SwiftVets.com

[kimberly]

Every time I catch this reporter on CNN is find it frightening that someone like this is embedded with our troops and I wonder if they (the troops) are aware of his reporting. For instance, right after Bush's first speech at the academy, "President Bush talked about how well the Iraqi security forces were fighting. He claimed that 40 Iraqi battalions were taking the lead in the fight against insurgents, and that in the battle of Tal Afar this year, “the assault was primarily led by Iraqi security forces – 11 Iraqi battalions backed by 5 coalition battalions providing support.”

"Anderson Cooper of CNN swiftly produced Time magazine’s Baghdad bureau chief, Michael Ware, who was embedded with the U.S. military during the entire Tal Afar battle. “With the greatest respect to the president, that’s completely wrong,” Mr. Ware said, adding: “I was with Iraqi units right there on the front line as they were battling with Al Qaeda. They were not leading.”

He also told Mr. Cooper: “I have had a very senior officer here in Baghdad say to me that there’s never going to be a point where these guys will be able to stand up against the insurgency on their own.”
Mr. Ware recalled that in a battle two weeks ago, he saw an Iraqi security officer put down his weapon and curl up into a ball when he was under attack. “I have seen that on – on many, many occasions,” he said."

2/21/05: PILGRIM: This political solution, do you see it working with these groups that can maybe be brought into the political process? WARE: Well, as the senior diplomats were saying to me, this is going to be a very long road. And we've learned this from past experience in other theaters. Yet, the diplomats seem to be of the view now, and also senior U.S. military commanders that I deal with in Baghdad, that this fight can no longer be won militarily.

and there is more, every time he appears on cnn...

[Doll]

This is a very disheartening and discouraging observation. On one hand you have the President saying,"“the assault was primarily led by Iraqi security forces – 11 Iraqi battalions backed by 5 coalition battalions providing support.” On the other hand there is the Cnn reporter quoting the Time's Magazine Bureau Chief saying, "With the greatest respect to the president, that’s completely wrong,” Mr. Ware said, adding: “I was with Iraqi units right there on the front line as they were battling with Al Qaeda. They were not leading.”

It cannot be both. One of the reports is scewed. Either the President is receiving false intelligence information, or the reporter is slanting the news to appeal to the leftists against the war.

Truly a dichodomy and I honestly do not know what to believe anymore. I listen quite a bit to Fox News over CNN and MSNBC because they have a tendency to be a bit more fair and balanced.

Time Magazine is also known to slant liberal and has in the past been caught doing so.

As for credibility, I would err on the side of the President. President Bush has nothing to gain and everything to lose should this war not be won. I cannot imagine the President scewing anything unless he was given scewed reports.

Excellent observations Kimberly. I appreciate this post.
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[kimberly]

thanks Doll.....I don't know if what this man is doing is ethical or legal or otherwise, but it just doesn't seem 'right' and I have noticed that he is often quoted by leftists after his interviews on cnn.

For instance, in this interview, he talks about how after months of spending time with the insurgents he has been given numerous and a variety of video tapes by the enemy.

"They're trying to tell the Western public: 'This is what your boys are dying for, this is what they are up against,' " he said. "They are letting us know that, 'We can kill your boys, and we are not going away.' "

As he watched a tape that purports to be the attack that killed four employees of Blackwater Security Consulting in Fallujah in late March, Ware said, "They've been filming this stuff from the beginning."

According to eyewitnesses at the time, a group of men, their faces covered by headscarves, split into two groups and threw hand grenades into the two vehicles that carried the contractors. As the vehicles were engulfed with flames, the assailants sprayed them with small arms fire, the witnesses said.

A mob then dragged the four civilians' mutilated bodies through the streets and hung two of them from a bridge over the Euphrates River as people cheered.

U.S. military officials who investigated the attack suspected it was planned because the normally busy city streets were empty and the shops closed at the time of the assault.

But they may not have known just how carefully the assault was planned.

On the insurgent video, a hooded man claiming to represent a group called the Islamic Army in Iraq shows how a satellite image was used to map out the attack route, circling the point of contact.

"This is clearly a military map of some sort," Ware said while watching the video. "That's an e-mail, and that's a Blackwater letterhead," he said. "It's got the names of the recipients, the date.' "

Also shown on the videotape are the possessions of the dead contractors.

Frightening access to world of insurgents

Ware's life changed when he received a tape of a Pakistani hostage after more than a year of reporting on the insurgency.

"Since they gave me the hostage tape 10 days ago -- the first Westerner to get a hostage tape -- it's like that was them opening up," he said. "And in the 10 days that's followed, I've been getting access that's quite frightening. And in the last three days, I've received seven new tapes from different parts of the resistance -- Islamic guerillas, Iraqi nationalists and independents."

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/07/06/iraq.insurgent.videos/



earlier still, while embedded, this is part of how he reported in Fallujah.....

Sitting in my own compound in the city, I‘m prone to mortar fire.  They have kidnapped teams circling our block.  A journalist was kidnapped 300 meters outside our gate.  Zarqawi controls central nodes of the city, including the most infamous Haifa Street, the scene of bloody engagements for months now, where he is within range of mortars directly impacting into the Green Zone and the U.S. Embassy.  So, are we winning?  That doesn‘t feel like winning to me......" 

Then Ware goes on to say THIS:

"But have we beaten the insurgency?  No.  No, I suspect we‘re far from that.  They will now be more decentralized.  I was interviewing cells weeks before the operation who had long fled.  Documents I have from Zarqawi‘s people which are after-action reports on the previous uprising in April show just how they did it then, evacuating the leadership.  All indications are that they did this again, leaving a rear guard action behind to fight a suicidal death march, just like the one that we‘ve seen here in Afghanistan and in Northern Iraq against Ansar al-Islam.  In many ways, this is deja vu. "

There is so much more on this Michael Ware.....How does HE have posession of these documents? obviously he must be on the up and up or our military wouldn't tolerate him being embedded with them AND the insurgents. It just doesn't sit well with me. All of his 'interviews' are with LL MSM/CNN.

[PhantomSgt]

Which side is this guy imbedded with?


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