Megan Stack: War on Terror "Never Really Existed" September 17, 2010

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Complete video at: Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2010/08/06/Megan_Stack_An_Education_in_War

Megan Stack, author of Every Man in This Village Is a Liar: An Education in War, defends her claim that the so-called War on Terror was more of a political generalization than an actual, coherent war. The war, she says, was a "very sort of fragmentary and ever-evolving process."

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Megan Stack started life as a war correspondent almost accidentally. She was 25 years old, a National Correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, and holidaying in Paris when the 2001 September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center occurred. Her vacation was cut short, she flew in to Afghanistan, and from there Stack officially became a war correspondent.

Since then, Stack has been a foreign correspondent in over 22 countries and has covered war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel and Lebanon. It's an experience she recounts in her book, Every Man In This Village Is A Liar: An Education In War.

In this talk at the Byron Bay Writers Festival, Megan Stack discusses her career as a war correspondent. She gives insights into the wars she has covered, many of which still rage on today explaining why in war "You can survive and not survive, both at the same time."

She is joined by journalist Mungo MacCallum who replaces the intended compare for the event Kerry O'Brien (whose plane was delayed). O'Brien rushes in halfway through the talk, takes up his post and continues the conversation with Stack. - Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Megan Stack has covered the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon, as well as the Palestinian intifada. She joined the Times' national desk in 2001 as Houston bureau chief. She was posted to Jerusalem in 2003 and, later that year, was named Cairo bureau chief. In 2007, with her colleagues in the Baghdad bureau, she was named a Pulitzer finalist for Iraq coverage and won an Overseas Press Club award.

A native of Glastonbury, CT, Stack studied Spanish literature at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and graduated from George Washington University in 1998. She worked as a reporter for the El Paso Times and covered Texas and the Mexican border for the Associated Press.