so is any newsmaker who has some ‘splaining to do.

I had no good answer for my caller.  It sounded like my competitor was playing by the rules — broadly stating the topic of the desired interview, while keeping key details under wraps until the right moment.

It may not help our poll numbers.  But it helps us do our jobs.

John Bankhead retired last week.  Bankhead had been the spokesman for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation since 1987.  He wasn’t a cop.  He was a communicator, the go-to under some of the weirdest and most unhappy circumstances imaginable. Bankhead says he conducted his first TV interview in Atlanta in 1987 with WXIA’s Donna Lowry.  He remembers his first encounter with yours truly when I met him with a photog at his church following a Sunday service.

As reporters, we knew that when the GBI was involved in a newsworthy case, Bankhead would meet our information needs on a timely basis.  Even when information was sparse, Bankhead’s credibility reduced the number of disagreements in the field between reporters and law enforcement.

For 26 years, he was a class act.  He agreed to the following exit interview.

Moments that stand out in your career as a PIO?

John Bankhead, GBI

1 – Tri State Crematory – I recall when I was driving up I-75 to Noble when the news first broke, I passed Dr. Kris Sperry, Chief Medical Examiner and his deputy, Dr. Mark Koponen. Dr. Sperry waved me over so I stopped in the median. Dr. Sperry got out of his car and came back to tell me that I was not going to believe what I was about to see when I got there.  For Dr. Sperry to say that, I knew it was going to be gruesome – better use unusual – and he was right.

2- Meredith Emerson case. The hiker who went missing in Union County.  Gary Hilton was convicted of her murder and that investigation led to his being charged and convicted in Florida. He received the death penalty down there.  Hilton is evil incarnate.   I was at or near the scene when they found her body. They had to bring Hilton down from the Union County jail so he could tell them where he discarded her head.  I have never seen GBI agents so emotionally upset over a case before or since.

3. Kristi Cornwell – Another missing woman in Union County whose body was found months later by her brother.  The man we believe was responsible for her kidnapping and murder killed himself in a standoff with Atlanta police.

4. Julie Love – 1989 missing woman case which the GBI eventually solved. Channel 11 News Director Steve Smith broke the news on the fact that the GBI had arrested one person and were looking for another. I told him to hold off since agents had more work to do on that other person. When they arrested the second man, I gave Steve the go ahead to go with the news. Others stations weren’t too happy with me about that, but that’s the news business. I was there when they found her body in a pile of tires off a remote road in Atlanta.

5.  Santa Claus (that is a town) Killings in Toombs County – four members of a family were murdered just before Christmas, the parents, their 16-year-old daughter and their 8-year-old son. The parents were also foster parents and the other foster children were kidnapped by the murderer, one of whom was sexually assaulted by the suspect. I remember the Christmas tree in the home with dozens of presents under the tree for the children.  The suspect was later arrested by GBI agents and he was tried and convicted in Walton County.  I helped remove the body of the 8-year-old. The top of his head was blown off by a shot-gun blast. He had been sleeping in the top bunk and part of his brain was on his little league photo on his dresser.

6. The Ranger, Ga. murders of a family of four which you covered.  An Amber alert helped catch the killer.  He tried to kill himself.

I have limited myself to 6 but there are many others.

- Three (or two or one) moments of jerkiest behavior by reporters / photographers?  Name names at your discretion, unless mine is one of them!

I always let the reporter fire the first shot then I return the fire.  New reporters to the Atlanta area who were not familiar with me have tried to be pushy at first but have come to learn that I don’t have much patience with that approach, so I don’t get the “jerkiest behavior”.  The Atlanta media have been very professional in their dealings with me and the GBI over the years and I am grateful for that.

I did have this voice mail message from a TV assignment person who didn’t know my voice mail had picked up. She must have been training a new desk person, and I could hear her tell her trainee that John Bankhead can be an asshole at times so you better be prepared when you call him.

All of them.  You are all professionals.

Gone fishin’.

Did any GBI folk ever urge you to lie to the media?  Mislead the media?  Why?  How’d that turn out?

Never.  That is not tolerated.  We have that in our media policy and no GBI employee has ever suggested doing that in my 25 years here.   Credibility is as vital in this job as it is in yours.   The Director, our legal services director and I gave a presentation to the International Association of Police Chiefs this past summer on how to tell the media that you screwed up.    Bottom line – You do it quickly and honestly.    The Director and I did add a section to our media policy to stress that that the media is not to be misled.

There was a case in the Metro area years ago where a woman had claimed people had sacrificed babies at a remote location in one of the metro counties. The media found out about the claim and showed up near the scene. The agent in charge had the bright idea for our crime scene specialist to bring an evidence bag to his car, put it in his trunk and drive off without saying anything. Well, the media started calling me asking about the baby bones we found.  There were no bones as there were no babies being sacrificed but there is an addition to our media policy that says the media shall not be misled in any fashion.

I was in a media class Atlanta PD put on years ago, given by the FBI – go figure – and they had these scenarios that each of us were interviewed about on camera.  I gave my interview and Lou Archangelli asked me how I said so much without saying anything.  I never thought much about that about being a “trick”.  I just know what I can’t talk about and what I can and I talk about what I can.  “Filler” if you will.

To some reporters and photographers, I could fall into those categories at times.  I think it might have to do with the pressure they (use to be we) face now with the change in media inquiries with the advent of the internet. Used to be, radio needed it first, then TV, then the newspaper so you had some breathing room to respond based on differing deadlines. Now with the Internet and all the cable news shows et al, everyone wants the info at the same time; and being a one-person shop here, that can be trying.    Email does help with that, though.

And my “curmudgeonliness” doesn’t come through in an email as much.   I remember your interview of me on the Ranger case and your photographer asked me a question that I must have misinterpreted or didn’t like and I responded rather rudely.  I guess I could blame it on the stress and pressure, lack of sleep, etc., but it was uncalled for and I later apologized.

Photo not available

One Halloween, I dressed as Marie Antoinette. I looked hideous. The longer the evening went, the worse my French got. It was a linguistic disaster. But mostly, it was a fashion disaster.  My garment was ill-fitting, unnatural and had no pockets.  It was an abject first-hand lesson in the perils of women’s attire.

I know that women have made substantial progress in the business of local TV news, an industry once run by men.  A woman runs our newsroom.  Most of our producers are women.  Our highest-profile news anchor is a woman.

Despite this ascension, women still apparently feel compelled to dress — like women.  Which means they wear garments that are less practical and less substantial than men’s clothing.

Fashion forward: Julie Wolfe, WXIA

Here’s Julie Wolfe, a WXIA reporter.  There’s little doubt that she has the most outstanding haircut in Atlanta TV news.  In this instance, she also shows a certain amount of fashion fearlessness.

Wolfe is doing a live shot about a guy holding himself hostage up the street, a police standoff that eventually involved a SWAT team and tear gas and whatnot.  The story was forgettable.

The eye-opener was Wolfe’s creative use of her coiture to accommodate the demands of TV.

She made an adult decision to wear a garment with a limited amount of square footage.  More importantly, it also lacks a belt and pockets. Almost every item of clothing I own has pockets.

I find belts and pockets to be essential.  In our industry, they host things like microphones and IFB / earpiece boxes.

Wolfe has none of that.  But she does have boots.  And she has an earpiece wire that just happens to stretch from her collar to her right ankle, which is where the IFB box is clipped.  The IFB box is then attached, by audio cable, to a cell phone in a live truck.  Over that phone line, Wolfe hears program audio for WXIA’s noon news and occasional cues from a producer in the control room.

As a man with a closet full of clothing with pockets and belt loops, I never, ever have considered clipping an IFB box to my footwear.  I’ve never had to because I don’t wear women’s clothing.

Except for that one time.  You had to be there.  No, wait.  You didn’t miss anything.

Julie Wolfe writes a blog about her life as a reporter and borderline obsessive marathon / ironwoman-type runner.  Read it here!

This was the violation:  WSB’s exclusive use of court-ordered pool video in its newscast without first distributing the video to the other Atlanta TV stations who were part of the pool.

The blurry images of WSB’s pool photog, WAGA’s Justin Gray, WXIA’s Donna Lowry, WGCL’s Sonia Moghe, WSB radio’s Pete Combs, and WXIA’s Blayne Alexander

The video was short but significant.  It showed a Fulton County sheriff’s deputy walking out the door of the district attorney’s office, carrying a hundred-or-so page indictment.  He then exited the DA’s lobby and headed to the courtroom of Superior Court judge T. Jackson Bedford, who was due to give the indictment his blessing before it would get certified by the court clerk.  The video — and a news conference a few minutes later — culminated a three-day stakeout of the grand jury.

Per an order issued by Judge Bedford under Rule 22 of the Electronic and Photographic News Coverage of Judicial Proceedings in the Uniform Superior Court Rules, WSB was named as the pool camera in the stakeout.  This meant the video belonged to all the TV stations present at the stakeout.

I’ll again note the absurdity of using Rule 22 to cover a stakeout in an office lobby; Rule 22 covers “official court proceedings,” but the Fulton County sheriff and courts have broadened it so that a Rule 22 form, signed by a judge, is required almost anytime a commercial TV camera enters the Fulton County Courthouse.   Since I’m not calling for the jailing of WSB’s news director for violating Rule 22, I’ll gently avoid demanding an adjoining cell for Sheriff Ted Jackson for abusing the rule.

Back to the video of the deputy carrying the indictment:

Reps from all three of WSB’s TV competitors watched WSB’s pool photographer shoot it.  I shot a perfectly lousy Iphone photo of it at 4:57pm.

The only station that matters, apparently

WSB aired the video at 5:31, perhaps even earlier.

A few minutes later, a WXIA producer asked me about the video she’d seen on WSB.  “You don’t already have it?” I asked her.

Oopsie!  Golly, did we forget to distribute the video to the TV stations who don’t call themselves “the number one news team in America”?

Actually, WSB didn’t overlook it.  WXIA’s desk made repeated calls to WSB to distribute the video.  WSB’s desk apparently questioned whether the video was pool video, then dragged its feet getting the right  answer.  The station finally distributed the video well after 7pm, when most early evening newscasts were done.

Rule 22 states that “approval … shall be granted without partiality or preference to any person, news agency, or type of electronic or photographic coverage…”  In this instance, WSB clearly exercised “partiality” to itself by failing to distribute the pool video before airing it.

WSB’s exclusive pool video

Rule 22 does not set out how pool video will be distributed.  “Photographers, electronic reporters and technicians shall be expected to arrange among themselves pooled coverage…”  TV stations don’t “arrange” pool coverage on a case-by-case basis.  Instead, they rely on a sensible and time-honored arrangement:  Until the pool station distributes its video, the station that shoots it can’t broadcast it.

It presumes that TV stations can behave honorably and not like children.  This isn’t as hilarious as it sounds.  Every pool photographer I’ve worked with at WXIA and WAGA honored the principle that pool video could not air on the pool camera’s station until after every station received it.  WSB photogs also reliably honor that tradition.

Somehow, WSB decided to be dishonorable Friday, ignoring the “no partiality” clause in Rule 22.  And ignoring the what goes around, comes around concept that really drives the rules behind pool video.  All for a 15 second shot.

Superior Court Judge Jackson Bedford

It would make perfect sense for Judge Bedford to hold a hearing and demand an explanation from WSB’s news director.   Bedford is a tough guy, especially with the news media.  He can be a bit scary when he’s angry.  A hearing would likely deter such behavior going forward.

However, Fulton County’s courts are pretty clogged with serious criminal cases.  And another Superior Court judge tells me that jail time — even a few hours in a holding cell, like the one that held Beverly Hall — is unlikely in a civil contempt case.  So, I wouldn’t ask Bedford to spend his valuable time on this.

Which leaves us with the concept of honor.  Or the lack thereof at WSB.

Outside the courthouse Friday. Photo by Millie. Thanks Millie!

I spent much of the last week producing stories about the Fulton County grand jury’s pending indictment of Atlanta Public Schools employees connected with the cheating scandal.  It was exhilarating, maddening and — like most stakeouts– unproductive most of the time.  I came away with many questions that I can’t really properly answer.

Was a daily drumbeat of coverage really necessary?  Once you report that the grand jury is considering indictments, is it necessary to stake out the lobby of the district attorney’s office for three straight days to see who walks by?

Enterprise stories on the scandal are always a good thing; done in conjunction with the grand jury activity, such stories are timely.  But the stakeout — of a secret proceeding, wherein most of the players are whisked in and out via secure and unseen entrances and exits — gives the audience the appearance of covering news, rather than actually covering it.

In the DA’s lobby. Luis, the WSB photog, shot pool for all the Atlanta stations.

Does it really take nine reporters to cover the details of an indictment?  WSB tweeted its staffing Friday afternoon.  WXIA had an even larger proportion of its staff covering the story.  It was great fun to see everybody, by the way.  But really.  Really?

Isn’t it time somebody called WSB on its frequent assertions that it breaks certain stories when they are, in fact, broken elsewhere? “All the stations do it,” suggested a WSB employee, as the topic arose during the tedium of the three-day stakeout.  Maybe, but WSB is easily the market leader in casually assuming, incorrectly, that they’ve broken a story.

Must there be so much social media?   If you follow commercial news media folk, you can expect your Twitter feed to be clogged with trivialities–  though every now and then, you may actually learn something.

WXIA’s Blayne Alexander explains the finer points of the Insta-Grahams to her granddad

Is a court order really necessary just to get a TV camera into the Fulton County courthouse?  To shoot pictures in the DA’s lobby?  To shoot a news conference?  Obviously, a court may issue an order on a courtroom camera providing pool coverage of court proceedings.  But it’s ridiculous that the sheriff has instructed courthouse deputies to bar cameras in this public building without a court order.

What about Brian Nichols? I hear you asking.  Nichols, a criminal defendant, shot and killed three employees in the Fulton County courthouse.  Perhaps the sheriff has ramped up security surrounding defendants in custody.  One certainly hopes so.

But the metal detector security at the main entrances is exactly the same as it was pre-Nichols.  The only noticeable procedural difference in security, to me, is the hard line taken against TV cameras.  Which seems to me not one bit related to any real security issue at this courthouse.

AJC photo

If you’ve known for days that you were planning to ask a grand jury to make high-profile indictments, wouldn’t you have a plan in place to actually announce the indictments to the news media?  And wouldn’t you share that plan, as a professional courtesy,  just so that the media can handle deadline logistics?

In other words:  If you’re a big time DA’s office, why is the answer “I don’t know” to three days worth of questions about how the completed indictment will actually be disseminated?  And why are the photogs covering the newser told to move, in thirty minutes time, from the third floor, to the seventh floor, then back to the third floor, then back to the seventh floor?

Lastly:  Is there any question now that grand juries are merely rubber stamps to the desires of prosecutors?  How far in advance of the grand jury’s blessing did the DA have two giant graphics produced for the news conference — one of which read “one indictment, 65 counts, 35 defendants”?

These are my questions.  Thank you.

March 26. The Chinook helicopter that took us out of Iraq lands at Camp Udairi in Kuwait at 1am.  We are dropped onto the tarmac.  We haul our gear to a nearby building.  The people in the building want nothing to do with us. They advise that we find the “mayor’s tent.”  It’s a half-mile that-a-way.

Scott, who works for Newsweek, and I start walking.  Yves, who works for LeMonde and Eddie stay behind.  MPs escort the four suspected spies out of there.

Camp Udairi

We find the mayor’s tent, and ask for Specialist Boyer.  Never heard of him, they say.  I note that the alleged spies are there, too.

It’s 2am.  I call the station on the sat phone.  I tell the managing editor we’re out of Iraq.  She repeats the news to co-workers nearby.  I hear a collective whoop over the phone.

There’s confusion in the tent because the army guys think that I’m among the spies.  They were expecting four civilians on the Chinook flight.  I explain that I’m with a group of four civilians, two of whom are still waiting a half-mile away.  Well– who are these guys?  the army guys ask, double-taking me and the alleged spies.

Finally, a Sergeant named Butch comes to my aid. What?  You got dumped on the tarmac?  Nobody met you? What the hell kind of shit is that?  he asks sympathetically.

He gets a car.  He takes Scott and me back to the hangar where Eddie and Yves are still waiting. We load the stuff.  The whole time, Butch is going off on the army:  I’m so sick of this goddam army.  This is the kind of shit the drives me fuckin crazy.  I can’t wait to retire from this.

I’m loving Butch at this point.  He takes us to an empty tent.  He gives us four cots, four bottles of water and four MREs.  We bid each other goodnight.

Dawn breaks on camp Udairi.  I wake up freezing, having slept sans sleeping bag.  But the camp has an actual chow hall, Butch informed us.  It’s across the way from our tent.  Because they’re in sleeping bags, everybody else is still asleep.  I head out for the mayor’s tent.  I detour thru the chow hall.  Breakfast is very strange– white rice, hot dogs and boiled eggs.  Soldiers are scarfing it down. I see some cereal– cereal!  First cereal I’ve seen in a month.  I drink some coffee.  So far, so good.

I head to the mayor’s tent.  I meet the colonel who calls himself the mayor of camp Udairi, a friendly guy.  I ask for suggestions on how to get out of there.  I need to go to Kuwait City, eighty miles south.  He says, you need somebody to pick you up. Great.  I got nobody.

I’ve got a phone number to call at Camp Doha, which is the US army post in Kuwait City.  I try the number. Mostly, it won’t even ring.  When somebody finally answers, it’s the wrong number.  This does not surprise me in the least.  And “Specialist Boyer,” the purported Army PIO who was to meet us at Udairi, is clearly a phantom at this point.

The colonel makes a suggestion:  Let us drop you off at Udairi’s gate.  Hitch a ride with somebody leaving the camp.

I return to the tent.  My tent-mates are rising.  I tell them about the phone calls, and the colonel’s suggestion.  Debate ensues.  We agree to take our chances hitchhiking.

The colonel puts us in an SUV with a private.  He drives us to the gate.  Among the four of us, we have a ton of stuff, which gets piled onto a curb.  We discharge and wait.  The guards at the gate don’t appear alarmed; apparently, they’ve seen this act before.

While Eddie, Yves and Scott hang back, I start approaching vehicles.  It is a lesson in humility, something to which I’m well accustomed as a local TV reporter.  Finally, an American contractor in an empty SUV says — sure.  Get in.  We load our stuff.  We all get in.  He’s going to Doha.

He drives across the desert like a madman.  Since I secured the ride, I scored the front seat.  I’m enjoying it.  The three guys stuffed in the back seat have gear falling on them.  But they don’t complain too much.  The contractor, a Bush supporter who sees the war as a moneymaker, drops us at the front gate at Doha.  Scott calls his co-worker in Kuwait City and asks him to pick us up.  Bring a big vehicle, says Scott.  We have four men and a ton of stuff.

The wired-up trunk of the mid-sized sedan at Camp Doha

Scott’s coworker shows up in a midsize four-door sedan.  And he’s got a passenger.  That means six of us have to pile into this vehicle, plus all our stuff. I’m crestfallen.  This can’t possibly work.

But Scott’s coworker, a cheerful guy with a British accent, insists it’ll work.  He finds some wire laying by the side of the road.  He starts wiring our stuff into the gaping car trunk.  We pile into the back.  I end up on Yves’s lap.

4pm, he drops us off at the Sheraton, downtown.  We purchase the French Suite, “the only room left” according to the slippery guy at the front desk. Over the phone at WAGA, Leslie informs us we’re leaving at 11am the next day.  I head to the gym, shower, then a real bed at 9pm.

March 27.  1am– Lilly, the news director’s assistant, calls from the station to update our flight info.

2am– Leslie calls from the station, informs me that an explosion is being reported “at the Sheraton.” Fox and CNN are geeked about it– what do I know?

I’m asleep in the Sheraton.  There’s no evidence of an explosion.  Find out, she says.  I switch on the tube. She’s right.  Fox and CNN are fully geeked.  Sure enough, the lower-third graphic says “explosion near Sheraton in Kuwait City.” Leslie calls again– do a phoner in five minutes (6p eastern).  I put on clothes, go downstairs, talk to the bellman, talk to a cop, hear sirens and do a phoner of some sort.  She calls again– we want another phoner.

I go upstairs to wake Eddie. Leslie already awakened him.  We get a cab. We head to the mall, two miles away, where an apparent Iraqi missile struck.  We get there almost– they want another phoner.  I’m not there yet– a protest ignored.  I do another phone report while exiting a taxicab.

We walk to the scene. Seems they want another phoner. I see mobs of folks heading to site.  I get there, almost– they want the phoner now.  I’m not there yet– oh,whatever.  I do another phoner as I’m walking up to the scene for the first time. No clue what’s going on.  I say something like “as crime scenes go, this one is unremarkable.”

Vickie, the managing editor, calls to give me an ass-chewing for playing down the importance of the big story.  Valid criticism,  but phone goes dead in mid-chewing.  Regrettable.

Now I’m up to stay.  They want another phoner and an actual live shot at 6am / 10pm.  I realize I haven’t shaved in a week, two and a half hours to kill.  We return to room.  I fill the jacuzzi in the french suite, settle in for a bath and a shave at 4am.  We cab to live shot location at the Kuwait City Fox bureau.

Sleep deprived in Kuwait City

At this point, the Fox News Channel was just beginning to cement its reputation as — quoting somebody at the Fox bureau — “the Al Jazeera of the US.”  But the bureau is a news bureau and seems mostly uninfluenced by Roger Ailes.  I put on an earpiece.  I hear the voice of associate producer Mark Hannah.  “Great to see you, Doug” he says with more emotion than I’d expect from a voice in an earpiece.  “You look a bit thin.”  Mark eventually left the news biz to become a Christian missionary.

Live shot complete, we scram to the airport.

Kuwait Airways has a “little problem” with our ticket.  It takes them 30 minutes to decide that we’ve each underpaid $250 for our tickets (we haven’t paid anything- the station paid it all up front last night).  They tell us they can work it out if we want to wait 24 hours.

It smells like a shakedown.  We agree to pay $250. They check again– twenty more minutes.  Oh, wait. You only owe us 12KD ($30) each.  Cash only.  Between us, Eddie and I have only eleven and a half KD.  Good enough, they say.

An Emirates airlines flight crew.

The plane is almost empty, yet they’ve wedged Eddie and me into two seats in the last row.

We fly out.  Nobody shoots at the plane.  We land in Dubai for our twelve-hour layover.  Yves told us the airport is like Disneyland.  I’d say it’s more like Perimeter Mall.  But guess what–?

It has a hotel.

Uncle Rupert buys us a room.  I’d grown so accustomed to Eddie’s snoring that we agree to share one room.

Eddie and I find a bar.  We toast our departure with brown liquor, chased by beer.  We retire to the room.  I nearly oversleep.  Eddie drags my semi-comatose ass to the gate, where we get on an Emirates Air flight to London.  In London, we change to Delta and go direct to Atlanta.  I’ll be home in time for my wedding anniversary.

I get home, shower and step on a scale.  I’ve lost nearly 20 pounds in a month.

If you want to find the real experts on local news, find the photographers.

Ira Spradlin, WAGA

Photographers tend to have greater staying power in a local market.  They lack the ladder-climbing ambition that reporters and anchors frequently have.  They’re also more under-the-radar, less vulnerable to the whims of regime change in newsrooms.  And regimes, old and new, tend to value their technical and journalistic expertise.  Or at least, they should.

This brings us to a guy named Ira Spradlin, the WAGA photographer who has covered the Georgia legislature longer than any of the other reporters or photographers in the press room.

The first time I got thrown into legislative coverage– an intimidating assignment, where the process of lawmaking is byzantine, and the players are numerous and often cagey — the assignment editor told me I needn’t worry.  I’d be working with Ira.

Ira didn’t schmooze legislators.  But he was around them so much, over a career that spanned four decades, that he became as familiar to them as the doormen to the House and Senate chambers.

It doesn’t hurt that Ira, who grew up on a dairy farm in rural Meriwether County (just north of Warm Springs), has a soft rural Georgia accent that can easily disarm the uninitiated.  He sounds like the good ol’ boys who often still dominate the legislature.  They were comfortable around him.

Like those old timey pols, Ira is easy to underestimate.  Under that southern accent, he can be as fierce as any photographer in town.

He’d be the first to tell you he’s not an artsy NPPA type photographer.  Ira’s value is his knowledge and his work ethic.  Nobody worked harder, or shot more video on a story.  I’m pretty sure Ira never missed a key shot in his life.

I’ll take that gristly newsman anytime.

This year, Ira Spradlin retires.  The legislature honored him this week, and I’m sure Ira took it with a grain of salt.  But I wish I’d been there.  He deserved the applause.

What follows are excerpts from an email I sent to friends and family a few days after we returned, written in diary form.

No legroom: Our ride into Iraq.

March 17, 2003.  An utterly miserable day, with a sandstorm that began at breakfast and persisted until after dinner.  Naturally, this was the day the Army chose to break camp.  We media types cowered in our tent while soldiers tore down the rest of the camp.

At one point, while standing in the sandstorm, I felt something in my chest.  Within an hour, I was joking that I was coming down with a touch of Gulf War Syndrome.  By the end of the day, I’d lost my voice completely.  Not a good thing for a broadcaster about to cover a war.

By nightfall, with camp virtually gone, many of the female soldiers spent the evening passing out candy.  Bush had given his 48-hour deadline the previous morning.  These folks were ready to get their war on– if only because it meant they had a purpose in life and a way out of the desert.

Starting at 1am (why 1am?  who knows?), we convoyed north, only about ten miles.  With a hundred vehicles, it took forever.  We arrived at another spot in the desert.  I put up a cot and spent the first of seven consecutive nights sleeping under the stars, or whatever else was in the atmosphere.

March 18.    We were told to wear our army-issued chemical protection suits for the first time.  A glorified rainsuit in desert camo, I wore it every day hence. Four times during the day, there were gas alerts– soldiers running around hollering “gas gas gas.”  We are supposed to put on our gas masks within nine seconds.  I succeeded nearly every time.  Each time, an all-clear sounded within a couple of minutes.

Bush’s 48-hour deadline was past by now, so anticipation was high.  We would cross the border within a day.  At dusk, we broke camp again and lined up in a convoy.  There, we sat for the night.  We watched twenty or thirty US missiles launch from the west.  At one point, we looked overhead and saw one coming from the wrong direction.  We’d learned later that a scud had hit harmlessly a few miles behind us.

At this point, I began doing live phone reports for our five, six and ten oclock news– which was 1am, 2am and 6am kuwait time.  Except, with my voice gone, Eddie did the first couple.  After the missile launches, I rasped out what must have been some awful-sounding phoners.

Eddie observes Sgt. Phillips calling home with the WAGA sat phone.

March 19 — Invasion day.  We crossed a 15-foot sand berm into the demilitarized zone at 6am.  Within a couple of miles, we crossed another berm– followed by a metal fence, concertina wire, another fence, another berm and a ditch.  Welcome to Iraq.  Drive carefully.  Can we stop at the welcome center?  Some coffee would be nice.

The invasion is tedious affair with Eddie and me bouncing around in the back of a humvee.  We’re crossing desert, of course.  A gazillion vehicles have kicked up clouds of dust ahead of us, so we spend the day eating copious quantities of it.  We ride from 6am to about 4pm.  The only Iraqis we see are beduoin farmers with herds of sheep and camels. They wave all friendly-like and run toward us, apparently hoping for handouts.  We wonder if these folks even know there are hostilities between the US and Iraq.

We stop at 4pm.  We’re still with a command-and-communications group, so they set up their antennae and form a makeshift command post.  Within a couple of hours, they break it down again and move forward some more.  By midnight, we’ve stopped again at a bridge off highway one.  As we settle onto our cots, we see US artillery firing a short distance away.  There’s lots of it.  It’s very loud.  We see explosions in the distance.  A while later we hear some rat-tat-tat of gunfire.

Oddly, I doze off while hearing this.  Eddie gets up and shoots it.  The next morning, I learn there was a firefight about a mile from our campsite.  Headline:  Doug sleeps through the war, except to do phone reports at 1am, 2am and 6am.

Eddie edits a TV story under a piece of cloth following the first day of the invasion. An extension cord is strung from the Tactical Operations Center to his laptop.

March 20.    I awaken on my cot and get a snootful of a rare rainshower.  We pack up, move forward only a couple of miles.  They set up their command post again.  They stay here all day.  They’ve set up at another bridge over highway one.  There’s a war going on somewhere, but it’s not here– at least not anymore.

The bridge is a lovely waste of Saddam’s cash: Highway One is a six-lane, limited access highway. Our bridge crosses it.  But there’s no road on either side.  It’s a bridge to nowhere.

On the top, there’s a homemade mud-and-brick structure overlooking the highway.  It has three rooms.  There are three cots in one of them.  There are windows. The ceiling is less than six feet high. We find a couple of helmets inside.  There are remains of a two-way radio.  There’s a chart inside showing all kinds of US military aircraft.  It’s an iraqi military observation post.  Very ghetto.

Below and away from the highway, there are three Iraqi artillery setups (I’m still not sure what to call them– they’re basically guns on a trailer.  There’s a seat for the gunner).  Anyway– two of them have been blowed up real good by the US.  One of them is still smoldering.  There’s ammo everywhere– bullet-looking things about as long as my forearm.

A third one is intact, however.  It’s also loaded with ammo.  The Army guys say it’s US-made, circa 1975. The army has a demolition squad, naturally.  They come over and haul it away.

Scariest moment of the war:  There’s a pack of Iraqi dogs living in another brick-and-mud building near the bridge.  I approach the building.  One of the dogs was apparently hurt by the attack the night before.  Very unfriendly.  His iraqi aggression sends me in the opposite direction.

March 21.   My supervisor, Leslie, informs me she wants us to start retreating out of Iraq.  I take it under advisement.  Good idea actually- but the war just started and the stories are getting better.

Instead of retreating, Eddie and I decide to accept an invitation from the commander of our brigade to roll with him.  He likes his war hot.  He goes where the bad guys are, but because he’s in charge, he’s well protected.  That’s what we keep telling ourselves as we take off with him.

Shortly after we take off, we hear that a sniper has taken a potshot at our convoy.  Army guys spot a motorcycle in the distance- the driver, gone.  The third shot from a tank destroys the bike.

Moments later, we see three guys in the desert. They’re giving themselves up.  We see four more guys. They’re giving themselves up too.  They all have great haircuts.  Our convoy isn’t equipped to handle prisoners.  My humvee stops to tend to them.  Eddie’s in another humvee- he drives on.

Doug denies porn to some Iraqi detainees.

The prisoners keep saying “sheep,” indicating they’re shepherds.  They utter the word “water.”  The army guys give them some.  They point to their mouths.  The army guys throw them some MREs.  They appear puzzled as we stand in the desert watching.

I volunteer to show them how to heat the food in the MRE.  They watch.  They eat.  The Army guys are happy to have me as their liaison.  The Sergaent-Major I’m riding with retreats to the humvee and browses thru a copy of Georgia Outdoorsman.

The prisoners use hand gestures to ask me for cigarettes.  Can’t help ya, pal, I says.  Another begins making strange hand gestures– two hands, like a book.  He’s pointing at “words”.  I’m baffled.  More hand gestures.  He points to the sergaent-major, engrossed in his magazine.  Then he forms a circle with his thumb and forefinger on one hand, and pokes the circle with the forefinger of his other hand.

It’s the international sign for copulation.  The Iraqi wants porn.

He thinks the Sergaent major is looking at porn.  He wants to look too.  Sorry pal, I says.  The prisoners are taken away.  We move on.

The driver of the humvee is a 20 year old named adam. He reveals later that he’s dating an Oakland Raiders cheerleader– via e-mail mostly. “She’s crazy about me,” he keeps telling me.  But he’s trying to play it cool. Right.

As we drive, Adam paractices Arabic as translated in an army handout:  “if you cooperate, you will not be harmed” and other such phrases.

Our convoy stops.  Our radio chatter indicates a firefight ahead.  I hear lots of artillery and see many plumes of smoke a couple of miles away.  I see an A-10 Warthog plane drop glowing, slow-moving globs in the sky.  Seconds later, I see explosions on the ground.  Suddenly, I hear our colonel holler into the radio “clear the net clear the net. I need a medevac.” I get a chill.  I haven’t seen Eddie for two hours.

“Are those your mortars?” somebody asks on the radio. “That’s not my mortars,” comes the answer.

Meantime, the convoy moves past us.  One cluster of humvees and trucks has soldiers lounging on the back, wearing soft hats, no kevlar, no chemical suits, listening to their walkmans.  My sergaent-major goes nuts, informing them that they’re driving into a hot zone.

Eddie and I finally reunite at about midnight.  He’s already on a cot.  I set one up nearby.  He informs me that an incoming mortar round missed him by fifty yards– the same strike that required the medevac for two soldiers.  Eddie tells me he’s ready to go home.

March 22.    At 2am, I wake up to do a live phone report.  As soon as they toss to me, a nearby Bradley opens fire on something-or-other in the distance. Our anchor asks if she’s, in fact, hearing artillery fire. Trying to sound badass, I casually inform her that “we get that a lot around here.”

After daybreak, a soldier decides that Eddie and I need to know how to fire an M-16.  We have no weapons ourselves (and it wouldn’t be allowed under the military’s rules for embedded journalists).  But the soldier thinks we need to know “if you two are the last ones standing.”  Not likely.

There’s a single shot setting, and there’s a burst setting.  “If you guys are actually firing this gun, you definitely want it on burst,” he says helpfully. “If you need to reload, pull a magazine off of one of our bodies.  Click it in here.”  We never actually shoot the weapon during the demonstration.

That morning I inform the colonel that we’re ready to go home.  By nightfall, he tells me that our ride will arrive the following morning to take us to another location, where we can catch a convoy home.

Leslie calls later in the day.  I want you guys out of there now, she says with authority.  I tell her we’ve already made the request.  It’s impossible to overstate the amount of worry I heard in Leslie’s voice every day.  She’s vastly relieved that we’re withdrawing.  Our unit stays put during the day, a very unexciting day  compared to the previous one. Fine with us.

March 23.    A sandstorm begins about 9am.  We get in a humvee with a public affairs guy with the rank of major.  We have a military police escort.  And we start driving– toward Baghdad. The major explains that the supply station is about 50k in the direction opposite of Kuwait.  I realize that, with the Army in charge, departing iraq will probably be slow and painful.

4pm in Iraq during a sandstorm

Hours later, we arrive at a place called D-Main, the HQ of the third infantry division.  They’d set up this place two days earlier.  We look at the sky– and an orange glow is churning on the horizon.  It gets larger.  And our garden-variety sandstorm evolves into something utterly weird.  The sky turns a dark, burnt-orange color.  Everything around us turns the same color.  And it starts getting very dark.  I hear thunder, but there’s no rain.  At 4:30pm, our spot in the desert becomes nighttime-dark.  It is very, very strange.

Meantime, our Major is trying to find out what to do with us.  We’re told to drive to a location a mile away.  It’s dark– and white lights are prohibited. So the drivers are using GPSs to navigate across sand, in the dark, in a sandstorm.  It takes an hour– an hour to drive one mile.  We arrive to learn that there is no place for us to sleep.  We see guys asleep on the sand, in their sleeping bags.  The storm is still raging.  It’s miserable.

I see a tent. It’s large. It’s empty.  There’s one cot inside, and a rope around the tent to discourage visitors.  I look inside.  I consider entering.  I conclude that this is the tent of a general or some other big shot.  But it’s 2 in the morning, and nobody’s inside.  Eddie is in a sleeping bag on the roof of a humvee.  I’m considering crashing in the general’s tent.

Before making what could have been a very bad decision, my Major offers me a cot. He’s had it in his car the whole time.  I accept.  I go to sleep in the sandstorm, pulling the sleeping bag over my head. It’s a good night.

March 24.   We’ve been handed off to a captain — we’ll call him Jones. Jones says if there’s a helicopter back to Kuwait, we’re on it. He invites us to wait in his humvee, parked outside the d-main compound. He disappears.  The sandstorm, which had abated briefly, reappears.  We realize there will be no helicopter today.

Eddie and I spend the entire morning in the humvee. At noon, I enter the compound to search for Jones. As soon as i go in, I hear cries of “gas gas gas.” They’re all diving for their gas masks.  I’ve left mine outside in the humvee.

Embarrassed and slightly anxious, i exit the compound. I return to the sandstorm, and quickly realize that no gas attack could possibly be effective in this wind.  I stop worrying.  Meantime, as I walk back to the humvee, the cry of “gas gas gas” follows me, and soldiers outside are putting on their masks.  I get to the humvee, wake up eddie and tell him there’s a gas alert.  Seconds later, an “all clear” is sounding.

This is easily the most unhappy day of my stint in the middle east.  We’re stuck in a humvee all day.  A sandstorm is raging outside.  There’s zero chance of a helicopter flying us out.  We’ve heard the sandstorm could go for a couple more days.  Jones, who’s supposed to be helping us, is ignoring us.  Night is approaching.  We have no place to stay, except in the same damned humvee.  And I’m no longer covering the war, but the station still wants phone reports.

March 25.   We wake up.  The sandstorm is gone.  Some water tanks have arrived in camp, easing what had been a water shortage.  I see soldiers washing clothes and hair.  I fill a bottle from the water tank.  The unhelpful Capt. Jones shows up just as I’m pouring water on my hair, overlooking the soldiers who’d done the same thing.  Jones, loudly and angrily, points at me:  “hey hey HEY!  water is for drinking and brushing teeth ONLY.  NO hair washing.”  Very embarrassing.

After a month with the Army, Jones is the first drop-dead idiot I’ve encountered.  And he’s the guy I’m depending on to get me out of Iraq.

An hour later, he apologizes profusely.  He actually appears interested in our plight.  With the sun shining and no breeze, he assures us we’ll get out this day.

An hour later, one of Jones’s underlings tells us to move all our bags and gear to a spot in front of the d-main compound.  We move at 10am.  An hour passes.

At 11am, I strike up a conversation with a photographer from People magazine.  We’d talked earlier.  He revealed that he arrived without a sleeping bag.  He wants to purchase mine.  Though I like my sleeping bag, I feel sorry for this guy.  And while I’m naturally pessimistic about leaving Iraq this day, I decide to become an optimist.  The guy gets my sleeping bag.  We continue to wait in front of d-main.

Hours pass.  Eddie naps.  I read.  Cars pass.  Dust flies.  At one point, a desert phenomenon called a dust-devil envelops us.  A dust devil is a mini-tornado, without the malevolence.  A soldier says it’s “like god farted on you.”  We’ve grown accustomed to the taste of dust, however, and it passes with little acknowledgement or comment.

By 4pm, soldiers walking past start to offer us handouts.

By 5pm, Yves appears out of nowhere.  We’d left the LeMonde reporter  two days earlier, assuming we’d never see him again.  He’s delivered there by the same major who delivered us there two days earlier.  The major sees us sitting there and does a double-take.  What are you still doing here?  He doesn’t wait for the answer, since he’s more familiar with the ways of the Army than we are.

A few minutes later, a reporter for Newsweek shows up. Turns out all four of us now want out of Iraq.  My optimism grows, slightly.

As it begins to get dark, Jones appears:  “There’s four chinooks sitting over there right now.  If you can get a ride over there, you’re gone.”  He disappears again.  I’m wondering if he’s expecting us to arrange our own transportation to the helicopter pad.  We stand and wait.

A Chinook helicopter

Jones reappears.  I ask if the helicopter guys are expecting us.  He says no– that’s why we gotta get over there RIGHT NOW.  He’s arranged for one humvee. He needs another for all our stuff.

We finally pile into two humvees.  We drive to another gate.  Jones asks, where are the helicopters?  The guard says, they usually land over there, pointing a hundred yards west.

Moments later, Jones says– follow this guy.  We follow a guy in an SUV- not army issue.  He knows where the choppers are, Jones says.  We follow this guy.  And follow.  And follow.  It’s getting dark fast.  We’re going deep into a hilly portion of the desert.  The trip is longer than we expect.  Even Jones is getting nervous.

I suggest that we’re following an Iraqi collaborator who’s taking us into the arms of the Republican Guard. Jones’s nervousness increases.  Serves him right.

Just as Jones is about to order his driver to stop following this guy, we turn onto a paved road.  Ahead of us, there are four chinook helicopters on the ground.  Amazing.  (chinooks are the ‘copters with two horizontal rotors, one in front and one in back).

We see four other civilians near the helicopters.  We learn they too, are journalists– except they’re being escorted out of Iraq by military police.  They’re suspected of spying.

We also see a dozen soldiers.  All of us are due to board one of the helicopters and fly to camp Udari. Udari is in the Kuwaiti desert, close by to our original camp.  Udari has an airfield and is more developed than our camp was.

Jones starts to leave.  I ask, what happens when we get to camp Udari?  Jones says:  “uh, well, a public affairs officer will contact you.  Uh- specialist Boyer.  He’ll contact you.”  Does Boyer know this?  “no– but I’m gonna call him right now.”

Fine with me.  Anything to get me the hell out of Iraq and away from this dimwit.

After Jones leaves, the chinook pilot asks me who’s meeting us.  I tell him.  He says– sounds like you’re on your own when we get to Udari.  I agree.

We crowd into the helicopter.  The civilians have to sit on the floor, Indian style, with each passenger in front of the other.  It’s amazingly uncomfortable.  To add to the fun, the chinook’s cargo door doesn’t close.  We fly with the back of the aircraft open, stirring a stiff cold breeze, a gunner seated in its maw.  Flight time is one hour, forty-five minutes.  Eddie and I plot some manly spooning to stay warm.

Moments before we board the helicopter, we see a volley of Cruise missiles headed northeast toward Baghdad.

Congratulations!  You made it all the way to the end of this post!  There’s one more installment.  Our final 36 hours in the Middle East were some of the weirdest moments of my professional life.  Stay tuned!