Michael Ware of CNN needs some more home leave or another vacation.

Yesterday evening, talking to Wolf “Here’s What’s Happening NOW” Blitzer, he went off on John McCain in a particularly hysterical-sounding rant [e.a.]:

BLITZER: CNN’s Michael Ware is standing by — Michael, you’ve been there, what, for four years. You’re walking around Baghdad on a daily basis.

 

Has there been this improvement that Senator McCain is speaking about?

MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I’d certainly like to bring Senator McCain up to speed, if he ever gives me the opportunity. And if I have any difficulty hearing you right now, Wolf, that’s because of the helicopter circling overhead and the gun battle that is blazing just a few blocks down the road.

Is Baghdad any safer?

Sectarian violence — one particular type of violence — is down. But none of the American generals here on the ground have anything like Senator McCain’s confidence.

I mean, Senator McCain’s credibility now on Iraq, which has been so solid to this point, has now been left out hanging to dry.

To suggest that there’s any neighborhood in this city where an American can walk freely is beyond ludicrous. …

I don’t know what part of Neverland Senator McCain is talking about when he says we can go strolling in Baghdad.

Ware was slightly less, um, edgy this morning when talking to substitute anchor John Roberts on CNN’s American Morning:

CNN’s Michael Ware joins us now to do a little reality check on what the senator is saying. Michael, you’ve watched and you’ve monitored what the senator has been saying over the past few days. Generally, what is your take on it?

MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, overall, in the broad thrust, the senator is correct to say that the current strategy being employed, headed by the new American commander of the war, General David Petraeus, is, indeed, having an impact on the levels of violence in Baghdad, the capita of Iraq, particularly in terms of sectarian violence. Basically, the civil war. And in many ways, Senator McCain’s Iraq policies have been amongst the strongest in a political sphere in D.C.

Nonetheless, the senator went deep overboard when he suggested fantastically that Americans could now dare to stroll the streets of certain parts of Baghdad and, indeed, that the top American commander, General Petraeus, drives about the capital in a Humvee that does not have weapons. So, he really put his credibility on the line there. And we see this morning with you, John, the senator backing away with that, putting his campaign vehicle into high gear reverse.

However, Ware, CNN’s reporter on the ground in Iraq, couldn’t resist inserting himself into both the policy debate and American politics by claiming substantiation for his position by citing a report written by someone who is also not on the ground in Iraq [e.a.]

ROBERTS: What do you think about that, Michael, that we’re not passing along to the American people the fact that there is some progress in terms of the number of deaths on the streets of Baghdad?

WARE: Well, in terms of the number of deaths from a particularly kind of violence in Baghdad, that’s true. But even American commanders on the ground distance themselves from what Senator McCain has said about the broad-term implications of this.

Everybody knows that the insurgents and militias are lying low. Yes, the military is putting stress on them right now. But time and time again, they bounce back. They displace, they move their violence everywhere.

At the end of the day, nothing has really changed. The fundamental dynamics of the war aren’t being addressed.

And we see today, with the release of a report for West Point by retired General Barry McCaffrey, where he spells out that Iraq is ripped by a low-grade civil war. Three million Iraqis are displaced, they don’t trust their own prime minister. The government isn’t functioning.

The police are feared. The army, the Iraqi army, is too small and underequipped.

U.S. support for the war has evaporated and will not return. Current deployment of U.S. forces is not sustainable.

He says, however, that the current strategy could work, that it’s still possible to achieve a stable Iraq that doesn’t have weapons of mass destruction and doesn’t harbor terrorists. But there’s nothing about democracy.

And correct me if I’m wrong. Wasn’t that the central strategy of the Bush administration plan for this country, to be a shining beacon for the rest of the Middle East?

Then CNN’s anchor helpfully gets Ware out of his jam:

ROBERTS: And Michael, McCaffrey backs you up as well, saying you can’t go out in the neighborhood in Baghdad without an armed escort, as well.

Michael Ware, as always, from Baghdad, thanks.

I have a great deal of respect for journalists, and particularly for war reporters. There was a particularly moving segment on Frontline last night, called Requiem, about those brave journalists who risk their lives to cover the stories and suffering people across the globe that others—particularly Americans, but not only Americans— want to forget about:

At a time when fair and accurate news coverage is more essential than ever, 2006 marked one of the deadliest years on record for journalists. Surprisingly, despite the fierce fighting in Iraq, most of the slain journalists did not die in combat. They were deliberately targeted, hunted down, and murdered for investigating corruption, crime, or human rights abuses in countries around the world. In Requiem, FRONTLINE/World essayist Sheila Coronel looks at the dangers journalists confront as they try to tell their stories and pays special tribute to reporters working in the Philippines, Russia, Turkey, Zimbabwe, China and Iraq who have been killed, jailed, or exiled for daring to speak truth to power.

Watch it. You won’t be sorry.

Meanwhile: beware journalists and war correspondents like Michael Ware who “go native” and consider it their purview to lecture their TV audience about policy and politics.

A quote from Arnold Schwarzenegger about “climate change” in today’s New York Times (in Thomas Friedman’s behind-the-pay-wall column) caught my eye:

What is “amazing for someone that does not come from a political background like myself,” said Governor Schwarzenegger, is that “this line is being drawn” between Democrats and Republicans on climate change. “You say to yourself: ‘How can it be drawn on the environment?’ But it is.

[[Ostensibly, Schwarzenegger was saying that climate change is a suprapartisan issue, which is true. To the extent that climate change is happening---and it certainly seems to be happening; the question is how quickly and what we can or should do about it---it certainly affects everyone on the planet---but not equally. However, to say that “the debate is over,” which Schwarzenegger also says to Friedman, is a crafty, cunning classic triangulation political maneuver. See Frank Luntz on this matter.]]

Back to the matter at hand, however, which is the politicization of everything in our country and our culture and our national conversation—a horrible path that we should resist, not encourage.

Unfortunately, things do not seem to be going in that direction. Today, for example, Andrew Sullivan suggests that America’s finest writers and thinkers—in this case, Emerson and Thoreau and Emily Dickinson—ought to be used as cudgels in a propaganda war against those who would deny ”climate change.”

In America, in particular, love of the land has long been a part of patriotism. And where religious faith appears, it isn’t necessarily a paean to Gaia. “America, The Beautiful” is an environmentalist hymn. America’s greatest poets, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, are intoxicated with the natural beauty of this continent. Part of their intoxication is their sense of the divine saturating the natural. Read Thoreau or Emerson and the same American interaction with nature is palpable. Americans, after all, forged a relationship with wilderness more recently than any Europeans. And there is, therefore, a deeply patriotic form of green thought in America that has been overly neglected by environmentalists and that can and should be reclaimed by political leaders, especially on the right.

There is also, it seems to me, an authentically religious approach to the environment that is completely orthodox and defensible.

This is the essence of demagogy, helpfully defined by Wikipedia thus:

Demagogy (Demagoguery) (from Greek demos, “people”, and agogos, “leading”) refers to a political strategy for obtaining and gaining political power by appealing to the popular prejudices, fears and expectations of the public — typically via impassioned rhetoric and propaganda, and often using nationalistic or populist themes. 

Sullivan’s deplorable and grotesque suggestion that we should plunder America’s national treasure—its glorious art and literature—for political purposes is disgusting enough in itself.

That anyone would take Andrew Sullivan, entertaining and popular as he is, seriously on anything having to do with politics is a sad commentary on how far we, as a country and a culture, seem to have fallen.

Going back on their word (what a surprise), the Iranians are parading their British hostages on television (via Sky News):

Footage of the 15 British sailors and marines being held in Iran has been aired by Iranian TV.

The pictures show the group being arrested, eating food in captivity and carries an interview with Faye Turney.

Turney is seen looking worried, wearing Iranian clothes and smoking.

She says the group “trespassed” into Iranian waters.

“I was arrested on March 23 and obviously we tresspassed into their waters,” she says.

“They were very friendly and very hospitable and nice people and explained to us why we were being arrested,” she said.

“There was no hurt or no harm.”

Here is her “confession”:

The BBC describes Britain’s step-by-step approach (which the Beeb refers to as “ridiculing” the Iranians) to the latest Iranian hostage crisis:

The British decision to go public with what they had previously presented to the Iranians in private came after the 15 captured sailors and marines remained in Iranian captivity. …

The first tactic was to offer Iran an easy way out. The Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett gave the co-ordinates of the British sailors to the Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and suggested that there might have been a “mistake”. …

Iran at first offered a different co-ordinate and then, when it was pointed out that even this was in Iraqi waters, another reading was given, this time on the Iranian side. …

However the initial quiet and discreet effort led nowhere, so a decision to escalate the issue was taken.

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair told the House of Commons on Wednesday that it was “now time to ratchet up the diplomatic and international pressure” to show the Iranians that they were isolated.

Reports as of an hour ago suggest that this tactic may allow Iran to climb down and that it may work.

Iran to Release Female Sailor

Iran said a female British sailor seized with 14 other crew members would be released Wednesday or Thursday, softening Tehran’s position by suggesting their boats’ alleged entry into Iranian waters may have been a mistake.

Iranian state TV also said it would soon broadcast video showing the 15 British sailors and marines who were captured last week. British diplomats said Iran had previously promised not to parade the captives in front of television cameras.