Michael Yon's Latest

[aricbcool]

Michael Yon's gotten a lot of coverage here for his work as an embed in Mosul. I thought I'd post his latest up for discussion. I'm curious to hear what others think of his accusations and assertions...

Regards,
Aric

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Conten...nigml.asp?pg=1

Censoring Iraq
Why are there so few reporters with American troops in combat? Don't blame the media.
by Michael Yon
10/30/2006, Volume 012, Issue 07

In a counterinsurgency, the media battlespace is critical. When it comes to mustering public opinion, rallying support, and forcing opponents to shift tactics and timetables to better suit the home team, our terrorist enemies are destroying us. Al Qaeda's media arm is called al Sahab: the cloud. It feels more like a hurricane. While our enemies have "journalists" crawling all over battlefields to chronicle their successes and our failures, we have an "embed" media system that is so ineptly managed that earlier this fall there were only 9 reporters embedded with 150,000 American troops in Iraq. There were about 770 during the initial invasion.

Many blame the media for the estrangement, but part of the blame rests squarely on the chip-laden shoulders of key military officers and on the often clueless Combined Press Information Center in Baghdad, which doesn't manage the media so much as manhandle them. Most military public affairs officers are professionals dedicated to their jobs, but it takes only a few well-placed incompetents to cripple our ability to match and trump al Sahab. By enabling incompetence, the Pentagon has allowed the problem to fester to the point of censorship.

My experiences with the U.S. military as a soldier and then as a writer and photographer covering soldiers have been overwhelmingly positive, and I feel no shame in saying I am biased in favor of our troops. Even worse, I feel no shame in calling a terrorist a terrorist. I've seen their deeds and tasted air filled with burning human flesh from their bombs. I've seen terrorists kill children while our people risk their lives to save civilians again, and again, and again. I feel no shame in saying I hope that Afghanistan and Iraq "succeed," whatever that means. For that very reason, it would be a dereliction to remain silent about our military's ineptitude in handling the press. The subject is worthy of a book, but can't wait that long, lest we grow accustomed to a subtle but all too real censorship of the U.S. war effort.

I don't use the word lightly. Censorship is a hand grenade of an accusation, and a writer should be serious before pulling the pin. Indeed, some war-zone censorship for reasons of operational security is obviously desirable and important. No one can complain when Delta Force will not permit an embed. In fact, I have turned down offers to embed with some Special Operations forces because the limitations on what I could write would not be worth the danger and expense. But we can and should complain when authorities willfully limit war reporting. We should do so whether it happens as a matter of policy, or through incompetence or bureaucratic sloth. The result is the same in any case. And once the matter has been brought to the attention of the military and the Pentagon--which I have quietly done--and still the situation is not rectified, it is time for a public accounting.

For generations journalists have been allowed to "embed" with various U.S. military units, including infantry outfits. Infantry is perhaps the most dangerous, underpaid, and unglamorous job on the planet. Infantrymen are called grunts, trigger-pullers, cannon fodder, and ground-pounders. Long hours, low pay, and death, death, death. If they survive, they get a welcome-home party. Sometimes. And that's it: Thanks. In World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, reporters were given wide latitude to travel with the infantry, even if few could stand it for long. Up to last year, this war was no different. A journalist could stay out with the infantry for as long as he could take it. I spent most of 2005 in Iraq, and most of that was with infantry units in combat.

I went to Iraq initially at the behest of military friends who insisted that what Americans were seeing on the news wasn't an accurate reflection of the reality on the ground. Two of my friends died on consecutive days. When the charred remains of American contractors were strung from a bridge in Falluja, I put aside a book I was writing to attend the funerals. In Colorado we laid to rest a Special Forces friend who'd been killed in Samara; then on to Florida for the funeral of the friend who'd been murdered and mutilated in Falluja. A photo of the dang ling corpses won a Pulitzer.

I purchased and borrowed the equipment required for the journey. Camera, satellite phone, laptop, body armor, helmet, and so on. Like most of the people who would later be called "alternative media," I bore these expenses myself, including the flights to Kuwait. Without media affiliation, I went, saw, wrote, and photographed. There was a dearth of information about the daily experiences of our troops in the U.S. media, and my work, published as a series of photo essays on my website, filled some of that void. My military background helped me navigate the system and provided critical context that informed my observations. I didn't need to be told when to duck, or what not to photograph, or why there had to be a red lens on my small flashlight (it's dim: harder for the enemy to see and saves your night vision). My reports and photographs from 2005 were seen by tens of millions of people.

I believe now as I did then: The government of the United States has no right to send our people off to war and keep secret that which it has no plausible military reason to keep secret. After all, American blood and treasure is being spent. Americans should know how our soldiers are doing, and what they are doing while wearing our flag. The government has no right to withhold information or to deny access to our combat forces just because that information might anger, frighten, or disturb us.

By allowing only a trickle of news to come out of Iraq, when all involved parties know the flow could be more robust, the Pentagon is doing just that. Although the conspicuous media vacuum can be partly explained by the danger--Iraq is arguably more dangerous for journalists than Vietnam or even World War II, when reporters were allowed to land on D-Day--some of the few who will risk it all are denied access for no good reason.

This information blockade is occurring at the same time that the Pentagon is outsourcing millions of dollars to public relations firms to shape the news. This half-baked effort has the unintended consequence of putting every reporter who files a positive story under scrutiny as a possible stooge. A fraction of those dollars spent on increasing transportation support might persuade more reporters to request an embed. A reasonable expectation of being able to get to units and get stories filed on time is all most reporters ask. The media people I encountered in Iraq were not looking for four-star accommodations. They knew full well what to expect from a war zone, but they cannot waste days, sometimes weeks, stranded in logistics limbo, held up for reasons that almost never have anything to do with combat.

There's little comfort in the supposition that this mess might be more the result of incompetence than policy. After all, what does it matter whether the helicopter crashed because it ran out of gas or because someone didn't tighten the bolts on a rotor? Our military enjoys supremely onesided air and weapons superiority, but this is practically irrelevant in a counterinsurgency where the centers of gravity for the battle are public opinion in Iraq, Afghanistan, Europe, and at home. The enemy trumps our jets and satellites with supremely onesided media superiority. The lowest level terror cells have their own film crews. While al Sahab hums along winning battle after propaganda battle, the bungling gatekeepers at the Combined Press Information Center (CPIC) reciprocate with ridiculous and costly obstacles that deter embedded media covering our forces, ultimately causing harm to only one side: ours. And they get away with it because in any conflict that can be portrayed as U.S. military versus media, the public reflexively sides with the military.

In September, when the popular blog conglomerate Pajamas Media reported that there were only nine embedded journalists in Iraq, readers lashed out, blaming a cowardly media. But the reality is convoluted. The Pentagon permits an extremely limited number of journalists access, while denying other embed requests that would have been permitted as recently as a year ago.

Following up on the Pajamas Media report, I con tacted Major Jeffrey Pool, the Marine officer in charge of tracking media in Iraq. He confirmed the figure of only nine embedded reporters. Three were from Stars and Stripes, one from the Armed Forces Network, another from a Polish radio station who was with Polish forces, and one Italian reporter embedded with his country's troops. Of the remaining three, one was an author gathering material for later, leaving two who were reporting on a regular basis to what you might think would be the Pentagon's center of gravity: American citizens.

Although the number of embeds is in constant flux, on the day of Major Pool's report there was approximately one independent journalist for every 75,000 troops. Most embeds last for a matter of days. So, how are our troops doing in Iraq? Afghanistan? Who knows?

(cont.)

[aricbcool]

(cont. from above)

The bulk of the reporting on Iraq comes from the "Baghdad News Bureaus"--the mainstream media correspondents who, because of the danger, generally gather information from the safety of their fortresses by using Iraqi stringers. But there are people who would go to war and report on our troops. Walt Gaya, a highly skilled photographer who received two Purple Hearts last year as an infantryman, recently received two invitations to embed with combat troops: The first came from the 4th Infantry Division, and the second was from Brigadier General Dana Pittard to embed with military training teams. I've had invitations from countless outfits. Yet when Walt and I requested embeds, Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson, the director of the Combined Press Information Center, dismissed both requests out of hand.

Johnson, who has been described as "the most quoted man in Iraq," was quoted last March saying this: "We don't turn down embeds at all. When we get a request, it may be very specific or broader. We go to the unit involved. They manage their own embeds. We don't force them to take anyone; we're not going to force anyone to interact with media. We may offer advice and talk to them about their reasoning. In the end, we respect the wishes of the unit." Walt and I both had requests, and in each case the commanders had put their wishes in writing. In both cases, Johnson denied the embeds.

Johnson was pressed for an explanation during a radio interview. I have listened to the tape. He claimed to have been worried because I have no insurance. "How would Johnson know whether I have insurance?" I wondered. "He never asked." Johnson told the interviewer that he had been in communication with me. This was true, but not in the way he implied, because the only words Johnson ever sent my way were in an email on July 18, 2006, where he wrote:

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Mr. Yon;
I do not recognize your website as a media organization that we will use as a source to credential journalists covering MNF-I operations.
LTC Barry Johnson
Director, CPIC
www.mnf-iraq.com
In fact, before Walt Gaya attempted to embed, he and I had a dozen or so phone conversations about his insurance policy. CPIC, for its part, never requested any information about insurance coverage. At the same time Walt and I were being given the brush-off, a blogger and freelance photographer named Chad Hunt was heading for an embed in Afghanistan. (Afghan slots are not controlled by Johnson.) When I asked Hunt if he had insurance, he replied, "Do you think I need it?" Hunt said that nobody had asked him about insurance, which didn't surprise me because it is not part of the standard process during which all embeds sign a detailed Hold Harmless agreement covering matters of injury, dismemberment, and/or death.

Johnson's emailed denial was unconditional. I take him at his word that he refused to recognize my online magazine as a media outlet he was willing to work with. His attitude may, however, come as a surprise to readers like the CentCom soldier who emailed me on October 13: "I have been a reader of your blog for some time. The stories and photographs are some of the best I have seen in the Milblog community. As you may or may not be aware, Central Command Public Affairs has been making an effort to get the military's story out via the blogosphere. The support of people like you and others in the milblog community is invaluable . . . ."

Walt Gaya, though, was intending to shoot pictures for the Veterans of Foreign Wars magazine VFW, which is distributed to the approximately 1.8 million VFW members. Surely that is not a media organization with which CPIC is unwilling to work.

After hearing Johnson's insurance excuse, I checked back with Chad Hunt to find out if the public affairs officers he had dealt with had inquired into his insurance arrangements. Hunt's email response: "Nope. What is that?" Hunt was headed for Afghanistan, and on September 3, I emailed him again, "Did you get insurance?" "Yes, I'm here and no insurance." Chad Hunt, like most alternative media, paid his own way to cover the war. As he explained on his website, chadhuntphotography.com :

I have paid for the cost of the plane ticket, body armor, kevlar helmet, ballistic glasses and all the other gear. I never expected to make money off of this and I even had one agency tell me that they would not back me "because embedded images don't sell."
(In fact, Hunt has already sold one of his Afghanistan images. It appeared as a half-page in the October 8 issue of U.S. News & World Report.)

Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson has repeatedly gone on record decrying the lack of press coverage in Iraq, all while alienating the last vestiges of any press willing to spend month after month in combat with American soldiers. Meanwhile, "the most quoted man in Iraq" has become a major media source in his own right. Too bad there is no one else to tell the story of our troops. Too bad the soldiers' families have little idea what they are up to from day to day.

As stated at the outset, many PAO officers are extremely hardworking and dedicated. My dealings with other PAOs, such as USMC Major Jeffrey Pool and Army Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, have been exemplary. But a system that so easily thwarts the work of good men and women is a system in desperate need of an overhaul.

The enemy knows that in modern day counterinsurgency, the media are an extension of the battle space. When Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the late and unlamented leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, began losing some of his media battles by broadcasting videos of hostages having their heads sawed off, Ayman al Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's second-in-command, scolded him in a missive later recovered in a raid:

However, despite all of this, I say to you that we are in a battle and that more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media. And that we are in a media battle in a race for the hearts and minds of our Umma. And that however far our capabilities reach, they will never be equal to one thousandth of the capabilities of the kingdom of Satan that is waging war on us. And we can kill the captives by bullet. That would achieve that which is sought after without exposing ourselves to the questions and answering to doubts. We don't need this. [Translation: Just shoot them, dummy.]
During the beginning of the war, when some of us called an insurgency an insurgency, our patriotism was questioned. Is there any question now? Are there just a few "dead-enders" that we are still "mopping up"? When I called a civil war a civil war a full year ahead of the media, out came the dogs. When I predicted success in Mosul even while the guns were hot, many mainstream journalists thought I was hallucinating. But these were all things I learned from being embedded for months with our troops. There was tremendous progress in Iraq in 2005, and I reported it, all while warning about the growing civil war that could undermine everything. I reported extensively on a unit that was getting it right--the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment (Deuce Four) of the 25th Infantry Division--and as I traveled to Mosul, Baqubah, and other places, I was mostly alone as a writer.

Early this spring, when I reported from Afghan farms about this year's bumper opium crop, people thought I was using that opium. Now it is common knowledge that the opium trade is fueling a Taliban comeback. Mark this on your calendar: Spring of 2007 will be a bloodbath in Afghanistan for NATO forces. Our British, Canadian, Australian, Dutch, and other allies will be slaughtered in Afghanistan if they dare step off base in the southern provinces, and nobody is screaming at the tops of their media-lungs about the impending disaster. I would not be surprised to see a NATO base overrun in Afghanistan in 2007 with all the soldiers killed or captured. And when it happens, how many will claim they had no idea it was so bad and blame the media for failing to raise the alarm? Here it is: WARNING! Troops in Afghanistan are facing slaughter in 2007!

The media do matter. Our troops are naked without them. Our people would probably still be driving down Iraqi roads in unarmored Humvees were it not for the likes of journalist Edward Lee Pitts, who got a National Guardsman to pose the now infamous "hillbilly armor" question to the secretary of defense. Seven days a week I communicate with wounded service members and families of service members killed in action. They ask, "When are you going back?" They long to hear the details--good, bad, or ugly--that bring them closer to their loved ones. Some get impatient and short with me, perhaps not realizing that Lt. Col. Barry Johnson has the final say and doesn't recognize my work or that of Walt Gaya as warranting an embed on his watch. As this magazine goes to press, military sources tell me that Johnson is on his way out of CPIC, and his successor is said to be much better. This may count as good news. But a system so dependent on the whims of a single officer cannot be relied upon.

The media are far from perfect. War reporters, like everyone else, get things wrong. Some of them, unsympathetic to the war aims, undoubtedly try to twist the news. But no coverage at all is even worse. It does a disservice to American soldiers. It is cruel to their families. It leaves the American public in the dark. If we lose the media war, we will lose Iraq, Afghanistan, and the entire "war on terror."

If our military cannot win the easy media battles with writers who are unashamed to say they want to win the war, there is no chance of winning the hearts and minds of Afghans and Iraqis, and both wars will be lost. And some will blame the media. But that will not resurrect the dead.

[haztacmedic]

Is this the same Mike Yon who is a QP. wrote a book about life and trouble in the SF?

[The Reaper]

Perhaps the issue is really that the media gives the terrorists better coverage and does less to harm their cause than they do for US forces.

Of course, if it looks like the media guy imbedded with AQ is going to cause them a problem, they have ways to make sure that the story is killed, so to speak.

I am not sure that he has properly correlated the cause and effect.

TR

[MtnGoat]

Originally Posted by The Reaper

I am not sure that he has properly correlated the cause and effect.

+1

Media coverage is a very double edge sword. Both side have there points, its a joint effort just like a joint patrol.

[Gypsy]

Originally Posted by haztacmedic

Is this the same Mike Yon who is a QP. wrote a book about life and trouble in the SF?

Yes.

All I know is I miss the riveting reports that MY used to write.

[GreenMtnTac]

I have a great deal of respect for Michael Yon. His articles while embedded with the "Deuce 4" were nothing short of amazing. His photographs are pretty amazing as well. I have one hanging on the wall of my bedroom that I think is probably the most powerful image of the whole war.

They could do a lot worse than M.Y. for an imbed journalist. What's their problem?

[The Reaper]

Originally Posted by GreenMtnTac

I have a great deal of respect for Michael Yon. His articles while embedded with the "Deuce 4" were nothing short of amazing. His photographs are pretty amazing as well. I have one hanging on the wall of my bedroom that I think is probably the most powerful image of the whole war.

They could do a lot worse than M.Y. for an imbed journalist. What's their problem?

With his faults, there aren't too many others like him. I think the ABC correspondent injuries, on top of everybdy else, sent the message that this is not a game, so most quit.

TR

[stone]

I don't think there's any shortage of journalists willing to cover the war, I think it's a matter of access and finances. The major networks have the cash but keep their people reigned in for insurance reasons (although I'm sure most of those talking heads are quite happy reporting from the hotel bar.) And the independent journalists who really want to get in there and mix it up and cover the story can't afford the major costs of operating in a war zone. There are exceptions of course-- Yon has managed to pull it off with a good deal of aplomb.

[Warrior-Mentor]

National Review
November 6, 2006

Covering Iraq
The modern way of war correspondence
By Michael Fumento

Ramadi, Iraq -- Would you trust a Hurricane Katrina report datelined “direct from Detroit”? Or coverage of the World Trade Center attack from Chicago? Why then should we believe a Time magazine investigation of the Haditha killings that was reported not from Haditha but from Baghdad? Or a Los Angeles Times article on a purported Fallujah-like attack on Ramadi reported by four journalists in Baghdad and one in Washington?

Yet we do, essentially because we have no choice. A war in a country the size of California is essentially covered from a single city. Plug the name of Iraqi cities other than Baghdad into Google News and you’ll find that time and again the reporters are in Iraq’s capital, nowhere near the scene.

Capt. David Gramling, public affairs officer for the unit I’m currently embedded with, puts it nicely: “I think it would be pretty hard to report on Baghdad from out here.” Welcome to the not-so-brave new world of Iraq war correspondence.

Vietnam was the first war to give us reporting in virtually real time. Iraq is the first to give us virtual reporting. That doesn’t necessarily make it biased against the war; it does make it biased against the truth.

During my three embeds in Iraq’s vicious Anbar Province, I’ve been mortared and sniped at, and have dodged machine-gun fire — all of which has given me a serious contempt for the rear-echelon reporters. When I appeared on the Al Franken Show in May, after my second embed, it was with former CNN Baghdad bureau chief Jane Arraf — who complained about the dangers of being shot down by a missile while landing in Baghdad, and the dangers of the airport road to the International Zone (IZ) . . . and how awful the Baghdad hotels were.

Descent into hell?

Most rear-echelon reporters seem to have studied the same handbook, perhaps The Dummies’ Guide to Faux Bravado. It usually begins with the horrific entry into Baghdad International Airport. Time’s Baghdad bureau chief, Aparisim Ghosh, in an August 2006 cover story, devotes five long paragraphs to the alleged horror of landing there. It’s “the world’s scariest landing,” he insists, as if he were an expert on all the landings of all the planes at all the world’s airports and military airfields. It’s “a steep, corkscrewing plunge,” a “spiraling dive, straightening up just yards from the runway. If you’re looking out the window, it can feel as if the plane is in a free fall from which it can’t possibly pull out.” The Associated Press gave us a whole article on the subject, titled “A hair-raising flight into Baghdad,” referring to “a stomach-churning series of tight, spiraling turns that pin passengers deep in their seats.”

I’ve flown into that airport three times now; each time was in a military C-130 Hercules cargo plane, and each landing was as smooth as the proverbial baby’s behind. But Ghosh is describing a descent in a civilian Fokker F-28 jet, on which admittedly I have never flown. (It’s $900 one-way for the short hop from Amman to Baghdad, and therefore the transportation of well-heeled media people.) So I asked a reporter friend who frequently covers combat in the Mideast and Africa, and has also frequently flown into Baghdad on those Fokkers. “The plane just banks heavily,” he said. “It’s not a big deal.” He requested anonymity, lest he incur the wrath of other journalists for spoiling their war stories. Moreover, you can read similar corkscrew horror stories from reporters who have flown in on C-130s.

As to the overall dangers of flying into or out of Baghdad, one civilian cargo jet was hit after takeoff with a shoulder-launched missile, but landed safely; and one Australian C-130 was hit by small-arms fire, killing one passenger. That’s it. No reporter has been injured or killed flying into or out of Baghdad International.

Then there’s the dreaded “Highway of Death.” Here’s Ghosh again, picking up after his horrific corkscrew description. “But the relief is temporary; most of us still have to negotiate the Highway of Death,” he writes. “There have been hundreds of insurgent and terrorist attacks along its length since the U.S. military established its largest Iraqi base, Camp Victory, next to the airport three years ago. Many of the attacks are directed at U.S. patrols, but they have also killed scores of Iraqi noncombatants.” Only as an afterthought does he note that “recently the highway has become less deadly.”

And here’s an account from A. A. Gill, a reporter who accompanied another journalist, Jeremy Clarkson, in Iraq last year. He wrote, in Britain’s Sunday Times Magazine last November:

The Americans didn’t have a Black Hawk to spare for the five-minute hop into the Green Zone, so we were going to have to drive it. This is the bit Jeremy swore he’d never do. When you’re asked where you draw the line, this is the place to start drawing. Nobody drives into Baghdad if they’ve not been given a direct order. Even our minder, Wing Commander Willox, has never done it. . . . This road is code-named Route Irish. [The] Guinness [Book of] World Records has just authoritatively announced that Baghdad is the worst place in the world. . . . This 25-minute stretch of blasted tarmac from the airport to the Green Zone is, as Jeremy might say, the most dangerous drive — in the world.

Yet just two days earlier the Washington Post headlined a piece on Route Irish as follows: “Easy Sailing along Once-Perilous Road to Baghdad Airport.” It observed, “Two months ago, the killings stopped. In October, one person was wounded on the road and no one was killed, according to the U.S. Army. . . . It was safe enough to stop here, to linger, to chat, and a computer screen flashed the statistical evidence. . . . In 10 months, the only enemy fire they have seen on the airport road came after one of the civilian trucks they were escorting broke down.” And two months earlier, USA Today had published a similar account, backing it up with a quote from an officer whose men patrolled the roads: “Route Irish is definitely not the most dangerous road in Iraq any longer, and everyone who uses it knows it.” Apparently, though, the Sunday Times reporter didn’t know it — and other Baghdad journalists still don’t know it.

'Fear and tension' in the IZ

With that horrific arrival behind them, it’s time for the Baghdad reporters to settle into their lodgings. Those may be in the International Zone or just outside in places like the Al Rashid, Al Hamra, or Palestine hotels. And trust them, their trip into the IZ was stepping from the frying pan into the fire. Newsweek’s Joe Cochrane wrote a commentary about the IZ in July 2005 just two months after I first visited it. (All media must come through the IZ to get credentialed.) In other words, we both saw the same place at about the same time — but I don’t recognize his IZ.

“I’ve always been something of an optimist, but everyone has a breaking point. Mine came on Saturday as I toured the infamous ‘Green Zone’ in central Baghdad,” Cochrane began. After providing his view of a mean Baghdad outside the IZ, he continued, “The situation inside the [IZ] is scarcely better. Heavily armed troops guard government buildings and hospitals, menacingly pointing their weapons at anyone who approaches. Soldiers manning checkpoints can use deadly force against motorists who fail to heed their instructions, so the warning signs say, and I have no doubt they’d exercise that right in a heartbeat if they felt threatened. All this fear and tension, and inside a six square mile area that’s supposed to be safe.”

[Warrior-Mentor]

That’s funny, because inside my “infamous” IZ the guards make people feel safe, not threatened. In 2005, many of them were Gurkhas — a combination of some of the best killers on earth and the politest people you’d ever want to meet. Nobody ever menacingly pointed a weapon at me. Cochrane was right that “roadblocks, blast walls, and barbed wire are the most common sights in this walled-in mini-city,” but these defenses contributed to an atmosphere that to me was devoid of fear and tension. As for the idea that it’s “supposed to be safe,” when I inquired in May 2005 I was told it had probably been months since anybody dropped in a rocket or mortar round. And “dropped in” is probably the best term; the bad guys don’t even have the capacity to aim; they just fire and run, hoping the round actually lands somewhere within the zone. It’s rare that they actually hit near, much less kill, anybody.

The real IZ represents opulence in the midst of war — with terrific chow, huge post exchanges that stock an amazing array of products, the best medical care in the country, and large, sumptuous swimming pools built for Saddam but now open to anybody who works in the zone. Nor have the grotesque exaggerations of the dangers of the IZ gone unnoticed by soldiers and their loved ones. “Dear Chain-smoking, Unwitting Stooges,” military blogger Jason Van Steenwyk began an open letter to the Baghdad press corps. “So how come we can get mortared several times a week out here and it never makes the news, but the pogues [rear-echelon soldiers] in the Green Zone can catch three measly mortar rounds and I get my dad emailing me asking why the Baghdad press corps is covering it like it’s the second Tet Offensive?”

Hiding out in Baghdad

It’s not fair to say the hotel-dwellers never leave their safe and comfy confines. “Despite the danger, Nancy [Youssef, Knight Ridder bureau chief] and her colleagues do venture out and do find inventive ways to talk with ordinary Iraqis,” then–Knight Ridder D.C. bureau chief Clark Hoyt wrote in a column. He explained that Nancy says, “When I go grocery shopping, I listen to people’s conversations. What are they talking about?” It turns out that these shopping trips provide key insight for the “war correspondence” of the Baghdad Brigade.

Even journalists sympathetic to the Baghdad press corps admit they essentially just hide out. Here’s how The New York Review of Books put it last April: “The bitter truth is that doing any kind of work outside these American fortified zones has become so dangerous for foreigners as to be virtually suicidal. More and more journalists find themselves hunkered down inside whatever bubbles of refuge they have managed to create in order to insulate themselves from the lawlessness outside.” Unless you accept “insulation” as a synonym for “reporting,” this doesn’t speak well of the hotel denizens.

Other reporters have been less generous. The London Independent’s Robert Fisk has written of “hotel journalism,” and Maggie O’Kane of the British Guardian has said, “We no longer know what is going on, but we are pretending we do.” They can’t even cover Baghdad yet they pretend they can cover Ramadi.

One way the Baghdad press corps and its allies try to steal valor is to invoke the incredibly large number of reporters killed in the war: It’s true that over 100 journalists or media assistants have been killed. Yet, with the sole exception of Steven Vincent, the only American journalists killed or even seriously injured by hostile action in Iraq have been embeds. Atlantic Monthly editor-at-large Michael Kelly (an editor of mine) drowned after his Humvee rolled into a Baghdad canal during the invasion. NBC reporter David Bloom died of a pulmonary embolism, also during the invasion. Both were embedded with the 3rd Infantry Division. CBS News cameraman Paul Douglas and freelance soundman James Brolan were blown up by an improvised explosive device (IED) while accompanying CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier, herself critically injured. They were embedded with the 4th Infantry Division. So were ABC anchorman Bob Woodruff and his cameraman, who were critically injured by an IED. Time correspondent Michael Weisskopf had his hand blown off trying to toss a grenade out of his Humvee when he was embedded with the 1st Armored Division. These, not the hotel-bound credit-claimers, are the journalist-heroes of the Iraq War.

To tell the truth

What leads the embeds into the most dangerous parts of Iraq is the glaring gap between the reality of the war and the virtuality emanating from the hotels of the IZ. One of them made this point quite forcefully in a recent column. Jerry Newberry, communications director for the Veterans of Foreign Wars and a Vietnam Army vet, wrote in a September column just before heading off for Afghanistan and then Iraq: “For the most part, the wars being fought by our people in Afghanistan and Iraq — their successes, heroism, and valor — [are] reported by some overpaid, makeup-wearing talking heads, sitting on their fat rear-ends in an air-conditioned hotel. They rely on Iraqi stringers to bring the stuff to them and then call it reporting.”

Newberry’s bravery and dedication are to be saluted, but as a combat vet he has advantages. So did I, as a veteran paratrooper (on my first trip) and a combat veteran (by the end of my second). Michael Yon, famed for his blog and award-winning photos of his seven-month embed with the infantry in Mosul, is a former Green Beret. Writer and historian Andrew Lubin, a Fallujah-bound embed I met while getting credentialed on this trip, is a former Marine who goes to the rifle range twice monthly. But Patrick Dollard, with no military training, left a cushy job as Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh’s agent to bunk down with Marines in Ramadi for seven months to film a documentary series (still being edited) that he hopes will show the real war and the real warriors. In February, a Humvee he was traveling in hit a massive IED, which shredded the vehicle and killed two of the three Marines aboard. Dollard was injured and hospitalized. But he had a mission, and was quickly back on the job. The next month, another IED blast injured him, less seriously. Then . . . right back to work. Dollard’s experiences alone put the Baghdad press corps to shame. But he insisted to me that exchanging Hollywood for a hellhole wasn’t as hard as you’d imagine. “I had to feel the moral imperative to go, and clearly I did feel it,” he said.

The sad truth is that the mainstream media have no interest in covering the Iraq War for what it is, observes Dollard. He says they are interested in Iraq only so far as it is useful as a weapon against their self-imagined mortal political enemy, George W. Bush. The embeds, however, want the real picture — and we want to tell the truth about it to the world.

Which is something their detractors simply refuse to understand. Screenwriter-director Nora Ephron says that dispatches from both soldiers and embeds are worthless, because we’re “too close” to the war. The best “reporting” apparently is from those most removed. (Amazingly, Ephron also believes embedding was an evil idea dreamed up for this war, even though in World War II and later wars all major news outlets had reporters with the troops on the front lines. That’s how we got the incredible dispatches of Ernie Pyle, and the wonderful Iwo Jima flag-raising photo by Joe Rosenthal.)

Sometimes you’ll hear that embeds are just shuffled around in armored vehicles. Some are, although IEDs and rocket-propelled grenades still make that less safe than manning a desk. But in my case, I’ve never been in an armored vehicle that wasn’t merely dropping us off at a remote location to engage in foot patrols. Yet Paul Rieckhoff, an anti-war vet who was hawking his boring book, Chasing Ghosts, on the same Al Franken Show Jane Arraf and I were on, commented on my disgust with hotel-bound reporters by smearing embeds. He labeled those who actually go into battle with troops as “jock sniffers.” To him, the Ernie Pyles and Joe Rosenthals of America’s past were just a bunch of contemptible groupies.

Yet embeds perform a service beyond just their willingness to see combat, and to describe accurately the specific events they witness. “Although some journalism professors may worry that military embedding is subverting the media, I would argue the contrary,” Robert Kaplan wrote in The Atlantic Monthly. Kaplan, who has been embedded all over the world, went on to observe, “The Columbia Journalism Review recently ran an article about the worrisome gap between a wealthy media establishment and ordinary working Americans. One solution is embedding, which offers the media perhaps their last, best chance to reconnect with much of the society they claim to be a part of.”

The media-elite Baghdad Brigade and its stateside editors have forfeited this opportunity. It’s not just that being with the soldiers puts them at risk, but that they don’t want to be with those soldiers. They prefer the company of their fellow journalists and that, too, contributes to their unwillingness to leave their walled-in compounds.

It’s impossible to blame anyone for not wanting to report from the more dangerous parts of Iraq; over 99 percent of Americans surely would not want to. The trouble with the Baghdad press corps is that, in pretending to be war correspondents when the correspondence they engage in could just as well be done from New York or Washington, they may well be squeezing out from those positions reporters who actually want to do the job. Harry Truman’s famous words, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” suggest wise advice to today’s journos in Baghdad: If you don’t have the guts actually to cover the war, stand aside for those who do.

Mr. Fumento is a longtime journalist and author.

[Gypsy]

Michael was interviewed on CSPAN yesterday, for those of you who missed it.

Click here http://www.c-span.org/VideoArchives....ays=100&Page=2 it's the fourth one down.



Edited to provide proper link

[dennisw]

Spring of 2007 will be a bloodbath in Afghanistan for NATO forces. Our British, Canadian, Australian, Dutch, and other allies will be slaughtered in Afghanistan if they dare step off base in the southern provinces, and nobody is screaming at the tops of their media-lungs about the impending disaster. I would not be surprised to see a NATO base overrun in Afghanistan in 2007 with all the soldiers killed or captured. And when it happens, how many will claim they had no idea it was so bad and blame the media for failing to raise the alarm? Here it is: WARNING! Troops in Afghanistan are facing slaughter in 2007!

This is a very chilling prediction. I'm assuming he is tieing this to the bumper opium crop which means more funds will be available to the bad guys for weapons etc. I can only hope he's wrong or someone in the food chain is aware of this situation and will make an appropriate adjustment related to troop strenght.