PressEthic

A quick Lexis search turns up two stories from embedded Los Angeles Times reporter Geoffrey Mohan that underscore the value of embedded reporters.

Neither story is remarkable.

But both provide readers with valuable information about the conflict.

What type of war is this? How do troops weight their own safety against the safety of innocent civilians? This April 2, 2003 story gives the story from the troops perspective:

WITH U.S. FORCES IN IRAQ - Soldiers of the U.S. military marching toward Baghdad are encountering a bewildering form of war in which foes disguise themselves as civilians, women are used as human shields and any vehicle driving down the road could be a suicide bomb.

For soldiers in the field, the main emphasis has become self-preservation in hostile territory, while trying to avoid accidentally killing innocent civilians. But it is difficult in an arena where traditional rules of war are ignored, and women and children find themselves in the midst of combat.

First Sgt. Reinaldo Ortiz, 39, of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, described the time when Iraqi troops who had been fighting his company decided to surrender their bunker.

"There were six women," Ortiz said. "There were little children. We had one woman who was nursing a baby. There was a soldier coming out, he was in his underwear. He'd been trying to change his clothes. It's hard to know who is who."

On Tuesday, the day after seven women and children were killed when a vehicle they were riding in failed to stop at a military checkpoint, Lt. Col. Patrick Fetterman, a battalion commander with the 101st Airborne Division, was lecturing his company commanders on the rules of engagements.

If a soldier anywhere is threatened by a weapon or a vehicle, he is to "eliminate the threat," Fetterman said.

"We do our very best to preserve the sanctity of these peoples' lives," Fetterman said afterward, referring to civilians. "But if they don't act with common sense, we have to defend ourselves. When you're told to stop in a war zone by heavily armed men, and you don't stop, those men will fire."

The task of distinguishing between civilians and Iraqi gunmen has been complicated by paramilitaries who fire on U.S. forces at night and walk around unarmed and in civilian dress during the day.

U.S. soldiers are taught to open fire at anyone brandishing a weapon. If the person appears to be surrendering, soldiers are to keep their distance, order the individual to drop the weapon and get on the ground.

To cut through language barriers, the soldiers have memorized several commands in Arabic: "Show your hands!" "Stop!" "Get out of the vehicle!" To guard against memory lapses at critical moments, most men have written the translations on their uniform sleeves.

"The rule of thumb is: If he doesn't put his weapon down, he's not surrendering," said a company first sergeant. "In that case, take him out."

Dug into fighting holes on the 101st's perimeter, the men of the first squad of the battalion's Alpha Company said they trained months ago at Ft. Campbell, Ky., on rules of engagement and how to deal with civilians in urban settings.

Now consider this April 8, 2003 story. What is it like for the troops after the fall of Baghdad? Does it seem as though a peaceful postwar period is approaching, or the beginnings of an insurgency?

Even in hindsight this piece seems pretty spot on.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The car just kept coming. A white 1980s-era Caprice Classic barrelled down a war-torn boulevard here, leading straight toward one of Saddam Hussein's elaborate palace compounds -- and the U.S. troops that had just seized it.

Tanks of the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division fired machine guns in front of it. The car accelerated. They fired into the engine block and the windshield. Still it came -- until one of the tanks fired a high-explosive anti-tank round from its 120-mm main gun straight through the old Chevrolet. It came to a halt against a light post, pieces of it flying, and burst into flames.

In the hours after the division's 2nd Brigade rolled into Baghdad, at least six other cars sped toward U.S. tank positions despite warning shots, most of them barrelling across the 14th of July Boulevard Bridge, which spans the Tigris River. In several other instances, drivers stopped at the warning shots. One of them ran away cradling a baby, without coming under fire.

With parts of Baghdad now in U.S. hands, the remainder of the war in Iraq could turn into an insurgency by remnants of irregular forces and Saddam's military. Outside Baghdad, U.S. and British troops already have faced suicide bombings and attacks by Iraqis pretending to surrender and by others wearing civilian clothes.

In Baghdad on Monday, Republican Guard and Baath Party irregulars soon regrouped, launching rocket-propelled grenades from positions close to the bridge, where tanks from the 4th Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment bulldozed destroyed cars into a blockade.

U.S. troops suspected the drivers of the cars that came speeding toward them were trying to carry out suicide attacks. Capt. Steven T. Barry, commander of Cyclone Company, said after one of the vehicles exploded Monday that "normal cars don't burn like that."

But the driver of the Caprice survived. Waving a towel weakly, he crawled from the wreckage and lay on the sidewalk, his face blackened, shrapnel wounds through his legs.

"I put about 200 rounds through his windshield from 500 metres," said Sgt. Derrick January, 31, of Missouri, the gunner for the tank, which is nicknamed Caliban. "I hit him at 175 metres with a HEAT round. Allah was thinking of him today."

The Iraqis switched to other tactics as the U.S. armour settled in on the west side of the Tigris River. One Iraqi fighter fired rocket-propelled grenades from one side of a bridge, dodged under it, emerged on the other side, and fired repeatedly from behind light posts.

These stories and the photographs discussed in a nearby post seem to me irrefutable evidence that valuable journalism came from embedded reporters during the Iraq War.

That isn't to say that their reporting didn't demand to be balanced by reporters elsewhere, or that as readers we shouldn't be aware of the particular biases and constraints an embedded reporter is likely to face.

On the other hand, it does refute the assertion that embedding journalists isn't at all worthwhile. In roughly 45 minutes I've found Pulitzer Prize winning photographs and two worthwhile stories from the first reporter I checked up on.

Perhaps I just got astoundingly lucky, but I suspect there's lots more worthwhile reporting lurking in the Lexis Nexis archives.