COMM 209, 150: "Alaska to Iraq" blog

Finally reporter Rich Mauer of The Anchorage Daily News is with the troops from Alaska's Fort Richardson at a Forward Operating Base south of Baghdad. He's been in Iraq for a couple of weeks now, and his reporting has been mostly a demonstration of how sterile Baghdad is for U.S. reporters who are confined in heavily guarded hotels and the even more heavily guarded Green Zone where the Iraqi government and U.S. military headquarters are. He's been blogging every few days, but hasn't had much to say you don't see in the Associated Press roundups.

Now that's changing. Mauer filed a good one from FOB Kalsu today.

Here's part of his interview with Col. Michael X. Garrett of the 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), which has its headquarters in Anchorage.

With a new defense secretary, a new general in charge of the mission, an escalation in U.S. troop strength and a new security plan unfolding, Garrett’s mission is somewhat changed. It used to be “clear, hold and build” — clear the area of violent lawbreakers, hold on to it, and build on those results. Obviously it didn’t work.

Now it’s clear, control and retain.

“Can we clear areas?” he asked.

“Yes,” he said, answering his own question.

“Can we hold them?” he asked again.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Can we retain them long enough to complete the job?”

I waited for him to reply to himself again, but this time he was silent. After a moment, I pointed that out.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Is the war lost?” I asked.

“It’s not my feeling,” he responded quickly. “We’re all Type A personalities in the Army. We don’t like to fail at anything we do.”

There's no way a reporter could sum that feeling up and do it justice. You have to quote it.

COMM 209 students note the dialog, the short sentences and short paragraphs, both in and outside of quotation marks.

COMM 150 students click on the "Alaska to Iraq," read some of Mauer's blog posts from FOB Kalsu and compare them to his posts from Baghdad. My guess, the Green Zone is full of gatekeepers -- public affairs officers, government types -- and the FOB isn't.