Long Drive Through A Short War by Peter Wilson

Long Drive Through A Short War

Reporting On The Iraq War

by Peter Wilson

Hardie Grant Books, 2004, lightly illustrated with b/w photographs in text,  paperback, ISBN 1740661435

Near Fine Condition, minor edge and shelf wear, previous owners inscription on half-title page, uncreased spine 

'...the story of his time in Iraq, a remarkable period that led to him being named 2003's Australian Journalist of the Year.  It is an unusually honest account, one that does not shy away from the fears, the mistakes and the ethical dilemmas most war reporters face, but few ever write about.
With photographer John Feder and translator Stewart Innes, Wilson crossed the border from Kuwait into Iraq determined to focus on ordinary Iraqis, not the soldiers' war.
Living out of a 4WD, the team ended up on a frightening and extraordinary road trip: captured at gunpoint by Saddam's fighters in Basrra, driven through a tank battle to Baghdad and placed under house arrest in the Palestine Hotel.  There, they defied Iraqi orders by continuing to report, using equipment borrowed from other foreign journalists.
Amid the chaos of looting and shooting inside 'liberated' Baghdad, Wilson, Feder and Innes came across Ali Ismail Abbas, a horribly injured twelve-year-old who would become a poster-child of the war.  They worked frantically to arrange the military flight to Kuwait that would save the boy's life.
Wilson has been much praised and awarded by his peers for his 'uncommon foresight' in reporting the true course of the war, and his courage in getting our into the field.  His return to report on Iraq after the war further underlines the problems Iraq still faces today.'