Kimberly Dozier Returns to Iraq for First time Since 2006 Attack

By Chris Ariens 

On Memorial Day 2006, CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier, her cameraman Paul Douglas and soundman James Brolan were reporting with the Army’s 4th Infantry Division when a five-hundred pound car bomb exploded near them. Douglas and Brolan were killed. It would take months for Dozier to recover from her physical wounds, and a year later was running 10K’s.

But it would take three-and-a-half years to get back to Iraq. Dozier returned last week for the first time since the attack.

Now based in CBS’ Washington bureau, Dozier traveled to Baghdad, Talil and Ramadi. On CBSNews.com she writes:

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This time, we arrived with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, admittedly under heavy security, to Camp Victory outside Baghdad. I saw purposeful troops, but it didn’t have the same sense of the barely controlled frenzy I saw during the three years I spent there – with soldiers, civilian contractors and Iraqi tradesmen rushing back and forth, a steady stream of helicopters buzzing in and out, the roads choked with humvees and supply vehicles rushing to their next task.

Now, Camp Victory has the hum of a well-oiled machine-like they’ve got this down. The phrase that kept coming back to me was “on a glidepath.” Admittedly, one still studded by the occasional bout of horrific violence, but momentum for now seems to be in their favor.

Dozier’s reports were featured on CBSNews.com as well as CBS Radio News. There was no video crew this time around. CBS News gave Dozier the time to go as a private citizen at Adm. Mullen’s invitation. The trip is also providing Dozier material as she completes a paperback edition of her best-selling “Breathing the Fire” with a new chapter on her injuries and recovery. The author profits from the book are going to Fisher House, TAPS and other wounded warrior charities.

(Photo: CBS/Jim Garamone)

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