Journalist Michael Ware is the Baghdad Bureau Chief for Time Magazine. He was embedded in Fallujah during the recent US offensive earlier this month, and has covered the war in Iraq since February 2003. He joins us today with his perspective on the situation in Iraq.


MICHAEL WARE INTERVIEW ON WNYC HOST LEONARD LOPATE

NOVEMBER 24 2004

[RUSH TRANSCRIPT]



LOPATE: I’m Leonard Lopate, this is WNYC 93.9 We’re on line at WNYC.org. In the news today are reports that American Forces are continuing military operations to overcome isolated pockets of resistance in Fallujah and it’s surrounding areas. Are things going as well as that suggests? Well, joining me now with an eye-witness account is embedded journalist Michael Ware, Baghdad bureau chief for TIME magazine, he recently returned from Fallujah where he was tracking Alpha Company’s third platoon. Very pleased to welcome you to the show. Hi.

WARE: Thank you.

LOPATE: When did you get back from Fallujah?

WARE: I left Iraq on Saturday afternoon and arrived in New York on Sunday evening.

LOPATE: How long had you been there?

WARE: Well, I’ve been based in Iraq for almost two years now. So this is a rare respite.

LOPATE: Did you feel that it was okay to leave Fallujah because things have been brought under control?

WARE: No, I mean, I don’t think we’re ever going to be able to confidently say that Fallujah is under control. I guess it depends on what your measure of control really is. There will always be insurgents in Fallujah. Fallujah is the dark heart of the insurgency. We may be able to dominate the city now that it’s been retaken, but whether you effectively control it; whether you stamp out that rising tide of resistance, I don’t think so.

LOPATE: Is this like Groznyy in Chechnya , where the Russian forces have pretty much levelled the city and still face constant resistance?

WARE: Yeah, I mean, there’s things of Groznyy, but certainly it’s not a direct comparison by any measure. There has been widespread destruction in Fallujah in the course of this terrible, terrible battle…

LOPATE: Mosques and homes?

WARE: Oh, absolutely, I mean… For example, the military unit I was with, I mean, the operation in Fallujah involved largely Marines, but also some army elements. I was with one of those elements. The way they proceeded through the city, given that there was booby-traps, improvised explosive devices, riddling the streets everywhere. Entire houses were rigged to blow. The way they proceeded was what they call "Reconnaissance by Fire." If you’re going to go down a street first you scour it for any potential danger. How do you do that? You do it with a 25mm cannon on an armoured Bradley fighting vehicle. Or you do it with one 20mm tank round. Just blow up everything that looks vaguely suspicious. Then if someone shoots at you from a building, or there’s an explosion near a vehicle, don’t mess with it. Don’t go into the building looking for the guy… just level the building. And then go through the rubble afterwards.

LOPATE: Well, that can’t be pleasing people who are not in support of the insurgents, but who consider Fallujah their home…

WARE: Well, Fallujah, is actually called the City of Mosques . And whether you’re a Sunni, like most of the people in Western Iraq are, or whether you’re just an ordinary Iraqi, it still has some resonance. And to see a city destroyed liked that obviously won’t go without some repercussion.

LOPATE: Especially since one of our reasons for being in Iraq is to liberate these people, isn’t it? Or…. do you think the people of Fallujah felt liberated?

WARE: Well, I’m often troubled by just exactly why it is that the West went into Iraq . Because, it seems to me that the best justification that was made was somehow it related to the war on terror, yet I’m afraid to say, as in Fallujah, with all of Iraq , if this is to prevent terrorism, then it’s failing. We’re promoting, or spawning, or giving birth to terrorism, by our presence there.

LOPATE: Well, in a way you represent a couple of countries, because you’re from Australia , which supports the war effort…

WARE: Yep.

LOPATE: And you work for TIME magazine, which is an international publication, but is really an American publication. So, ah, do you feel that, that you’re an outsider from both of the… both of the cultures you have grown up in and worked within?

WARE:: No, clearly you can’t shed your, your, cultural grounding, like you take off a coat. I mean, I can’t divorce myself entirely from that, but what’s my role in Iraq ? What was my role in Afghanistan for the year before I went to Iraq ? It’s to observe and to report… I need to maintain some sort of sense of …of… neutrality, if not objectivity…

LOPATE: Well, both Afghanistan …. Well, Afghanistan to a lesser degree… but Iraq was very much a … the big story up to the election, it seems… both of them seem to be on the back burner, but we do hear ominous things, such as Afghanistan is now a… one of the major producers of… of opiates in the world… maybe, right now, the most dangerous one… Ah, this is after it was liberated… In Iraq we now… we’ve heard 51, maybe more, Americans killed just as a result of the fighting in Fallujah. 868 I think wounded as … according to today’s New York Times… This doesn’t sound like a very good thing….

WARE: Well… It’s….

LOPATE: I mean, how much success can we claim?

WARE: Okay, in Fallujah, it was a sweeping military victory. The objective was to retake territory. To deny the insurgents sanctuary. By and large that’s been accomplished. Congratulations. Has that broken the back of the insurgency? No. Not at all… Maybe you’ve dented them temporarily…

LOPATE: The numbers I’ve heard is 250 insurgents rounded up, which doesn’t seem like very much considering the cost in American lives, and Iraqi lives… the Iraqis who have fought along side the Americans. Haven’t most of the insurgents just slipped out and regrouped elsewhere?

WARE: Yeah, when they say "250 insurgents rounded up", that’s just men of fighting age. Some will be insurgents, most certainly. Others may not be. Some we’ll never determine. And, I don’t know, just every step take we’re alienating the Iraqi people more and more and more… And we’re producing more terrorists and insurgents.

LOPATE: Do we have any idea of how many insurgents were in Fallujah and the surrounding areas when this whole thing began?

WARE: There’s various estimates. Military intelligence was telling me prior to the operation that their best guess, based on signal intelligence and human intelligence was anything from 1500 to three thousand. Others put it upward of 5000 insurgents. However, I can tell you for a fact, most of them had already left the city well before the operation began.

LOPATE: Were they part of some kind of a unified military force?

WARE: This is a very complex issue. But in a nutshell, there’s essentially a two track war in Iraq . There always has been. There’s been the high profile terrorist war led by foreign Jihadis, come to fight the Holy War inspired by Osama bin Laden, now led by Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Then there’s the home grown insurgency; former military officers who are fighting a war of liberation. We’ve seen those two wars merge. That happened at the beginning of the year. Now, during the course of this year there was some friction between those two interests. However, as they were saying to me shortly before the operation when I asked, "Is it possible for you to band together again?" They said, "There is one thing that will unify us once more. And that’s an attack on Fallujah."

LOPATE: Hmm. Well, what separates them is very different visions as to what an Iraq after all this ends would look like…

WARE: Yeah, that’s one of the things… I mean it was issues of tactics. I mean, former professional military officers don’t like suicide bombings, don’t accept the collateral damage that the foreign Jihadis accept. Then there’s also the broader issue as you touch upon, the Jihadis want to establish an Islamic state. Not just in Iraq , but throughout the entire Muslim world. The insurgents, the home grown former military officers, they’re fighting to free their country. The most interesting thing though is, that the Jihadis, the al Qaida backed sponsored, inspired, Holy Warriors, have hijacked the entire insurgency. And now the military officers too are seeking an Islamic state.

LOPATE: How would you suggest the military deal with the issue of bombing mosques? We’ve been criticised for shooting at them, but the insurgents often use them as, as havens, don’t they?

WARE: Yeah, it’s a very thorny issue. I mean, the entire crux of this war is… it’s a matter of propaganda and perception. This is a war, as the insurgents were telling me even last year, it’s not going to be won and lost on the battlefield, but on television. This is what the military calls an "IO Campaign." An Information Operation. So, the insurgents are extraordinarily adept at it, much better than the US military. So, by using a mosque as a fighting position, that has immediate tactical advantage, but they know that forces the US military to reduce that mosque to rubble, and that has an enormous play….

LOPATE: Did they have a lot of sophisticated weapons themselves?

WARE: The insurgents? The insurgents have untapped resources to weaponry and explosives. Both within the country and stuff that just pours in over the open borders that we have left largely unattended. They don’t have great use of heavy weaponry, like Dushka heavy machine guns, yet they still have mortar systems, they are very adept, in fact the military intelligence officers I mix with describe them as ingenious at improvised explosive devices, booby traps, and the way they lay their snares for us, are just extraordinary.

LOPATE: Would securing the borders have been a better tactic? Perhaps we could have avoided some of these problems?

WARE: IT certainly would have assisted. You can never guarantee that you would prevent… but, it would have assisted the Islamization of this fight. I mean, a lot of the… the religious fervour that is now fuelling this war… has come across the borders. Yes, there was fertile ground inside Iraq for this, but it took that inspiration from abroad to really set it aflame…

LOPATE: You talked about the information war, why has there been such disagreement over the dead and wounded on both sides? Is it because… the US government agencies have been downplaying them, and the… the Iraqi insurgents have been inflating them? Or is this also a way that the different media control reporting on this war…..?

WARE: It’s a very complicated issue, but let me boil it down to one broad principle: In this war, like every other war I’ve been in, there’s one absolute, and that is that everyone lies. On all sides. Civil, military, the West, the Insurgents, the Jihadis, everyone is spinning the story. For their own purposes. I mean, don’t forget….

LOPATE: Well, what does that mean for you? You were covering the story. You had to go to the sources you could go to… How much could you trust them?

WARE: Oh, I don’t trust anyone… ever. Ever. I just can never turn my back, and I can never trust anything that’s told to me. So, you need to check, recheck, and check again. For example, in terms of the insurgents, that’s how I began this long road and painful path that I’ve eventually taken of actually being able to penetrate the insurgents, and even the al Qaida Jihadis. I’d be told many things by them in meetings with them. As would all reporters. But a man masking his face in a scarf sitting in a car can tell you anything he likes. So, I kept saying, "Well, how do I know it’s true?" And it was from that that they eventually took me in deeper and deeper and deeper, to just show me, to prove to me their bona fides, and then the extent of what they were doing. It’s only with your own eyes that you can ever know anything.

LOPATE: Is that why you allowed yourself to be embedded with Alpha Company’s 3rd platoon? Because, people have been concerned that embedded reporters only see what they’re allowed to see?

WARE: Well, that’s very true. That’s the nature of embedding. And that happens on both sides. When the insurgents take me, to essentially in inverted commas, "embed me" with their side, They only want to show me what they want me to see. It’s the same with the US military. So, it’s up to us to be there to see it. So, and… and the army, particularly, as opposed to the Marines, were much better on this… on press freedom, in this particular operation in Fallujah. I mean, I was with the 3rd Platoon of Alpha Company from the 2nd Battalion 2nd Infantry Regiment. They said to me, "Where do you want to be?" and I said, "I want to be right where your boys are." So, I was with 3rd Platoon which was the very first troops to set foot inside Fallujah on Monday night November 8. And they led the battle all the way through that week. And I was there side by side with them. Anything other than that prohibits me from really knowing the truth.

LOPATE: My guest is Michael Ware, who is Baghdad bureau chief at TIME magazine. Recently he returned from Fallujah, where he was tracking Alpha Company’s 3rd Platoon in their battles in Fallujah. We will continue our conversation after we take a little break here on WNYC. Stay with us.

(MUSIC BREAK)

LOPATE: We’re back with Michael Ware who is Baghdad bureau chief for TIME magazine. Recently he returned from observing the fighting in Fallujah. This is WNYC 93.9 AM820. We’re on line at WNYC.org. What pressures are there on people reporting from Iraq ? Recently the Wall Street Journal’s reporter got into trouble for sending private email messages to friends that revealed things that she wasn’t even putting in her articles, but people still… supporters of the war effort.. still wanted the Wall Street Journal to fire her for doing that.

WARE: Oh, I mean that was absolutely ludicrous. I know Farnaz very well. There’s not a single one amongst us in Baghdad who could quibble with a skerrick or a phrase of that email. And quite frankly, I was stunned by it, because, most of us have put that into print anyway. And certainly, when we avail ourselves of broader media opportunities on television and radio, we are all saying the exact same thing: Iraq is an absolute disaster. And it’s …it’s… it’s not improving. It’s deteriorating with a rapid pulse. It’s a failing mission. I mean, for me, I’ve been asked, "Are we winning?" And I say, "Well, that’s not really the proper question. The question is how can we prevent from losing?"

LOPATE: But, aren’t a lot of people putting their hopes… pinning their hopes on the elections that are coming up?

WARE: Well they can pin as much as they like on those elections. I don’t know what good it’s going to do them. I mean, I’ll tell you right now, you can set any Disneyland date you like, let’s call it January 30th. You can hold an election. It will certainly look like an election. And it will sound like an election. But, anything other than sham, you can’t hope to produce. I mean, the… the West will do it’s best to support this process, but under no circumstances can I see any election in Iraq now or anywhere near in the future that will produce anything akin to a real mandate for anyone.

LOPATE: Why was Fallujah deemed so important to win? Couldn’t it have just been cordoned off and kept under control?

WARE: That… That’s… That was one option, although that’s not as a simple a thing to do as one might think. I mean, until you’re out on a battlefield, you don’t really understand the nature of the confusion of it all. And to seal a city, I mean, can you appreciate just how many tens of thousands of troops you would have to dedicate to that task? I mean, you’d almost have to introduce the draft here in America just to seal off Fallujah, to add to the troop numbers that are already there. The other thing is that there was a political imperative. I mean, obviously, Fallujah was a festering sore. It was a gross act of brazen defiance against the Iraqi government and against the US forces…

LOPATE: Worse that Mosul ? Worse that Baquba?

WARE: Oh, absolutely. Now, I’ve spent a lot of time in all those places: in Baquba, in Ramadi, in Tikrit, in Behji, in Mosul , in Kirkuk … Oh, I’ve spent much time in all those places on both sides of the fence. Fallujah was particularly symbolic, I mean, operationally it was very key. It was actually a city that the insurgents and the Jihadis controlled. And on their secret websites and on their secret message boards, that I’ve been able to monitor, through the assistance of the insurgents.. I get to see the way they talk… and they referred to Fallujah as… as … Iraq and The Independent Islamic State of Fallujah….

LOPATE: So, it had a symbolic significance?

WARE: Absolutely. But, I mean, militarily? At best this is a tactical victory. We have reclaimed territory. Strategically, it’s done nothing to stop the terror. And much like the entire invasion of Iraq of itself, but you know…. In many ways there was certain reasons for doing it, but, but this is… this is…(stend ?) nothing.. nothing at all. I mean, it was important… I mean, cos, at the heart of an insurgency, or an insurgent war, classic counter-insurgency tactics is that essentially you must deny population from the insurgents. It’s not about taking territory and holding ground. That’s got nothing to do with the nature of the fight in Iraq . So, we’re supposed to drive a wedge between the ordinary people who support and shelter, or at the very least, acquiesce to the presence of the insurgents. By that measure, how are we fairing? Well, their support is growing. It’s not reducing.

LOPATE: Well, one of the first things we heard was that we had to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. So is that the battle we’re really losing right now?

WARE: I mean it would be glib to say that the hearts of minds of the people that we haven’t yet killed… but… there is an element of…. Truth to that. I mean, honestly, I see day by day as we add to the ranks of the insurgency… Now, be it, I’ve been there… I’ve watched civilians atomized before my eyes by withering US fire. And….

LOPATE: These are civilians? These are innocent bystanders?

WARE: Absolutely. I mean, this is the confusion of war. By no means, is that meant to be a direct criticism of the military itself or the individual soldiers involved. I mean, I can talk to you for many horrid and nightmarish hours about the nature of that, but let’s not go there. I mean, innocents die.

LOPATE: And it’s hard to tell who is an innocent and who’s an insurgent, isn’t it?

WARE: Absolutely, and when you have a confused Iraqi father, driving his terrified family.. trying to escape a battleground somewhere and he tentatively and fearfully approaches a US checkpoint, which is manned by baby-faced teenagers who have seen their friends and colleagues horrendously torn apart and who are coming under almost constant fire from every direction from an enemy who hides as a civilian, and leaps out when it’s least expected…. As that family approaches that checkpoint a nervous trigger finger is a nanosecond away from… from wiping them all out…. And I’ve… I’ve just experienced far too much of that….

LOPATE: Well, we just heard about a soldier actually killing wounded prisoners…. Because of that kind of anger? The anger that arises from having seen your friends die?

WARE: I mean, I wasn’t in the room when that happened. But I was in that battlefield, and I’ve certainly seen…. Put it this way, that… wouldn’t have been the first such occasion. If I had been there…. And even in Fallujah itself, I saw stuff that was very akin to that. And that’s the nature of war. And it’s not so much…. I wouldn’t credit to the anger of an individual soldier who pulled that trigger. It doesn’t have to be anger.. You don’t sleep for a week. You’re in constant battle. You’re on a perpetual adrenaline rush. It’s all that keeps you going. You’re nerves are absolutely fried. It’s just instinct half the time.

LOPATE: You sound like you’re battling post-traumatic stress syndrome. Do you feel that way?

WARE: I don’t know. I’m rarely sober enough to think about that. No, I’m just joking. I mean, no, I wouldn’t say that. .. I mean, let’s just say that…… war is not an easy business. And it always exacts a toll in one form or another. On everyone who is touched by it.

LOPATE: Is there a humanitarian crisis in Fallujah? Has the Red Cross gone in there yet?

WARE: When I left Fallujah itself, no. The Red Crescent or other aid agencies weren’t being allowed into the city. I mean, that distress me to a great degree because to whom are they to go in to deliver aid? In six days of non-stop combat I didn’t see a single civilian. Now, there were civilians in pockets of that city. But nothing like the 40,000 that was originally estimated by military planners. So, the fact that aid agencies aren’t in there right now, isn’t to me a terribly disturbing thing… I mean, obviously that’s a major issue in the Arabic press. Again, this is the Information War.. it’s being played up enormously about the innocent death in Fallujah. Now, I know that civilians were killed, but was it on the scale that’s being… that’s being drawn for us in the Arab media. No, not at all.

LOPATE: My guest is Michael Ware, who is Baghdad Bureau chief for TIME magazine. He was an eye witness to the fighting in Fallujah from November 8th until just last Saturday when he returned to the United States . This is WNYC 93.9 AM820. We’re on line at WNYC.org. So, are we receiving the… You talked earlier about "spin"… Are we receiving as distorted a view of what’s going on in Iraq as the local population is… from its news sources?

WARE: I mean… To some degree, you must understand it’s difficult to measure just what message you’re receiving here in your homes, and in your offices….

LOPATE: You didn’t see the same CNN that we saw?

WARE: No, generally, I watch for example CNN International… If I get access to news at all. But, from what I do know, and from you know, what I read, and what I’m able to absorb, you’re subject to as much an….a carefully structured campaign of information and spin as any constituency that is supporting and giving the mandate for military operations. And that’s from the Arab side, and from the US side. I mean, it would be naïve to think that in some fashion we’re not all being manipulated. And often, it’s subconscious or it’s not even malign… it’s just so insidious… and almost imperceptible and sometimes it can turn on just the hint of nuance… It amounts to a distortion, at any way you look at it, it amounts to a distortion… I mean….

LOPATE: It doesn’t matter where we go?… I mean, I could read your reports in TIME magazine, or watch the BBC. Or I could watch the French press…. In the end, I’m going to always get a distorted view, through the filter of whoever’s doing the reporting?

WARE: I mean, we all do our best. And obviously, some try harder than others, some succeed better than others, some are less agenda ridden than others. But, at the end of the day, I mean, just speaking for my own personal experience, I mean clearly, I bring whatever personal filters I have inherent within me, but I try to, I try to keep them out of my reporting. But, I mean, all I can ever do for you is I can just bring you shards…. From the broken glass of… of a war. I mean, I can only give you the slivers that I am able to explore… And that’s the best that we can do.

LOPATE: Well, actually, this war is closest to World War Two, because so much of it involves urban warfare, isn’t it? We had Vietnam where it was dangerous to go out of the cities, but relatively safe within the cities. And then the First Gulf War was a long distance war, and we were kind of told that that’s the way future wars would be conducted. But, here you were going from house to house. From street to street. Weren’t you? With these soldiers?

WARE: Actually, we weren’t just going from house to house. WE were, without a hint of exaggeration, fighting room to room. I mean, I’m sitting in your studio here, I’m looking at a large pane of glass that leads onto the corridor… in one of the fights that the unit I was with was in… we were on this side of the pane of glass, and the insurgents were on the other. We.. They were firing at each other from anything from four to eight feet away.

LOPATE: How prepared are the soldiers… the American soldiers for this kind of fighting? In one of your articles they seemed to be in awe of the insurgents….

WARE: I mean, I don’t know if the soldiers themselves are in awe. They certainly have grown to respect their foe. And any… to do anything else would be extraordinarily unhealthy for them. I mean, they still deride them with… with terms and names… but I mean, that’s the nature of a soldier. But, every individual grunt has a certain respect for the enemy with whom he is engaging. They can’t not. I mean, the resilience, the tenaciousness, and the ingenuity of the insurgents…. It goes without question. And I mean, there’s another thing… combat, of any kind, but particularly something so close as point blank range in urban warfare, is an extraordinarily personal affair. There is nowhere to hide from yourself in combat. There’s… You can’t pretend to be anything other than you really are. There’s no room for bravado. There’s no room for pretences of any kind. You are stripped bare. And you are who you are. And that’s on all sides of the conflict.

LOPATE: I get the feeling that you’re also telling me that Fallujah may be won for the moment, and maybe won for the rest of this war, but there’ll be many more Fallujahs…

WARE: Oh, absolutely. There’s not going to be the great…. You know… weeping sore that Fallujah was… I mean, it was a stellar act of defiance. I mean, to be able to actually secure and control a city, and to beat off the US military, and to play such a savvy political game that it tied the military hands… But, we’re going to see it popping up here, there, everywhere… In front, in behind, beside us, up and down, everywhere. I mean…… this doesn’t feel like victory to me….

LOPATE: Before the war there predictions that even if it was easily won that once we left, sectarian civil war would break out. Now that these soldiers are, the insurgents… have developed so many battle skills, do you think that’s even more likely?

WARE: Well, I mean, I know some of the home grown Iraqi Nationalist insurgents that I deal with itch for us just to simply get out of the way and let them get on with it.

LOPATE: What would they bring back, another Saddam Hussein? Or do they want…..

WARE: Actually, many people joke, perhaps a little too seriously, that if we release Saddam and allowed him to run in this election, he would go very close to winning right now. Simply because so desperately crave the security which he was able to deliver. But this is not the real legacy that I fear of the folly of Iraq . It’s not a civil war that tears Iraq apart, as dreadful as that would be… We are giving birth to the next generation of Jihad. September 11 was in many ways the end note of al Qaida as we know it. Osama knew that he would be severely impaired after September 11, really it was an act of inspiration. He was lifting the lid off the Pandora’s Box of Jihad. After that, they were looking for a platform upon which to wage that Jihad, and we gave it to them. Invading Iraq on the sketchiest of grounds… to prevent a link to terrorism that was… not… there. Saddam was a threat? Without a doubt. He was a menace, he was a dictator to his people. He was a human rights nightmare. But, was he exporting terror? No! Now, we are doing that. We’ve created the new Afghanistan . Where the new generation of Al Qaida is blooding themselves and returning out to the rest of the world to spread….

LOPATE: So, we’re seeing a repeat of history? The last time it was when the Soviet Union went into Afghanistan and inspired a Jihad? And now the United States and Britain , and a number of other allies… Poland , for example, as the President reminds us, have done the same thing…

WARE: Absolutely, I mean it’s not just turning Iraqis to a religious fanaticism and a lust for Jihad against us within Iraq . It’s also, I mean…. Some of these guys I would speak to would say, "Look, we just want the Americans out of our country, and we want to be left to our own devices. Iraqi solutions to Iraqi problems." Now these guys say to me, "I’m fighting for Islam." And I say, "Well, what will you do when the Americans leave?" They said, "Well, we’ll follow them." And the other thing is , young Muslim men are pouring in over the borders. Bathing themselves in the blood of Jihad in Iraq . And then, going home again. This is Afghanistan . This was what the Al Qaida generation, or class of veterans from Afghanistan did. We’re creating the next generation. We’ve already created their next leader: Abu Muzab al Zarqawi. A marginal figure before this invasion. Now, he has a price on his head that is matched only by Osama himself. And, his place in the Jihad milieu in fact threatens Osamas.

LOPATE: We’ve run out of time, but I do have to ask you whether you think anyone in Washington is listening to you?

WARE: ….. They may listen, but do they hear? I don’t know. I mean, I’m ….. what am I? I’m just one insignificant little voice that rails against the horror and the lunacy that I see. I mean, I don’t have any expectation whatsoever that I can actually change things. The best I can do is just document and record and speak with the voice of the people who are there.

LOPATE: Well, you are the Baghdad bureau chief of TIME magazine. And I want to thank you so much for being with us today. Michael Ware, who was recently tracking Alpha Company’s 3rd Platoon in its attacks on Fallujah. It’s ultimate recapturing of Fallujah. It’s been …. It’s been wonderful having you here….thank you so much…

WARE: Thank you, it’s my pleasure.

Transcript provided by Paul: PKJ@PKJ.CA

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