HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, IRAQ WAR!

First off, apologies for neglecting this space for the past two weeks. My schedule hasn’t permitted much writing lately, but there is “product in the pipeline” as the “industry types” “say.” For now, I offer up something I wrote on the eve of the Iraq war. I was in Washington DC interning at CNN when the war started. (At the time, I didn’t want to name the organization, for obvious reasons.)

With the war’s birthday just past, it seems a good time to revisit.

Originally printed March 12, 2003

Well, it’s final, we’re going to war. Technically, it’s not really final. The United Nations will do some voting and the French will stomp their feet and the protesters will do some marching, but it’s really a moot point. We’re going to war.

If you saw President Bush’s press conference last Thursday, he said the final decision had not yet been made about military action against Iraq. But he smirked every time he said it, so you knew he was lying. The decision has been made, the troops are in place, the news stations have their cameras in the best locations. We’re going to war.

At Unnamed News Organization (hereafter referred to as UNO), the 24-hour news channel where I’m interning, we’re in full war mode. After Thursday’s presidential news conference, (in which the Washington Post described Bush as appearing “medicated”), several UNO reporters were informed they were leaving for Kuwait. Plans were unveiled for elongated work schedules once the war begins. Somewhere, someone was composing the theme song for the new war.

Those who are to remain in Washington have been issued protective suits in case of chemical attack. We interns were not issued protective suits; we perform the important “canary in the coal mine” function. If the interns keep dropping dead, the reporters know it’s not safe to take off the chemical suits.

People in the newsroom disagree about just when the war will start. The U.N. vote on the second resolution is on March 17, and most expect the war will start shortly after that. A few reporters think the United States will try to “shock and awe” Iraq by striking a day or so before March 17. One guy actually thinks we’re just posturing and we’re not going to war at all. UNO is putting him on a plane to Kuwait next week.

Those of us in the prestigious UNO intern corps are divided about the war. Most interns at UNO are the kind of bleeding-heart lefty peaceniks you’d expect to find in journalism. As you can imagine, most of us oppose the war. But there’s one catch: Being a news intern during a war looks great on your resume, so we all have something to gain by the U.S. going to war. That’s right, if our government kills thousands of people on the other side of the world, it will help us advance professionally.

This, I’m learning, is one of the great dilemmas of journalism. The worse things are, the better your job is. When there is relative peace and there’s not much going on, journalists have to do stories on stupid things like El Nino or what the president does with his cigars. Journalists make their reputations covering war, disasters, and mass murders. The worse the story, the better it is professionally for the journalist, assuming the story doesn’t personally affect the reporter.

So the march to war is on, and the careers of many journalists may be made or ruined by what happens in the next month. Back in the UNO newsroom, we’re taking bets on what the war will be called. Some think it will be called the “Iraq War,” while others figure the war will spread and be named the “Middle East War.” I nose into the debate by saying it will be called “Gulf War II: Electric Boogaloo.”

After everyone stops laughing at that hilarious joke I’ve told 1,000 times before, someone offers another possible name: World War III.

We all get uncomfortable and go back to our desks.