August 5, 1990: US Media Arrives in Baghdad to Cover Invasion

American journalists, with their camera and sound crews, begin pouring into Baghdad, causing an enormous strain on the US Embassy personnel. The embassy personnel quickly decide to house them in the US Information Service Cultural Center across the street from the embassy, where the journalists will not interfere with embassy’s operations but can still file their stories and images using the embassy’s direct telephone and satellite connections. By and large, the embassy staff, from Deputy Chief of Mission Joseph Wilson on down, welcome the media representatives, because, as Wilson will later write, “we thought it important that the story be covered as fully and openly as possible from Iraq.” [Wilson, 2004, pp. 118]