Fearing the day
When I heard the explosion at 11 a.m. Monday morning, I had no idea I was listening to my colleagues being killed. The blast sounded just like the two other blasts - booming, rumbling, base sounds like claps of thunder – I’d heard before 9 a.m.
Now that I know what happened, however, I can’t help but imagine the scene. I don’t want to. I can’t help it. I can see the aftermath, that evil kaleidoscope of smoke, blood, metal, soldiers and guns, all colored red with panic and blanketed with the lingering smell of munitions like a million struck matches.
We all fear that this day will come, the day when a bomb will tear a piece off of us.
So fragile
I was in a Humvee this weekend on an embed and remember looking down at my legs.
They looked so thin and fragile. For a second I thought, "What if I lose them?"
On Monday, Kim Dozier, Paul Douglas and James Brolan's numbers came up.
Dozier’s brother told us tonight that he’d told his sister she’d been "pushing her luck." She’d been coming here too much, he felt. Evidently, she didn’t listen.
Tonight my mother grounded me. She sent me this email: "YOU ARE UNDER HOUSE ARREST UNTIL YOU CAN BOOK A FLIGHT OUT OF THERE...Moms orders...Be careful...Love you.. Mom"
We’ve gone through this before. She is supportive of what I do and sends magazines and whole hams for Christmas. She knows I am going to stay and keep reporting. But it is the frequency we all worry about, knowing that eventually, everyone gets caught out.
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God Bless you all! Mothers know things ....believe me. I have tremendous respect for all that is sacrificed in the name of ....truth? freedom? whether or not I agree with it. I am a mother, and I know things about my children that they have yet to discover about themselves. Everything has a price, and I'm sure you have already made a down payment in sacrifices. Maybe it's time to listen to your mother, so that you can continue to inform...from a different perspective.
Blessings to you and your colleagues.
Sue M, Maine (Sent Jun 5, 2006 12:26:36 AM)
Listen to your mother. There isn't anything you could report which we haven't heard that is worth your life. NBC should lead the way out of there. Our president does not care if you come home dead or alive but your viewer and family does. You might even save a soldiers life if NBC did a summation of what is lost in our government's poor policies and decisions.
Sharon Harlan (Sent Jun 5, 2006 10:25:04 AM)
Am very sorry about what happened but I thank reporters should stay out of the areas and let our men and ladys do there jobs and only report and go where the service lets them and stay out of the way. all their looking for is rateings for who they work for. i have family there and he saids they get in the way and make it hard to do their job. they make it easy for our men to be found which ends up getting someone killed. i thank they should do it and reported it like they did during WW2 and vitenam. that way there is more of chance of them making it home alive.
John White, Woodville, Texas (Sent Jun 5, 2006 12:22:40 PM)
While I feel sorry for every soul lost in Iraq, I believe that US troops and reporters are in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It is time for US administration to admit the horrible mistake they have made by occupying a foreing country by military force due to false information from CIA, and to withdraw all forces from Iraq immediately.
News Monitor (Sent Jun 5, 2006 6:21:33 PM)
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