From: Kevin Sites Sent: Friday, March 07, 2003 11:29 PM Subject: Kevin Sites: E War Slug: E War Date: 3.7.03 Dateline: Kuwait Writer: Kevin Sites Words: 1,100 Ring Tones & Screen Savers Don’t get me wrong. It’s not boredom, but desperation that makes you consider things like this while waiting for this conflict to begin, “have we done a story on cellular phone ring tones in the Middle East,” I recently asked someone. “I mean you literally can’t go 30 seconds without hearing a Kylie Minogue tune or Beethoven’s Symphony in C Minor emanating from someone’s pocket.” I was eating breakfast with a CNN engineer recently, when the strains of Camptown Ladies filled the restaurant. The microwave dish got blown over in the windstorm last night, he was told. All the doo dah day. It is, after all, appropriate. This war, if it happens, will be the ultimate E war (for electronic) with it’s satellite guided munitions, night vision goggles and pilotless drones. And not just for the military. When journalists embed with fighting units—they’ll carry the gear that will theoretically allow them to report live from the front lines, and send back video and still images as quickly as they can fire up their satphones. And so far, while we wait, we’re able to stay connected. To wake up and watch President’s Bush’s news conference at 4 AM local time. To read the wires on the diplomatic chess match at the U.N., to email friends and family that we are rested, well-fed and safe. But of all the images of this pre-war E war so far, this is the one that stays with me; in our workspace, personal laptops temporarily abandoned by their users--off for coffee or a bathroom break—one by one, ghostly images of wives, children, girlfriends, husbands, pets, slowly appearing from the depths of cyberspace---as screensavers. The Defense of Kuwait The Kuwaiti military is eager, to the point of neurotic, to get this message out: Kuwait does not just rely only on the U.S. muscle, but is actively involved in it’s own defense. They’re so concerned about this that they’re “giving” CNN an exclusive along with Al Arabica (the new Arab satellite TV station set to compete with maverick Al Jazeera). We will be flown in a French-made Puma helicopter to Kuwait’s Northern border with Iraq to see Kuwaiti troops dug into defensive positions. Then we will be flown to the southern border to see the arrival of Bahraini troops and equipment arriving, also in the defense of Kuwait, a sign of Gulf solidarity. It sounds promising, but right off the bat things start to go sour. The Kuwaiti Public Affairs officer in charge is a nice man, an earnest man, but he is new to his job—and deathly afraid of losing it. He is on his cell phone to his boss every 20 minutes or so. Initially we were told we could shoot aerials, but then the clarification—but only of the Kuwaiti position. Honestly, it’s hard to find in the sea of American tanks, trucks and troops amassing in the desert below us. On the ground we are taken to a couple of Bradley fighting vehicles buried in the sand. They’re manned by a some Kuwaiti troops—with a few U.S. Green Berets advisors stationed with them. It’s not particularly interesting video, especially with the loads of stuff we’ve been able to feed out of U.S. troops doing battle drills in the desert. The Kuwaiti press officer stands by another field officer as I interview him. He interrupts every second question, even very innocuous ones. I end the interview in frustration. Then I attempt to speak with the U.S. Special Forces advisors. They agree as long as I don’t show their faces. The press officer stops me, “You’re here to show gulf forces,” he tells me, “this story is about gulf forces.” “Please don’t tell me what my story is about,” I say, “It will be about what I report not you.” “You can interview them when you make your own arrangements to get here,” he tells me, “this is about gulf forces.” We go back and forth like this for a few minutes—until he says fine, cover what you want, but CNN will not be invited on any more trips. I want to tell my partner Bill to stop shooting. I want to go back and sit in the chopper without taking another frame of video. It’s a bluff. He needs this story more than I do. But you never know when you’re going to need access, never know who can actually get you there. I take a breath. “I’m sorry,” I say, extending my hand to the press officer, “I was overstepping my bounds.” We shake and make good. At the end of the day he shakes my hand again, tells me I’m a professional. Yes, we’re both professional I think, and neither of us has a story. Da’ Bomb For most of the journalists here in Kuwait, this is the fear and this is the joke; that for all our technology—our videophones and portable dishes, our Thurayas, and Iridiums and Neras, our digital cameras and laptop editing systems—we could end up covering this war with wind up film cameras. It’s on the grapevine that the U.S. Air Force has developed an electro magnetic pulse weapon at Kirtland Air Force that could be used in war against Iraq. The concept is devastating simple; flying over the target area, the military emits a microwave swath, which basically fries the electronics of any appliance or device in its path. Like a giant switch, when the EMP weapon is flicked on, the lights go out. People, however, are supposedly spared—unless they happened to be wearing a pacemaker or are hooked up to other life sustaining machinery. The EMP weapon does not apparently differentiate between cell phones and hospital respirators. Tactically, it could help to end the war more swiftly, by denying Iraq any military communications. The order to fire a chemical weapon may be eliminated along with the chain of command. But the EMP weapon is the boogeyman of TV network news executives’ dreams, since it has the same consequences for the media. With our reliance on satellites and microwave technology—TV is particularly vulnerable. Technologically we become deaf, dumb and blind—and may have to revert to technology that hasn’t widely been used to cover news since the mid to late 70’s. How ironic that in the first Gulf War viewers around the world were awed by both the techno savvy and intestinal fortitude it took for CNN to broadcast from Baghdad while under a thunderstorm of thousand pound bombs. While this time the pictures on every channel could have the look and feel of the muddy film footage air lifted out of jungles during the Vietnam. -end- Kevin Sites CNN Correspondent