Iraq or Bust!

Wow. I’m incred­i­bly touched by the out­pour­ing of sup­port from the read­ers of Back to Iraq. Some of you wished to remain anony­mous, oth­ers have asked to be listed under the Angel Investors over to the right. No mat­ter how big or small your dona­tion, it is greatly appre­ci­ated. The fact that peo­ple are will­ing to sup­port inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism, reportage with a voice, makes all of this worth­while. Thanks to all of you, the dona­tions now total $773.71! In a day peo­ple donated almost $550. That’s incred­i­ble and you all should be extremely proud of your­selves. With the money I’ve saved up, we have $1,973.71 in the Back to Iraq fund. That’s def­i­nitely get­ting into the ball park. Since dona­tions have been com­ing so fast and furi­ous, I’d like to take a moment and tell y’all more of the plan and answer some ques­tions.
What’s the money actu­ally going for?
Trav­el­ing to war zones is expen­sive. In addi­tion to air­fare, insur­ance and other basics of travel, there’s bribe money (in cash), the need to pur­chase a gas mask and other pro­tec­tive gear, atropine (for nerve agents, but if I have to pull it out, it likely won’t do any good at that point) and money to hire trans­la­tors, dri­vers, etc. Based on my last trip to the region, I esti­mate that $8,000 to $10,000 is a com­fort­able oper­at­ing range for a six week to two months stay.
How much are you kick­ing in?
Well, I’ve got about $1,200 in sav­ings right now. I’m going to be adding to that as I can with my var­i­ous free­lance gigs. I’m hop­ing to have about a 50 – 50 split on costs. But if it’s 60 – 40 or even 70 – 30, so be it. It’s not impor­tant that you read­ers pay for the whole trip. What’s impor­tant is that you’re con­tribut­ing to inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism. That’s why some­one who gives $1 is just as impor­tant to me as some­one who gives $200.
What about taxes?
I’m check­ing on that one. If I have to pay taxes on the dona­tions, then I’ll obvi­ously skip the coun­try and move to France. Just kid­ding! (I get sev­eral hits from the treas​.gov domain, so that was a joke, IRS peo­ple.) If I have to pay taxes, I will. I am not a non-profit orga­ni­za­tion, how­ever, so your dona­tions, at the moment are not tax deductible.
How are you going to get into the region?
Well, to be hon­est, I’m still work­ing on that one. With the war com­ing up in the next cou­ple of weeks or so, it’s highly unlikely I’ll be able to get in-country prior to the war. How­ever, if dona­tions con­tinue to come in like they are, it’s quite likely I’ll be able to get in the mid­dle or toward the end of hos­til­i­ties. For those who think that won’t be that inter­est­ing, au con­traire! Occu­pa­tion news will be pos­si­bly more inter­est­ing than the actual war report­ing. As for my route, it will likely by through Syria or Iran.
Any­one else going with you?
Pos­si­bly. I’ve had inter­est from two very good jour­nal­ist friends who would like to go. I’ve also had some inter­est from a doc­u­men­tary film­maker and sev­eral over­seas broad­cast­ing com­pa­nies who are look­ing for expe­ri­enced Iraq peo­ple. (I guess that includes me.) So far, how­ever, this looks like a solo endeavor.
What do we get out of this?
Well, you get more than a warm and fuzzy feel­ing, that’s for sure. I’m going to steal — er, “quote” — from Hec­tor Rotweiler Jr.’s site since I think he has the best line on this:

To date, Michel has raised more than $3000 for her breasts — which she does not promise to share with her sup­port­ers if she raises the money needed for implants — while Christo­pher Allbrit­ton has raised less than $500 for dis­patches that he will post to his website.

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p>Heh. So that’s the basic pitch. You get to read good report­ing, thought­ful com­men­tary and unique pho­tographs (and video if I can hook up with some cam­era peo­ple.) But as they say on late night tele­vi­sion, “There’s more!” Not only do you get to con­tribute to a good cause, i.e., inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism, but the donors get put on a pri­vate email list. You will have access to sto­ries, pho­tos and raw notes — as well as per­sonal obser­va­tions — before the Web site or other media out­lets do. You can also request sto­ries to be cov­ered. If you hear rumors of, say, guerilla fight­ing in Basra, ask me to check it out. If it’s humanly pos­si­ble and it’s not a death­trap, you get to play assign­ment edi­tor!
What does your mother think of all this?
She’s ter­ri­fied! She also, sig­nif­i­cantly, has not donated a penny. (Hint, hint.) She didn’t know about my first trip until after I got back, and then she kind of freaked out. But, as I tried to explain to her, the best sto­ries are in dan­ger­ous places. On a related note, I have received money from sev­eral ex-girlfriends. You can draw your own con­clu­sions from that bit of knowl­edge.
Ok. Enough with PBS fund ras­ing drive! You all know what to do. If you have a credit card, you can click on the Ama­zon or Pay­Pal but­tons on the right. Oh, and for the peo­ple using Ama­zon, it does not give me email addresses or any other con­tact infor­ma­tion. I try to respond per­son­ally to every­one who donates, so if you use Ama­zon, please drop me a note with the amount you donated so I can add you to the pri­vate email list. (If you have the con­fir­ma­tion num­ber, that’s even bet­ter.)
Thank you every­one! I can’t tell you how much your sup­port and kind words of encour­age­ment have touched me.
PS: If you’d like to be noti­fied when I update the site, please sign up to the right. Or you can drop me a line and I’ll add you myself. Thanks!

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