Mr. McCain Goes To Baghdad
Update 04/03: Via Juan Cole, The Australian carries a report by James Hider in Baghdad for The Times:
…21 Shia market workers were ambushed, bound and shot dead north of the capital.
The victims came from the Baghdad market visited the previous day by John McCain, the US presidential candidate, who said that an American security plan in the capital was starting to show signs of progress.
John feels a need to prove that Iraq is becoming Eden, so he interrupts the war by showing up and demanding to go on a walking tour. He wanders outside the Green Zone and visits a market for a total of an hour and declares that a new era in dawning.
He fails to mention the sweep looking for bombs and snipers before he went, the 100 infantrymen in his bodyguard, the three Blackhawks used for aerial surveillance, the two Apache gunships for extra punch, or the personal body armor. He makes no mention of the lives he put it harm’s way, the cost, the wear and tear on people and equipment that were involved in this political stunt.
Quiddity noticed the reaction of a mild-mannered Middle East professor at mild-mannered Midwestern university, Doctor Juan Cole.
Quiddity is as stunned as I am. Dr. Cole wears tweed jackets and glasses, and always sounds so professorial.
The wingers tried to generate a smoke screen by claiming that the CNN reporter was heckling St. John of Bush’s War, and didn’t seem to notice that the event was taped and it didn’t happen. This situation led to them being run over by the Tbogg-an.
My favorite part was the Rick Moran quote about the correspondent: “an irreverent sort of fellow who tries to project the hard-bitten, world-weary, cynical war reporter image”
A quick trip to the Wikipedia entry for Michael Ware, would have told Rick that Mr. Ware is an Australian, who has been in the area since 2001, first for Time magazine before moving to CNN. He started in Afghanistan, moved to Kurdish controlled Iraq before the invasion, and left the area only to cover the Israeli-Hezbollah unpleasantness.
He has filed reports from Kabul, Kandahar, Beirut, the Bekka Valley, Fallujah, Tikrit, Tal Afar, Mosul, Samarra, Ramadi, and Baghdad. He has been embedded multiple times with both British and American units. Was almost assassinated by al Qaeda in Iraq, and has managed to acquire some of the best sources from all sides in the region. He isn’t a visitor, he lives in Iraq, and not inside a protected US base.
Mr. Ware projects what he is: a “hard-bitten, world-weary, cynical war reporter.” He’s also a law school graduate and Australia’s libel laws are not nearly as forgiving as the US’s.
8 comments
Good grief. I’ve encountered Mr. Ware before, and I consider his credentials impeccable. If any reporter alive today understands the nature of sectarian war, and has put himself in harm’s way to report it, it is Michael Ware. Columnists criticize him to the detriment of their own credibility. One might as well criticize Prof. Cole for his scholarship on the region. Oh, wait…
Sen. McCain’s well-protected walkabout notwithstanding, people are dying in Iraq at a rate guaranteed to make one cry, unless one has a heart of stone. If not for the sake of our own troops, then for the sake of Iraqis themselves… we need to get the (bleep) out of there.
“TBogg-an” … good one, Bryan. Your craft is improving, not that it was ever lacking! 🙂
Just like “The wingers tried to generate a smoke screen by…” pretending to be the Fighting 101st Keyboarders – the Equivalent to the *Rough and Ready* squadrons..as long as they don’t get…like, you know, a serious injury, a HANG NAIL or something!
Blech – despicable inveterate Liars…every one of em!
Actually, Mike Ware and Juan Cole are both people who have lived in war zones as civilians, and know what life is like during wars. Visitors and soldiers have a totally different experience. It’s like living through a hurricane and watching it on television – it’s not the same. It’s one thing to look at the destruction from a war after the guns fall silent, but altogether different when the neighborhood was whole in the morning and you are in the center of it when the shells start landing.
Karen, if this war is so important to them, no one is stopping them from tithing to Pentagon to support the war, or enlisting to fight in it. Don’t tell me you think it’s a good idea at the same time you object to paying taxes, and won’t volunteer.
I don’t want to pay for it, and don’t want anyone to be sent to fight in it. Because of the incompetence and lack of planning, the US is a major cause of the continuing violence. The US presence is a major excuse for murderous thugs to roam freely.
This is Blue Indiana’s quote of the day from Rep. Mike Pence (R-Indiana) who accompanied McCain on his stroll through the militarily clamped-down Baghdad market:
I know one state I won’t be shopping in anytime soon.
For some reason, when I was a student at IU in Bloomington, I don’t remember armed soldiers and helicopters overhead at the outdoor markets.
I didn’t like Ware for a long time, because it seemed (to this partisan bitch, anyway) that he was doing a lot of well-scripted ooh-rah for the Powers That Occupy. Then whatever happened happened, and he appeared on CNN with a black eye and a busted nose. I didn’t assume that he’d gotten that in a bar fight, in other words.
Over the past few weeks, he has gotten more and more critical of the Bushistas, and I figure that it’s about damned time, especially since he doesn’t have the personal escort of Apaches and Blackhawks and 100 soldiers to cover his ass. The McCain mutiny is most likely accidental, but the hopped-up response by the republicunts couldn’t be any more cynical or disgusting. Wasting millions so that John McCain can feel like his dick still functions. Nice priorities for a war vet, eh? Endangering the lives of military personnel and wasting HUUUUUGE chunks of military spending for a fucking CAMPAIGN STUMP?!??!?!?!? Forget his aging and pathetic excuse for a dick, this motherfucker has BALLS!!!!!!!!
This shit is not unlike what Jane Fonda did in posing on anti-aircraft weaponry with the Viet Cong. And somebody damned well ought to tell the motherfucker. He mocks the deaths of American soldiers and marines with his cold-hearted publicity stunt, and he ought to have whatever medals he won stripped from his puffed-up chest.
It’s hard to argue that the Iraq mission is short of cash when they find money for political photo ops. McCain has lost it. This was just around the bend, his need to justify his claims. I don’t doubt it was part of the reason 21 Iraqis who worked in the market were ambushed and murdered – just part of the PR campaign.
No shit.
McFonda doesn’t care, though — all that he cares about is that he looked all macho and shit whilst wasting about 350 gallons of helicopter/jet fuel a fucking minute, not to mention special overtime on 100 fucking soldiers who could’ve been annihilated for his little fucking dick-enhancing ego trip. Why the fuck can’t Bob Dole take this freak aside and quietly explain to him that it’s OVER?!??!?!