Topic: NewsBusters
A March 8 NewsBusters post by Mark Finkelstein touts the comments of CNN Baghdad correspondent Michael Ware, who claimed that discussions of withdrawal timetables of U.S. troops from Iraq "may as well be happening on the planet Pluto for all that it counts to the bloodshed and endless combat that we're seeing" and that "anyone setting time frames like that without real pre-conditions, anyone trying to put artificial deadlines upon this conflict is only aiding the enemies, so-called, of America, al Qaeda and Iran."
But wait -- wasn't the NewsBusters gang slapping Ware around not so long ago for being insufficiently propagandistic for U.S. purposes about the Iraq war?
Yep. Here's NewsBusters' Noel Sheppard in a Sept. 21, 2006, post calling
It’s really the height of gall, but perfectly illustrates the arrogance of today’s media. On Wednesday evening, Michael Ware – CNN’s Baghdad correspondent – stated that the folks giving President Bush advice and information about what’s going on in Iraq – including General George Casey and Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad – “are men who could not be more divorced from the Iraqi reality. They very much live within a bubble, be it physically within the Green Zone or be it within the bubble of heavy U.S. protection” (video link and full transcript to follow).
Ware didn’t end there, for he knows better than all of the advisors, the commanders, and the boots on the ground: “And this is true even for their advisers and for the commanders and the American soldiers.”
Imagine the arrogance. This one reporter knows more about what’s going on in Iraq than everybody else.
And Megan McCormack claimed in a March 2006 post that Ware "sounded defensive" and "rant[ed]" when he said that "All of these critics who are saying that we’re not telling the good news stories, I’d like to know just how many of them have spent any time here on the ground? Or any of these people who are reporting the good news from within the belly of the U.S. military, how much time have they spent on the Iraqi street?" McCormack added, "Ware did not fail to disappoint those eager to hear the United States is losing in Iraq."
Further, the NewsBusters' boss, Brent Bozell, bashed Ware last October for a report that included "video filmed by terrorists" showing "Islamic terrorist snipers time and again shooting and presumably killing American boys," citing it as evidence that "CNN is the terrorist’s messenger service, FedEx for the fanatics who want us dead."
Didja hear that, NewsBusters boys? Michael Ware is your enemy! Why are you approvingly quoting him?
