Correspondent Terry McCarthy Shares His Experiences In Iraq

SAN FRANCISCO, Jun. 28, 2007 (KGO) (KGO) -- A news correspondent who covers the war in Iraq for ABC news, visited us briefly today, before he heads back to Baghdad. Terry McCarthy talked with ABC7 political reporter Mark Matthews about life and death in Iraq.

Terry McCarthy reports on the war, the violence, the politics and the people of Iraq, and when he's home the question he's asked most, what's it really like.

Terry McCarthy, ABC News Correspondent: "And my answer to that is usually well, we don't get out a lot we are very constrained in what we can do, and it's very frustrating as a reporter you want to go and see the story and most of the time we cannot it's see what's going on, it's just too dangerous."

Western journalists rely on Iraqi employees who are also not safe. Last month ABC cameraman Alaa aziz and soundman Saif Yousuf both were kidnapped and killed.

Terry McCarthy: "We felt like we lost two family members and it was an awful week for us we had the family come visit us we had to tell them we couldn't go to the funerals because the area where they lived was too dangerous for foreigners to go to."

Life in Baghdad is bad, says McCarthy. The surge isn't yet calming the violence.

Terry McCarthy: "The new commander in Iraq General David Petraeus is very frank, he's very open with the press. He doesn't try and varnish it and compared to his two predecessors he seems to have a fairly open mind to what is going right and what is going wrong."

McCarthy says he has tried to cover the good elements, what is going right.

Terry McCarthy: "But frankly there aren't very many good sides in Iraq as shown by the number of Iraqis that are leaving and the death toll everyday."

After being in Baghdad since the start of the war McCarthy predicts if the U.S. pulls out things with get worse, and he predicts if the U.S. stays, things will get worse.

Terry McCarthy: "The Iraqi's both sides seem to want to fight and at some stage in the future we're going to have to go back in and put the pieces together but at the moment it doesn't look very good."

Watch Mark Matthews' full unedited interview with Terry McCarthy:

Watch Terry McCarthy discuss his experiences in Iraq during a visit to ABC7:

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