`There is no such thing as immunity'

CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier, who was critically wounded in a bomb attack in Baghdad on Sunday, wrote about her experiences covering the war in an article last summer for Wellesley, the alumnae magazine of Wellesley College. Dozier graduated from Wellesley in 1987. Here are excerpts:

The blast was close enough to our hotel to give everyone in the bureau a rude wake-up call, but it was much worse for our Iraqi bureau manager, Firas. He'd just driven by the target -- an Iraqi forces recruiting station -- seconds before a suicide car bomber rammed into the front gate, killing 35 would-be recruits and injuring 100 more. . . .

Firas's car was rear-ended by the force of the bomb, the windshield blown out, the windows cracked. But he fared better than the guy behind him, whose car was practically obliterated. . . .

For most Americans the bombing was just another headline that would doubtless cause many to change the channel. It would likely prompt yet another US military commander to ask me, ``Why do you always report the bad news?" Because I can't ignore 35 people being killed, no matter how many hospitals or schools have been rebuilt, I would invariably reply.

There has been good news in Iraq-- the elections for instance, with massive popular turnout, which rocked the pessimistic press back on its heels, me included. But there are still more bad days than good, which is not a welcome message back home. It's also hard to find a new way to describe the same horrors over and over in order to keep Americans listening, when they've heard a phrase like ``hail of shrapnel and glass" 100 times before.

Then again, I can't go as far as to show on air what I really see, like bits of people I've inadvertently ended up standing on amid the wreckage of a car bomb. After I'd finished stand-ups at one scene, the producer asked, ``Did you notice you were standing on someone's toe?" We can't show that on TV.

The truth is, no matter how I'd like to spend my days doing ``good news" stories, Iraq is still a horror show, one most Iraqis and many young American soldiers cannot escape, and one US commanders have admitted will take years to change, given the strength of the insurgency.

So we stay on, broadcasting a message that isn't always popular with the military or with our audience, in an environment that has gotten more dangerous for journalists, and for every other type of foreigner, by the day-- and more dangerous still for the Iraqis. . . .

This past spring, as we filmed a stand-up from our hotel rooftop -- a kilometer from the Green Zone -- a pair of Apache helicopters buzzed us twice, flying so close I could see one of the pilots was having a bad day.

Then, not five minutes later, a US Marine patrol burst onto the roof, running in our direction. They told us they had a report we were filming the Green Zone, which was forbidden for security reasons. A bit bemused, we took them downstairs to the bureau, gave them cold sodas, and sent them on their way.

Unfortunately, they're not the only ones keeping an eye on us. Intelligence sources have told us that the militants are watching, too -- tracking our movements, even monitoring our cellphone calls. We didn't really believe it.

When a rocket slammed into our building recently, we dismissed it, assuming it was aimed at the Green Zone nearby. Then a video of the rocket attack appeared on a militant website. You can hear the attacker's voice, saying, ``The CIA is meeting at this hotel right now, so we are hitting the 10th floor." And then, they fire.

No one was hurt by the blast, nor were there any American secret agents hiding out on the 10th floor, as far as we know (I would have had a few pointed questions for them). But the militants accomplished their goal-- frightening every Iraqi working in the hotel, and giving them another reason to fear foreigners like us.

It was one more reminder for us that there is no such thing as immunity from violence in Iraq, and no shortage of it either. At least not yet.