Introducing Dahr Jamail

Dahr Jamail was born and raised in Houston, Texas and attended college at Texas A&M University where he majored in Speech Communications. After graduating, he moved to Washington State where he worked for a while on a Masters Degree in English Literature. When funds ran out, he took a job working in an air monitoring laboratory on Johnston Island, a U.S. territory in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. There he monitored the air at a chemical demilitarization plant that incinerated 6% of the chemical weapons (now obsolete) of the military.

Taking breaks from what was a monotonous job at Johnson Island, he traveled extensively around the world.

In an interview with Newtopia Magazine (a website well worth visiting at www.newtopiamagazine.net), he describes his personal growth during his travels:  

The perspective and experiences I gained from my travels opened my mind and heart to the world - seeing the unearned and unfair privilege we in the US had struck me whilst traveling to so many developing countries like Indonesia and Palau, then later Nepal.

I had a calling to move to Alaska to climb Denali. I moved there in 1996, climbed Denali the next summer, and have stayed ever since. There I worked as a mountain guide during summers, as well as assisting in rescues with the park service. My life there for 5 years centered primarily on climbing and being in the mountains. Climbing found me traveling to Mexico, Pakistan, Chile and Argentina.

One of the largest influences on me was a job I took in the climbing off-season working as a personal assistant for my dear friend Duane French, who experiences quadriplegia. I saw the efforts he went to just to exist and how government policy directly affected his life. Here I was awakened politically. Our daily discussions of policy and political parties got my wheels turning, pulling me out of the classic American comfort-zone of apathy and ignorance.

Then, watching the stealing of the presidency in 2000 by the Bush regime shocked me further into action, followed by the military response to 9/11 and the selling of the Iraq invasion. During the media sell job, I could take no more and knew that this was an information war. I had done some freelance writing for various magazines and continued this by writing in our alternative weekly rag in Anchorage.

We did a good job showing the alternative view after the events of 9/11, showing the US support of bin Laden, who the Reagan administration funded and trained, etc. Shortly thereafter our editor was fired, so the entire staff left in protest within one month.

I started saving my money and came to the front lines to start telling the truth from Iraq in November, 2003.

I have spent 6 of the last 12 months in Iraq. As I mentioned, what brought me here was the nearly total failure of the US ‘mainstream’ media to show the truth of this illegal invasion and occupation. How it affected the Iraqis, as well as US soldiers. Overall, they just weren’t doing their job, and this has grown even worse.

I had done all the usual actions of attempting to speak up and effect change at home -calling and writing Senators/ Congresspeople, attending teach-ins, spreading information. After watching the worldwide demonstrations on February 15, 2003 be brushed aside as a “focus group,” I knew then that the minds of the American public had been misled by the corporate media who mindlessly supported the objectives of the Bush regime, and that reporting the true effects of the invasion/occupation on the Iraqi people and US soldiers was what I needed to do....    

Newtopia Magazine has published the complete interview with Dahr Jamail. We quote below the first part of the long interview and urge our readers to go the Newtopia website and read the entire interview to get a better picture of this unique individual. We are both proud and pleased to present Dahr’s communications to our readers.  

Newtopia: What is it like being one of the only " unembedded" journalists operating in the country? Do you fear for your safety, and what have you done to ensure your safety? Whom do you fear more, random kidnappers or the American Military? How do you manage to move through Iraqi society now when it appears that, in the wake of Margaret Hassan's murder, all Westerners are viable targets? And on that same note, what do the Iraqis think of the kidnappings, murders, and beheadings?

DJ: It’s tough. Working in this environment of media repression and danger is always an uphill battle. Blinking electricity, car bombs, kidnappings are the playing field. I constantly monitor my safety factor and those who work with me. I grew a beard, dress like locals, and only travel around covertly with one interpreter in a beat up car. I minimize my time on the street, while at the same time spending enough there to get the Iraqis reactions to what unfolds here each day.

My greatest concern is the reaction of my own government. I’m reporting information that the Bush regime wants kept under wraps. I fear reprisal from both the government and military far, far more than being kidnapped or blown up by a car bomb.

Iraqis are of course shocked and outraged by the beheadings and kidnappings of people like Margaret Hassan. So many also believe it was a CIA/ Mossad plot to keep aid organizations and journalists out of Iraq in order to give the military and corporations here a free hand to continue to dis-assemble and sell of the country.

Interview continued at www.Newtopiamagazine.net