Becki
Posted on 01/30/2006 4:58:03 AM PST by Kaslin
NEW YORK - ABC News led its broadcasts with its own journalists in the news: anchor Bob Woodruff and a cameraman had been seriously injured by a roadside bomb while reporting in Iraq.
Woodruff, the new co-anchor of "World News Tonight," and Doug Vogt both suffered head injuries, and Woodruff has broken bones. They were flown Monday to a U.S. military hospital in Germany, and the network said their families were at the hospital Monday.
"They're both very seriously injured, but stable," Col. Bryan Gamble, commander of the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in western Germany, said Monday. He said the two 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 and Vogt, an award-winning cameraman, were embedded with the 4th Infantry Division and traveling in a convoy Sunday with U.S. and Iraqi troops near Taji, about 12 miles north of Baghdad.
They were standing up in the hatch of the mechanized vehicle, exposed when the device exploded. An Iraqi solder also was hurt in the explosion.
"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.
It was another dose of bad news for ABC News, still recovering from the cancer death of Peter Jennings in August. Woodruff, 44, assumed Jennings' old job anchoring "World News Tonight" with Elizabeth Vargas 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, 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 in 1989 and helping CBS News during the chaos of the 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.
ABC said that at the time of the attack both men were in an Iraqi vehicle — considered less secure than U.S. military equipment — to get the perspective of the Iraqi military. They were aware the Iraqi forces are the frequent targets of insurgent attacks, the network said.
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 by gunmen Jan. 7. 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.
The most visible among the U.S. TV reporters was David Bloom of NBC News, who died from an apparent blood clot while traveling south of Baghdad on April 6, 2003.
The Blooms and Woodruffs were known to be close friends, and when NBC News executives had to tell Bloom's widow that her husband had died, they made sure Woodruff's wife, Lee, was there to offer support.
Woodruff spent three days in Israel last week reporting on the Palestinian elections, and was to have been in Iraq through the State of the Union address on Tuesday, according to ABC.
ABC News' Jim Sciutto, who is covering the war in Iraq, said of Vogt: "He's the cameraman we all request when we go to the field because he's so good, a fantastic eye. He's won so many awards for ABC."
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," he later told The Associated Press.
NBC "Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams said he had been in touch with Woodruff's family and is praying for the families of both men. "There is no way to cover the story in Iraq without exposure to danger," he said.
Insurance for civilians can be quirky in Iraq. There aren't any HMO clinics here.
If an American civilian working in attachment to the military becomes badly injured or very ill, we can be treated by the military until we are able to be evacuated out of the country.
Our only other option would be an Iraqi hospital and well...I'm just going to leave it at that.
AFI 41-115, Health Services, Authorized Health Care And Health Care Benefits in the Military Health Services System (MHSS), July 25, 1994, paragraph 1.3.3 states: "At Air Force MTFs, civilian emergencies are authorized emergency care only. When the patient is medically stabilized, transfer to an appropriate civilian medical facility or discharge as appropriate."
This just the Air Farce. First one with legal references I could find. All the services have similar ones. Read the part about transfer to an appropiate civilian medical facility!
BUT, I resent the amount of press given to these guys, when HEROes are being ignored, and castigated!
...................................................
Well said and absolutely right. It's the MSM and ABC is among them that twist and fabricate the truth about Iraq. Now we have to listen to the sob stories about these guys ad nauseum as if the media was somehow a glorious profession instead of what they really are: propagandists marketing news for their corporate interests.
I'm reading off of mine right now.
"Authorized Patronage."
UNLIMITED Exchange."
There's more stuff but I think those hit the point. ;-)
The PX priveledges alone are worth working in Iraq!
Because the ABC anchorman got his makeup smeared in a bomb blast before going on the air.
I can't imagine what I'd do without the ol' PX.
P. S. The Green Zone PX sucks. The Victory/Liberty one is way cooler. And the Taji one is the coolest of them all.
that's what I am saying....
although I don't have my overseas CAC card anymore....
did the Haji mart down in the Green Zone ever come back after it was bombed?
Please describe what is biased about this.
Anaconda used to have a 45 minutes wait to get in. We'd shop in pairs. One would go to the check out line and the other would shop then we'd trade places.
The smallest I saw was Al Qaim. Hadith didn't even have one and only a field kitchen.
And you'd think that the GZ would have something nice, at least as good as Victory North. (Isn't that the one by Dodge City and the Bathouse?)
You mean the one with all the rugs and stuff? Yeah, it's back.
The cafe that got bombed is back, too.
But we infidels don't go there.
Much.
As to who pays for this...I don't know but at one time I went to Kosovo for research on a project. I was there for ten days and was fortunate enough to go on a number of patrols with US troops out of Bondsteel. My regular insurance would not cover me since it considered Kosovo a war-zone. The US gov't wouldn't (in fact I never asked). I ended up paying Lloyds $1,000.00 USD per day for full coverage including death benefit.
Becki
Yeah, the GZ has a great pool, some cool shops, a decent selection of fast-food places, but a really lame PX.
The big Victory North one is right across from Camp Parker. I used to live literally right across the street from it (behind some T-walls, of course.) There's a BK, a Popeye's and a Cinnabon there now, too. And a BUNCH of shops. It's almost like Kuwait.
Except for the occasional mortars and rockets, of course.
ahhh crap they got a Popeye's there now?!?
jeez....
Yep. And Taji has a Taco Bell.
Those things all happened after I left those camps.
Dang it. ;-)
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