Now cnn's Michael Ware is scaring up fears about Mexico? How did we

[babylonsister]

ever survive without him? :eyes:

He's a war reporter, so I guess MX qualifies. Except I was there last weekend, and it was no big deal. (heh) You have to be smart.

[MADem]

1. Is that the guy who really, really needs a nose job? His nose is

about two inches off center?

[babylonsister]

2. The Aussie. It just seems to me like he's transferring his 'skills' to

somewhere safer.

He just as easily could be staying in whatever town he's reporting from and partying awhile.

[DCKit]

14. He said on Bill Maher's show that the gig in Mexico (investigating the drug trade)...

was way more fun than our illegal wars.

[Joe the Liberal]

3. Lol that's him.....

I wonder how his nose got like that.

[Sugarcoated]

4. He plays Austrailian rules football

on a regular basis. He was interviewed on 360 one night. He says it's been broken something like six times? Or seven?

[alfredo]

23. He also plays Rugby.

[Gabi Hayes]

17. he got it caught in something

ask Lara

[alfredo]

24. Leg crossing at an inopportune time?

[cynatnite]

5. I trust his reporting...

He's one of the few that came out ahead of other reporters about how bad Iraq was going not long after the invasion. He's the one who got the tapes of the Blackwater contracters that were murdered and their bodies were put on display in the streets.

The repukes attacked Michael Ware and said he was providing propaganda when he provided video tapes of American soldiers being shot at by snipers.

In my book he's a hell of a war reporter who doesn't hold back.

http://crooksandliars.com/2008/06/02/obama-could-see-the-rooftops-of-a-lot-of-iraqi-houses?highlight=Ware

http://crooksandliars.com/2007/09/14/keeping-them-honest-michael-ware-on-bushs-definition-of-an-ordinary-life-in-iraq?highlight=Ware

[RagAss]

6. I second that...there was a time when he was the only voice of truth reporting in Iraq...

Not like those cheerleader "imbeds" who sold the fucking lie on behalf of Cheney's war machine.

[babylonsister]

8. I liked him as a 'war reporter', but to transpose this to MX? Not so much.

Not even comparable.

[madokie]

9. So do I trust him

[depakid]

18. He tends to call it like he sees it

and he also goes to see it right up close and personal.

Wouldn't underwrite his life insurance policy.

[Duckhunter935]

7. I live on the border, will not go there.

The young woman's death was one of nine Juárez homicides Sunday. At least 10 people from El Paso have been killed this year in Juárez.
State police reported 11 homicides Tuesday, including the death of a Mexican federal agent investigating the November killing of Juárez newspaper crime reporter Armando Rodriguez.
Officials said Agent Jesus Ibarra Limon was shot in the head by gunmen when he stepped out of his pickup Tuesday night as he arrived home.
This year, more than 1,100 people have been killed. More than 2,700 have been killed since a rise in violent crime began in January 2008 with the start of a drug-cartel war. There were at least four more homicides as of Wednesday evening.

http://www.lcsun-news.com/ci_12944797?source=most_viewed

JUAREZ -- Deadly violence continues to grip El Paso's sister city as several more people were killed in violent crimes.
XHIJ Channel 44 in Juarez is reporting nine people were killed overnight. The death toll for the month of July now stands
at 236 and the yearly death figure now stands at 1,120.

http://www.kvia.com/Global/story.asp?S=10829376


Juárez has 23 deaths in 2 days

http://www.elpasotimes.com/juarez/ci_12839261

[babylonsister]

10. OK. I 'get' why you won't go there. You've been there in better times,

too, I'll bet.

I never did go to MX after living in Corpus Christi for about 6 years and going fairly often.

I know what's there and don't want to go. I'm missing nothing.

But to kill MX everything with first the drug lords, then the swine flu, now back to the drug lords, I don't know who is massaging this message.

[Maru Kitteh]

12. You do understand Juarez isn't really that big don't you? 23 deaths in 2 days?

Yeah, it's pretty bad right now. I used to live in El Paso, in better times. Iraq once had better days too.

You don't make things better by not talking about them, or pretending it's all daisies and ice cream.

[babylonsister]

13. I also realize that this is bad. I want someone to

make it better, and not necessarily the US gov't. I also don't want MX to be cast as the worst place in the world to go. Who's ramping up this? Is it being ramped up? I want some truth, not a war reporter going there to do it.

[Maru Kitteh]

19. Dead people are the truth.

Nobody needs to ramp it up. It exists. They are our neighbor, it is a rough and violent time, and it is a story. Given the body counts on the other side of the star, a battlefield correspondent seems appropriate.



I really loved Juarez while I was there, so this is painful for me to see.

Talking about corruption in Mexico is like talking about the wetness of water or dumbness of Dubya, but I have seen glimmers of real hope in the last few years. I hope that whatever Ciudad Juarez and/or the government of Mexico gets exactly as much help from the U.S. as they want, and no more. I hope that if we are asked, we are generous, respectful and forthcoming with whatever is asked of us. I have immeasurably better faith in that possibility with Obama at the helm.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_-RECjJksv7M/Rxo6qFvjJvI/AAAAAAAAEAE/n-Rk2pBMmEg/s400/Ala+norte+del+mercado+Ju%C3%A1rez+18102007.jpg

[babylonsister]

20. Dead people are the truth in LA, Houston, NO, NY, too.

I think he's there to scare people and to mess with the MX revenue.

My father, who lives in NY in the summer, is scared shitless of MX when there's the same going on a lot closer to home.

I think it sucks for the economy of MX. People are not being shot on street corners in every city or town in MX, despite what Ware is attempting to convey.

[Maru Kitteh]

25. I don't understand why you're stuck on some great conspiracy theory here when the facts are readily

apparent.

1) Juarez (like other cartel strongholds)is experiencing an unusually vicious and proliferous level of violence right now related to the drug trade and weapons trade.

2) This has brought a shockingly violent spate of crime to include commando-style attacks that slaughter entire families including toddlers, torture killings, and beheadings. Last I checked, torture killings, beheadings and commando assaults that murder young children were not regular occurrences in similar American bergs.

3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnOaTCiiPjs&NR=1

4) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMdRfJTQvAk

5) Journalists are being targeted and assassinated by the drug cartels in Ciudad Juarez. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnOaTCiiPjs&NR=1


One really does need to apply Occam's razor here. "All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best"

Michael Ware absolutely did not suggest that "people are being shot on street corners in every city or town in Mexico," nor is he by any stretch of the imagination the only reporter covering this very real story. US, Mexican and International media have all covered this story.

Quite to the contrary, I have heard Michael Ware go out of his way to make a few very important points in regards to this story - that we would not have this level of violence in our sister cities and towns if it were not for the stupid and arcane drug laws of the United States combined with the gross availability of arms and weaponry here that results in a thriving smuggling trade TO Mexico.

I have also seen him carefully explain that while some random citizens have on occasion been victimized, it is still for the most part highly targeted violence. He just as carefully points out that tourists have not been targeted and are in very little to no more danger than they ever have been traveling in Mexico, but that the recent spate of drug violence is hurting the tourism industry.


So this is where we are. Evidence and information from multiple sources suggest that there has been an extra-ordinary rise in brutal and violent crime in areas held by the drug cartels of Mexico. This represents a newsworthy set of events and has been covered extensively by Mexican, US, and International media.

You make the extra-ordinary claim that Michael Ware is part of some conspiracy to deprive the state of Mexico of revenue - when Ware in fact appears to have treated the subject with greater restraint and more clarity than many of his counterparts, both foreign and domestic.

Extra-ordinary claims require extra-ordinary evidence.

[dysfunctional press]

11. micheal ware seems like the illigitimate love-child of joaquin phoenix and jude law...

or possibly vinnie jones.

[DCKit]

15. Even Michael Jackson needed to borrow a womb....

but I like your thinking.

[miyazaki]

16. Ya, you have to be smart, thats great.

:|

[SoCalDem]

21. He's an adrenalin junkie, and will not quit until he gets killed

:(

[alfredo]

22. Ware on Bill Maher Watch both short videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxZrTgOkIl8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KatO1aWMcto&feature=related

[kiva]

26. Do you think we should supress the news of the

killings to help Mexico's economy?

Michael Ware is one of the few journalists out there who tries to bring more than a couple of sound bites to stories and he's done a very good job with his reporting from Mexico. Just because you don't like what is happening there doesn't mean you should shoot the messenger.