Members of Vets for Freedom have campaigned for John McCain and made anti-Obama ads, but while they're in Iraq, you're paying for their gas, food and lodging.
On its face, it seems like an idea any enterprising editor could have come up with: Gather a group of veterans of the Iraq war who also have journalism experience, including some highly decorated soldiers. Then send them back to the areas of Iraq in which they served, this time as reporters embedded with the troops still fighting there, and get their assessment of the security situation and whether the surge is working.
Someone has organized just such an expedition, and this Monday eight veterans left for Iraq. But the "Back to Iraq" trip wasn't put together by the Washington Post or the New York Times; it's the brainchild of Vets for Freedom (VFF), a pro-war group. VFF is nominally nonpartisan, but it has a remarkable number of ties -- some previously unreported -- to Republicans generally and John McCain's campaign specifically. And it has run attack ads against Barack Obama.
It's unremarkable to send reporters with thin journalistic credentials to Iraq, or to promise that journalists with a known political bias will report "objectively." Conservative and liberal publications send their preferred reporters to Iraq all the time, and their representatives come home, unsurprisingly, with differing conclusions. But what about sending political activists and GOP operatives to Iraq in the guise of journalists, with the cooperation of the U.S. military and on the taxpayers' dime, so that the activists can come home and proselytize for the Republican presidential candidate's position on the war?
For journalists, getting to Iraq isn't cheap. At a minimum, there's the airfare to Kuwait, plus the cost of body armor, helmet, protective eyewear and insurance. But once they're in Iraq, embedded reporters don't have to spring for much else. The military flies the journalist from Kuwait to Baghdad and supplies food, lodging and transportation within Iraq. The military provides translation and personal bodyguard services, acting as a sort of super-fixer. Without embed status, the on-the-ground costs for any reporter or private citizen traveling in Iraq are dramatically higher. The cost of security alone, which often means an armored car and a driver as well, drives the price of any Iraq trip sky-high. In an e-mail, a reporter for a major American daily who has been to Iraq as an un-embedded reporter said that paying for non-embedded reporters involves "an infrastructure cost that can be very pricey, in the millions of dollars each year."
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/08/08/embeds/All the news that's fit to shit.:crazy:
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