Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Freedom Journal Iraq

My friend asked me in one of her comments...
Just finished watching "The Quiet American." Anyhow...despite Brendan Frazier being a bad actor in the movie...it made me think about combat journalism and what stories you might be covering. Are you allowed to tell us what kinds of stories you're covering in the news over there?


So I want to take a few minutes of your time to tell you what YOUR military is doing over here and then show you how Freedom Journal Iraq is covering it. We're right in the middle of the "Surge of Operations." These operations are designed to seek out and remove Al Qaeda in Iraq, rouge and splinter groups of the Jaysh Al Maddi, Iranin Cupds Corp, and any other enemy of Iraq or Coalition Forces. The success of these operations by themselves will not result in a victory in Iraq. Rather, they will provide the time and space needed for Iraqi lawmakers to develop a fair and equitable Rule of Law and enable Iraqis take the lead in their own country. Freedom Journal Iraq is committed to highlighting success and progress being made by Coalition and Iraqi Forces...Kinetic and Non-Kinetic. Kinetically, we continue to detain insurgents, capture or kill terrorists, find weapons caches, and drop bombs on the bad guys. These type of operations is what you generally see in the media. However, you see all of the negative fall out from it. Here is what you missed:



With every victory on the battlefield, more and more local citizens are stepping up to defend their own cities. There is a buzz surrounding "Concerned Citizens." The Commanding General in Iraq, Dave Petraeus routinely walks through neighborhoods which months ago were ravaged by insurgents and zapped of their livelihood and shows the progress being made. You may have never heard about how cities up and down Iraq are returning to "normal!"



Last week we highlighted all of the Non-Kinetic success in Iraq. We had the Army Corp of Engineers, Gulf Region Division come in and talk about all of the electricity sub-stations, water systems, schools, hospitals, and other infrastructure projects completed and under way in Iraq.



Of course we also spend a great deal of time talking about capturing high ranking Al Qaeda in Iraq terrorists. We have two ways of telling this story. One is called a Look Live that we package in our newscast and send out to the Pentagon Channel for broadcast. The other is a brand new element called the "Raid Report." This product is a true testament to the quality of broadcasters I have on my team over here. I basically said, "Hey, I've got an idea...I think it should look like this..." Those who know me, I like to pretend I can draw, so I took my recycled paper on my desk a drew a rough sketch of what I was thinking about. This is the final result:



Final Thoughts:
No matter what side of the political agenda you find yourself...rest assured the men and women of the Armed Forces are making a difference in Iraq. You'll have to make up your own minds as far as the current political climate. REMEMBER TO VOTE!

By the way you can checkout FJI 24/7 on the MNF-I website Last night's cast is posted. I'm on Wednesday's cast.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are we supposed to see pictures with this report? If so, It does not appear on my computer.
Tell me, Chris, by being where you are and doing what you do, does that make you safer than most?
My back has been out for the most part of a week but I still get up and come here to see if you have updated. Thanks.
Did I tell you that i will be going to work for the hospital here?

Anonymous said...

Chris,

I really appreciate you taking the time to compile and share those reports with us. If its ok...I'll share with family & friends too. I haven't seen this type of coverage in our local or national news...so its great you've shared this with your perspective. BTW - you have a great presence (radio & t.v.) Thank you for sharing & thank you for your service. ~Prima

Anonymous said...

My Mom-in-Law's Mom from Tustin, CA sent this: "Wow. This is really special. To see and hear this journalist and learn something of what is really going on there does not seem to be picked up and reported on by our home journalists. Some of them do go over there but we don't hear too much about anything except how many have been killed. That is important, especially to their families, but to know good things are going on is important, too. Maybe they fear this would indicate support of Bush.
Thanks for sharing, love, Gram"

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