The 'Inside' Story On A Mutiny In Iraq

Readers of this blog will remember the series Editor and Publisher is addressing here. It was a fantastic job of reporting what life is like in Iraq for Charlie Comopany. I just wonder what took them so long to do this?

The 'Inside' Story On A Mutiny In Iraq



By Barbara Bedway

Published: February 13, 2008 8:30 AM ET

NEW YORK When Army Times medical reporter Kelly Kennedy embedded with U.S. forces in Iraq last June, a mutiny was probably the last thing she expected to cover. But the catastrophic losses of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment that preceded the revolt -- including 14 soldiers killed, more than any other Army company sent to Iraq -- convinced Kennedy and her editors at the Gannett-owned, independent weekly to greatly expand the scope of her original assignment.

Instead of focusing on the near-miraculous efforts of the on-site medics, the 37-year-old Kennedy would instead chronicle the company's entire 15-month deployment. "Blood Brothers," the resulting four-part series that appeared in December, became "one of the single best examinations of an Iraq war deployment so far," in the words of Paul Rieckhoff, founder and executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

Kennedy, herself an Army veteran, "took readers deep inside a combat unit in a way nobody else has," he observes. "She knows when an Army public affairs officer is pushing a line of b.s. and can sense when a soldier is afraid to be candid in front of a superior. Her military experience clearly gives her subjects a level of trust that they would not have with someone who had not personally served."

But it wasn't easy. "I cried a lot writing this story," admits Kennedy, who had just started following Charlie Company a few days before the June 21st IED blast that killed five of its soldiers. "They'd been great to us, hanging out the night before, doing karaoke," she recalls.

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