A good bit on Dozier and co.

[RuntheDamnBall]

I generally don't like Maureen Dowd, at all. She's often snide and snarky. But this one resonated with me a bit more, though she does rehash some talking-point material.

 

I find it very revealing that two of the major reporters and their crews that have been hit with these attacks were trying to cover "the good side of the war," the side conservatives lament isn't being shown to us -- only to be put in harm's way, and in several crewmembers' cases, in the arms of death. Read on.

 

Live From Baghdad: More Dying

By MAUREEN DOWD

 

James Brolan, the CBS soundman who was blown up in Baghdad on Memorial

Day, was cute and funny and cheated at Scrabble. The 42-year-old former

British soldier left a wife, an 18-year-old son and a 12-year-old

daughter.

 

Paul Douglas, the cameraman, was a slab of a man with a great smile and

gentle charm, a whiz of a cook who lived in London, where he liked to

ride his motorcycle and cruise in an old Bentley that he'd restored

himself. The 48-year-old left a wife, two daughters, three

grandchildren and a mother.

 

Several teams of doctors have been fighting to save the life, and the

legs, of Kimberly Dozier, the CBS correspondent who was hurt by the

roadside bomb. The single 39-year-old was a headlong, generous reporter

who had spent years covering Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

"People rarely think of a woman as pretty as Kimberly as being strong,"

Dan Rather blogged on the CBS Web site. "She is."

 

Mr. Rather recalled that she had kept a kayak in her room in Baghdad,

hoping she could someday persuade the military to let her row on the

Tigris, near where she almost died while embedded with the American

infantry, reporting a story about what the troops were doing on

Memorial Day.

 

Doctors said that her heart had stopped beating and her blood pressure

had plummeted. But somehow, with the help of blood donations from those

in the combat hospital, they stabilized her. (Soldiers dragged Mr.

Douglas away from the burning vehicle and put a tourniquet on one of

his legs that had been blasted off, but it was too late to save him.)

 

The administration and some right-wing commentators have blamed the

press for not reporting positive news in Iraq. The radio host Laura

Ingraham has suggested that the press is "invested in America's defeat"

and has mocked TV journalists for "reporting from hotel balconies about

the latest I.E.D.'s going off."

 

Conservative chatterers have parroted President Bush's complaint that

"people resuming their normal lives will never be as dramatic as the

footage of an I.E.D. explosion."

 

But now two network personalities — Ms. Dozier and Bob Woodruff — have

been severely injured by roadside bombs while embedded with the

military, trying to do the sort of stories the administration wants.

 

"One thing I don't want to hear anymore," Steve Capus, the president of

NBC News, told The Times's Bill Carter, "is people like Laura Ingraham

spewing about us not leaving our balconies in the Green Zone to cover

what's really happening in Iraq."

 

Even with constricted coverage, the tally of journalists killed in Iraq

is now 71, more than the number killed in Vietnam or World War II.

(This war is now six months short of the United States involvement in

World War II, but at least then we knew we were winning by this point.)

 

Shaken by the CBS losses, networks were reassessing how to cover a

story with such excruciating risks. Journalists in Iraq are hamstrung

in Iraq just as the troops are, struggling, with ever greater

frustration and higher costs, to do the job they were sent in to do.

 

As the CBS war correspondent Lara Logan told CNN recently, American

officials often reject her requests for optimistic stories, saying:

"Oh, sorry, we can't take you to that school project, because if you

put that on TV, they're going to be attacked, the teachers are going to

be killed, the children might be the victims of attack. Oh, sorry, we

can't show this reconstruction project because then that's going to

expose it to sabotage."

 

An American soldier was killed in the blast that killed the CBS

cameraman and soundman and injured Ms. Dozier. But more than a day

after we knew everything about the CBS victims, no information had been

released about him.

 

There is a tragic anonymity about this war. Kids die but we don't know

who they are, other than their names, which turn up in small print.

They do not touch everyone's lives because, without a draft, they are

not drawn from every part of American society. The administration tries

to play down any sense of individual loss; the president has not

attended a single funeral, and the government banned pictures of their

returning coffins. The Iraqi civilians who die don't even get their

names in the small print.

 

Journalists die and we know who they are. We know they liked to cook

and play Scrabble. But we don't know who killed them, and their killers

will never be brought to justice. The enemy has no face, just a finger

on a detonator.

[Wacka]

Woodruff's injuries are because he had to get a photo op- sticking his head outside. Everey war has journalists hurt or killed -Ernie Pyle being the most famous.

In general, journalist feel they are invincible, and how dare he enemy shoot at them.

[RuntheDamnBall]

Woodruff's injuries are because he had to get a photo op- sticking his head outside.

700942[/snapback]

Link?

Everey war has journalists hurt or killed -Ernie Pyle being the most famous.

In general, journalist feel they are invincible, and how dare he enemy shoot at them.

700942[/snapback]

I'm well aware of that. My point was that journalists are getting killed trying to do the very thing that Republicans want them to do -- to show that Iraq has some measure of safety and success and that good things are happening there.

[Wacka]

Woodruff and the cameraman were on top sticking their heads out. Their injuries were head injuries. The soldiers were all inside and if I recall correctly, not hurt.

[Crap Throwing Monkey]

Woodruff and the cameraman were on top sticking their heads out. Their injuries were head injuries. The soldiers were all inside  and if I recall correctly, not hurt.

701323[/snapback]

 

There's a very easy explanation for that: when bullets are flying, soldiers are smart. Reporters are idiots.