Conclusion

What was the hardest thing in writing this book? It's an extraordinary account of the war which relies on sources of information on the ground, in the war, in Washington, and so on. What was the greatest difficulty in consummating this work?

It's really like several books in one. The first eight chapters [are] the policy evolution of how we went to war with Iraq, the confused postwar policy, a lot of the Washington wrangling, and it covers about eighteen months. Chapters 9 through 22 is the war; it covers about a three-week period but I've chronicled in great detail a lot of these battles and how they were actually fought. Some of these battles, no one's ever really covered to this day, because the embeds moved on to the next assignment, the next battle, the next place, and I put it all together. Then there's the post-war.

Some of these interactions are so complex that linking what was happening on the battlefield to what was happening in Washington required a lot of hard work to chase things down.

And -- I feel strongly about this -- there's a tendency now in book writing not to have footnotes, not to have original sources, not to put people on the record, not to put documents in the book. I'm fighting that tendency. I tried -- couldn't do it in many cases -- but I tried to put people on the record. A lot of the generals went on the record. I try to have footnotes saying where some of this information came from. Like the British representative in Baghdad, his cables back to London that I acquired that are confidential -- I put them in the appendix of the book, let people read for themselves. I tried to document to the extent that I could where all of this came from. That said, it just simply wasn't possible to put everybody on the record, despite my earnest efforts, because people are afraid of losing their job, they're afraid of hurting their chances for advancement, there's a whole host of reasons why people are reluctant to go on the record.

So, I think maybe [that was] the hardest part. I had some success in getting it on the record, but not complete success. But I think it's important. You've interviewed other authors. Go look at their footnotes in some recent books on Iraq. book cover Some don't even have footnotes.

One final question, requiring a brief answer. If students were to watch this program, how would you advise them to prepare for a beat like military correspondence?

I don't think it's fundamentally different than being a medical correspondent, or being a Supreme Court correspondent like Linda Greenhouse. You've just got to dive into it and stick with it, and in your head think of it as a five- to ten-year professional commitment. Don't think of it as a five-month assignment -- you're just going to go to a war and do a few glossy reports, and then bail out, because it really does require that degree of commitment to do successfully. It's very complicated subject matter, and the military [itself] takes a while to gain the trust of people, and that's gained through repeated encounters with military officers and civilians. That all takes time.

Michael, on that note, I want to thank you very much for coming to our program, thank you very much for writing this book which I will show to our audience again, Cobra II, the definitive account of the war up until the present. Thank you very much.

Right. Thank you.

And thank you very much for joining us for this Conversation with History.

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