I feel sorry for Washington Post reporter Daniel Williams. Were it not for the endless Reagan hagiography, this story might not have been burried on page A15.
Fallujah byways are a hell of roadside bombs and ambushes. On Friday, an armored sport-utility vehicle carrying this Washington Post reporter and his driver was attacked close to Fallujah on the main highway to Baghdad. Four men in an orange-and-white taxi pumped dozens of bullets from AK-47 assault rifles into the vehicle for more than two minutes, each round causing a loud thump on the vehicle's metal plating and reinforced windows. They shot from behind, from in front and from the sides, where their determined frowns and mustached faces were clearly visible, as they and we weaved down the highway at 90 mph. The fusillade stopped when the SUV, its back tires missing and its rear windows shattered, spun out of control. The gunmen sped down the road, evidently thinking their mission was accomplished. Neither the driver nor the reporter was injured.
Had I been there, the paragraph might have concluded, "One occupant soiled himself, however."
Posted by cradle at June 7, 2004 06:43 PMwashingtonpost.com seems to have stopped accepting cpunks' registration. It is a tragedy.
Posted by: Andrew at June 7, 2004 06:54 PM...either that or their login button just isn't working for my mozilla.
Posted by: Andrew at June 7, 2004 06:56 PMHey Andrew, use "fred" and "fred" for the login and password. Fred works for me.
And David, Reagan died. You must write on the Gipper. I mean they brought all the troops back from Iraq and Afganistan because they have to attend the funeral. Didn't you hear? Reagan, the president that said the word freedom does not exist in the Russian language, died. We're all a little to busy to hear about reporters being hurt in the Middle East.
Also,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3783799.stm
cpunks is working for me, my WP.com header says "Hello cpunks"
I'm under the impression that armored SUVs getting shot at is not particularly newsworthy in Iraq right now...I heard an NPR reporter on Saturday talking about being shot at in an armored SUV while riding with power engineers going to fix a generator plant. The driver said "Oh, this happens all the time."
Posted by: Tom at June 8, 2004 02:08 AMI think the article, as a good "follow that story" piece on Falluja, would have made A1, regardless of whether the reporter's SUV had been shot-up. The reporter's experience makes it even sadder.
I heard the same story you did, on This American Life (PRI, not NPR, btw). If I recall correctly, the car in front of the reporter was the one shot at. The convoy's security detail got out, started firing back, and the assailant's BMW drove away.
In Williams's case, he was in the vehicle being attacked, there was no convoy, and he was fired on for two minutes. Scary stuff.