Michael Ware at Brave New Films

Love In Baghdad - Lara Logan Shacking Up -Find Out With Who?

2008-10-27T09:30:46Z

CNN's Michael Ware Dispels Myth of VIP Iraq Visits

2009-01-08T02:26:05Z

CNN's intrepid Iraq "war" correspondent Michael Ware dispels the myth that American dignitaries see "the real Iraq" when they visit on their military fortified politicized trips. Ware suggests that visits by American politicians and dignitaries don't produce an honest view of the war - but a more sanitized, public relations version. Ware also states that John McCain has never provided a truthful (my word) account of the war in Iraq after returning from his half dozen trips to the war zone.

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CNN's Michael Ware On Ahmadinejad v. McCain's Iraq Visits

2009-01-08T02:26:05Z

CNN's intrepid Iraq reporter Michael Ware compares Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's essentially security-less visit to Iraq to John McCain's military fortified visits where McCain is protected by 100 American soldiers and sleeps safely within the Green Zone. Ware challenges McCain and Obama to a sit down with him to discuss the reality on the ground in Iraq.

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Michael Ware is a better commentator than Gloria Borger and David Gergen

2008-01-12T20:20:11Z

No, I did not watch the speech. I haven't had dinner yet, and I didn't want to ruin my appetite. Or my day.

I also knew they'd replay it to death, or segments of it. And guess what! They did!

I only caught a few reactions, but the best by far was Michael Ware on CNN, who reports regularly from Iraq. He ripped through Bush's Happy Thoughts the way Katrina ripped through Heckuva Job Brownie's reputation. And he was not ashamed in the least to show his obvious disgust with Bush's speech, both visually and verbally.

Anderson Cooper played a clip of Bush saying that Iraq was getting back to normal, and Ware said, with great disdain, something like:

"If you call having no refrigeration, constantly living in the dark, being afraid all the time, and no longer having the friends in your neighborhood to talk to due to ethnic cleansing, then, yeah, Iraq is back to normal."

Even if I misquoted him, it's close enough. The point was made beautifully, with wickedly well-chosen words and body language.

Michael Ware: Tonights Best...Person...in the Wooooorld!

UPDATE: Here is the original quote:

WARE: "Absolutely. And if by the -- if the president means by ordinary life, families essentially living locked up in their homes, in almost perpetual darkness, without refrigeration, or perhaps constantly struggling -- struggling for ever more expensive gas to run generators, if he means waiting in their homes, wondering if government death squads will drag them off and torture and execute them, if he means living in sectarian, cleansed neighborhoods where people who were your friends have had to flee, if he's talking about living in communities that are protected by militias, then, yes, life has returned to ordinary."

Michael Ware: Beware of "smoke and mirrors from the administration"

2008-09-27T20:38:57Z

CNN's Baghdad correspondent Michael Ware warned Tuesday that the recently released National Intelligence Estimate which states that "al Qaeda is seeking to leverage al Qaeda in Iraq for attacks against US targets outside of Iraq" is three years too late.

"Al Qaeda has reorganized itself through the war in Iraq that America handed it on a silver platter in its own backyard ..."

Ware went on to warn that we should be aware of spin from the administration related to the NIE findings:

"We must be aware of the spin, the smoke and mirrors from the administration, trying to reshape the message on Iraq being specifically about al Qaeda ... trying to evoke some Pavlovian response from the American public to fear them into again supporting the war."