Richard WarnickJane Stillwater’s Embed Request Cancelled by Army
I’ve called attention before to Jane Stillwater, a talented writer and one of the world’s most intrepid bloggers. On her own initiative, she obtained press credentials and went to Afghanistan and Iraq (twice) on a shoestring budget. During first visit to Baghdad’s Green Zone in April 2007, Jane outdid CNN, putting Senator John McCain on the spot with a tough question. Then she interviewed members of the Iraqi parliament an hour before they were attacked by a suicide bomber. Going back again last October, she embedded with the US Marines in Anbar Province and met with Sunni insurgents who have now joined forces with the Americans.
Jane’s book, Bring Your Own Flak Jacket: Helpful Hints For Touring Today’s Middle East, offers entertaining first person accounts of what it is like to go to Mecca on Hajj, plus Egypt, Palestine, Afghanistan and of course Iraq.
So, why did the Army cancel Jane’s embed with the 3rd Infantry Division? Last month they said she was good to go, and she bought a plane ticket to Kuwait. Soon afterwards, however, her permission to embed was suddenly withdrawn, due, allegedly, to battlefield conditions. Then they gave another reason for not being embedded — that Jane didn’t have enough of a readership. After she provided evidence that she indeed has more than 600,000 readers, it all came to down to a typical military “because we said so.”
“Please understand that we have limited resources, and not every embed request is routinely accepted,” the latest message read. “Unfortunately there is only so much time and limited resources to support embeds, and units have to prioritize the large volume of requests they receive. However, if you would like to try and arrange phone interviews from the U.S., I would be more than happy to assist.”
Apparently Jane isn’t going to be allowed into Iraq this time. The offer of telephone interviews doesn’t help because her unique style of first-person reporting demands being there.
The problem is much bigger than one blogger’s complaint. Back in October 2006, veteran Iraq blogger Michael Yon found that at one point there were only nine embedded reporters in all of Iraq. He called it an “information blockade.”
Our military enjoys supremely one-sided air and weapons superiority, but this is practically irrelevant in a counterinsurgency where the centers of gravity for the battle are public opinion in Iraq, Afghanistan, Europe, and at home. The enemy trumps our jets and satellites with supremely one-sided media superiority. The lowest level terror cells have their own film crews.
Right now, the military is allowing a grand total of 16 embedded reporters in Iraq– about one for every 10,000 troops! In the spring of 2003, there were 257 embedded reporters. So the claim of “limited resources to support embeds” seems odd.
UPDATE: On OpEd News, Jane Stillwater opines that the government likes some bloggers better than others– and she is going to Kuwait anyway!
Previous One Utah posts:
Jane Stillwater Reporting from Baghdad! (April 12, 2007)
Jane Stillwater Coming Home (April 23, 2007)
Jane Stillwater’s Trip to Kabul (May 21, 2007)
Jane Stillwater Returning to Iraq (October 3, 2007)
Jane Stillwater With the Marines in Anbar (October 16, 2007)
Jane Stillwater: ‘The war is over if you want it’ (October 24, 2007)
