Samarra, a Year Later

Last year, I was embedded with the U.S. military in Samarra and wrote a cover story about the rather dismal situation there, with Iraqi and American forces fighting what seemed to be a dirty war. In a riveting story, Tom Lasseter of Knight Ridder writes about the current state of things in Samarra, where American troops strap dead insurgents to the hoods of their Humvees, and an American soldier, after killing an apparently innocent Iraqi, cannot contain his frustration, telling Lasseter, “No one told me why I’m putting my life on the line in Samarra, and you know why they didn’t? Because there is no f—— reason.” If Samarra is a window into the war-fighting part of the counter-insurgency campaign, it’s only gotten worse in the past year.

Author: Peter Maass

I was born and raised in Los Angeles. In 1983, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, I went to Brussels as a copy editor for The Wall Street Journal/Europe. I left the Journal in 1985 to write for The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, covering NATO and the European Union. In 1987 I moved to Seoul, South Korea, where I wrote primarily for The Washington Post. After three years in Asia I moved to Budapest to cover Eastern Europe and the Balkans. I spent most of 1992 and 1993 covering the war in Bosnia for the Post. View all posts by Peter Maass