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THE HUGH & MIKE SHOW
Hugh Hewitt interviews Time’s Michael Ware, who’s been getting a massive amount of US air time recently. Michael’s an old mate, although we disagree on Iraq and his coverage of events there (read the interview to gauge the extent of this). Fascinating guy, once you get past the politics; he’s one of the few people I’ve met who is almost literally fearless. Which isn’t always helpful in a war correspondent ...
I thought his early coverage from inside the Iraqi insurgency was superb. He managed to explain how it began, how it gained strength, and why he thought it was ultimately doomed. Suppose the jury is still out on that one.
Ware’s stories on the Battle Of Fallujah in November, 2004, were also pretty comprehensive.
Do you reckon his politics are that blatant in his coverage, Tim, or do you mean when you talk to him personally?
Some of my friends in the US love him, they call him the Crocodile Hunter of War Correspnodents! Presumably he’s seen on US TV more than on Australian TV.
Posted by LeftieLatteLover on 2006 03 29 at 09:16 AM • permalinkGot about one third of the way through this transcript and began wondering why this guy Mr Ware isn’t in a cell somewhere being interrogated by ASIS, ASIO or whomever is responsible for our intel in Iraq.
Posted by Dean McAskil on 2006 03 29 at 10:29 AM • permalinkFearless doesn’t equal smart, or right.
Posted by Dean McAskil on 2006 03 29 at 10:31 AM • permalinkHey at least Ware showed up sober for this interview…
BTW, with this rash of Ware interviews, look for a Simon & Schuster book deal/60 Minutes Interview to be announced shortly…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 03 29 at 10:46 AM • permalinkI still Hewitt is right. It’s not right when reporters like Ware or Kevin Sites deal with the enemy. Their reports are exciting but add nothing of substance to our knowledge, regardless of what they say.
His employer, Time Mag, also has a kids edition for use by schools which is so left wing (like all of them) I never used it. “Progressives” are squawking now over teachers getting in trouble using Time’s peace studies module.
How can he possibly claim objectivity if, by his own admission, he is monitored and threatened by the insurgents? They only allow him access (and to live) because they agree with what he reports. Do you honestly think he would breath one more breath after objectively reporting what he sees them doing? Are they so noble? These are the same head-sawing people that screamed for blood over a cartoon mind you.
He prints what they want him to print and no more.If you want to know what it’s like to go on a raid, capture a town or get caught in a firefight and be right there with the troops, then read Michael Ware. The Military and soldiers lke him because he treats them with respect and writes truthfully about what he sees on the ground. It’s not a playground, it’s a deadly, dangerous warzone. Is he supposed to lie to make some feel better about how it’s all going? Too much truth is never enough.
Posted by LeftieLatteLover on 2006 03 29 at 12:06 PM • permalinkTriple L,
That really is kind of the point though. Raids, firefights and IEDs are only a very small part of what GIs do on a regular basis. Those are the stories that sell, because they are exciting. A story about some LT taking his platoon to some village to talk to the Mukhtar about helping with a water project will never attract a lot of readers, but it more indicative of what soldiers do on a regular basis in Iraq.
I got the impression—especially after he said that they (the insurgents) listen to every word said about them—that he waffled to Hewitt for the same reason CNN muzzled itself in Saddam’s Iraq. Once he said anything condemnatory, he’d lose the access that made him a ‘valuable’ news commodity, in addituion to putting his life at risk when he returned.
The compromises being made for what people like Ware bring home to the rest of us—regardless of value—are pretty clear.
I heard this interview and it chilled me. Ware may be fascinating and he may be fearless, but he’s still a whore (and quite possibly a drunk which, if true, renders him even less reliable).
And one by one, they started picking up arms, and in a very ad hoc fashion, started attacking passing American vehicles and so on. Then over time, they started to evolve. And I got to watch that with my own eyes, as they did take shape as the insurgency we’ve ultimately come to see today.
So how many people were killed and maimed as Ware watched with his own eyes as the insurgency “evolved”? Journalists like Ware suffer from their own peculiar brand of Stockholm Syndrome. And the world view under which they operate is really quite demented. I once heard another war correspondent (who, like Ware, had access to the enemy) asked whether his primary duty was that of a journalist or a human being. In other words, if he were in a position to stop some atrocity he was covering, would it be his duty to do so. He finally decided that, no, he would not be proactive in such a circumstance because his duty as a journalist is to observe and report events not affect them. I don’t know why we would regard as reliable anyone with such flawed judgement.
The other thing was that the whole weapons industry, including the WMD industry that Saddam had mothballed, was riddled with corruption. So a lot of these guys were saying, you know, some of these big characters in the regime, were selling Saddam on the idea of this wonder-weapon, that actually never really existed. They fired once, it didn’t really work. They dodgy up the report. He throws $10 million at them, which they all pocket. So that was what I learned from regime figures about WMD.
Apparently he actually finds this information credible. To me OTOH, considering how Saddam treated disloyal members of his regime, it sounds more like a bunch of “big characters” blowing smoke up a gullible reporter’s ass.
Everyone had nice things to say about you though, Tim.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 03 29 at 12:37 PM • permalinkOh-he makes specious arguments as well: he says that if the U.S. military had problems with what he does they wouldn’t grant him interviews or access. Of course they can’t silence him and any efforts to try would be a propaganda disaster. Sherman said that journalists in wartime are spies, but he knew he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
The telling part of the Hewitt interview is the game of Russian roulette that Ware plays with the insurgents, he knows the revolver can hold six cartridges and that its loaded with five rounds but he continues to play - the whole time aware that the gun will blow the back side of his skull off sooner or later.
Ware gets to hang with the most bad ass hardcore special forces guys on the planet, pal around with former Sadam loyalists and play whack the mole with the insurgents. He’s a major league thrill seeker and adrenaline junky. But Ware isn’t bound by any set of rules other than what he decides to live by. It strikes me as a sort of fence sitting, he gets to play soldier but can desert at any moment, gets to play reporter but can put the pen down when he wishes, act as judge and jury when he see’s fit and then when the day ends he flitters back to the fence where he chips about remaining a neutral observer.
So are these guys really there to tell the world a story, or is the story just a useful vehicle they use as a facade while they satisfy the thrill seeker - warrior element within themselves. It’s not a matter of how I feel about him either, like is he carrying water for the other side or not, I just think that there are other motives that drive him beyond the worn out Ernie Pyle hero - war correspondent template.
#16 I think you are right on the money. You can only dodge for so long when you’re playing that game. He’s got guts, no doubt. Baghdad is a seriously rough place, especially for Anglos. I wish him well, but it will come as no surprise if he winds up kidnapped or killed. I’ve never seen him, but then again, I’m not an SF trooper.
My life ain’t neeeeeearly exciting enough to be newsworthy.#10 LLL, He tells the truth about what he sees on the coalition side, no one is denying that. What is in question is his ability to report the insurgency objectively.
Also, I’ve got a little news for you. Reading ANYBODY isn’t even a hundred miles from being here. If you are truly interested in knowing what it is like, stop on by your local recruiting office and check out a new employment opportunity. The Aussies here seem to like it here, so why not?"his duty as a journalist is to observe and report events not affect them”
These guys HAVE to know the their very presence affects events. How much of the ‘insurgency’ has been staged for Western journalists? How less virulent might it have been without fawning press coverage? Indeed, the ‘insurgent’ media strategy has been generally flawless, and where they’ve stumbled, the press has generally covered or whitewashed for them.
Everybody take a pill.
If the military thought that Ware was assisting the enemy, he would not be tagging along with their units.
There is not doubt that he declined to call the terrorists evil for fear of losing their faith.
However, I can see that Ware’s reporting would be useful to the military. At the very least it allows MI to profile the mindset of the enemy.
My only criticism of Ware is that he probably immerses himself too much in the conflict without understanding the context of what he is seeing. It disturbs me that he seems comfortable with his ignorance about the Cold War, whilst feeling at ease with reporting a major historical event.
One thing that was not mentioned is that Ware completed officer training in the Australian army.
Hewitt makes the same mistake that all ideologues make—he projects upon a messy world his own purity of expectations. Such purity is a fantasy in every field of life, and especially so in reporting.
No war correspondents in any conflict—not in World War 2, not in Vietnam, not in “good” wars or “bad” wars or any wars—have ever been entirely free from influences or concerns that had some effect on their reporting.
This was certainly true of my own war reporting in Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Bolivia. I tried to do the best and most accurate and truthful job I could. But this could only be done by working around threats and problems, not ignoring them.
Or take perhaps the best known war correspondent of all, Ernie Pyle. We know, for example, that Pyle edited from his reports certain less-than-uplifting little details of the daily lives and experiences of World War 2 GIs out of concern for them and their families. But his dispatches told the essential and important truth about the heroism and simple decency of the citizen-soldiers that America produced and sent to war. And his reporting honored their sacrifices.
That’s why we call him a great reporter even today. Not because his reporting was unaffected by risks or logistical problems or even political concerns at times, but because these concerns did not in the end alter the fundamental truth, accuracy, and humanity of his reportage.
Michael Ware is a courageous, honorable and truthful reporter. And for Hugh Hewitt to demand from his safe little office in Manhattan that he somehow either be immune from any influence from the constant threat of bombs, bullets and kidnapping that he faces or else quit his job is the height of self-righteous pomposity.
Hewitt understands what is at stake in the war, and wants Ware come down on the good guy’s side. At one point Ware compares the Baathist insurgents favorably to the Jihadis. That is a little like saying that the Wehrmacht were different than the SS-true, but irrelevant-both must be defeated. The media may have never been free from outside influences about their reporting, but it was always taken for granted which side they were on. The Islamist insurgency shouldn’t rate equal time just because they are “the other side”.
RE #15, 91B30, I agree with you on this one. MNF-I or MNC-I denying access to a Time magazine reporter? Please! They’ll never say no, for fear of being accused of “censorship”, or something equally silly.
Brave guy, all right, but I reject that he is right to do what he does. As 91B30 noted, nationalist or jihadist, they are the enemy, and in very large part the cause of problems in Iraq. I won’t let them off, even if Ware was totally correct (he isn’t) on his assessment of the Coalition handling of the war.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 03 29 at 10:45 PM • permalinkBoth the insurgents and the Jihadis are proactive in their use of the media. They have the example of Viet Nam before them and they know exactly what must happen if they are to succeed in their goals. The journalists to whom they reach out, including the honest ones, are their all too willing accomplices.
Ware says his time spent among the terrorists is for and to our benefit. He says that we can’t trust the information that comes through official channels, and that very well may be, but what he doesn’t seem able to grasp is neither can we trust the information that comes through his terrorist channels. For example, he reports that on any given day the opposition, presumably in all its forms, fields 15-20,000 men. From whom does information like this come and what makes those sources reliable? Michael Ware as eyewitness to events on the ground is one thing; Michael Ware as confidant of the Jihadis and insurgents is quite another.
I’m put in mind of celebrities (and celebrity journalists) who go down to Cuba, get schmoozed by Castro and come back starry-eyed believing they actually have a handle on conditions there (it’s like a Havana version of Jerusalem Syndrome). Michael Ware, reckless, brave and bold, seems very much a daredevil off on a great adventure. It’s bound to affect his judgement.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 03 29 at 11:30 PM • permalink#4, if intelligence agencies and the US Military get good intel from his reporting, why would they want him to stop?
The idea that attacks and bombings are being carried out solely for the benefit of Ware and Time Magazine is absurd.
By the way, soldiers on some of the millblogs love his work, because he’s there with them in the battles, he writes about their heroic acts and he records their successes (like Fallujah), plus he gets down in the print the deaths of some of the brave soldiers, and he does it with respect.
Posted by LeftieLatteLover on 2006 03 30 at 12:33 PM • permalinkIt’s absurd to fault Ware for reporting from the insurgent side as well as the coalition side. If anything, it’s a testament to his accuracy and LACK of hidden agenda that all sides (and there are more than 2 in Iraq) trust him to report faithfully on what he sees and hears.
All wars, including WW2, saw reporters covering every side of the conflict when possible. And as I noted before, the best journalists learn how to negotiate the inherent dangers involved—and not just the physical dangers.
For example, if you report only on front-line action, you’re liable to miss some of the larger picture and context. If you report only on violence, you can miss much of the more positive developments going on. If you report only on military or government press briefings, you’re extremely vulnerable to missing what’s happening on the street and in ordinary people’s daily lives.
Usually, reporters have a beat or a focus, but from their collective effort, we tend to get a relatively balanced picture—fighting, violence, progress, official press conferences, and man in the street.
Michael Ware is uniq
There’s a limited number of journalists willing to go and work in Iraq. Imagine if Time Magazine didn’t have Ware? They might have to make use of the reportage of McGeogh, or Fisk.
Or Time might instead have to make use of the articles produced by the Lincoln Group, which are, almost without doubt, the WORST crap propaganda newspaper planted stories of the war so far.
The idea that the average, intelligent literate Iraqi (and let’s face, they had one of the highest literacy rates in the world back in the 1990s) would read these planted stories in their local newspapers and believe them is incomprehensible.
Example : “Meanwhile, the underhanded forces of al-Qa’ida remain bent on halting progress and inciting civil war. The honest citizens of Iraq, however, need not fear these criminals and terrorists. The brave warriors of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) are hard at work stopping al-Qa’ida’s attacks before they occur.”
That ran as a paid-to-place news stories in Iraq papers in October 2005. And the Lincoln Group charged US taxpayers hundreds of millions for tosh like this.
Ware might be a bit over the top, but at least you can tell by reading his work that it’s real, whether you agree with his politics or not.
Posted by LeftieLatteLover on 2006 03 30 at 09:49 PM • permalinkYou have to give it to him: Michael Ware does some real reporting, unlike so many others. But as far as I am concerned he disqualified himself with his performance on Maher.
It´s all big joke to Maher, who is, as usual, drowning in self-righteousness and fake concern and the fact that Ware is having such a jolly good time with Maher is, I think, quite revealing.
Watch that clip.One more thing: Did I get this right? Close to a million US soldiers have passed through Iraq and there are as of now apparently no bad incidents with Iraqi women? This must be a first in human history. Certainly, the Iraqi soldiers in Kuweit didn´t waste a single day of both pillage and rape. For these two it is just an occasion to speculate about horrible things that will eventually happen. And how important it is to bring them to light when they eventually happens.
I say, let´s investigate how long Bill Maher or Michael Ware can go without getting any.
Werner-I watched the video. Maher is a world-class assshole of long standing. Ware does little in the interview but feed his delusions. He was more restrained with Hewitt in the radio blogger interview and I get the impression that his snarkiness with Maher is the real him. I’ve been to Iraq twice (June-August 2003 at Camp Cedar II just outside An Nasiriyah and December 2004-October 2005 at FOB Bernstein near Tuz Khurmatu) and I could come up with a lot more positives if asked than he did. He comes across as a typical media doom monger.
Steyn weighs in on Ware: But I felt gradually exhausted since September 11th, 2001, that it’s very dispiriting trying to keep going in this phase of what is a very long conflict. And the reason I do it is because I want us to win. I don’t particularly like journalism. I don’t particularly like writing newspaper columns. I’m sick of having to make what I think should be an obvious case again and again and again. And I’d much rather pack it in and sit on my porch in New Hampshire and enjoy the view of the mountains. But I do it because I want us to win. And the idea that he has, this diseased sense that somehow just the story, the story is somehow how you demonstrate your journalistic integrity and purity, and might get you nominated for some prize that nobody cares about somewhere down the line, that’s not what it’s about. I mean, why does he want to be a journalist, if it’s not to be on the right side of history. This is ridiculous.
He says that we can’t trust the information that comes through official channels, and that very well may be, but what he doesn’t seem able to grasp is neither can we trust the information that comes through his terrorist channels. For example, he reports that on any given day the opposition, presumably in all its forms, fields 15-20,000 men. From whom does information like this come and what makes those sources reliable?
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 03 29 at 11:30 PM • permalinkThat would be concensus estimate of the Pentagon for quite some time Kyda.
How can he possibly claim objectivity if, by his own admission, he is monitored and threatened by the insurgents? They only allow him access (and to live) because they agree with what he reports. Do you honestly think he would breath one more breath after objectively reporting what he sees them doing? Are they so noble? These are the same head-sawing people that screamed for blood over a cartoon mind you.
He prints what they want him to print and no more.
Posted by Texas Bob on 2006 03 29 at 12:02 PM • permalinkTry reading the interview Bob.
So how many people were killed and maimed as Ware watched with his own eyes as the insurgency “evolved”?
...
In other words, if he were in a position to stop some atrocity he was covering, would it be his duty to do so.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 03 29 at 12:37 PM • permalinkAll this time I thought the invasion took all those embedded reporters along to report on the war. Turns out they were combat reserves that deserted their post.
Did I get that right or are you just as insane as you sound ?Tell you what, why don’t you stick the word “Balibo” into google and find out what war correspondents do in terms of serving the public that is far more important than one man picking up a gun could ever achieve. Every single one of those search results wouldn’t exist otherwise.
Michael Ware is a courageous, honorable and truthful reporter. And for Hugh Hewitt to demand from his safe little office in Manhattan that he somehow either be immune from any influence from the constant threat of bombs, bullets and kidnapping that he faces or else quit his job is the height of self-righteous pomposity.
Posted by Dkline on 2006 03 29 at 06:28 PM • permalinkLot of that going about.
No end to criticism here for the opinions of a reporter who puts his life on the line to get the information that informs those opinions.Yet Hewitt gets a free pass by everyone here on informing a reporter who’s been through major campaigns, abductions and near executions in Afghanistan and Iraq just how dangerious having a studio in the Empire State Building really is ?
Ranks somewhere between sad and funny.
One more thing: Did I get this right? Close to a million US soldiers have passed through Iraq and there are as of now apparently no bad incidents with Iraqi women? This must be a first in human history.
Posted by werner on 2006 03 31 at 02:30 PM • permalinkWithout some sort of clarification for your assessment on half the population you could assume you aren’t.
Where would you even read such a ridiculous statement ? I know the internet is a big place but I doubt even the North Korean media is delusional enough to make statements like that.
One thing’s settled though, where you can go to find people gullible enough to believe this.
Tank - I was talking about the allegations Bill Maher made in that clip. Without stopping to acknowledge the generally remarkable discipline and honourable behaviour of coalition soldiers, especially given the extreme dangers, they prefer to speculate about the rapes that have not come to light yet. Maher clearly revels in that thought. And Ware is going along with it. And that is why I think those two are not serious, judicious, honest men. Unlike Maher, Ware should have known better.
91B30 - My thought exactly. Ware is quite circumspect in the Hewitt interview (in the style of “I cannot be sure since I was not there") and this was a convincing and professional appearance. The same guy is very laid back on Maher where he sounds like a happy version of the Captain Willard character from Apocalypse Now.
It is only fair to assume he felt more at home on Maher, who if anything is even more partisan than Hewitt is. In any case, a person with his stature, who has seen what he has seen should not feed Maher´s propaganda show. It was irresponsible, no matter where one stands on the war in Iraq.
And yes, I am wary about judging someone who has shown such courage and who must have endured a lot, but that would go doubly so for the soldiers there.Hugh Hewitt : “I’m sitting in the Empire State Building. Michael, I’m sitting in the Empire State Building, which has been in the past, and could be again, a target.”
So the hijackers were aiming for the Empire State Building and hit the World Trade Center instead?
Didn’t read that in the 9/11 Commission Report.
Posted by LeftieLatteLover on 2006 04 01 at 08:23 AM • permalinkWhen I covered the anti-Soviet resistance in Afghanistan in the 1980s, we lost 10 journalists killed. That’s over 10% of all those who even irregularly covered the conflict, and closer to 20% of those of us who were regulars.
Not one of these brave men and women, so far as I know, ever wrote a pro-Soviet story even though they faced the threat of death from Russian troops all the time. In fact, the Soviet ambassador to Pakistan caused quite a stir in the early 1980s when he specifically warned Western journalists against entering Afghanistan “or our forces will hunt you down and deal with you properly.”
People who claim that Michael Ware cannot report objectively because of insurgent warnings or threats against him have absolutely ZERO notion of what war reporting is actually like, nor any understanding of how real people deal with threat and risk in the real world.
And by the way, thanks Tank for mentioning Balibo.
I might also add Malcolm Caldwell, assassinated by Pol Pot gunmen in the same “guest house” where I stayed in Phnom Penh in 1978.
Oh hell, I could just start listing the names of people who gave their lives trying to tell the stories of people suffering from oppression and war because they thought it was important to do so.
And it is important to do so.
He couldn’t think of one net positive when Maher asked? That’s crap. He’s free to spin the story however he likes, but some of the rest of us here know a little bit about Iraq as well and the insurgency, however it is composed, is trying to destroy all the advances that have been made. Ware may be physically brave and a good storyteller, but he’s a moral coward. If he thinks the war was the wrong thing to do, let him say so. I don’t think that is an argument he can win on the merits. Otherwise, what exactly is he trying to say?
I guess I’m not clear why you think he’s a moral coward, 91B30. He’s done more reporting with front-line US and Iraqi troops than almost any other journalist on earth. And he also happens to have contacts with the insurgents.
If he’s a journalist, then it’s his job to report what he sees from both sides.
He’s clearly doing that.
Now, if he was a politician or a philosopher, then maybe his job would be to tell you what you want to hear—i.e., that the US is engaged in a moral war for human freedom and that our intervention is working.
But that’s not his job.
It’s his job to tell you what he sees. And I can’t see where he’s failing at that.
See here’s the thing. He goes on Maher’s show and he can’t think of one positive thing to say about the war. He says that he’s too concerned about the average Iraqi who is having a hard time because of the disruption in Iraq. Now, in the interest of objectivity he might have also said that you have to balance that against the fact that the Shia are free to practice their religious festivals or that the marsh Arabs are returning to their homes or that the Kurds are making remarkable advances in their part of the country. Instead he can’t think of one net positive. But of course he knows that Maher isn’t going to call him on it. Now, when he goes on Hewitt’s show he is a lot more careful and doesn’t make the same points because he knows that Hewitt wil call him on it. Imagine if Steyn or Hitchens-both of whom have been to Iraq-went on Maher (fat chance), I doubt that either would shrink from making their case. Making different arguments based on who you are talking too is pretty shady.
Of course, you can read “Guns of August” or “Blackhawk Down” and get the perspective of the clan leader or the German general staff, but Tuchman and Bowden never lose sight of the big picture: that German expansionism had to be opposed or that Aidid was starving thousands and had to be stopped. It’s pretty clear that he has taken a stand, let him make his case, otherwise I think I am justified to question whether he has the courage of his convictions.
I reread the interview with Hewitt. They addressed many of the issues I listed, but I still got the impression that Ware was a lot more guarded than he was on Maher and that his statements on Maher’s show reflected his true feelings. He never raised those same issues with Maher which calls into question his objectivity-either he doesn’t see those factors or he doesn’t think they are important. Either way it looks like he has taken the position that the war is not worth the gain or the effort. That’s got to effect his reporting and he ought to be up front about that if it is true.
..I still got the impression that Ware was a lot more guarded than he was on Maher...
Can you think of any reason why that might be ?
Maybe take a browse through the Radioblogger archives there and see if you can spot a trend of Hewitt’s preference for focussing on irrelevant crap and insignificant details to take out of context when interviewing reporters who he considers aren’t promoting the angle he likes.That irrelevant detail here is whether Michael Ware considers people who conduct terrorist bombings as “evil”. The ENTIRE relevance and impact of this assessment is whether Ware will get killed for making this assessment of the people he has to deal with.
Brave interviewer right ? Real stand up guy this Hewitt chump.
This is actually the second time in a month I’ve seen a reference to a Hewitt interview with a member of the media working in Iraq where he’s done this - continually ask for some answer where he knows it will put those people in danger. He does this simply because he knows that they cannot provide an answer which will, for the ideologically retarded, pass for a “gotcha” on a reporter who he and his audience consider isn’t towing the line in terms of “good news stories”.
It’s a great technique if you are an interviewer who is (a) a completely cowardly piece of crap and (b) so completely incompetant or uninterested in real issues that you are unable to ask a more relevant question.
The previous instance from a couple of weeks ago was where the interviewee, after being asked half a dozen times to name people conducting interviews in Iraq (supposedly as a way for Hewitt to assess how accurate the information they gained was), had to remind Hewitt this was irrelevant to the issue, posed a security risk to those personnel and already off limits as per the terms of the interview.
A left-leaning interviewer could get the same effect by asking troops working in conjuction with Iraqi police forces to declare those people death squads or to substantiate claims by naming Iraqi informants.
Nobody here would have 2 seconds pause for condemning that shit from someone else. The only reason it is not only tolerated but applauded from Hewitt is his politics.
All hail the coward. Well… let’s not forget that he’s in the Empire State Building.
Either way it looks like he has taken the position that the war is not worth the gain or the effort. That’s got to effect his reporting and he ought to be up front about that if it is true.
Posted by 91B30 on 2006 04 01 at 10:43 PMThis isn’t something you have to speculate about.
If you believe this without even reading his reports then who cares what you think. If you have read his work then you could probably cite some examples. You can’t, as Ware himself and those that do follow his work have pointed out.At the end of the day the only issue any of you appear to have with Ware is that he ISN’T getting off the fence to take sides in this conflict. Well that’s not his job. There’s already 130000 troops over there for that, and quite frankly if you need reporters to help out - or what Hewitt asks for to stop reporting - you’re looking at much bigger problems than Michael Ware.
I guess what it boils down to is if you don’t like Michael Ware’s reporting on the insurgents from inside Iraq read another reporter who does. Should be a short search.
You could always wait for Hewitt to take a trip to a “red zone” in Iraq. Yeah.
Bash Hewitt all you like, you have to ignore what Ware said on Maher to make your case. If he couldn’t think of one net positive then he clearly was taking a position on the war. I guess it’s too much to ask that you give Hewitt credit for trying to get him to to justify his position-which leads to a huge copout on Ware’s part in which he says that he doesn’t know whether Iraq is better now than under Saddam. Once it becomes clear that Ware believes that the war is not worth the effort it opens the door to other questions about his work. In the link Richard McEnroe provides they make the point that “He (Ware) was in Tal Afar both before and after the American-Iraq offensive; he has seen the transformation with his own eyes” but when asked by Maher it apparently slipped his mind-I wonder what else he chooses not to report.
A brief google search for Michael Ware reveals where he stands on the war:
Here he is on CBS-""I want those who say we aren’t reporting the good news to come and live one day in Iraq as an Iraqi and I challenge them to repeat those opinions,” he continues. “It’s easy to opine from an ivory tower when you’re safe at home. It’s much harder to do so when you’re on the ground.” He says that, if anything, much of the coverage doesn’t accurately reflect the harsh realities that take place every day. “The loss of American lives becomes a one paragraph brief in the world section,” says Ware. “It takes carnage of cataclysmic proportions to break into the news cycle. We’ve become immune or numbed to the body count. We have come to accept the horror from Iraq as normal. Our measures of success have been deeply skewed by the reality of the situation.”
Here he is as transcribed from NPR-"On the elections: “You can set any Disneyland date you want. It will look like an election, it will sound like an election, but it won’t be anything other than a sham.” And at the same link on Fallujah-""Absolutely. Fallujah was a spectacular act of defiance for the insurgents. But there will be similar acts here, there, everywhere. This doesn’t feel like victory for me.”
And here he is on Chris Matthews show in 2004-"The name of the game is deny the population to the insurgents. That‘s what we‘re trying to do, winning hearts and minds. But we‘re not winning them. Day by day, there‘s a steady drip feed of hearts and minds slipping away us from. Last year, middle Iraq was sitting and waiting, giving us the chance to see how we fared, to see what we delivered. Well, that window is closed.”
Nope-no steady drumbeat of doom mongering from him.
Name one innacuracy in his above comments.
We are failing to win hearts and minds, as numerous US military commanders openly declare.
Insurgent defiance continues and grows, as all the evidence shows.
Casting a ballot is not the same as building a democratic and stable society, as the slide towards civil war that is acknowledged by the US ambassador and military command demonstrate.
And the great success of Tal Afar? The day after Bush mentioned that, a huge bomb blew up dozens of people there.
It’s not that there aren’t new schools built, towns made safer, etc., etc. to report. There are many “good” things happening in Iraq (although it’s worth pointing out that the bulk of Iraq’s population, economy and infrastructure are located in the chaos areas).
But the point is, these “good” things don’t alter the fundamental reality of the collapse of American goals in Iraq and a steady slide towards chaos and civil war.
If you’d like reporters to tell anything but that fundamental truth, you better send them to another country.
Were you around during the Vietnam War, by the way. Do you think reporters just made that disaster up as well?
Is it impossible for you to imagine that the United States could fail at something?
If so, you live in a child’s world.
Yeah, must be all the negativity coming from Ware that is causing such distressed and saddened reactions in the US. Nothing to do with the 2300 dead soldiers and the 17,000 casualties.
These people did and do have relatives and friends and they do talk and they do share their grief and loss, regardless of whether they think the war was the right thing to do or not. Word-of-mouth amongst the families and friends of casualties was always going to be the hardest thing of all to suppress, and to counter, which is why the war needed to be over fast, and the troops returned home victorious.
You can tag Ware for doom-mongering the war, or telling the truth about what he sees taking place, but why should he have to lie just to make people feel better about what’s going on over there?
We’re not children and this war is no game. If we’re mature enough to support the War On Iraq in the first place, then we have to be mature enough to take the consequences, and when a war goes bad, obviously the majority of the news will be negative.
It doesn’t help when it is learned that the US is now building ‘Enduring Freedom’ bases throughout Iraq, that are going to be there for years, if not decades, to come.
Americans, Brits, Australians, were sold on a war that was never going to turn out the war it was pre-mythologised. People get pissed when they find out they have been fed a bucket of lies and deceit.
Posted by LeftieLatteLover on 2006 04 02 at 01:18 PM • permalinkBut the point is, these “good” things don’t alter the fundamental reality of the collapse of American goals in Iraq and a steady slide towards chaos and civil war.
Oh baloney-and the only reason that you believe that is because of what you read in the media-hence the relevance of Ware’s (lack of) reporting. I spent a year in eastern Salah Ad Din province in the city of Tuz right along highway 2-the primary route between Kirkuk and Baghdad. There was occasional violence, but nothing like Ware and the rest of the media are trying to gin up.
So, for the record-I lived in Iraq for a year and saw no evidence of Ware’s gloom and doom. I provided security for two of the elections and I can’t see how anyone could characterize them as a “sham” without trying to advance an agenda.
Quote your “numerous US military commanders”, if you can. Commanders on the ground that is, I’ll bet that I can find many more who say we are winning, I suppose that you believe that they are compelled to put a happy face on the war, if so there is little I can do to change your mind.
Of course it was the Mayor of Tal Afar who praised our efforts there-why didn’t Ware mention that?
The difference between the two of us is that I have first hand experience of what I say about Iraq, you are relying on hearsay.
Triple L,
Ware conciously tries to go along on combat patrols looking for a battle-that has to influence his perceptions. No one is asking him to lie, only to acknowledge that there is more to the story than he is telling.
Many Iraq vets are complaining that the media coverage of the events does not reflect their experience-myself included. The casualty rate amounts to approximately 2.1 soldiers killed a day. Each individual death is tragic, but understanding that casualty rate in context goes a long way towards understanding the war in context.
If you believe the war is “going bad” I don’t know what I can do to convince you otherwise-I suggest that there is plenty of evidence that this is not so, but you would be unlikely to hear it from Ware.
I’ll say something else. The FOB I was stationed at is pretty isolated. We were at least an hour from any reinforcements and our AO was a fairly good sized area that included Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Turkomen. But in a year the worst we got was a mortar or rocket every few weeks-none of which ever caused any damage, and two or three IEDs a week. IEDs were dangerous and GIs were killed by them, but that was the extent of the insurgency’s operations in our area. If the insurgents couldn’t put together enough of a force to challenge a bunch of national guardsmen, miles from help, on a large, difficult to defend FOB or on patrols as much as 3o miles from that FOB I don’t see how anyone can declare them to be the kind of fighting force capable of defeating the coalition.
It’s not the American casualties; it’s the degeneration of Iraqi society into chaos and sec tarian war. Mass population movements to avoid ethnic cleansing. The inability of Iraqi political authorities to form a real government or civil society. The sseizure of the armed apparatus of the state by Shia militias.
Ware doesn’t “gin” this stuff up. And I’ll bet you he gets around in Iraq and sees a lot more than you did when you were there.
I’ve covered many wars as a reporter. And I have freidns in the service there right now. No one says violence is everywhere. But American commanders do say the situation is degenerating, as does Bush and the US ambassador.
So who the hell are you to say they’re all lying?
Quote someone Dkline. It’s not difficult here’s another quote from Ware-this time about Afghanistan from a July 31, 2002 interview on Australia’s ABC link
Ware: Yeah, I do agree. In my opinion, the greatest problem facing the U.S. led forces at the moment is just finding an exit strategy – When can they get out of Afghanistan? Coming in was relatively easy, on a wave of military success. Staying here and maintaining the peace is increasingly proving to be a losing battle. So how can you get out? If the American bombers in the skies left the airs today, the al Qaeda camps, the Kashmiri militant camps, the Pakistani militant camps would all be back here tomorrow. So when can the Americans leave? Either when they eradicate these hard-core groups – which is not going to happen any time soon – or when they have secured the support of the civilian population so that these people do not want the militants here, or until there are government institutions in place that can secure this country. And again, neither of those things are going to happen any time in the near future.
Byrne: Mmm. Mike, let’s talk a bit about the hearts and minds issue – the old hearts and minds stories – particularly around Kandahar where you’ve spent much of your time.... do the people living there, where you say there’s pockets of support still for the Taliban and al Qaeda, do they accept that the Americans are doing the best they can, and yes there’s occasional disasters like the bombing of the wedding party… or basically are they hostile – is it a population that just wants the Americans out?
Ware: The tide has very much turned in the South. I am now hearing far too commonly a statement that though it is without some basis, it is very heartfelt. More and more you are hearing people say ‘we were better off under the Russians’. As the Afghans say to me, ‘in the first twelve months, the Russians were not bombing our families… however, that’s what the Americans are doing. At the same time, there’s no sign of humanitarian assistance or roads and bridges and schools. So they’re seeing nothing from the international community except American bombs. There is no security. Outside the city of Kabul it is still extraordinarily difficult and dangerous for NGO’s and aid agencies to be working. Much of the north is currently closed off to aid agencies. In the south, they rarely set foot outside of Kandahar, and there’s only a token presence of U.N., World Food Programme, Red Cross and a handful of other agencies. Every mile you take outside of the major cities, it becomes wilder and wilder country where there is no sign of any assistance
Same old song and dance.
Well, 91B30, you got me on that one. I had no idea Ware said that about Afghanistan.
Because, you see, Afghanistan is a place I know something about, having spent years there and the bulk of my reportial career. And if Ware said that, he is simply full of shit—at least about Afghanistan.
For one thing, every single public opinion poll taken since the US intervention (the latest being an ABC poll four months ago) shows that 90% of the Afghan population opposes the Taliban and Al Queda and supports the US intervention (despite the idiocy of some of our tactics there, such as conducting search and humiliate raids looking for weapons in a country where every 9 year old male has a rifle).
What’s interesting to me is the difference in the effectiveness of the uS role in Afghanistan versus that in Iraq.
In Afghanistan, a 4 week US bombing campaign and only 300 US ground troops helped the Afghans themselves liberate their country from a regime that had no real foundation in Afghan history or temperment.
In Iraq, however, 135,000 troops cannot seem to stop the downward spiraling doom loop of chaos and sectarian warfare.
Condoleeza Rice was in Iraq today, warning of a “political vacumn” and “growing chaos.” This is not just made up by the media.
To be the explanation for the difference lies in the fact that the Afghan people fought for their own freedom over the course of 25 years. They learned how to work in united front fashion and develop the “habits of democracy” as a result.
In Iraq, however, the people for whatever reason did not ever organize themselves to resist Saddam’s tyranny.
And don’t tell me it was because Saddam was worse. During the Soviet occupation, one out of every 3 Afghans was turned into a refugee or a corpse. So many intellectuals were systematically murdered that it produced a statistical decline in the literacy rate. yet still they fought, learned how to work together despite tribal and political differences, and ultimately won.
Not so in Iraq.
It is my belief that you cannot impose democracy by external force of arms upon a people unprepared to fight for it themselves.
To me, that’s the nut of the problem in Iraq.
All that said, I give you credit, 91B30, for showing me something about Ware I did not know before.
Dkline-I am perfectly willing to admit that Iraq and Afghanistan are different cases-my point, as I am pretty sure you understand but I want to state it explicitly for anyone else reading this thread, is that Ware seems to have said the same things about both places and emphasized the gloom and doom. I think it calls into question his reporting.
Now, much of what you say about Iraq is true, but I also think that you should factor in that the kurds fought against Saddam for a long time and many Shia leaders also resisted him, perhaps this is not on the scale of what you saw in Afghanistan, but it was there.
Also what you say about the “habits of democracy” is very good. Let me say that this is a big part of what we did in our AO. Each company (troop actually, we are Cav) commander would work with the Mayor/city council of one of the big towns in our AO. Part of his job was to meet regularly with them and listen to any problems-our coordination with civilian authorities was far from perfect, but we worked with them regularly. As I mentioned previously in the thread every platoon leader-young second LTs-was responsible for going around to the smaller villages on patrols and working with the Mukhtars who would also sometimes visit the FOB to discuss problems and bring us intelligence. We even had one team-call sign Die Hard-made up of civilian cops that went out every day and worked with the Iraqi Police.
Now you won’t see much of that reflected in the reporting coming from Iraq. What we are trying may not be working, but the emphasis on the violence does not tell the whole story by a long shot.
Dkline:
In Iraq, however, the people for whatever reason did not ever organize themselves to resist Saddam’s tyranny.
They were ready to do it after the first Gulf War. We left them hanging, and Saddam cracked down.
As we speak, Iran and others are anxiously awaiting the day we leave them hanging again.
LLL:
Word-of-mouth amongst the families and friends of casualties was always going to be the hardest thing of all to suppress, and to counter
Yuh-huh. Cindy Sheehan’s media handlers don’t have much of a problem suppressing the families and friends of those who disagree with her and her use of their loved ones. The friends and family of those who are serving or who have even lost their lives in Iraq are not those who are least likely to support the mission there. Why, we even have an Iraqi vet right here in this thread taking you to task.
91B30, thanks for your service.
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I used to play footy with WarCo