In April, New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins will receive the George Polk Award for War Reporting for "his riveting, first-hand account of an eight-day attack on Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah." We talk with him about the rebuilding country and its recent elections.
Filkins accompanied the Marines of Bravo Company of the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines for eight days in November as they took over Fallujah. Filkins filed more than a dozen stories from this extreme close-up perspective. He followed the Marines from the outskirts of the city into the maze of streets, dodging suicide bombers, waking at 1:30 a.m. to a rebel attack, and even sustaining the threat of friendly fire when the company was mistaken for rebels by U.S. troops. Filkins has just returned from Iraq, where he was covering the elections there.
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