It’s been a good week for confessing to one’s stupidity. Right after I tweeted the story of my blowing my job at the New Yorker, Edmund Andrews of the New York Times published in the Times Magazine a piece about how he got suckered into buying too much house in 2004 and then built up a staggering pyre of credit card debt. Andrews is an economics reporter at the Times with a lot of experience covering financial crises. “I know a lot about the curveballs that the economy can throw at us.”

It’s a good article. He fesses up amply to being a total dope, and that’s endearing. He also managed to hold onto his marriage, though by the article that appears to have been a near thing.

I have my own experience with Edmund Andrews.

Right after the statue of Saddam Hussein fell, I convinced the New York Times magazine that private contractors were involved in the planning and fighting of the war to a greater extent than widely known. (That proposal can be read here.) I arranged with Halliburton essentially to embed with its KBR people working on the reconstruction of the Iraqi oilfields. I spent about two weeks with them in Kuwait and southern Iraq.

I’d never envisioned having to go to Baghdad, but how could I not? The airport wasn’t open to civilian traffic then, so the way to go was to rent a car in Kuwait City and drive the twelve hours north. (This was in the brief, post “victory” moment when doing so was still possible.) It seemed a dicey trip to make alone, but luckily I ran into a guy with a press pass wandering around the Kuwait Hilton who also wanted to go. Edmund Andrews.

We agreed to split the cost of the SUV and driver. He had another Times reporter with him, a sharp-tongued dark-haired woman whose name I wish I could remember. About an hour before setting off, Andrews realized that he had only hundred-dollar bills and wanted some smaller ones. He wasn’t about to venture into the vast underground mall in Kuwait City frequented by the country’s many foreign workers; I don’t know why, but he made it clear he found the thought distasteful. So I volunteered to wander the fascinating warren of tiny shops from money-changer to money-changer, buying twenty- and fifty-dollar bills.

Before leaving Kuwait City, I bought a roll of duct tape and put big sideways V’s on the doors -- the symbol of a Coalition vehicle so we wouldn’t get blasted by an American helicopter -- and covered the car with the letters “TV.” I haven’t worked in many war zones, but I’ve been to the movies. TV is the universal symbol for Press. Don’t shoot.

More tomorrow.