Michael Ware (born 25 March 1969) is an Australian journalist formerly working in CNN and was for several years based in their Baghdad bureau. He joined CNN in May 2006, after five years with sister publication, Time. His last on-air appearance for the network was in December 2009.
He was one of the few mainstream reporters to live in Iraq near-continuously, since before the American invasion and gained early acclaim due to him establishing contacts with the KurdishPeshmerga and the Iraqi insurgency. He reported on the severity of the growing opposition Western coalition forces faced in mid-2003, and his contacts provided him with controversial videotapes of attacks on coalition forces, including the murder of four Blackwater contractors. Ware has been embedded with American and British military forces on numerous occasions, and the coalition forces have been the focus of many of his reports describing conditions in Iraq.
As of 2015 he is working on a book about the Iraq War, titled Between Me and the Dead. The title comes from a conversation he had with a friend in the Marines; when asked how he deals with civilians and how many people he's killed, the Marine replied, "That's between me and the dead."
Michael Ware, a Brisbane, Australia native, graduated from Brisbane Grammar School. He holds a Bachelor of Laws and a degree in political science from the University of Queensland. Before entering journalism, he served as Associate to then-President of the Supreme Court of Queensland, Tony Fitzgerald. His journalism career began at The Courier-Mail in Brisbane from 1995 to 2000. During this time, Ware's investigative articles prompted an official investigation into the handling of a paedophile ring by the police, where he refrained from disclosing the sources of internal police documents he had received.
His earliest assignments for Time magazine took him to East Timor in 2000; and, in December 2001, he went into Afghanistan to cover the U.S. search for al-Qaeda. As preparations for the invasion of Iraq began in early 2003, Ware relocated to the Kurdistan area. Although he has gone into battles embedded with U.S. forces, he also travelled to insurgent camps and reported on their perspective of the war. His Timebylines include reports from Kabul, Kandahar, Fallujah, Tikrit, Tal Afar, Mosul, Samarra, Ramadi, and Baghdad.
In September 2004, while investigating reports that Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi's nascent "al-Qaeda in Iraq" group was openly claiming control of the Haifa Street area of Baghdad, Ware was briefly held at gunpoint by fighters loyal to Zarqawi who had pulled pins from live grenades and forced his car to stop. The men dragged him from the car and stood him beneath one of the banners, intending to film his execution with his own video camera. By threatening them with immediate and violent retaliation, his local guides, including members of the Ba'ath Party, were able to win his release. Ware has stated that, had this happened only a few months later, when Zarqawi's group had grown stronger, he would have been killed.
In October 2004, he was named Time magazine's Baghdad Bureau Chief. He was embedded for the September 2005 assault on Tal Afar, and his harrowing video of the battle has been included in a Frontline documentary and a 60 Minutes report. When with CNN, he was partnered with Thomas Evans, who produced for Anderson Cooper.
In August 2006, he spent three weeks in Beirut and the Bekaa Valley as part of CNN's team covering the Israeli invasion of Lebanon before returning to Iraq.[1]
In October 2007, he covered the quadrennial Rugby World Cup for CNN Sports, reporting from Marseilles and Paris.[2]
In February 2008, he covered the parliamentary elections in Pakistan for CNN and hosted Pakistan's Vital Vote.[3]
In April 2008, he hosted 30-minute special for CNN, Iraq: Inside the Surge.[4]
In February 2011, Ware confirmed that he would not be returning to CNN.[13] He later told an Australian newspaper that he has formed a film company, Penance Films, and has recently finished a documentary about his time in Iraq called Only the Dead, released in 2015.[14][15]
On 18 October 2006, CNN aired a small portion of a videotape sent to Ware that showed snipers shooting at, and apparently killing, American troops.[18] The video was a tape sent to CNN with Ware adding narration for the edited broadcast that showed American soldiers being stalked and eventually brought under fire by the shooters. After the news report was shown, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow accused CNN of "propagandizing" the American public.[19] Representative Duncan Hunter, then-chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, asked Donald Rumsfeld to remove CNN embedded reporters following the airing of the news report, claiming that "CNN has now served as the publicist for an enemy propaganda film featuring the killing of an American soldier".
In 2008, he revealed that, while embedded in Diyala Province in 2007, he filmed the shooting of a young Iraqi man, whom he described as "a legitimate target", by U.S. soldiers. The shot did not initially kill the man, but no aid was rendered during the estimated 20 minutes it took him to die. Ware told the story to illustrate how dehumanising war is for military personnel as well as reporters.[20][21]
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Live from Baghdad is a 2002 American television war drama film directed by Mick Jackson and co-written by Robert Wiener, based on Wiener's book of the same title. The film premiered on HBO on December 7, 2002, during the prelude stage of the Iraq War.
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Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, abbreviated as JTJ or Jama'at, was a Salafi jihadist militant group. It was founded in Jordan in 1999, and was led by Jordanian national Abu Musab al-Zarqawi for the entirety of its existence. During the Iraqi insurgency (2003–11), the group became a decentralized network with foreign fighters with a considerable Iraqi membership.
An Iraqi insurgency began shortly after the 2003 American invasion deposed longtime leader Saddam Hussein. It is considered to have lasted until the end of the Iraq War and U.S. withdrawal in 2011. It was followed by a renewed insurgency.
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The following lists events that happened during 2006 in Iraq.
Abu Ayyub al-Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, born Abdel Moneim Ezz El-Din Ali Al-Badawi, was the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq during the Iraqi insurgency, following the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in June 2006. He was war minister of the Islamic State of Iraq from 2006 to 2010 and prime minister of the Islamic State of Iraq from 2009 to 2010. He was killed during a raid on his safehouse on 18 April 2010.
This article is a chronological listing of allegations of meetings between members of al-Qaeda and members of Saddam Hussein's government, as well as other information relevant to conspiracy theories involving Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, born Hamid Dawud Mohamed Khalil al-Zawi was the Emir of the Islamic militant umbrella organization Mujahideen Shura Council (MSC), and its successor, the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), which fought against the forces of the U.S.-led Coalition forces during the Iraqi insurgency.
Ismail Hafidh al-Lami — known as Abu Deraa is an Iraqi Shia militant whose men have been accused of retaliatory terrorizing and killing Sunnis.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, born Ahmad Fadeel al-Nazal al-Khalayleh, was a Jordanian jihadist who ran a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. He became known after going to Iraq and being responsible for a series of bombings, beheadings, and attacks during the Iraq War, reportedly "turning an insurgency against US troops" in Iraq "into a Shia–Sunni civil war". He was sometimes known by his supporters as the "Sheikh of the slaughterers".
Maggie O'Kane is an Irish journalist and documentary film maker. She has been most associated with The Guardian newspaper where she was a foreign correspondent who filed graphic stories from Sarajevo while it was under siege between 1992 and 1996. She also contributed to the BBC from Bosnia. She has been editorial director of GuardianFilms, the paper's film unit, since 2004. Since 2017, she has been chair of the Board of the European Press Prize.
Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn, more commonly known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq, was a Sunni jihadist organization affiliated with Al-Qaeda. It was founded on 17 October 2004, and was led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri until its disbandment on 15 October 2006.
Kata'ib Hezbollah —or the Hezbollah Brigades—is a radical Iraqi Shiite paramilitary group which used to be part of the Popular Mobilization Forces, staffing the 45th, 46th, and 47th Brigades. During the Iraq War (2003–11), the group fought against Coalition forces. It has been active in the War in Iraq (2013–2017) and the Syrian civil war (2011–present). The group was commanded by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis until he was killed in a US drone attack in 2020. Thereafter, he was replaced by Abdul Aziz al-Muhammadawi, as the new leader of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). KH seeks to establish an Iran-aligned government in Iraq, expel American forces from the country, and advance the regional and international interests of Iran in Iraq and the region. The group is responsible for killing hundreds of U.S. soldiers and takes a central part in carrying out attacks against U.S. targets in Iraq and acts as part of the Axis of Resistance. Kata'ib Hezbollah is directly subordinate to Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps's (IRGC) Quds Force and operates under its instructions and guidance.
On July 12, 2007, a series of air-to-ground attacks were conducted by a team of two U.S. AH-64 Apache helicopters in Al-Amin al-Thaniyah, New Baghdad, during the Iraqi insurgency which followed the invasion of Iraq. On April 5, 2010, the attacks received worldwide coverage and controversy following the release of 39 minutes of classified gunsight footage by WikiLeaks. The video, which WikiLeaks titled Collateral Murder, showed the crew firing on a group of people and killing several of them, including two Reuters journalists, and then laughing at some of the casualties, all of whom were civilians. An anonymous U.S. military official confirmed the authenticity of the footage, which provoked global discussion on the legality and morality of the attacks.
Nick Paton Walsh is a British journalist who is CNN's International Security Editor. He has been CNN's Kabul Correspondent, an Asia and foreign affairs correspondent for the UK's Channel 4 News, and Moscow correspondent for The Guardian newspaper.
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