Berkeley Blogger Jane Stillwater wants to get embedded with coalition forces.
Posted on 05/07/2007 3:10:10 PM PDT by SmithL
BERKELEY — Berkeley blogger Jane Stillwater hasn't even been back from her war correspondent gig in Baghdad for a month, and already she's planning her next trip to Iraq.
And this time she is determined to get embedded and see some actual combat in Baghdad's Red Zone, she said Thursday.
"When I was there I saw everything inside the Green Zone, but I never got to see combat. You can't see Iraq like that," said Stillwater, 64, of Berkeley. "It's like going to the zoo and not seeing the elephants and lions."
A longtime blogger and full-time, self-described peacemaker, Stillwater, who is not a professionally trained journalist but a keen observer and a colorful writer, was inspired to go to Baghdad because of her outrage over the war.
While there, she filed 17 reports on her blog jpstillwater.
blogspot.com between March 28 and April 17 from a borrowed computer in the Combined Press Information Center in the U.S.-protected, fortified Green Zone.
Her entries dealt with everything from the variety of Meals Ready-to-Eat to flying in a helicopter to Diwaniyah, skimming over rice fields, adobe brick compounds, sheep and cows, on her way to a news conference about a cleanup action conducted there.
Her blog entries caught the attention of a prominent journalist who wants to foot the $1,900 flight to Baghdad if Stillwater's application to be embedded with a military unit, which she said is being "shopped around," is approved. Stillwater was hoping Advertisement to know over the weekend if and when she'll go back to Iraq. She said she officially requested an embed for mid-June to early July.
Stillwater won't reveal the name of the journalist — yet — but said the overseas scribe contacted her via e-mail Thursday.
"She read my blog and she said, 'You are doing really good work and I'd like you to go back,'" Stillwater said during an interview at a Berkeley coffee shop Thursday.
To pay for her trip last time, Stillwater, who lives in government housing and rides a bicycle, ate peanut butter sandwiches for months to save for a ticket to Kuwait.
She secured press credentials with the help of a small Texas newspaper, The Lone Star Iconoclast, because editor W. Leon Smith liked the idea of sending an "ordinary person" that "people can identify with," to dispatch the news.
Some things about Stillwater are, indeed, quite ordinary.
Since returning home to Berkeley, she went with great excitement to hear the Dalai Lama speak in San Francisco, "hoping he would be able to cleanse my soul of the ugliness that is Iraq."
She also rejoined her ongoing fight for tenant rights at the Section 8 housing complex where she has lived for 27 years and received an early Mother's Day present — a videotape of a past trip — from son Joe Stillwater, 27, one of her four adult children and a supporter of her attempt to get embedded.
"She's pretty amazing. I wasn't really worried about her the first time she went. Now I'm a little more worried," said the filmmaker and painter, who lives in Berkeley.
This time around, he admits, could be different.
"Now I'm a little bit nervous because of what happened last time she was there," he said.
On April 12, the day a suicide bomber blew up the Iraqi Parliament restaurant, blogger Stillwater had been there interviewing two female Parliament members about their views on the situation in Iraq.
An hour later, a suicide bomber set off an incendiary device that killed two and injured about a dozen more.
"I was horrified when they blew up the Parliament because I had been there one hour before, sitting at the table that was blown up," she said.
Still, she wants to head back, in part, because she gets restless playing solitaire, and "I get bored, and I hate doing laundry. I hate cooking," she said.
But also because she wants to use her life to spread a message that the world should give peace a chance.
"That's the goal of all this, to get as much peace in the world as possible," she said.
Wire services contributed to this report.
Still trying to get her sorry self embedded!
Hey, let’s hope she gets her wish. Then maybe she’ll see her Muzzie soulmates up close and personal, and find out what they do to American womyn, whether they’re moonbats or not.
(Moonbat she may be, but seriously, I’ll give her props for going.)
}:-)4
“Stillwater, who lives in government housing”
Shouldn’t she give her ticket $$ back to the taxpayers?
Well, that's what happens when you get stuck in the moonbat exhibit.
she went with great excitement to hear the Dalai Lama speak in San Francisco, "hoping he would be able to cleanse my soul of the ugliness that is Iraq."
Must be nice to see clebrities - I have to settle for the counselors at the VA for my cleansing...
"I was horrified when they blew up the Parliament because I had been there one hour before, sitting at the table that was blown up"
And you still won't let go of your Leftists agendas...
"That's the goal of all this, to get as much peace in the world as possible"
No, the goal is to keep your name in the media as long as possible, you geriatric attention slut.
Oh! Now I know why the Parliament was targeted! To bad our timing was off!
“you geriatric attention slut” - LOL!!
Jane, meet Sand Rat .... :)
Seriously, maybe she’ll get turned into a pro War Freeper ... LOL!
Only time will tell.
See you guys, she gets her soul cleansed by the Dalai Lama just like everybody else.
It is said there is a leisure class at each end of the social scale.
America’s poor are so desperate and shunted aside that they can afford trips to Kuwait and Iraq, where they report on helicopter rides....?
I'll help you out, Jane. Bike up University and hang a right on Martin Luther King. Go straight on MLK for 3.5 miles.
And when your white a$$ hears popping sounds, and you feel a LEAD INFECTION, that's Oakland, baby, and there are PLENTY of lions and tigers there...
The peacemakers in Iraq are our armed forces there and our allies there. May none of them have the ghastly obligation to sheppard around and protect this unfortunate woman.
The Texas paper wanted to send an ‘ordinary person,’ so they chose a MOONBAT from Berkeley??? hahaha.
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