At the risk of sounding like I'm obsessed here, I think Tamala Edwards is the best journalist on Earth (and the most beautiful, as well). I wish that she would get more air time than she does. Used to look forward to seeing her on Hardball with Chris Matthews at MSNBC. Her once a week segments as White House Correspondent for the Sunday Edition of the ABC Evening News are just not enough for someone with her skills. Now that Tamala is an embedded reporter in Kuwait, I haven't seen her in weeks.
Here's all I can find on the ABCNews website, from March 26th:
Tamala Edwards with the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing
2 p.m. ET; 10 p.m. IraqThese F-16s can get from here into Iraq in the space of five minutes, but even those guys complain about how much of their fuel is drained often getting to where — into the box, as they call it — they want to be. The A-10s, while a powerful plane, does move slower. There's definitely a cause and a need, as far as the Air Force sees it, to get further into the arena.
The New York Daily News has an interesting story on women reporting in the Gulf, which includes a detailed interview with Edwards:
Posted by Mike at March 31, 2003 02:10 PM | TrackBack
ABC's Edwards landed her assignment late in the process."Being a reporter, the first impulse was yes," she said.
Edwards is not on the front lines, but at an air base from which fighter pilots make bombing runs around the clock.
She admits there was some uncertainty about a woman's presence "just because people weren't sure how it would work because of the customs in the region."
But once she arrived, Edwards said, she found the pilots were used to having women around, both as part of the military and as reporters.
"It's not odd to be here," she said.
Edwards doesn't believe being a woman in a war zone presents a disadvantage, either in terms of physical danger or in access to sources.
"Not in this embed," she said of her post. "Some of the others where you're just dirty and filthy all the time, maybe. But I see women just at the front as I see men — they're all there just smelling bad together."