New York Times reporter Lynette Clemetson has been as close to U.S. Navy bombers in Iraq as you can get without signing an eight-year flight contract.
Clemetson spent the past 27 days embedded on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf. She has previously written for Newsweek in Hong Kong and Washington, D.C., and her work has garnered numerous awards for excellence in journalism. In an interview with The Dartmouth, she discussed modern military correspondence and her view of the conflict in Iraq.
The Dartmouth: What was your day-to-day schedule on board the carrier?
Lynette Clemetson: The day-to-day schedule was incredibly rigorous. I was just talking to my husband this evening and saying that I don't think I've worked so long for such a sustained period any time that I can remember.
From when we first got there until maybe the second week, we would start the day like a military day and be up by 6 a.m. We'd have the first briefing at 7:30, work all day and then at six in the evening it would be 10 o'clock Eastern time. Then, if you were writing a story, you would go through another whole day with your [newspaper's] desk. Most days, I went to bed anywhere between 2 and 4 a.m.
I don't think that this compares in any way to the physical demands that our colleagues who are with ground troops are under. I can't imagine doing what they're doing. But being on a ship has its own demands -- you don't have any private time ... I was in a cabin with five other journalists. We had four bunked beds and two cots and we shared a bathroom with all of the others.
The D: Did you undergo any special training before you were embedded?
LC: I did the general training and bio-chemical [protection] training that most journalists did. It wasn't particularly useful for the Navy. The Navy embed is one of the safest spots, if not the safest spot, you can be as an embedded journalist.
In the period before the war started, the captain put the ship under a bio-chem alert. We all had to carry gas masks around with us at all times for probably the last two-and-a-half weeks I was there. People started calling their masks "Wilson." ... You know, like Wilson from [the movie] "Cast Away," the ball. As in, "Do you have your Wilson?" because it was something you had to have with you all the time; your constant companion.
The D: Did anything in particular surprise you about living on an aircraft carrier?
LC: I had been on an aircraft carrier before, but I had never lived on an aircraft carrier. The amount of work surprised me, and the fact that when you step onto the ship, you're in an industrial environment ... The ship is never not at work. Most people's shifts are 12 to 14 hours and some people work 18 hours a day.
And everything is steel. The first week I was there, I was bruised most of the time because when you bump into something, you're bumping into something that's steel. When I was getting used to things, I'd bump my leg or bump my toe and then, at the end of the night, I'd notice that I was all black and blue.
The D: Three weeks into war, how are American soldiers and sailors doing?
LC: I think they're tired. You could clearly see fatigue showing on the pilots I talked to, at this point. The [U.S.S.] Abraham Lincoln is now in its ninth month of deployment and that's one of the longest deployments in naval history. These guys had been doing missions over Iraq for months when the war started.
I spent a lot of time with one squadron that was flying two missions a day. That's a lot and the physical toll is pretty great. I remember talking to one guy who had two flights in a day. His first brief started at 7:45 in the morning and he got back from his last flight and debriefed 12 hours later.
I think [soldiers] are tired, but I don't think that exhaustion necessarily translates into low morale. Everything I witnessed indicated that once the war started, morale was pretty high because they had a mission to focus on. I thought morale was lower in the time when [soldiers] were waiting.
The D: How much awareness is there of how the war is going as a whole? Are the sailors watching CNN?
LC: A carrier is unique in that, unlike on the ground, there are TVs, so CNN International was on. But do people spend every spare minute of their day catching up on the news? I don't think so. Even the journalists are busy doing their own job.
The D: You've written about anti-war feeling in the United States. How have soldiers reacted to press coverage of anti-war protests?
LC: There are a range of responses. I saw everything from the very visceral -- "those protestors don't know what they're talking about" or "how can they do that?" -- to a very nuanced understanding and appreciation of whatever role those protestors are playing.
People in the military do their jobs and are proud of the jobs they do. But ... not everybody I met was actually supportive of the [administration's] policy, either.
Does that mean that they would've been protesting if they were at home? No. I mean, they're in the military and they have a job to do. But that doesn't mean that they were fully onboard with what the policy was on the war.
The D: How has the prevalence of embedded reporting changed the way America watches this war?
LC: What I'm assuming is that when you read a total picture ... whatever your personal opinion is, your view will be more complete. I don't think any of this is necessarily going to change anyone's mind about whether they support or don't support this war. But I do think it paints a fuller picture of the people who're participating in it.
The D: Some people have commented that the process of embedding necessarily affects the perspectives of journalists. For example, history professor Ronald Edsforth told The Dartmouth on Tuesday that "the point is exciting. There's a sort of psychological bonding that's going on between journalists and soldiers." Did you feel that?
LC: Psychological bond? I felt very much like a reporter the whole time I was there. I didn't ever feel like I was "one of the gang" and I think that's an important distinction. I never wanted to feel like I was "one of the gang," one of the ship's crew.
I was there with them so I could get an idea of what they did. But I thought the line between what I was there to do and what they were there to do was always clear.
[Being embedded] allowed me to ask more probing questions because I'd known the people [involved in combat] over a period of time. I had some inkling of their personalities and, when they came back from a mission, I could read their faces and their expressions and the way they answered questions and get into their heads a little bit more ... I don't think I would've had anywhere near the same perspective if I hadn't been there.
