Boston.com / News / Rebuilding Iraq

KUWAIT CITY

When the media are in line of fire

By Thanassis Cambanis, Globe Staff, 3/23/2003

UWAIT CITY - Reporters ''embedded'' with combat units have sprinted dozens of miles a day, have camped in the open desert, and have filed reports from satellite phones from deep inside Iraq.

Hundreds more, however, have been reporting from the surreal confines of Kuwait City.

When war broke out, many reporters relocated to the Kuwait Hilton Report, public affairs headquarters for the Coalition Forces Land Command Center.

Press officers meander through crowds of journalists eager to confirm rumors and reports, many broadcast by television reporters with combat units. Is there fierce fighting in Basra? Has Umm Qasr really fallen? Did 8,000 Iraqis surrender? Exactly how many Iraqi missiles have landed on Kuwait?

Then there's the task of outfitting four-wheel-drive vehicles for the rough ride north. The shopping lists are long and the roof racks are crowded with generators, 25-liter jerry cans of gas, tents, food, satellite phones, bulletproof vests, and chemical suits.

Every night, air raid sirens send Kuwait City residents into shelters. Sleep has been in short supply. By yesterday morning, with coalition troops more than a hundred miles into Iraq and in nominal control of the Al Faw peninsula, the ranks of journalists had thinned.

Convoys of ''unilaterals'' - the military's term for reporters who chose not to embed with troops - had made the dash into Iraq, and were filing dispatches with coveted datelines.

Anxious reporters who had been left behind joked about being the last in Kuwait City. The light mood lasted only until lunch, though, when rumors of the first press casualties started streaming in. By dinner, we knew that some of our colleagues might have died trying to work independently in Iraq. Britain's ITN television news declared three of its employees missing; they had come under attack on their way to Basra.

US Colonel Guy Shields, head of the press center here, announced that three journalists were either seriously injured or were dead. ''There's another four journalists being detained by Iraqis and possibly wounded,'' Shields said.

It was a somber prospect for the journalists, many of whom were still talking about the best way to get into Iraq. ''Is any story really worth your life?'' one exasperated military official said.

We're all asking the same question.