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Matt25
Guest
So what was his/her name and with whom was he/she embedded?
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gilliam
Guest
%between%
I don’t know. He seems to have worked for Magnum agency. Maybe Corentin Florier
the bad guys
newssafety.com/stories/afp/iraq25.htm
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gilliam
Guest
Yep, it was him. This report says he is a freelance photographer, and they got one of his buddies. Corentin Fleury is young (age 21).
Reporters Without Borders today called on the US military authorities to explain the continuing detention of Bakhtiar Haddad, an Iraqi interpreter of Kurdish origin who has been held for the past three weeks by US forces after being arrested in Fallujah on 8 November with French freelance photographer Corentin Fleury. US officials have said Haddad has been held in Abu Ghraib prison since 23 November on suspicion of collaborating with Iraqi guerrillas.
cascfen.org/news.php?nid=724&cid=22
Reporters Without Borders today called on the US military authorities to explain the continuing detention of Bakhtiar Haddad, an Iraqi interpreter of Kurdish origin who has been held for the past three weeks by US forces after being arrested in Fallujah on 8 November with French freelance photographer Corentin Fleury. US officials have said Haddad has been held in Abu Ghraib prison since 23 November on suspicion of collaborating with Iraqi guerrillas.
cascfen.org/news.php?nid=724&cid=22
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Matt25
Guest
ipsnews.net/new_nota.asp?idnews=26333
" French freelance photographer Corentin Fleury was detained by the U.S. military with his interpreter, 28 year-old Bahktiyar Abdulla Hadad when they were leaving Fallujah just before the siege of the city began.
They had worked in the city for nine days leading up to the siege, and were held for five days in a military detention facility outside the city.
“They were very nervous and they asked us what we saw, and looked over all my photos, asking me questions about them,” Fleury told IPS. “They asked where the weapons were, what the neighborhoods were like, all of this.”
Fleury said he had photographed homes destroyed by U.S. warplanes, and life in the city leading up to the siege.
“They wanted information from me regarding the situation in Fallujah, but they have yet to release my translator,” he said. “I made a silly photo of him holding a sniper rifle, and I think this is why they are holding him. I’ve been trying to get information for the last five days on him, and the French embassy has been trying to get him out, different journalists he’s worked with are sending letters, but there has been no luck so far.” (END/2004)
This doesn’t appear to be a French female journalist embedded with the “bad guys” as originally suggested. More like journalists not embedded with the “good guys” getting a hard time for being independent
" French freelance photographer Corentin Fleury was detained by the U.S. military with his interpreter, 28 year-old Bahktiyar Abdulla Hadad when they were leaving Fallujah just before the siege of the city began.
They had worked in the city for nine days leading up to the siege, and were held for five days in a military detention facility outside the city.
“They were very nervous and they asked us what we saw, and looked over all my photos, asking me questions about them,” Fleury told IPS. “They asked where the weapons were, what the neighborhoods were like, all of this.”
Fleury said he had photographed homes destroyed by U.S. warplanes, and life in the city leading up to the siege.
“They wanted information from me regarding the situation in Fallujah, but they have yet to release my translator,” he said. “I made a silly photo of him holding a sniper rifle, and I think this is why they are holding him. I’ve been trying to get information for the last five days on him, and the French embassy has been trying to get him out, different journalists he’s worked with are sending letters, but there has been no luck so far.” (END/2004)
This doesn’t appear to be a French female journalist embedded with the “bad guys” as originally suggested. More like journalists not embedded with the “good guys” getting a hard time for being independent
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gilliam
Guest
Matt25 said:
My understading is he left during the siege. But he is the only one I know of. And, no, he is not a female, but male. He had be in and out of Fallujah throughout 2004. After initial scepticism, the terrorists, it would seem, liked him.
more info:
He left Fallujah on Nov 10th the battle started Nov 8th.
poynter.org/column.asp?id=45&aid=74240
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gilliam
Guest
G
gilliam
Guest
This story is starting to come out in MSM:
From the Toledo Blade :
Mr. Jordan told a panel that the U.S. military had killed a dozen journalists in Iraq, and that they had been deliberately targeted. When challenged, Mr. Jordan could provide no evidence to support the charge, and subsequently lied about having made it, though the record shows he had made a similar charge a few months before, and also earlier had falsely accused the Israeli military of targeting journalists.
Mr. Jordan’s slander has created a firestorm in the blogosphere, but has yet to be mentioned in the “mainstream” media.Until now, which is why we’re reporting it.
From the Washington Post :
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, during a discussion on media and democracy, Mr. Jordan apparently told the audience that “he knew of 12 journalists who had not only been killed by U.S. troops in Iraq, but they had in fact been targeted,” according to a report on the forum’s Web site (www.forumblog.org). The account was corroborated by the Wall Street Journal and National Review Online, although no transcript of the discussion has surfaced.
…]
In November, as reported in the London Guardian, Mr. Jordan said, “The reality is that at least 10 journalists have been killed by the U.S. military, and according to reports I believe to be true journalists have been arrested and tortured by U.S. forces.”
From the Toledo Blade :
Mr. Jordan told a panel that the U.S. military had killed a dozen journalists in Iraq, and that they had been deliberately targeted. When challenged, Mr. Jordan could provide no evidence to support the charge, and subsequently lied about having made it, though the record shows he had made a similar charge a few months before, and also earlier had falsely accused the Israeli military of targeting journalists.
Mr. Jordan’s slander has created a firestorm in the blogosphere, but has yet to be mentioned in the “mainstream” media.Until now, which is why we’re reporting it.
From the Washington Post :
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, during a discussion on media and democracy, Mr. Jordan apparently told the audience that “he knew of 12 journalists who had not only been killed by U.S. troops in Iraq, but they had in fact been targeted,” according to a report on the forum’s Web site (www.forumblog.org). The account was corroborated by the Wall Street Journal and National Review Online, although no transcript of the discussion has surfaced.
…]
In November, as reported in the London Guardian, Mr. Jordan said, “The reality is that at least 10 journalists have been killed by the U.S. military, and according to reports I believe to be true journalists have been arrested and tortured by U.S. forces.”
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gilliam
Guest
SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq – Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s father-in-law carried out a suicide bombing in the Shia holy city of Najaf that killed a leading Iraqi cleric, according to two senior Kurdish intelligence officials.
The attack in August 2003 killed more than 85 people, including Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, who led Iraq’s largest Shia political party. The bombing was carried out with an explosives-laden ambulance driven by Yassin Jarad, the father of al-Zarqawi’s second wife, the Kurdish officials said.
Jarad had slipped into Iraq several weeks before the bombing from the Jordanian town of Zarqa, where al-Zarqawi was born, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. At least a dozen other suicide bombers from al-Zarqawi’s hometown have infiltrated Iraq over the past 18 months, the officials said.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com …
This is very significant.
The attack in August 2003 killed more than 85 people, including Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, who led Iraq’s largest Shia political party. The bombing was carried out with an explosives-laden ambulance driven by Yassin Jarad, the father of al-Zarqawi’s second wife, the Kurdish officials said.
Jarad had slipped into Iraq several weeks before the bombing from the Jordanian town of Zarqa, where al-Zarqawi was born, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. At least a dozen other suicide bombers from al-Zarqawi’s hometown have infiltrated Iraq over the past 18 months, the officials said.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com …
This is very significant.
G
gilliam
Guest
THE LONG GAME VS. THE SHORT GAME: Gerard van der Leun thinks that CNN has, for the moment at least, successfully defused the Eason Jordan scandal: “The Eason Jordan vs The Bloggers match ended its first set today with a high lob set-up from Howard Kurtz at the Washington Post put away by an overhand smash by Mr. Adams of Davos who announced that the videotape of the Davos meeting, in which Jordan claimed the US Military was deliberately killing journalists in Iraq, would not be released to the public. . . . In this world, if it doesn’t happen on television it doesn’t happen, and without the videotape this will not happen on television.”
I hate to accuse Gerard of old-media thinking, but I think that’s what’s going on here. It’s true, of course, that without video the story won’t get a lot of play on TV. But that’s the short game, in which the goal is getting rid of Eason Jordan.
The long game is different, and Jim Geraghty gets it:
What we need from the Davos conference organizers is simple - the tape of what Jordan said. It would be good to get the entire event, but really, what is at issue here is what Jordan said, and how much he backtracked.
If the Davos organizers refuse to release it, and CNN refuses to call for its release, and the BBC refuses to call for its release, and every other news agency refuses to call for its release…
…then remember this, the next time the media gets up on a high horse about the public’s right to know. Remember this the next time Dick Cheney has a meeting with energy executives. Remember this the next time reporters complain about Bush not holding enough press conferences, and not doing enough interviews. Remember this the next time they talk about the importance of a free press, and an informed citizenry.
Because it’s all conditional. None of this applies when the situation includes a media executive says something in a big forum that he later realizes he doesn’t want the public to hear. Then all of a sudden, none of this matters, because it’s bad form for other news agencies to look into the story if he wants it to go away. “Bad manners, old chap. We journalists have to stick together.”
You don’t need TV for those ideas to spread. And when they do – and they are – getting rid of Eason Jordan doesn’t matter so much. Because neither does Eason Jordan. On the other hand, if the Eason Jordans of the world are all untrustworthy, self-interested boobs, and seen as such, it’s going to be hard to sustain public support for press freedom. Unless, perhaps, enough people are blogging that the public sees its own face on “press freedom” and not the likes of Eason Jordan’s.
JOE GANDELMAN has an Eason Jordan roundup.
instapundit.com/
I hate to accuse Gerard of old-media thinking, but I think that’s what’s going on here. It’s true, of course, that without video the story won’t get a lot of play on TV. But that’s the short game, in which the goal is getting rid of Eason Jordan.
The long game is different, and Jim Geraghty gets it:
What we need from the Davos conference organizers is simple - the tape of what Jordan said. It would be good to get the entire event, but really, what is at issue here is what Jordan said, and how much he backtracked.
If the Davos organizers refuse to release it, and CNN refuses to call for its release, and the BBC refuses to call for its release, and every other news agency refuses to call for its release…
…then remember this, the next time the media gets up on a high horse about the public’s right to know. Remember this the next time Dick Cheney has a meeting with energy executives. Remember this the next time reporters complain about Bush not holding enough press conferences, and not doing enough interviews. Remember this the next time they talk about the importance of a free press, and an informed citizenry.
Because it’s all conditional. None of this applies when the situation includes a media executive says something in a big forum that he later realizes he doesn’t want the public to hear. Then all of a sudden, none of this matters, because it’s bad form for other news agencies to look into the story if he wants it to go away. “Bad manners, old chap. We journalists have to stick together.”
You don’t need TV for those ideas to spread. And when they do – and they are – getting rid of Eason Jordan doesn’t matter so much. Because neither does Eason Jordan. On the other hand, if the Eason Jordans of the world are all untrustworthy, self-interested boobs, and seen as such, it’s going to be hard to sustain public support for press freedom. Unless, perhaps, enough people are blogging that the public sees its own face on “press freedom” and not the likes of Eason Jordan’s.
JOE GANDELMAN has an Eason Jordan roundup.
instapundit.com/
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jlw
Guest
Just give me the TAPE, please.
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Matt25
Guest
channel4.com/news/2005/02/week_2/11_blog.html
Some – especially those on the right of the discussion – ridiculed the CNN exec, reminding us he’d made similar comments in 2003, this time claiming that Iraqi intelligence agents planned to attack CNN journalists working in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. (Indeed, the April 11, 2003 edition of the New York Times ran a lengthy personal statement from Jordan to that effect.)
But does the fact that Jordan spoke irresponsibly mean that his comments have no substance? Other precedents suggest he may be more than a fear-mongering maniac. BBC correspondent Kate Adie, in a radio interview on March 9, 2003, claimed she’d been told ‘by a senior officer in the Pentagon’ that if uplinks carrying television or telephone signals out of Baghdad were detected by military planes circling the city, the people sending them would be fired upon, ‘even if they were journalists.’
That was the before. Then came the during, in which many journalists accused the US military of deliberately firing at journalists. On a single day, three Al Jazeera reporters were killed after their offices were hit by American missiles, and two Ukrainian and Spanish cameramen were killed when an American tank fired a round at the Reuters office in Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel. Film shot by the French TV station France 3, and descriptions by journalists present, suggested the neighborhood was very quiet at the time. The US tank crew, it was said, took its time, waiting for a couple of minutes and adjusting its gun before opening fire.
Robert Fisk was very direct in his assessment of these incidents. ‘I suspect they were killed because someone in the Pentagon decided to try to “close down” the press. Of course, American journalists are not investigating this. They should – because they will be next.’
By November 2003, thirty major news gathering outlets ranging from CNN and ABC to the Newhouse News Service and The Boston Globe had written to the Pentagon complaining of intimidation, arrest, destruction of note books, video tape, recorders and film.
Presenting Eason Jordan merely as an irresponsible liberal will not do. **He is an irresponsible liberal backed by two years of disturbing evidence.
**
Easongate: www.easongate.com
Non-embedded journalists, as Reporters Without Borders complained in April 2003, have been refused entry to Iraq from Kuwait, threatened with withdrawal of accreditation and held in interrogation for several hours. ‘One group of non-embedded journalists,’ they claim, ‘was held in secret for two days and roughed up by US military police.’
Indeed some view embedding as simply one aspect of this, the ‘most censored conflict of modern times’. As David Miller shows, a grim progression has certainly been in evidence. In the UK’s Falklands War, heavy censorship left a dearth of imagery available to the public, and imaginations were dangerously liable to fill in the gaps. By the Gulf War, lessons had been learned: carefully supplied footage of ‘precision’ bombs zeroing-in on targets created the impression of a ‘clean’, ‘smart’ war of ‘surgical strikes’ that wasn’t hurting civilians. I*n Iraq, reporters operating in close proximity to military units and wearing military uniform produced gushing accounts demonstrating they’d clearly begun to identify with the military they were supposed to be reporting on. *
Do Eason Jordan’s comments indicate matters in Iraq were taken one step further? Has the distinction between actions of declared adversaries and those of independent media become so dangerously blurred? War On Terror, precedents suggest that while the CNN News Chief’s comments might have been ill-advised, they may not have been as crackpot as we might hope. Attacking journalists in cold blood would, of course, be completely contrary to the Geneva Convention-- but we know by now what the US thinks of that rather ‘quaint’ document.
Reporters Without Borders: www.rsf.org
David Miller On Embedded Journalism: www.scoop.co.nz
Some – especially those on the right of the discussion – ridiculed the CNN exec, reminding us he’d made similar comments in 2003, this time claiming that Iraqi intelligence agents planned to attack CNN journalists working in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. (Indeed, the April 11, 2003 edition of the New York Times ran a lengthy personal statement from Jordan to that effect.)
But does the fact that Jordan spoke irresponsibly mean that his comments have no substance? Other precedents suggest he may be more than a fear-mongering maniac. BBC correspondent Kate Adie, in a radio interview on March 9, 2003, claimed she’d been told ‘by a senior officer in the Pentagon’ that if uplinks carrying television or telephone signals out of Baghdad were detected by military planes circling the city, the people sending them would be fired upon, ‘even if they were journalists.’
That was the before. Then came the during, in which many journalists accused the US military of deliberately firing at journalists. On a single day, three Al Jazeera reporters were killed after their offices were hit by American missiles, and two Ukrainian and Spanish cameramen were killed when an American tank fired a round at the Reuters office in Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel. Film shot by the French TV station France 3, and descriptions by journalists present, suggested the neighborhood was very quiet at the time. The US tank crew, it was said, took its time, waiting for a couple of minutes and adjusting its gun before opening fire.
Robert Fisk was very direct in his assessment of these incidents. ‘I suspect they were killed because someone in the Pentagon decided to try to “close down” the press. Of course, American journalists are not investigating this. They should – because they will be next.’
By November 2003, thirty major news gathering outlets ranging from CNN and ABC to the Newhouse News Service and The Boston Globe had written to the Pentagon complaining of intimidation, arrest, destruction of note books, video tape, recorders and film.
Presenting Eason Jordan merely as an irresponsible liberal will not do. **He is an irresponsible liberal backed by two years of disturbing evidence.
**
Easongate: www.easongate.com
Non-embedded journalists, as Reporters Without Borders complained in April 2003, have been refused entry to Iraq from Kuwait, threatened with withdrawal of accreditation and held in interrogation for several hours. ‘One group of non-embedded journalists,’ they claim, ‘was held in secret for two days and roughed up by US military police.’
Indeed some view embedding as simply one aspect of this, the ‘most censored conflict of modern times’. As David Miller shows, a grim progression has certainly been in evidence. In the UK’s Falklands War, heavy censorship left a dearth of imagery available to the public, and imaginations were dangerously liable to fill in the gaps. By the Gulf War, lessons had been learned: carefully supplied footage of ‘precision’ bombs zeroing-in on targets created the impression of a ‘clean’, ‘smart’ war of ‘surgical strikes’ that wasn’t hurting civilians. I*n Iraq, reporters operating in close proximity to military units and wearing military uniform produced gushing accounts demonstrating they’d clearly begun to identify with the military they were supposed to be reporting on. *
Do Eason Jordan’s comments indicate matters in Iraq were taken one step further? Has the distinction between actions of declared adversaries and those of independent media become so dangerously blurred? War On Terror, precedents suggest that while the CNN News Chief’s comments might have been ill-advised, they may not have been as crackpot as we might hope. Attacking journalists in cold blood would, of course, be completely contrary to the Geneva Convention-- but we know by now what the US thinks of that rather ‘quaint’ document.
Reporters Without Borders: www.rsf.org
David Miller On Embedded Journalism: www.scoop.co.nz
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Matt25
Guest
counterpunch.org/fisk04292003.html
What is a journalist’s life worth? I ask this question for a number of reasons, some of them–frankly–quite revolting. Two days ago, I went to visit one of my colleagues wounded in the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Samia Nakhoul is a Reuters correspondent, a young woman reporter who is married to another colleague, the Financial Times correspondent in Beirut. Part of an American tank shell was embedded in her brain–a millimetre difference in entry point and she would have been half paralysed–after an M1A1 Abrams tank fired a round at the Reuters office in Baghdad, in the Palestine Hotel, last week.
"
What is a journalist’s life worth? I ask this question for a number of reasons, some of them–frankly–quite revolting. Two days ago, I went to visit one of my colleagues wounded in the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Samia Nakhoul is a Reuters correspondent, a young woman reporter who is married to another colleague, the Financial Times correspondent in Beirut. Part of an American tank shell was embedded in her brain–a millimetre difference in entry point and she would have been half paralysed–after an M1A1 Abrams tank fired a round at the Reuters office in Baghdad, in the Palestine Hotel, last week.
Code:
Samia, a brave and honourable lady who has reported the cruelty of the Lebanese civil war at first hand for many years, was almost destroyed as a human being by that tank crew.
At the time, General Buford Blount of the 3rd Infantry Division, told a lie: he said that sniper fire had been directed at the tank--on the Joumhouriyah Bridge over the Tigris river--and that the fire had ended "after the tank had fired" at the Palestine Hotel. I was between the tank and the hotel when the shell was fired. There was no sniper fire--nor any rocket-propelled [counterpunch.org/fisk.jpg](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1560254424/counterpunchmaga)grenade fire, as the American officer claimed--at the time. French television footage of the tank, running for minutes before the attack, shows the same thing. The soundtrack--until the blinding, repulsive golden flash from the tank barrel--is silent.
Samia Nakhoul wasn't the only one to be hit. Her Ukrainian cameraman, father of a small child, was killed. So was a Spanish cameraman on the floor above. And then yesterday I had to read, in the New York Times, that Colin Powell had justified the murder--yes, murder--of these two journalists. This former four-star general--I'm talking about Mr Powell, not the liar who runs the 3rd Infantry Division--actually said, and I quote: "According to a US military review of the incident, our forces responded to hostile fire appearing to come from a location later identified as the Palestine Hotel... Our review of the April 8th incident indicates that the use of force was justified."
But it gets worse. A few hours before I visited Samia, I was in Beirut with Mohamed Jassem al-Ali, the managing director of the Qatar-based Arab al-Jazeera channel. On that same day--8 April--that the American tank fired at the Reuters office in Baghdad, an American aircraft fired a missile at the al-Jazeera office in Baghdad. Mr al-Ali has given me a copy of his letter to Victoria Clarke, the US Assistant Secretary of State of Defence for Public Affairs in Washington, sent on 24 February this year. In the letter, he gives the address and the map coordinates of the station's office in Baghdad--Lat: 33.19/29.08, Lon 44.24/03.63--adding that civilian journalists would be working in the building.
The Americans were outraged at al-Jazeera's coverage of the civilian victims of US bombing raids. And on 8 April, less than three hours before the Reuters office was attacked, an American aircraft fired a single missile at the al-Jazeera office _ at those precise map coordinates Mr al-Ali had sent to Ms Clarke--and killed the station's reporter Tareq Ayoub. "We find these events," Mr al-Ali wrote in his slightly inaccurate English, "unjustifiable, unacceptable, arousing all forms of anger and rejection and most of all need an explanation."
And what did he get? Victoria Clarke wrote a letter that was as inappropriate as it was "economical with the truth". She offered her "condolences" to the family and colleagues of Mr Ayoub and then went on to write a preachy note to al-Jazeera. "Being close to the action means being close to danger," she wrote. "...we have gone to extraordinary [sic] lengths in Iraq to avoid civilian casualties. Unfortunately, even our best efforts will not prevent some innocents from getting caught in the crossfire [sic]... Sometimes this results in tragedy. War by its very nature is tragic and sad..."
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gilliam
Guest
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