Posted on 01/30/2006 11:57:41 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
NEW YORK (AP) -
0130dvs-woodruff-update ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff, seriously hurt by a roadside bomb in Iraq, has shown signs of improvement and may be airlifted to the United States as soon as Tuesday, the network's news president said Monday.
A hospital official said body armor likely saved the journalist's life.
Cameraman Doug Vogt, also hurt in the explosion, is in better shape than Woodruff but doctors were pleased with how both handled the transfer to a U.S. military base in Germany, said ABC News President David Westin.
"We have a long way to go," Westin said. "But it appears that we may have also come some distance from yesterday."
Vogt was filming a stand-up report with Woodruff and both were standing in the open hatch of an Iraqi military vehicle when the bomb went off. They underwent surgery in Iraq before being flown to Germany.
"They're both very seriously injured, but stable," said Col. Bryan Gamble, commander of the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in western Germany. He said both men were heavily sedated and under the care of the hospital's trauma team.
Their body armor likely saved them, "otherwise these would have been fatal wounds," Gamble said.
Woodruff, the new co-anchor of "World News Tonight," had serious head wounds and broken bones, and Vogt also suffered head injuries, ABC News said. The network said the mens' wives were at the hospital and talking with doctors Monday.
Former "NBC Nightly News" anchor Tom Brokaw said Monday that he had spoken with Woodruff's wife, Lee.
"The doctors had told them once they arrived that the brain swelling had gone down. In Bob's case, that had been a big concern. Yesterday they had to operate and remove part of the skull cap to relieve some of the swelling," Brokaw said on NBC'S "Today" show.
The doctors didn't know for sure whether shrapnel penetrated Woodruff's brain, but they were removing additional shrapnel from his neck area, Brokaw said. He said Woodruff's family had also learned more details about the explosion from witnesses.
"Immediately after the explosion he turned to his producer and said 'Am I alive?' and 'Don't tell Lee,' and then he began to cry out in excruciating pain," Brokaw said.
Woodruff and Vogt, an award-winning cameraman, were embedded with the 4th Infantry Division and traveling in a convoy with U.S. and Iraqi troops near Taji, about 12 miles north of Baghdad when the device exploded. An Iraqi solder also was hurt.
"Doug was conscious, and I was able to reassure him we were getting them care. I spoke to Bob also and walked with them to the helicopter," said ABC senior producer Kate Felsen, who had been working with Woodruff for the past two weeks.
The injuries were a blow to ABC News, still recovering from the cancer death of Peter Jennings in August. Woodruff and co-anchor Elizabeth Vargas assumed Jennings' old job at "World News Tonight" earlier this month.
"Bob and Doug were in Iraq doing what reporters do, trying to find out what's happening there up-close and firsthand. All of us are mindful of the risks and the dangers," Vargas said Sunday night in a closing note.
Woodruff and Vogt had been riding in the Iraqi military vehicle, considered more dangerous than U.S. military vehicles, so they could report on the war from the Iraqi soldiers' perspective.
Westin, speaking Monday on "Good Morning America," said the risks news personnel face are assessed every day in a country where there were 221 attacks by explosive devices last week alone. But it's important to cover the news, he said.
"We all know there are substantial risks," Westin said. "At the same time, what we do is report the news. We report the stories such as Iraq, and it's a dilemma we struggle with all along because frankly, we don't get to report as much in Iraq as we'd like to because of security."
Woodruff, 44, a father of four, has been at ABC News since 1996. He grew up in Michigan and became a corporate lawyer in New York, but changed fields soon after a stint teaching law in Beijing, where he helping CBS News during the chaos of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest.
Vogt, 46, is a three-time Emmy award-winning cameraman from Canada who has spent the last 20 years based in Europe covering global events for CBC, BBC and now exclusively for ABC News. He lives in Aix-en-Provence, France.
"He's the cameraman we all request when we go to the field because he's so good, a fantastic eye," said ABC News' Jim Sciutto, who is covering the war in Iraq.
On CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday, anchor Bob Schieffer abandoned his commentary to wish Woodruff and Vogt well.
"It just hit us all like a lightning bolt because we've all been there," Schieffer later told The Associated Press.
Dozens of journalists have been injured, killed or kidnapped in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
Jill Carroll, a freelance reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, was kidnapped Jan. 7 by gunmen who threatened to kill her if the U.S. didn't release Iraqi women in custody. She was among 250 foreigners who had been taken captive in the country since the U.S. invasion; at least 39 of those foreigners were killed. Carroll is still believed to be held in Iraq.
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Associated Press Writer Jan Sliva in Landstuhl, Germany, contributed to this report.
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On the Net:
http://abcnews.go.com
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I wonder if they can get Hillary's brain-swelling to go down too.
It's her ass-swelling that concerns me.
Will Wordruff's employer reimburse our military for the medical care and transportaion they received in the place of a soldier that may haveneeded it?
Great to know.
I don't think he is going to be on camera for awhile!
Wow - sensitive reporting about an American who is wounded in Iraq. I wonder why it took a reporter to get to this point?
Compassion my fellow freeper, compassion. Our military is great and they do help everyone including the people who criticize them all the time.
Just curious who foots the bill? Deny them no treatment.
Was the vehicle moving when they were doing this?
The press can be a bunch of sleazy bastards, but these were guys who were doing their jobs in cooperation with the U.S. and Iraqi powers. Yes, they wouldn't have been injured if they hadn't been filming the report from out of the hatch, but I'm quite sure that some U.S. soldiers have been injured because they weren't in the most protective posture possible as well.
I hope they both recover fully - the head and neck injuries sound scary - and I'll keep both of them and their families in my prayers. Members of the press don't get put on my sh!t list until they are shown to have earned it.
Only real newspersons run the risk they are all painfuly aware of.
My only question is why did these two have body armor when we've been told for so long that there's not even enough to go around for all our soldiers?
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Are you saying that you are aware that an injured member of the US military was bumped so that the resources could be allocated to these guys?
...despite the fact that these geniuses were standing to tape a report while in a Russian built Iraqi APC...the lead vehicle no less...in a convoy...through one of the most dangerous area's in Iraq...yes despite that they survived because of body armor. Guess the rules of embedding have changed to allow such inquisitive sh*tbirds the opportunity to scatter themselves over others while "getting the story"
Of course he had no proof of that, but it made for nice baseless and nasty comment, didn't it?
That was last month's Media and DemonicRat story...they have moved on!
Journalist death toll in Iraq exceeds that of Vietnam.
Our troops have gotten better at war while Journalists have gotten worse.
Of course now the MSM will say Iraq is worse than Vietnam.
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