Richard Engel
NBC News

I’ve been in Iraq for a while. I’ve been there longer than any of the military guys, and they rotate through, and they’re always the same: at first, you know, they come in with a message, and they treat you badly — I’ve gone through so many divisions. It drives me crazy. Every time, they come in and they treat me like a stranger. Let’s say, I’ve spent a year with the Third Infantry Division, and I know all the generals, I know all the PAOs, the public affairs officers, and I know all the captains on the frontline units. I know them, they know me, we trust each other to a degree. When soldiers are killed, a lot of times I know the units that they’re in. I don’t report that because they ask you not to; they want the families to be informed officially, not to have someone watch the Nightly News with Brian Williams and find their son is dead. I agree with that and respect that. After a while you build up trust, and you can have a real relationship and they’ll tell you information and you can tell them information and you can build a relationship of trust. Then, they rotate out, and a new division comes in, and they treat you like the enemy, like a stupid enemy, like you don’t know anything and everything is great. The guy’s been on the ground for two weeks and he’s telling me about Baghdad, and I’m like, “Look, you just got here. I had a great relationship with the divisions that just left. Didn’t they tell you?” And then okay, six months later, the guy finally trusts me and then I get six months of real, working relationship with him, and...

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