In Extremis: The Life and Death of the War Correspondent Marie Colvin

by Lindsey Hilsum

As British and American forces gathered in Kuwait, Marie consulted an old soldier who knew something about fighting in Iraq: the Duke of Wellington, Jane’s father, now aged eighty-seven, who had commanded a mounted brigade fighting to capture Baghdad in the Second World War. His concern, he told her, was that the next battle for Baghdad would be fought with little clarity about its aim, or proper planning for the aftermath. “I have an awful suspicion that the role of the British will be to occupy and pacify the country,” he said. It was a prescient remark, and Marie understood from her own experience the sensitivity Iraqis would have about being occupied. But, like many journalists who had spent years interviewing people who had escaped Saddam’s prisons, or relatives of those who had been tortured and killed, she supported the war. She understood the perils of regime change, but was swayed by the Iraqis she knew who craved a future without dictatorship.