If you're a regular reader of BusinessWeek, or even a new one, you'll notice that War isn't one of our standing departments. That's because our mission is to be the world's best business magazine, not the Guns & Ammo of the business world. But we're now deeply invested in the Iraq war. And rightly so. The war is the world's dominant news story, and business won't go back to normal until it's over. So in the last three weeks, we've done covers on the war's impact on the global economy, the possible shape of a postwar world, and the battlefield rollout of the Bush Administration's new concept of rapid-deployment digital warfare. This week's cover assesses the war's short-term impact for the U.S. economy -- likely positive now but perhaps negative in the longer term.
Manning our front line from Kuwait is London bureau chief Stanley Reed, a Middle East specialist who first landed in the region in 1976, as a freelance reporter. Reed's story a few weeks ago told you that behind the angry scenes on Arab streets, most of Iraq's neighbors were already calculating the realpolitik economic gains from a postwar rebuilding. That view soon became the conventional wisdom. With some 1,700 journalists in Kuwait competing for stories and driving up to southern Iraq each day for unofficial reporting, Reed says his biggest concern isn't an errant Scud missile but staying outside of the press pack "in hopes of doing something original."
Embedded with the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division is Frederik Balfour, a veteran foreign correspondent who reported on the Afghanistan war and on Pakistan's secret intelligence service. Balfour's daily files and online and print stories since the Iraqi war started give an up-close and personal view of life with an infantry unit that is now outside of Baghdad. "I live in a chemical warfare suit, I write in the back of a Humvee, I put my cot out under the stars, and on most nights I've learned to sleep through artillery explosions, provided they're far enough away," says Balfour, who calls himself a "desert rat."
At Central Command in Qatar is "hotel warrior" Laura Cohn. A Washington bureau staffer who took the assignment as a detour on her way to London, she has the job of hounding the big brass. Since U.S. Army General Tommy R. Franks briefs infrequently, cultivating commanders as sources is the task, she says.
Pulling all this coverage together is a team of editors and writers in Washington and New York. Washington Bureau Chief Lee Walczak, Deputy Bureau Chief Paula Dwyer, Pentagon correspondent Stan Crock, White House correspondent Richard S. Dunham, security writer Paul Magnusson, and BusinessWeek Online editor Douglas Harbrecht have been in the middle of the capitol's bureaucratic and foreign policy battles over the strength of U.S. forces. Guiding overall coverage are Senior Editors Jane Sasseen and Chris Power, Senior Writer Rose Brady, and Associate Editors Rick Schine and Robin Ajello.
No military has ever allowed the U.S. and international press to see battle from such a vantage point before. And no war has ever churned out so much conflicting instant analysis. We know that the value of this journalism will be debated for years. It's our hope that this effort to bring some understanding to the conflict is paying off for you. Let us know.
Bob Dowling
Managing Editor
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