Michael Ware

McCain And Obama’s Excellent Adventure To Iraq

Posted by on May 30, 2008 at 10:30 am. NO Comments :

A few days ago, John McCain challenged Barack Obama to visit Iraq with him. McCain charged that, since Obama had not been there for a couple of years, he was unqualified to assess the situation. But McCain’s criticism descended into condescension and allegations of weak resolve:

McCain: “He really has no experience or knowledge or judgment about the issue of Iraq and he has wanted to surrender for a long time,”

This seems to be a hollow complaint coming from a fellow who’s been to Iraq a half dozen times but still fails to make a correct assessment of it, and who has no problem with another 100 years of occupation. In addition to the fact that McCain’s invitation was no more than a publicity stunt, security experts agree that the Secret Service would never sanction such a trip. And if they did, what would the travelers find?

Michael Ware, a CNN reporter who has lived in Iraq for most of the past five years gives his take on the value of such visits:

Ware: And let’s not forget what do American officials get to see?

Well, they get to see the rooftops of a lot of Iraqi houses as they chopper over them or across vast expanses of desert. They get to see rooms in the inside of U.S. bases in the Green Zone, both of which are divorced from reality. And they’ll get inundated with military briefings.

Now, in these briefings, in the past, officials have been told the insurgency was in its death throes, there was no civil war, that Iranian influence wasn’t that big a problem, that Al Qaeda had been defeated. I mean, you really aren’t going to get much of a real picture. It’s almost by definition impossible.

On a previous visit to Iraq, McCain returned with the delusional impression that…

“…there are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods today.”

On that occasion McCain showed up in Baghdad wearing a Kevlar vest, with an entourage of 100 soldiers, three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships. The absurdity of this manufactured photo-op prompted Ware to remark at the time:

“I don’t know what part of Neverland Senator McCain is talking about when he says we can go strolling in Baghdad.”

McCain will first have to return from his junket to Neverland, where he appears to have taken up residence, before he can go to Iraq with Obama.

John McCain: The Bitch Is Back

Posted by on November 15, 2007 at 12:50 pm. 1 Comments :

When John McCain was asked by a supporter, “How do we beat the bitch,” referring to Hillary Clinton, McCain responded by laughing and saying that it was an “excellent question” which he then proceeded to answer. As an after thought he tosses out an expression of his “respect” for Clinton.


Now McCain’s campaign is outraged that this exchange was covered by CNN. His campaign manager Rick Davis has sent out an e-mail to supporters insisting that CNN owes McCain an apology:

“The CNN Network, affectionately known as the Clinton News Network, has stooped to an all-time low and is gratuitously attacking John McCain for not sufficiently defending Hillary Clinton enough when a South Carolina voter used the ‘B’ word to describe her when John McCain stopped into a luncheon yesterday at the Trinity restaurant in Hilton Head, S.C.”

Really? An all-time low? Lower than during the run-up to the war in Iraq when even CNN’s Christiane Amanpour said the the press had been muzzled and that…

“…my station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News. And it did, in fact, put a climate of fear and self-censorship, in my view, in terms of the kind of broadcast work we did.”

Lower than when CNN followed McCain around Baghdad as he proclaimed that there are neighborhoods where we could all take leisurely walks with security? This prompted a response from CNN’s Michael Ware:

“I don’t know what part of Neverland Senator McCain is talking about when he says we can go strolling in Baghdad.”

Does Davis really believe that CNN, by merely reporting McCain’s failure to object to an inappropriately derisive question, sinks to an all-time low? You may think that Davis has reached the pinnacle of hyperbole, but he is only just getting started:

“The liberal media has figured out that John McCain is the only thing that stands between a Hillary Clinton presidency, and they are therefore trying to stop the McCain comeback. Simply put, CNN is scared that John McCain will beat Hillary Clinton. They are right to be scared.”

While Davis asserts that McCain is “the only thing that stands between a Hillary Clinton presidency,” he doesn’t say “and what.” That must be what is terrifying CNN. It’s the fear of the unknown. It couldn’t be McCain’s alleged “comeback” that even Rasmussen, whose poll he cited when answering the “bitch” question, described as follows:

“the Arizona Senator now leads Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton by a statistically meaningless two percentage points.”

That’s mighty scary stuff. And leave it to McCain’s campaign to promote fear as a means to counter their perceived political enemies. They want CNN to be scared, just as they want their own supporters to be scared. Did I mention that this alarming email was sent to McCain supporters along with a pitch for donations? You better pony up patriots, because John McCain is the only thing that stands between Hillary Clinton and…..something???

The Vanishing Intelligence Trick

Posted by on July 19, 2007 at 1:24 am. NO Comments :

When the White House declassified its latest National Intelligence Estimate, it released it into a whirlwind of spin that could have taken out a small mid-western town.

The document itself said of Al Qaeda that:
“Their intent to attack the U.S. is undiminished, and they continue to adapt and improve their capabilities.”

Fran Townsend, the President’s Homeland Security Advisor said:
“We are facing a persistent terrorist enemy led by al Qaeda that remains driven and intent on attacking the homeland.”

And a leaked intelligence analysis proclaims reminiscently that:
“Al Qaeda Better Positioned To Strike The West.”

These statements are all consistent with the strategery of the administration which commonly seeks to pump up the fear ratio when it finds its popularity declining. And its popularity continues to set new lows. At the same time, they must realize that they can’t get away with painting a picture of a revitalized Al Qaeda without the nation wondering what the heck has been going on the past six years. The President doesn’t want to admit that he’s been asleep at the switch so he has to come out and say:

“There is a perception in the coverage that al Qaeda may be as strong today as they were prior to September 11. That’s just simply not the case,”

What you have just seen is the President waving a wand and dismissing everything his own intelligence machine has produced and reducing it to mere perceptions created by faulty coverage. Yet he gets to keep the simmering fear dispensed by the reports he now tosses off. Lucky for him, most of the press corps observing this spectacle are only interested in transcribing it and getting to happy hour in time for the cocktail weenies.

There is at least one correspondent that stayed alert and was not fooled by this stunt. In an exchange with Wolf Blitzer, Michael Ware, CNN’s man in Baghdad, delivered this bit of keen reporting:

“Now in the midst of all of this, despite this material, this evidence, we must be aware of the spin — the smoke and mirrors from the administration, trying to reshape the message on Iraq being specifically about Al Qaeda — America’s lingering, most familiar fear, trying to invoke some Pavlovian response from the American public, to fear them into again supporting the war. That doesn’t quite hold water.”

If that wasn’t enough to send poor Wolf into cardiac arrest, Jack Cafferty added this:

“What if we had spent the last five years with 158,000 soldiers and $500 billion hunting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and in the border regions next to Pakistan? I wonder if we’d still be hearing all of this stuff about Al Qaeda.”

What if…

A Stroll In Baghdad

Posted by on April 2, 2007 at 5:04 pm. NO Comments :

Last week John McCain launched a press offensive to declare that things were improving in Iraq. He told Bill Bennet on his radio show, that…

McCain In Iraq“there are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods today.”

Despite the charm of a romantic outing with John and Bill, hand in hand, strolling the palm-lined avenues of Sadr City, I don’t think that even a high-stakes gambler like Bennet would take that risk. McCain himself was unprepared to do so when, a few days after his rosy remarks, he showed up in Baghdad wearing a Kevlar vest, with an entourage of 100 soldiers, three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships. That would make me feel a little safer as well.

McCain repeated his assertions of tranquility on CNN admonishing Wolf Blitzer to “catch up,” and added that even General Petraeus tooled around the city in an unarmored Humvee (which Petraeus’ staff denied when they finished laughing).

CNN’s correspondent in Iraq, Michael Ware, was struck by the absurdity of McCain’s comments. Drawing on his experience of four years in Iraq, Ware pointed out the obvious: that the streets of Baghdad are still dangerous for anyone, especially an American. He added:

“I don’t know what part of Neverland Senator McCain is talking about when he says we can go strolling in Baghdad.”

Well, now he’s done it. Ware’s insistence on reporting accurately has now set off a torrent of hostility from the right wing echo chamber. Their leader, Matt Drudge, led things off by reporting that Ware had “heckled” Sens. McCain and Lindsay Graham in a press conference. Drudge’s unnamed “official” called Ware’s conduct “outrageous,” saying…

“here you have two United States Senators in Bagdad [sic] giving first-hand reports while Ware is laughing and mocking their comments. I’ve never witnessed such disrespect. This guy is an activist not a reporter.”

The only problem with that report is that Ware denies that he heckled anyone and, in fact, didn’t even ask a question at the event. Video obtained by Raw Story confirms that there was no heckling by Ware or anybody else. So if Ware was telling the truth, who is the lying “official” that was cited by Drudge? Or is Drudge the liar? That scenario wouldn’t require much imagination.

It is disturbing enough that McCain is trying to mislead the American people with fantasies of an Iraqi vacation paradise. But he is doing so at a time when, contrary to his assertions of progress, things are actually getting worse. There were more killings in Iraq in March than in February, when the escalation began. And the number of American soldiers killed was the tenth highest since the war started in 2003. But this doesn’t stop McCain and his media enablers from lying and slandering honest reporters.

I’m actually a little surprised at the impatience of the attack dogs on the right. Had they listened a little longer to Ware’s conversation with Blitzer, they would have heard him say this about the relationship between violence in Iraq and politics in Washington:

“Do you think anyone enduring that is paying attention to artificial deadlines that are going to get vetoed by the president? And even if they were to pass through the legislative process, would only serve al Qaeda and Iran, America’s enemies? No. People are focusing on the near game.”

Ware is characterizing the legislative timetables advocated by Democrats as artificial and advantageous to Al Qaeda. That’s a perspective that’s shared by the pro-war right and you would think they would appreciate it. But they’ve developed a strain of ideological blindness so severe that it causes them to beat up on anyone who points out the cracks in their false accounts of a successful “surge” – even their allies.