Free Republic

One of the most remarkable stories of the Iraq war appears today at the online magazine Salon, written by its longtime foreign correspondent Phillip Robertson. Amazingly, he managed this month to track down the American sniper who apparently shot and killed Knight Ridder correspondent Yasser Salihee, 33, on June 24. The article, "The Victim and the Killer," chronicles this search, and lengthy exchanges between Robertson and the sniper, described only as "Joe." E&P has covered the Salihee incident from the start, first with a news report, then a moving tribute to him written by Knight Ridder's Baghdad chief Hannah Allam,...

Times Correspondent Mark Fineman Dies in Baghdad By James Gerstenzang, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON – Mark Fineman, a veteran Los Angeles Times correspondent, died today, apparently of a heart attack while waiting to conduct an interview in Baghdad. He was 51 years old. Fineman and a Times colleague, Alissa J. Rubin, were at the office of the Iraqi Governing Council when he said he felt ill and collapsed, Times foreign editor Marjorie Miller said. She said he was rushed to a hospital, where U.S. doctors "worked on him for quite a while and weren't able to revive him." Fineman's final...

     NBC's Richard Engel conceded on Tuesday's Today that he rarely gets to report on the heroics of U.S. soldiers in Iraq, but he did this one time because those heroics saved him. Recounting how the Army unit with whom he was traveling came under attack, Engel noted how a soldier "actually stepped right in front of me protecting me with his body and started to return fire at the insurgents. And I just remember thinking that this is one of the small acts of heroism, I think you can say, that I so rarely get a chance to see...

We should all be grateful, once again, to Wretchard at Belmont Club, this time for hammering away at the amazing ability of an AP photographer in Baghdad to take pictures of Iraqi terrorists executing election officials. Wretchard keeps asking--and AP keeps kinda denying but increasingly kinda admitting culpability--how come the photographer was there at the precise moment the killings took place, and managed to take the pictures even though everyone else except the terrorists was running rapidly away from the scene. Lots of good work has also been done by Roger Simon, Power Line, Instapundit and others. It's a big...

Filkins avoids the purple prose, the clichés, the antiwar declarations, and the patriotic riffs that seduce lesser chroniclers of war. His play-by-play requires almost no commentary as he collects the images and testimonials and patches them into his spare narrative. The photos of Ashley Gilbertson (a "he," it turns out) complement Filkins' words, as they capture the unit doing its killing business, rescuing wounded mates, ducking for cover from friendly phosphorous rounds.

This isn't what they expected,said one CNN jounalist

Dana Lewis NBC News Correspondent Moscow Dana Lewis has been the Moscow-based correspondent for NBC News since July 1998, contributing stories from around the world to "NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw," "Today," "Dateline NBC" and MSNBC. Lewis has reported from Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Philippines, the Middle East, and he is regularly assigned to NBC’s London and Tel Aviv bureaus. Lewis was one of the first western journalists into Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

For those that are interested.....

A PALESTINIAN television journalist was killed today as he was giving a live report to camera on deadly clashes between US forces and insurgents in the heart of the Iraqi capital. Residents of his home town in the West Bank watched in horror as Mazen al-Tomaisi, who worked for Saudi television Akhbariya and for the pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Arabiya, went down. Mr Tomaisi, 28, was killed when a US helicopter fired missiles on a mob which had gathered round a US tank in Baghdad that had been set ablaze in a car bomb attack, one of a string of bombings...

Italian journalist executed 27/08/2004 00:06 - (SA) Doha - An Islamist group has executed Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni in Iraq, Arabic-language satellite news channel Al-Jazeera reported on Thursday. Baldoni's captors, a group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq, had on Tuesday threatened to kill their hostage unless Italy withdrew its 3 000 troops from Iraq within 48 hours.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A car bomb ripped through a crowded restaurant hosting a New Year's Eve party in the Iraqi capital, killing five Iraqis and wounding 24 others. The nighttime attack came amid tightened security in Baghdad as military officials expected insurgent attacks. Sirens wailed and helicopters buzzed overhead as ambulances and U.S. soldiers converged after the explosion on the Nabil restaurant, a popular spot with foreigners that had advertised a New Year's Eve party with live music and belly dancing. Three reporters from the Los Angeles Times, and four local staff members suffered injuries that appeared minor, said Dean...

U.S. TV network news about Iraq as distorted as al- Jazeera?Checking in from Iraq on Wednesday's Hardball with Chris Matthews as part of that show's look this week at "Iraq: The Real Story," Bob Arnot highlighted a Muslim ayatollah in Iraq who "is furious at the press coverage. He says not only American television, but Arabic satellite TV, such as Al-Jazeera and the Abu Dhabi station, have mis-portrayed the great success that is Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein." Arnot, MRC analyst Geoffrey Dickens noticed, documented how "Iraqis themselves are angrier than the American administration about the barrage of...

MSNBC’s Arnot Contradicts Media Image of Iraq in Violent Chaos Bob Arnot, who rarely appears on NBC News programs, popped up Monday night on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews to contradict the image of chaos in Iraq hyped by the media. Launching Hardball’s week-long series, “Iraq: The Real Story,” Arnot recounted the challenges faced by troops in hostile areas, but countered the negative image of the Iraqi situation he knows Americans get from TV news. Arnot argued: “The real question is, given all the death and destruction that you see on television in the United States, what’s the real deal...

Jewish World Review May 30, 2003 / 28 Iyar, 5763Jack Kelly Our best and brightest are not at Harvard http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | One of the smarter of the many smart decisions made by the Pentagon during Operation Iraqi Freedom was the decision widely to "embed" journalists with U.S. troops. I think it may cause a sea change in the attitude of journalists toward soldiers. I am writing now to express my respect for and appreciation of the soldiers in the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and the First Armored Division, with whom I was embedded, and the soldiers of the 3rd...

At times, [during the Iraq War] Ms. Banfield sounded like she was Press Secretary for Saddam Hussein and Hezbollah .Still, she could be a big news star someday. She is sexy and attractive, articulate and smart. And the press loved her.But now she is being sent to Coventry for opening her cute little mouth.This was amazing. Why was NBC News President himself bothering to squelch this little pipsqueak when she squeaked in Kansas?They are so upset with Banfield at 30 Rockefeller Center that insiders are saying that her career is finished at NBC, if not elsewhere.

NEW YORK - NBC News has swooped in and signed Richard Engel, a former freelancer who became one of ABC's most visible war correspondents when he stayed in Baghdad while other reporters left. Engel, 29, will begin reporting for NBC from Baghdad in early May, the network said Wednesday. In the days before the war, ABC, NBC and CBS all pulled reporters from Baghdad, concerned about their safety, and didn't send them back until American troops reached the Iraqi capital. Engel, a freelancer, decided to stay. Despite inexperience that occasionally manifested itself as boyish enthusiasm, Engel was used frequently on...

Geraldo Rivera Rants About Media Critics Reporter Lashes Out At Networks On Web Site Posted: 12:17 p.m. EDT April 30, 2003 Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera is still filled with "smoldering anger" from the way the media reported on him being asked to leave Iraq for drawing troop movements in the sand. Rivera wrote on his Web site, roughpoint.tv, that the media stories were a "grotesque exaggeration." He especially blames MSNBC, who he says conducted a "Get Geraldo" campaign. He seems to go after Joe Scarborough and Keith Olbermann, though he doesn't mention them by name. He wrote that MSNBC...

Embedded Reporter From Pa. Newspaper Ordered to Leave Unit in Iraq The Associated Press Military authorities have ordered an embedded newspaper reporter to leave his unit in Iraq, saying he revealed sensitive information in a story. The commanding officer of the 2nd Battalion, 25th Marines, to which Brett Lieberman of The Patriot-News in Harrisburg was assigned, cited an April 25 story describing the unit's mission of patrolling Nasiriyah. Lt. Col. Robert C. Murphy said the story included too much military detail, the Patriot-News reported in Tuesday's editions. "We were disappointed," Patriot-News Executive Editor David Newhouse said. "This seems to have...

On the night before he died of a pulmonary embolism, David Bloom sent his beloved wife, Melanie, an e-mail that eerily foreshadowed his death. At his funeral Wednesday in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, his brother John read that prophetic message, one that defined David Bloom and showed clearly what values propelled him in his brief life. "I hope and pray all my guys get out of this in one piece," Bloom wrote. "But I'll tell you, Mel, I am at peace. Here I am, supposedly at the peak of professional success, but I could, frankly, care less. It's nothing compared to...

Journalist Bloom Eulogized at Funeral Melanie Bloom, center, hold hands with her children, as she follows behind the casket of her husband and their father David Bloom, a NBC reporter, after funeral services in New York, Wednesday April 16, 2003. Bloom, 39, the weekend anchor of NBC's ``Today'' and a former White House correspondent, died of an apparent blood clot April 6 while embedded with a military unit in Iraq. (AP Photos/Bebeto Matthews) By DAVID BAUDERAP Television WriterNBC News correspondent David Bloom, who died while covering the war in Iraq, was eulogized at his funeral Wednesday as a modern-day Ernie...