It has been just over a year since Kimberly Dozier, CBS News correspondent, was critically wounded in Iraq. JWN regulars may recall a tribute here, reflecting on her University of Virginia graduate studies and her extraordinary 3 year coverage of the Iraq war.
I am happy to pass along that CBS News aired a one hour program on May 29th, featuring Kimberly Dozier, with fellow UVA product Katie Couric. Title of the program is Flashpoint: Kimberly Dozier and the Army’s Fourth ID, A Story of Bravery, Recovery, and Lives Forever Changed. CBSNews now provides transcripts and the full video at its website.
At least for me, much of this is difficult to watch. Yet characteristically Kim, brief accounts of her own painful story transition into longer reflections on the lives lost that day and the families left behind. There’s little overt “political analysis.”
In the list of related videos (and sub-sections) on the right of the link noted above, check the interview given to Harry Smith. Therein, Kimberly hints at getting back to “her” story; if not Baghdad, then surely the Middle East.
The candle is burning brightly for Kimberly Dozier’s recovery and return. Our best wishes stay with her.
Footnote: (as of 6/17/07)
As I watched the program and the support clips at the CBS web site, I couldn’t help but think of PTSD – post traumatic stress disorder. Today’s WaPo & LATimes both have cover stories regarding the Pentagon’s apparent “compulsion” (pun intended) to deny support for vets so suffering.
Back in 1996, I learned of the subject first hand via work for a year with Amb. Nathaniel Howell and trained PTSD professionals on a sensitive project to evaluate how Kuwaiti society was being rocked by unresolved traumas from the Iraqi invasion and occupation. I confess to having been a bit doubtful at the outset — until I personally witnessed horrendous manifestations of wounds of a different sort.
As the right-wingers so often say, war is hell. (particularly when they wish to dismiss concerns about JIB violations….) But apart from the physical carnage, the chaos of war wreaks its own “hell” on the minds and families of those who “return.”
Supporting the troops means more than just giving them more destructive arms and armour for “the mission.” It also means taking care of them, their whole persons, afterwards.
My mother’s eldest brother recently passed away. He was a kindly man; think Bing Crosby. Yet as far as I know, he never was able to talk in the least about his WWII service…. He had been an ambulance driver for over 3 years in North Africa & Europe. He never resolved the inward horror of what he saw. Rest in peace Uncle Bill.
11 thoughts on “Kimberly Dozier: A Year Later”
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I see the corporate media, and their staff, as having done a great deal to promote and continue this war, like all wars I suppose.
I just wish the Iraqi people who had no choice and no say in the start or continuation of this war got the same care as Kiberly Dozier did. I see them as much more deserving – yet they get next to nothing.
And as far as PTSD goes, the Iraqi population does get nothing…. nothing at all.
My sympathies lie with them, not the corporate media types who do stories on our troops but not the civilians. Now, you could make the argument that Iraq is too dangerous to cover, but this argument does not hold up with the Iraqi refugees in Syria, Jordan, and everywhere else.
Well Susan, you’re consistent. For some reason, you misread the gist of my “tribute” last year and again in this little post. Do you have a different sort of problem with KD? And how is it that the Iraqi people are “more deserving” of the care she got?
KD was as far off the “reservation” as you could get for a mainstream “corporate” media reporter…. and she got widely and brutally castigated for it. (as I noted in detail in my tribute — even Dan Rather was distancing himself from her.)
Last year, when KD nearly got killed, right wing bloggers were cheering….. and it seemed you were too (from the opposite corner — I let it pass then.)
Alas, I avoided commenting on the lack of politics in the current CBS special, in part because they aired it on Memorial day, and in part because (well to me anyway), it was vintage Katie Couric, lots of “human interest,” but precious little analysis of deeper politics. (unless you count all those white tombstones)
So this was a special mainly about American victims, airing around Memorial Day. If it wakes up a few American numb-nuts to the tolls of war, it’s a start.
As for the Arab side, sure, PTSD type stories might seem a cynical sideshow over here, when even worse daily physical hell rules there in Iraq, and a Pandora’s box we opened. Agreed on that – surely.
(and I didn’t even get into explaining why PTSD issues are potentially so “sensitive” in Arab culture, from my Kuwait experience…)
One of KD’s last reports was precisely about the toll of war on Iraq’s children. Yet you lampooned it last year as a “feel good” story. (You think the war mongers want stories about the suffering the war brought? Those are the stories Kimberly regularly pursued, never mind the pressure from Rice to her bosses to instead cover the schools being built….) The rare “feel good” story that KD did was precisely the one that nearly got her killed, about soldiers working as normal on what for Americans is a relax day,…. but it was hardly her standard fare.
In my original post, before I edited it, I floated a lame observation that so many of the lesser mainstream journalists & columnists who had been to Iraq for far shorter stays than KD were landing juicy fellowships at this or that think tank to write their books/memoirs. I, for one, would hope that KD would get a shot at it too — precisely because my hunch is that Kimberly would be far more “independent” of the influences that infected her colleageus. Perhaps though, that’s why she wasn’t offered such a chance, because she is so off-the-reservation.
“And how is it that the Iraqi people are “more deserving” of the care she got?”
My point is not that some are more or less deserving, but that a great number of victims (who had no choice about being in Iraq) GET NONE AT ALL. They simply die….. or not.
And the vast majority of them don’t get noticed either.
Tough luck for them, I guess.
I see journalists like Dahr Jamail as independent, not KD.
Instead of covering the recovery of corporate media personnel’s recovery from riding around Iraq with US troops, why don’t they do a documentary on what is happening to the Iraqi refugees in Syria and Jordan? Why don’t they put those people on TV and let Americans see and hear what they have visited upon these people. It would be safe and easy to do.
I, for one, will not hold my breath waiting for that one.
“Kimberly Dozier and the Army’s Fourth ID, A Story of Bravery…”
the title rather says it all, doesn’t it? yes, it is a story of bravery on the army’s part there in Iraq, not a story of slaughter, violence, evil and madness.
The link to the “transcripts” link ends with the quote from KD of “where are my guys? where are my guys?”
from McClatchy reporting:
About 60 Iraqi families seek help at the center on any given day, said Father Paul Suleiman, the Syrian priest who runs the group. He can scarcely open his office door before desperate Iraqis catch a glimpse of his white collar and recognize him as someone able to help. “Our father! Our father!” they shout, vying for his attention.
The dramatic caseload increase has taken its toll on Suleiman. He’s exhausted from the fieldwork and emotionally drained from the parade of suffering that begins anew each day. His characteristic calm turned to outrage when he showed a visitor a log of all the wounded, destitute Iraqis the center has treated in the past couple of years.
“All the world should have a guilty conscience for what has happened, this destruction of a people with 9,000 years of civilization,” the priest said, his voice rising. “Nobody human, not even the strongest of nations, can say God told him to conquer a people and give them democracy by force.”
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/17380478.htm
Isn’t it a funny coincidence that McClatchy guys, formerly Knight-Ridder, get the pre-war story correct and are now the only ones getting the refugee story also.
what a co-inky-dink.
and a year ago, KD risked her life, and some of her colleagues lost their lives, to get a fake story. again. just like the pre-war WMDs crap.
but, hey, those Memorial Day stories about our “brave” troops making things so much better for the poor Iraqis sure help to keep a war going – just like the war-pimping of the DANGER OF THOSE WMDS THAT SADDAM HAD sure helped getting the war started.
again:
“All the world should have a guilty conscience for what has happened, this destruction of a people with 9,000 years of civilization,”
Americans most of all.
Mr. Ferner wrote an article called “Collateral Genocide” about Iraq. He’s what he said it would be like if Iraq were transposed to the USA population figures:
In the former cities of Atlanta, Denver, Boston, Seattle, Milwaukee, Fort Worth, Baltimore, San Francisco, Dallas and Philadelphia every single person is dead.
In Vermont, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada, Kansas, Mississippi, Iowa, Oregon, South Carolina and Colorado every single person is wounded.
The entire populations of Ohio and New Jersey are homeless, surviving with friends, relatives or under bridges as they can.
The entire populations of Michigan, Indiana and Kentucky have fled to Canada or Mexico.
Over the past three years, one in four U.S. doctors has left the country.
Last year alone 3,000 doctors were kidnapped and 800 killed.
In short, nobody “out there” is coming to save us. We are in hell.
LINK:
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2072.shtml
While I have respect for Helena I think Susan C is more on the ball.To many US people seem to get swept away with “the flag” and Memorial Day stuff and what’s going on outside the US of A doesn’t really get through the fog of thinking the US is the be all and end all of everything.
As a mate who visited the US recently said they fly flags from everywhere, it’s sickening.
Old Glory ain’t something to be proud of in this day and age.
Robbo(in Oz)
What’s sickening about that? And are you proud of your Pacific Solution?
No, not proud ashamed of the Governments (both)responsible for it, just as ashamed as I am of the unquestioning support given to the current US administration.
Robbo.