ABC's "World News Tonight" Co-Anchor Bob Woodruff and His Cameraman Are Injured in Iraq by IED

ABC news ^ | January 29, 2006

[ARealMothersSonForever]

Bob Woodward and photographer injured in IED attack.

[RonDog]

Also from abcnews.go.com:

Jan. 29, 2006 — "World News Tonight" anchor, Bob Woodruff and his camera man, Doug Vogt, are both in serious condition after they were hit by an improvised explosive device in Taji, Iraq, today.

Woodruff is undergoing surgery at the U.S. military hospital in Balad, where Vogt also is being treated.

Woodruff, Vogt and their four-man team were traveling in a convoy with the Iraqi army. They were in a mechanized vehicle when the explosive went off. The exposion was followed by small arms fire.

Both men suffered head injuries. Woodruff sustained shrapnel wounds and Vogt was hit by shrapnel in the head and suffered a broken shoulder.

Both were wearing body armor, helmets and ballistic glasses. They had been traveling in a U.S. armored humvee, but then transferred into the Iraqi vehicle. Vogt and Woodruff are embedded with the 4th Infantry Division.

The men were medevaced to the Green Zone to receive treatment. They were then flown by helicopter to Balad which is about a 20-minute ride from Baghdad, said ABC News White House correspondent Martha Raddatz.

"There are very good doctors, the best medical care you can possibly get, in Balad," said Raddatz...

[GianniV]

Bush'a fault - he has instructed the military to kill journalists!

[Wasanother]

Maybe the US Troops refused to haul him around because they didn't like him and found him to be a propagandist?

[John W]

Who would tell them to haul them around and to whom would they direct this refusal?

[jimbo123]

I would think that Woodruff thought he would be safer NOT traveling with the Americans.

[KCRW]

They are Americans- I will continue to pray for their safety and quick recovery.

[thoughtomator]

Call me heartless, but knowing the MSM "journalists" are unmistakably and devotedly on the side of the enemy, I can't muster an ounce of sympathy.

Now the troops, I hope they're OK.

[KCRW]

They were riding with Iraqis that were with a mechanized unit

[fight_truth_decay]

reporters are distrusted and shunned (actually, "despised" is the word I heard) by the soldiers they travel with.....for good reason.

"Iraqi police" and their "alleged treatment" of some "free lance" reporters and the response by a coalition press official below -embed or "get out" scenario- comes from CPJ :

Iraqi police openly threaten journalists at news events in an effort to block coverage. When Knight Ridder photographer Allison Long took pictures of police beating a suspect in August, she tells CPJ, a uniformed officer tried to wrench away her camera. When she resisted, a plainclothes officer came up from behind, drew and cocked his gun, and pointed it at her, saying he would kill her. A passing Iraqi government official had to intercede.

In June, I was chased and held at gunpoint after photographing Iraqi police and intelligence agents hitting prisoners. Police dragged me for several blocks before a commander finally ordered my release and apologized.

But the worst example of government attacks on the press happened during this summer's siege at the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf. At 10:30 p.m. on August 25, dozens of armed police, many of them masked, stormed a Najaf hotel widely used by journalists. Firing warning shots in the lobby and beating down doors to rooms, police forcibly removed some 60 journalists from the Bahr Najaf Hotel and packed them into waiting trucks without explanation.

"After I was put into the truck, one policeman leaned down and told me in Arabic, ‘Now we are going to take you out and kill you. You will all die.' It was a clear attempt to terrify us," freelance photographer Thorne Anderson says.

After being driven in an open truck through a city where major street fighting was continuing, the reporters were herded into a coerced press conference where the chief of police complained about coverage by the Dubai-based news channel Al-Arabiya. The journalists were held for an hour without basis or charge.

The U.S.-led coalition does not counteract such intimidation. One coalition press official privately acknowledges that it wants journalists to embed ( Woodruff was embedded) with its forces or leave Iraq. Otherwise, journalists are on their own. "This is a dangerous combat zone," he says, "and we don't need or want you here."

At least three journalists were killed as a result of fire from U.S. forces, compared with six such deaths in 2004. U.S. forces' fire has killed 13 journalists between March 2003 and the end of 2005 writes CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper.

.....with good reason, we are fighting terrorists; therefore journalists who enter a war zone know what they are walking into..wrong place, wrong time, taking life and death risks..that's life in the fast lane..BEWARE! Our Coalition forces fight for Country; journalists for self, thrill, truth 'the Media way'. Plenty to read at http://www.cpj.org/ by Cooper and/or CPJ.

[jimbo123]

Wanna bet this attack was filmed by the terrorists and will be aired on Al Jazeera in the next couple days?

[Wasanother]

The command require the journalist be transported but since they passed them over to the Iraqis traveling along side they didn't technically refuse.

[Izzy Dunne]

Most recently he covered the presidential campaign of Senator John Edwards.

Edwards ran for President?

Does John Kerry know?

[nmh]

Bush needs to take his rose colored utopian glasses off.

He also needs to GET REAL about OUR borders, security and immigration. It will bite us, big time, if he doesn't SOON.

[rintense]

If they transfered to an Iraqi vehicle, shouldn't they no longer be considered embedded with US troops?

[fight_truth_decay]

http://www.cpj.org/regions_06/mideast_06/jill_carroll_page.html

Pretty current with a story by the mother of one of the US released Iraqi women I had not read.

The mother of one of the five Iraqi women released by U.S. authorities has joined the chorus of advocates calling for journalist Jill Carroll's release. "She'll be fine and she will come out very soon because she loves Iraq and she loves Iraqis, so God will never forget her," Siham Faraj, the mother of Hala Khalid Wahid, who was detained by U.S. forces in Iraq four months ago, told The Christian Science Monitor. "I don't think Jill Carroll's situation has anything to do with the release of my daughter, but we definitely feel her pain." [Posted January 26]

[ARealMothersSonForever]

If they transfered to an Iraqi vehicle, shouldn't they no longer be considered embedded with US troops?

Unified command. They were still embedded.

[RonDog]

Update from abcnews.go.com:

NEW YORK Jan 29, 2006 — ABC News co-anchor Bob Woodruff and a cameraman were seriously injured Sunday in an attack and explosion while reporting from Iraq.

The two journalists were traveling with U.S. and Iraqi troops near Taji, about 12 miles north of Baghdad, when an improvised explosive device went off, ABC News President David Westin said. Both suffered serious head injuries and were taken into surgery at a U.S. military hospital in the area, the network said.

Both Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt were wearing body armor and helmets, the network said. The two had been embedded with the 4th Infantry Division and were traveling with an Iraqi Army unit. The Iraqi mechanized vehicle they were riding in is considered more dangerous than U.S. vehicles.

ABC said the two were traveling that way to get the perspective of the Iraqi military...

[rintense]

Ok, but transferring to an Iragi vehicle seems like the least intelligent thing to do.

[billhilly]

Is that Judy's son?