4.6 • 8.7K Ratings
🗓️ 28 March 2018
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
0:00.0 | Last week marked the 15th anniversary of the night of shock in awe, |
0:05.5 | exploding across the night sky over Baghdad, |
0:08.8 | the opening salvo in a nearly nine-year war. |
0:14.9 | It was a deadly conflict to cover. |
0:18.1 | Foreign reporters increasingly relied on Iraqis to take the risks on the ground. |
0:23.3 | Back in 2006, I spoke to three Iraqis, pulled into journalism by a trick of fate, caught in the |
0:30.2 | wave of correspondence pouring in from the West. Then I spoke to them again in 2013. We'll replay both of those. |
0:38.7 | The story begins with writer George Packer, who, while covering Iraq for the New Yorker, |
0:45.0 | found a blog called Healing Iraq. |
0:47.6 | Well, the first time you go to his blog, it says something like views of an Iraqi dentist. |
0:54.4 | And then there's a quote, I believe, from Swift. |
0:58.0 | So you're just thinking an Iraqi dentist whose epigraph on his blog is from Jonathan Swift |
1:02.9 | and who is writing these long, informed, historical accounts of what's going on in Iraq today. |
1:10.5 | Who is this guy? Where did he learn all this? |
1:13.4 | You know, why is he writing this? Is he real? It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of what he was |
1:20.8 | never reasoned into. That's the epigraph from Swift that sits atop healing Iraq. I thought he was |
1:26.6 | maybe 50, not a guy in his mid to late |
1:29.8 | 20s, because he seemed so reflective and sort of sad and slightly disdainful about the militias and |
1:40.9 | about the violence and about Iraqi politicians and about American mistakes. |
1:45.6 | But there was no hysteria and there was no rank partisanship. |
1:51.0 | He somehow seemed to take the whole thing in and see it as the tragedy that it was and is. |
1:56.5 | I thought that in the early days of the war, the Western media was just pouring into Iraq, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from WNYC Studios, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of WNYC Studios and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.