Blog posts tagged "Iraq"

December 12, 2011 9:08 am 31 Comments

I have never been more frightened in any theatre of war. To be on the ground was to be adorned in a flak jacket and to feel very personally threatened at all times. I was there perhaps a dozen times. I heard the car bombs, saw the tell tale plumes of black smoke rising into the sky.

September 2, 2011 7:20 am 54 Comments

Very bad men and cults that go bad: Jon Snow blogs on Gaddafi and the green that turned to black, tinged with the red blood of those who opposed his dictatorship.

September 1, 2010 6:52 am 51 Comments

No apology for Iraq - but former prime minister Tony Blair comes close to one on, strangely, fox-hunting in his memoirs published today, writes Jon Snow.

August 23, 2010 8:39 am 39 Comments

The gaping sore that is 9/11 in the American psyche remains unhealed. We who covered the co-ordinated attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, and the Pentagon in Washington underestimated how deep, how searing, and how long lasting this event would prove to be. Today this secular nation, whose refusal to either favour or [...]

June 9, 2010 6:34 pm 9 Comments

Jon Snow blogs on meeting General Petraeus and finds an intriguing close-up of a man who one suspects will attempt to go much further.

8:28 am 6 Comments

A short blog to start the day. I’m just off on the bike to chair an intriguing session for the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). Don’t often get the call from the military. But two very special guests today: Generals David Petraeus (US) and Peter Wall (UK) are to speak and interact with an audience.

June 30, 2009 2:57 pm 21 Comments

Iraq is a country I have visited many times since I was first there to report from the front line of the harrowing Iran/iraq war in 1980. Foreign intervention and interference has dogged it for more than a century. No wonder Baghdad is seized with parties and celebration. For the promised American pull-out from Iraq [...]

June 15, 2009 9:44 am No Comments

Gordon Brown will announce an inquiry into the Iraq war this week. My sources tell me that this will not be chaired by a judge, senior or retired. It will be chaired instead by a historian. The hot tip in Whitehall is that it is likely to be the respected Churchill and Holocaust scholar Sir [...]

March 3, 2009 9:24 am No Comments

I shan’t be around for the next couple of days. I’m going off to be kidnapped, bundled up in a sack, immersed in thick mud, and shot at. I’ll also be updating my first aid skills. Once every three years in this business you have to go off and be “refreshed” on the hostile environment [...]

February 19, 2009 10:53 am No Comments

The Iraqi shoe thrower appeared before a Baghdad court today. A short appearance, as it turned out – the case was quickly adjourned. Muntazer al-Zaidi, the 27 year-old journalist who threw both his shoes at George Bush on the US president’s final visit to Baghdad in December, has not been seen since allegations that he [...]