Hugh Hewitt interviewed TIME Magazine's Baghdad bureau chief Michael Ware, whose idea of a good way to cover Iraq is to embed/liaise with the al-Qeada affiliates and Ba'athist fascists of the so-called "insurgency." The transcripts are up, and Hewitt writes:
"Parts of this interview trouble me a great deal. Ware is quite obviously a courageous, battle-hardened and determined reporter, but his answers to a variety of questions leave me concerned that the pressure of his circumstances will impact his reporting, and may have already impacted the candor of his assessment of the jihadists and the "insurgents." His refusal to answer other questions of historical judgment and relevance - were the Soviets better off under Stalin or Khrushchev, for example - tell me he is aware of the deep problems with his analysis of Iraq under Saddam and post-Saddam, and that he refuses to engage in any conversation that will inevitably expose that analysis as indefensible.
But the major problem comes from the threat of distortion born of fear, the same problem that we learned plagued CNN under Saddam, but learned only after Saddam was toppled."
Commentary and key excerpts here, or go for the full transcript and MP3 file. Reading the interview, one cannot reasonably come to any other conclusion. He is shilling and soft-pedaling for fascists and terrorists, consciously telling less than the truth in order to preserve his ability to cover a war from the enemy's point of view.
Ware has a history here - and when you combine his self-censorship because the jihadis might read it with his frank acknowledgement of the role that the insurgents told him to his face they wished him to play, it's incredibly damning. Now contrast Ware's 2005 Tal Afar reports with the actions of and letter from its mayor recently. No doubt his unsubstantiated charges about US soldiers "manhandling" Iraqi women were also a great interview-smoother with his Islamofascist "contacts".
The operative word here is traitor. To his profession. To his country.
Joe,
You write as if you've not yet seen the drunken Ware cavorting with Bill Mahr.
Mike Daley
Just be glad I didn't try to send the wmv as an attachment.
http://www.exposetheleft.net/video/michael-ware-maher.wmv
"Reading the interview, one cannot reasonably come to any other conclusion. He is shilling and soft-pedaling for fascists and terrorists, consciously telling less than the truth in order to preserve his ability to cover a war from the enemy's point of view."
This is a maddening statement. I read the other interview and I beg to differ. We are more than free to question Mr. Ware's prejudice towards how things in Iraq are progressing, but to call him a traitor...take a breath, Mr. Katzman.
I, for one, absolutely want Mr. Ware to continue reporting anything he can about whichever insurgency he is brave (foolish) enough to meet with. As a once and future soldier (former enlisted, back in school and ROTC) I want to know everything I can about the insurgent groups. That they are using Mr. Ware to further their own goals I don't find particularly germane. Everyone in a media war uses reporters for their own goals; nonetheless media reports still have their uses. We simply must treat them with the requisite skepticism. And we must ensure that our own efforts to get our own views out into the open are more successful than Zarqawi's.
Let's hear it from Mr. Ware himself, shall we?
This guy has just told you to your face, sir, that he intends to limit his reporting and essentially lie, in order to keep meeting with insurgents so he can bring you their approved content.
In short, he won't help you know "everything you can." He'll let you know everything the terrorists want you to hear. And he won't tell you in his reports (indeed, will do so only when pressed by a hostile interviewer) that his reports are being redacted in this way.
So now he's lying to you twice.
This is a complete betrayal of any meaningful journalistic standard. It is also aiding and abetting enemies of America in time of war. And as the links above demonstrate, it's 100% conscious and intentional. And he is the Bureau Chief of TIME magazine in Baghdad.
I stand by my characterization.
Final note: as ROTC, check out the good uses your colleagues have found for insurgent videos from Islamist web sites as training tools. Highly recommend as an option for sharpening the soldiers you will command.
I'm going to have to respectfully disagree on this one, Mr. Katzman. Lord Haw-Haw was a traitor. Mr. Ware has quirky hobbies.
Mr. Ware has said nothing more than his continued access and the continued attachment of his head to his neck will be dependent on his perceived use to the insurgent cause. You may see this as intentionally lying and shilling for the enemy, which strictly speaking it is, but it's also par for the journalistic course. Faced with the choice between a less-than-truthful Mr. Ware or a less-than-truthful al-Jazeera (or simply nothing), I consider Mr. Ware's reporting to be useful. Unfettered access to the truth of the insurgents' behavior? Certainly not, but I don't see that as a possibility. Mr. Ware can either be true to our journalistic ideals and get no access or put them aside and get some access. Pick your poison.
As far as I'm concerned, we need to start accepting certain elements of a media war as inevitable obstacles. Insurgents will inevitably seek to twist the media to suit their own bloody ends. The media will inevitably fail to grasp the bigger picture. I don't necessarily disagree with the constant harping on the media for its results in Iraq. I simply don't see it as useful. We are not going to change what I see as inherent forces in journalistic practice by accusing journalists of being traitors or shills or whatnot. Journalism is what it is. As individuals we can always demand better from the media. As strategists we need to spend more time thinking of ways to deal with the media as they are and likely always will be, and less time bemoaning the facts on the ground.
Addendum: We had a few individuals in basic training who were prone to utilize a certain video from the Soviet-Afghan war to ensure we understood the kind of individuals we might one day face. I'm not sure this is the type of insurgent video you were referring to, but, needless to say, it made an impression.
I pick a bureau chief of TIME magazine who is true to journalistic ideals. That is what TIME is supposed to stand for, and that's why it has more credibility with the American public. Al-Jazeera (known as "Sunni TV" to many annoyed Shi'a and Kurds in Iraq) isn't exactly the standard I would promote for the US media, and to say there is no difference is an indictment rather than an argument.
If TIME believes that's the standard it aspires to, furthermore, then I definitely want to the public to know that loud and clear. That would be useful.
The argument that "well, they'll always be corrupt so why criticize" is obviously ridiculous when applied to, say, corporate malfesance and 60 Minutes documentaries. The tectonic shift represented by the blogosphere puts the media under the same kind of scrutiny, and that's a good thing. Exercising that opportunity is not useless, it's quite valuable. And useful. As Rathergate demonstrated.
And the media do not always have to be this way, as demonstrated by the simple and provable fact that they have not always been this way.
In light of which, criticism will continue to be useful.
RE: insurgent videos: your colleagues are using more modern videos from Iraq, which show attacks on American forces. They have been gleaned from Islamist web sites, which use them as recruiting aids. Iraqi videos strike me as more operationally useful, though a video from Afghanistan has a certain motivational value.
Ask around, especially at CALL (Center for Army Lessons Learned) and via AKO (Army Knowledge Online).
"The operative word here is traitor. To his profession. To his country."
But not to his own ego, and that is all that counts in journalism.
In 1961, Edward R. Murrow co-hosted with John Wayne a special on Communism and the Cold War and discussed the threat to the United States that the Soviet Union and communism posed. After his landmark documentary Harvest of Shame was being used to attack the US by Fidel, Murrow was vehement about attacking Fidel and defending his country.
In the late Seventies Fred Friendly hosted a forum on PBS with Mike Wallace and Peter Jennings. In which Wallace persuaded Jennings that he should not warn (in a hypothetical) US troops of attacks by rebels because he was a journalist first and a "citizen of the world."
Journalists have no identification with the United States or it's people, by and large. They view themselves as a new Priesthood dispensing morality and moral virtue. Of course Ware (an Aussie I might add) loathes and detests the US Military and it's people. Of course he openly roots for the Al Qaeda and jihadi forces.
Journalists are on the side of the enemy. No use pretending otherwise.
"apostasy" absolutely nails it:
"I don't necessarily disagree with the constant harping on the media for its results in Iraq. I simply don't see it as useful. We are not going to change what I see as inherent forces in journalistic practice by accusing journalists of being traitors or shills or whatnot. Journalism is what it is."
It doesn't matter what the media should be like in a perfect world. Did we learn nothing from Walter Kronkite and the Tet Offensive? The American media will eventually turn on a bloody, drawn-out war, especially one in which they feel duped into. If you are President and take this country into war, you better know ahead of time that you can handle a media blitz against it. It doesn't matter if it right or wrong, it's just a fact, so deal with it. You go to war with the country you've got, not the one you want.
Mike Daley,
I posted last week about that Bill Maher show.
"If you are President and take this country into war, you better know ahead of time that you can handle a media blitz against it."
I have to agree that Bush blew off selling the war to the American public. He promoted it once or twice and then left it to the bloggers to do his work for him. Now he is trying to play catch-up.
I think he will forge ahead regardless of what the public thinks, but if the war doesn't have broad support and understanding from the public, what of his successor? I think he is figuring that out now that some Republicans are criticizing him more.
It's fair to be upset that Time hires people who work with the insurgents, but we are better off picking through the "news" then having none at all. So what if he is on their side, find a way to exploit him.
Someone should do an expose on whether Ware's reporting is accurate. In his Hewitt interview Ware also said that the pentagon has lied about what is going on in Iraq. That needs to be backed up with facts or Ware needs to retract the statement.
He also said he can have no political motives since he is Australian and not American. This is misleading, Australia is in the coalition. Ware works for TIME which is an American magazine.
However calling him a trator is pointless. The underlying issue should be whether he is providing good quality journalism. Everyone's primary concern should be that media reports give an accurate impression of the actual situation in Iraq. Since no one would ask the media to report falsely out of patriotism and the media would have to admit that they desire to provide high quality journalism, the grounds for discussion should be the facts in Iraq and how the current style of reporting is not creating an accurate representation of those facts and is therefore not very good journalism.
You can't win the debate with out winning the quality argument. Once you win the quality argument you don't need to discuss patriotism. If you try to push the patriotism argument without winning the quality argument you will be accused of using patriotism as an excuse for falsehood. Therefore the issue of patriotism should be left out of the discussion.
Time is just following in CNN's footsteps in Iraq. Does the name Eason Jordan ring a bell?
"Hey, look how Glen Wishard is trying to re-fight the last War on the Liberals, taking great liberties with the facts to do so."
As far as I recall, the last war on 'liberals' was the Cold War. In it, the increasingly misnamed 'liberals' were on the side of the Soviet Union, the Khymer Rouge, and Fidel Castro. It's amazing how having people you know slaughtered by Cuban mercenaries sours you on people singing the praises of the Castro. And it sort of soured me on 'liberals'.
Now, I really don't know anything about a 'war on liberals', but to the extent that self-styled liberals are going to claim that 'the war on Terror is a real sideshow' and that the real enemies that Americans should be afraid of are the guys conducting the war on terror, then you are going to find me not very well disposed to the wankers. If self-styled 'liberals' find themselves being 'made war on', or at least imagine that they are being 'made war on', perhaps that they should consider that they are standing abit too close to the enemies of the United States.
I'm not really aiming at you, but if you are going to embed yourself with the enemy, I won't get too upset if you are part of the collateral damage.
I am against a War on Liberals, but I could definitely get behind a general taunting of Grandiose, Self-Righteous, Drama-Queenly Egotists.
Liberals I kind of like.
Obviously what we need is less Mike Ware and more of Wretchard declaring the insurgency defeated over and over again.
Hugh Hewitt is a sad joke.
Joe, perhaps you should go back to linking to Ralph Peters.
I dont doubt Ware is anti-Bush and doesnt believe in this war, but that doesnt mean he's not doing important work. Any glimmer we get from inside the insurgency is critical information. I wouldnt turn down a cup of sugar from Toyko Rose at this point (and Ware is hardly a propagandist or a traitor in any way).
Perhaps you refer to the New Left assault on the Democratic Convention Center in 1968, also known as "The Chicago Tet Offensive". Not much of a war if you ask me, but the liberals sure acted like they'd been whipped afterwards.
My first "War on Liberals" was the Great Liberal Turkey Shoot of November, 1980. That brings back some fond memories. As Lee said, it is well that war is so terrible or we should grow to love it too much.
Mark, so even a glimmer of info from inside the insurgency is important? Important to whom, us or the "insurgents?" If MW is feeding theretofore unknown info to our military that enables them to kill the "insurgents," then yes, what he's doing has value (and HH should continue to help him maintain his cover). However, if that farfetched scenario isn't actually what's happening, and the glimmer that we're getting from Ware is just what the enemy wants the MSM to publish in order to make a premature American withdrawal more likely, then the info he's providing isn't really valuable unless you think that it's good to be misled so that Liberalism (with a capital L) will lose. If, at a time when the difference between victory and defeat is the political support for the war here in the US, Ware really is skewing his reporting to favor the enemy, then he is aiding the enemy and should bear the responsibility that follows.
"If MW is feeding theretofore unknown info to our military that enables them to kill the "insurgents," then yes, what he's doing has value (and HH should continue to help him maintain his cover)."
Kill them, split them off, nuetralize them, set them fighting each other, whatever it takes.
"However, if that farfetched scenario isn't actually what's happening, and the glimmer that we're getting from Ware is just what the enemy wants the MSM to publish in order to make a premature American withdrawal more likely, then the info he's providing isn't really valuable unless you think that it's good to be misled so that Liberalism (with a capital L) will lose."
Farfetched? Knowing thy enemy is farfetched? Lets be honest here- and i'm a big Bush/war supporter- this administration either didnt understand the nature of this insurgency or lied about it for years. Might it not be useful to our military to know who the enemy is, what they want, what their tactics and goals are? I dont consider that far fetched.
As far as losing the war because we've heard the words of the enemy, I happen to have more faith in the American people than that. They deserve to hear things and decide for themselves. Whats worse, Americans getting to hear reporting on the enemy that includes their propaganda, or Americans being blindsided when what the government is telling them doesnt turn out to be entirely accurate? Tet didnt turn the war around just because the media blew it up, the media was able to blow it up because the government was feeding people over-optimistic nonsense for years.
"If, at a time when the difference between victory and defeat is the political support for the war here in the US, Ware really is skewing his reporting to favor the enemy, then he is aiding the enemy and should bear the responsibility that follows."
What's "favoring" the enemy mean? Reporting on him, reporting what he says, what conclusions you might draw firsthand(rightly or wrongly)? Is reporting an enemy victory 'favoring' the enemy? Or should we hide it, because reporting it is 'helping' the enemy? Was it a mistake to report Pearl Harbor to the American people? Heck, maybe we should have papered over 911, called it a gas leak. Couldnt have people thinking Al Qaeda snuck one in on us. American people might crack.
Im getting real tired of this line of thinking lately. Michael Yon goes over and reports his POV, Michael Ware reports his, im smart enough to figure out whats what. I dont want to hear pure government cheerleaders anymore than i want to hear only MSM anti-Bush hotel dwellers. If you actually bother to read Ware's reports, there is some interesting and potentially exploitable information there about the insurgents. This kind of thing tells us how to fight, how to win. Ignoring it because you find it more convenient and comforting to imagine the enemy a faceless madman screaming and brandishing a bombbelt is a foolish mistake.
Except for the one word "supporter", I'm down with everything Mark Buehner wrote in 22.
I'd guess Mr Buehner has gotten separated from his teammates because he's still looking at some way to "win" the War in Iraq, or at least to improve the situation. (Mind you, other than the obvious reduction of carnage, I am no longer certain what that would mean—is Moqtada al-Sadr's choice for PM a "victory"?) The rest of the team is trying to blame somebody else for the terrible shortfall in results on the ground, while dealing with the obvious disenchantment of the American public as the pre-war PR story is revealed as so much nonsense.
The American people were willing to enlist, to pay taxes, and to go to war to capture Osama bin Laden. It was the first military action I ever heard my father (a Korean War conscientious objector) endorse, to the extent it was an armed police action to neutralize the Al Qaeda and Taliban criminals. How much we are willing to sacrifice for a war whose strategic purpose was unclear (if you discounted the WMD falsehoods, as I did), and whose tactical execution is a sequence of horrific blunders fatal to whatever chances ever existed is unclear.
BTW, Mark Steyn must be added to Hugh Hewitt as another right-wing pundit whose seriously confused about what's difficult: Give that boy a Bronze Star.Mark, by all means, let's hear the words of the enemy -- what the enemy really says, and let's see what it does, and understand what its values are. If the MSM prints that story faithfully, the insurgency has no chance. But that's not what Ware is giving us. Ware is giving us a sanitized (somewhat, anyway) account of the enemy, because full disclosure would jeopardize his access. Ware isn't offering us an opportunity to know the enemy; rather, he's offering the enemy a sympathetic portrayal in exchange for Ware getting a non-printable exclusive. The price the enemy exacts from Ware is his integrity and, ultimately, his obedience. Ware's a tool.
And contrary to Ware's self-aggrandizing claim, he didn't break the news that the Iraqi "insurgency" wasn't a monolith. It might have been news to the MSM or anyone who depends on the MSM for information, but certainly the blogosphere has been aware of the ethnic diversity and, importantly, the ethnic integration, in Iraq for a long time. Heck, even some of the MSM knew it (Christopher Hitchens has been writing about it for a while, now). There is nothing about Iraq that Ware (or anyone else at Time, Newsweek or any of the other dumbed down MSM weekly rags) has published that someone in the blogosphere hadn't already written about. Ware has sacrificed his integrity for nothing more than access and, perhaps, a future book deal. Let's hope that if he ever miscalculates and finds himself endangered by his deal with the devil, no GI's or Iraqi soldier's life is risked to save his worthless hide.
Yehudit,
re your #10,
I know that you posted this earlier on WoC, I plead laziness in just using your linked to item rather than finding your original post for the link.
No disrespect intended, in fact, as you'd linked to this wmv in your WoC post, I was more than surprised Joe didn't include it in his post.
Mike
Ware admits that he lies about his reporting and we have to find excuses for that? The word traitor fits nicely here.
At the outbreak of WWI in 1914, patriots rushed to enlist on all sides. By the time it was over four years later, the world had changed. "Hooray for our side" was a sick joke to many of the survivors of the trenches of the Western Front.
The 1933 Oxford debate ("wouldn't fight for country" won 275 to 133) follows naturally.
There was a swing back in the other direction among the Allies during WW2, as liberal democracy seemed under existential threat, facing off against evil ideologies. Pick up one of Ernie Pyle's war dispatches. You realize that you're reading a partisan account--no question, Pyle wants the Allies to win.
Then the ambiguities of the Cold War, and Viet Nam, bringing elite journalism's pendulum back towards the post-WWI disdain of 'patriotism.' The famous 1989 'gotta get the story no matter what' colloquium including Peter Jennings and Mike Wallace.
Ware, like Wallace and Jennings have views of their countries that are closer to those of disillusioned WWI vets than to that of Ernie Pyle. Add to that the demands of objective journalism. Report! Don't take sides!
Ware isn't a traitor--compare what he says to what chic reporter/heiress Molly Bingham writes. From Hewitt's interview, Ware is an incredibly brave man, and an insightful observer. His loyalty is to his profession--not to his country. Ware is the kind of reporter J-schools are hoping to turn out.
Calling Ware a traitor has no meaning. Or, taking it the way Joe means it, it's a label he'd be proud to wear, along with most of the US media. Yeah, I don't kneel to kiss the ring of George Bush, or his poodle John Howard. I go get the story. I call it as I see it. What of it, mate?
This brings up a second, more interesting point. By his conduct in Iraq, is Ware betraying his own ideals?
Ware described to Hewitt the dance he does with the insurgents. He's aware that they are using him to present their story to the world--to frame it in ways that advance their military and political plans. Ware says that the insurgents read the press very carefully--and his own work in particular. He's been within a hair's breadth of execution multiple times--his life depends on the insurgents' continued approval of his work, and he knows it.
And Ware's readers know it too: he has to report favorably to stay alive.
In other words, Ware has entered into a contract with his hosts. You agree not to kill me and to keep talking to me, and in return I write reports that portray you in favorable terms. Terms that are so favorable that you look good even after my sophisticated readers have taken my situation into account.
Why is Ware so solicitous of the jihadis? Because the jihadis have structured the transaction by murdering journalists as a matter of calculated media policy. These murders are the necessary precondition for the deal with Mike Ware. Else, would he follow their script out of admiration for Zarqawi? Of course not.
The next Ugly Insurgency--the one that's going to start somewhere a few years from now--will have rebel leaders who study history as they ponder strategy. They'll read Sun Tzu, Mao, and General Giap, and the Marines' Small Wars Handbook. And, when it comes to relationships with the press, they'll read Michael Ware's dispatches in Time, and the Hewitt interview. Then they'll know what to do to formulate a policy that Gets Results.
Ware is a man of few illusions. He will have figured out this line of reasoning a long time ago. Yet the corrosive consequences of Ware's actions to his own ideals and to the lives of future reporters don't seem to trouble him much.
I wonder why not.
Michael Ware is a traitor to the US. He clearly is helping the enemy. Instead reporting the facts, he should focus on the repainting of schools and handouts of soccer balls to Iraq children. Only then will he be a real journalist.
The problem, as noted above, is precisely that Ware is NOT really about telling the whole truth. By his own admission, and supported by his record.
The fact that he has taken physical risks does not invalidate the weight of that point in terms of his professional obligations. Nor the moral weight of the nature of the people whom he has chosen to modify his reporting for, and why, without so informing his readers until faced with a hostile interviewer.
Ware telling us that he's reporting the truth remind me of Arthur Andersen telling us that their audits of Enron were honest and guided completely by professional standards. I also seem to recall them and their defenders taking great offense at all those baseless accusations that self-interest and a desire to maintain a client account might be compromising their judgment, or the performance of their duty.
You all have got to be kidding. Michael Ware is the ONLY person I have heard who is understands the dynamics of what is going on. What's troubling is the way you view him and his reporting. No wonder this country is in the situation it is, with people (and reporters) like you all. What a friggin joke.
Michael ware is revolting. that is all I have to say. He is beneath my contempt. He has no idea of what is at stake. He and Anderson Cooper exploit Iraq war for their own vanity. I want to vomit every time I see them.