Engel: ‘I’ve seen so many ugly things’

Editor's note: Below is a partial transcript to the MSNBC special report “War Zone Diary.” For the complete documentary experience, we recommend watching the video online or in future MSNBC broadcasts. This first aired Wed., March 21, at 10 p.m. ET.

Richard Engel NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent • Profile

I thought it would be important to document, for my own sake, what I was going through in Iraq. I thought, “If I’m gonna keep a journal in this digital age, I may as well keep a video journal so that I’ll have some sort of record of it— not only of what I was saying and what I was feeling, but also what I was looking like and what the place I was living at looked like.

I did, at some stage, think I may have been recording my own obituary. 

How it began
I was a freelancer and I’d snuck into Iraq by bribing some Iraqi officials with a few hundred dollars. They gave me an illegal visa. And then once I was here, I was very surprised. Almost all of the other news organizations pulled their reporters out.

Suddenly, I was one of the few people left in the country.

Video diary: I just spoke with my wife. She’s not very calm. She’s nervous. She’s not telling me to leave but she’s saying that it’s been very difficult on her and the rest of my family. When you speak to your family, it brings it home and makes you think about the big picture and you start to wonder, am I doing the right thing? Am I going to end up looking like some sort of foolish cowboy who stayed out?

I don’t think you can really prepare for an urban war.

Video diary: I have here a helmet and a bullet proof jacket, a belt, a money belt with a zipper in the back. There should be about a thousand dollars in there, a whole stack of local currency. It’s not worth as much as you’d think. 

I was just trying to think, what are the things I was going to need? I didn’t want to be dependent on other people, if possible.

Video diary: This is something I really hope I don’t have to use. It’s atropine. You probably have seen this in other reports. What you are supposed to take in case of a nerve agent attack are in these little syringes... you undo this knob, and then you stab yourself with the green end. If you do this, when you’re not exposed to a nerve agent, it can be lethal so you want to be very careful with that stuff. I hope to never open that little pouch.

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I would go out during the day with my camera and drivers and try and assess the situation and the mood. There were a few times where I was nervous. U.S. forces had dropped a cruise missile into a crowded marketplace killing many civilians. When I got there, some of them were quite aggressive. They were holding up body parts in my face and screaming, “This is what the American government has done. This is what your government has done.”

The Iraqi government before the start of the war had this bizarre attitude. The press conferences were completely ridiculous. Most of the microphones that were in front of those podiums were not even plugged in. They were just taped to the podium itself and that was like the regime in general. It was just a facade at this point.

April 3, 2003: Baghdad blackout
It happened one night. Power was cut in Baghdad. I knew it then. The Americans were coming.

As the Americans were approaching, I could see their air support coming in. The Apache attack helicopters and the A-10 Warthog, just laying waste to anything in front of the advancing American troops.

May 27, 2003: Palestine hotel
I was down in front of the Palestine Hotel when I heard the explosion. Then I went up to the room itself. I first saw blood on the floor and bloody sheets.  Then I saw the destroyed camera. There was a camera on the floor with blood all over it. These had been my colleagues who’d just been killed.

We were angry. 

We thought that the biggest danger was from the Iraqis not that the American military, as they were advancing, would fire on a hotel known to have journalists in it.

I was told later that that tank squad thought that it was a sniper team trying to direct fire onto the U.S. military.

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