Tonya and PQBON's WebLog
CNN.com - A reporter's shock at the Haditha allegations - May 30, 2006
And so began the e-mails and phone calls between myself and my two other CNN crew members, Jennifer Eccleston and Gabe Ramirez: Do you remember when we were talking with the battalion commander and his intel guy right outside the school and then half an hour later they found an IED in that spot? Do you remember when we were sitting chatting with them at the school? And all the other "do you remember whens."
There was also -- can you believe it? -- the allegations of the Haditha probe.
This is exactly why the government has started to embed journalists.
I went on countless operations in 2005 up and down the Euphrates River Valley. I was pinned on rooftops with them in Ubeydi for hours taking incoming fire, and I've seen them not fire a shot back because they did not have positive identification on a target.
I saw their horror when they thought that they finally had identified their target, fired a tank round that went through a wall and into a house filled with civilians. They then rushed to help the wounded -- remarkably no one was killed.
The journalists are now part of the group. Not only can embedded journalists be controlled, it is easy to limit who they talk to and what they talk about. It also makes them very unlikely to talk to random locals. But, it also bonds them to the units they are attached to. This plants doubt, much the way your heard from Scott Peterson's former friends and coaches about how good a person he is and how he never could have killed is wife. You now have journalists in that role.
Posted by pqbon at May 30, 2006 3:40 PM