'The Best Covered War in History': Intimate Perspectives from the Battlefields of Iraq by Andrew J. McLaughlin A thesis presented to the University Of Waterloo in fulfilment of the thesis requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 2017 © Andrew J. McLaughlin 2017 Examining Committee Membership The following served on the Examining Committee for this thesis. The decision of the Examining Committee is by majority vote. External Examiner Marco Rimanelli Professor, St. Leo University Supervisor(s) Andrew Hunt Professor, University of Waterloo Internal Member Jasmin Habib Associate Professor, University of Waterloo Internal Member Roger Sarty Professor, Wilfrid Laurier University Internal-external Member Brian Orend Professor, University of Waterloo ii Author's Declaration I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. iii Abstract This study examines combat operations from the 2003 invasion of Iraq War from the “ground up.” It utilizes unique first-person accounts that offer insights into the realities of modern warfare which include effects on soldiers, the local population, and journalists who were tasked with reporting on the action. It affirms the value of media embedding to the historian, as hundreds of journalists witnessed major combat operations firsthand. This line of argument stands in stark contrast to other academic assessments of the embedding program, which have criticized it by claiming media bias and military censorship. Here, an examination of the cultural and social dynamics of an army at war provides agency to soldiers, combat reporters, and innocent civilians caught in the crossfire. iv Acknowledgements To my parents, Gordon and Elizabeth McLaughlin, who encouraged my love for history and fostered my imagination. Thank you for always encouraging me to aim high. To my brother, Gordon Michael McLaughlin, a true friend and mentor, for helping shape my skills as a writer in those early days of my academic career, and challenging me at every turn. To my wife, Marzena, for always supporting me through the years of research and writing, military training and travel. I wouldn't have been able to do this without you. To my other siblings, Michelle, Adam, Catherine and Jessica, thanks for putting up with me! To my mentor, editor, counsellor, and academic supervisor, Professor Andrew Hunt, your guidance and support have been indispensable and immensely appreciated. I am also eternally grateful to my other academic mentors, Jasmin Habib and David Monod; thanks for believing in me and listening to my frequent, long-winded diatribes. Melanie King, your astute eye and keen surveys aided this project immensely, and for that I thank you. To Fred McGarry and Professor Don Cowan from the Centre for Community Mapping, thank you for making me a part of your team. A special gratitude also goes to my military mentor, Lieutenant-Commander Walter Moniz. Thank you Sir, for everything. And to my little angel, Ella, I hope you one day enjoy this, as we enjoy our bedtime stories! v Table of Contents 1. INTRODUCTION... 1 2. A SHORT HISTORY OF U.S. MILITARY-PRESS RELATIONS... 9 3. HISTORIOGRAPHY & LITERATURE REVIEW... 37 4. GENESIS OF THE EMBEDDING PROGRAM... 63 5. CONSTRUCTION OF THE ENEMY... 92 6. BATTLEFIELD CONDITIONS... 126 7. DEATH, VIOLENCE & DESTRUCTION... 156 8. IDENTITIES & DECISIONS... 189 9. CONCLUSION... 229 10. BIBLIOGRAPHY... 231 vi 1. INTRODUCTION Wars can be viewed through many lenses, and interpreted in various ways. This study offers evidence of the value inherent in the analysis of combat reporters’ first-hand accounts of battle; a collection of news reports, memoirs and collected oral histories that neither fits neatly into the field of traditional military history nor the study of journalism and communications. Indeed, despite being largely overlooked in traditional military histories, these works collectively represent a vital source base that can be utilized together to offer intimate details of war from the “ground up.” The embedding program – where hundreds of journalists were attached to, and reported on the activities of fighting units in the field during the invasion of Iraq in 2003 – produced a plethora of sources that offer detailed views of modern warfare that would otherwise be unavailable to the historical record. These works serve to affirm the value of embedding to the historian, as they offer an inside look at the shared experiences of reporters and soldiers in a way that is critical to understanding the dynamics of a modern army at war, and helps capture the essence of the true nature of modern warfare and its impact upon the individual and on various groups. Important social and cultural experiences can be gleaned from participant-observers’ accounts that have emerged since the authors returned from the battlefields, especially. After the near-immediate news cycle and military regulations and restraints were no longer obstructive to nuance and detail, journalists had the opportunity to introduce a level of frankness into their accounts missing from battlefield dispatches. Various firsthand accounts combine to offer a multi-faceted, multi-perspective look at the modern battlefield and military culture that foregrounds more complex narratives about the war and its toll on humanity that conventional 1 coverage cannot capture, thus bringing finer details about this conflict front and centre to a reading audience in a way that their much shorter, deadline-driven reportage could not. This study explores the dynamics of United States military forces at war through first- hand experiences related to various actors in a recent conflict yet to be deeply analyzed by historians. Emerging eyewitness accounts and collected oral histories stemming from the embedding program offer nuanced, intimate, and valuable perspectives that have been ignored by myriad critics of this policy. Utilizing United States military-media relations history as a backdrop, and following in the footsteps of pioneering war and society histories such as John Keegan’s The Face of Battle, the study forms a critical intersection between the wars of the past and their impact upon contemporary military-press relations while providing agency to "friendly" soldiers; the forces that resisted the American invasion; combat reporters; and innocent civilians caught in the crossfire. Thesis Even though journalists have faced various challenges to their ability to report on wars, their eyewitness accounts are critical to understanding the conflicts they cover. In past wars when they were not present, or when their numbers were minimal, the historical record was missing a vital perspective on the true nature of the conflicts that could not be conveyed by soldiers and military documents. In certain cases, this missing element led to the battlefield realities of American conflicts being exaggerated, romanticized, or outright sanitized through various means serving a variety of agendas. Those conflicts covered more extensively by reporters can be analyzed in a way that they cannot in wars where press freedoms were limited. By contrast, wars characterized by a dearth of press coverage place the historian at a disadvantage when it comes to understanding the history 2 of such events and reconstructing the realities of battlefield experiences. Wars in the late 20th and early 21st century – such as those in Vietnam and Iraq – produced a wide array of first-hand accounts, largely due to the open battlefield access given to reporters. In surveying battlefield reportage and memoirs from earlier wars, it becomes clear that it's the reporters themselves and the stories that they’ve shared that are key to enhancing our understanding of these events. Their insights are indispensable. Their accounts offer a unique look at war; especially when they are allowed greater access to the battlefield and even more so when they cover military actions in large numbers. In effect, the level of press access granted by the military impacts the depth to which the conflicts can be understood by historians. During the Iraq invasion phase of February-April 2003, issues such as images of the enemy in the popular imagination of the press and soldiers; the motivation of soldiers to fight; battlefield experiences combined with environmental conditions, death and killing; and the complex interplay of race, class and gender (especially dominant notions of masculinity) were explored through the combat reporters’ lens. Extensive media access to the Iraq invasion, through the embedding program, gave participant-observers a unique opportunity to address through direct experience these (and other) complex questions. In past wars, even in Vietnam, where the press enjoyed far greater freedom of movement and access, memoirs by journalists written after the conflicts did not address matters of military culture and battlefield experience in the same depth, and with the same level of insight, as those focused on the Iraq invasion. In essence, this specific fraction of history generated an unprecedented number of firsthand accounts from reliable observers, which has provided a unique opportunity to analyze the conflict from the point of view of reporters who shared in the combat experience to a far greater extent than journalists in previous wars. 3 Generally, this study addresses two basic questions. First, it explores the hasty evaluations made by the academic community regarding the merits and value of the embedding program, which are addressed in the literature review. And second, and related in its goal, is an analysis of how the experiences of combat affected the soldiers, reporters, the "enemy," and the local population (i.e. what did the embedded reporters see, and what does it tell us) forms a critical intersection between the invasion of Iraq and modern war and society discourse. Academic Criticism Several academic works appeared in the immediate aftermath of the Iraq invasion (2003- 2006), and treated the embedding program harshly.