so that to bring us up to date for the moment more news with me and from now in the meantime it's all special report we reveal how the war in iraq proved to be the bloodiest in history for the journalists who were covering it that's next why for them i mean.

i got him on my site. if. i can bring. the two thousand and three war in iraq was the bloodiest of the last decade so almost one million soldiers and civilians were killed and four and a half million iraqis became rich. in the outright thousands of journalists and media personnel company with. a war that was broadcast live all around the globe with the complexity of the first time to instantly and insist the put me in.

after eighteen days of war u.s. forces into baghdad without encountering any particular resistance more than one hundred journalists and media workers covering the war from the iraqi capital are staying at palestine hotel. but the world had the feeling that the day would be an important day a critical day for the war in iraq. the marines and the u.s. army were so close to the hotel we could almost see their eyes still so hoarse. a medium i hear there on the local time i went out on the balcony and it was a very calm on and on and on shots were being had from

a long distance away and that's why i was on that balcony because i realized i wasn't in any danger by being there on that balcony looking over the city at. an alj meridia bridge just four hundred meters away from the hotel two american tanks a taken back a position since the. sergeant sean gibson scans with his binoculars the floors of the hotel. he focuses on the fifteenth floor always spot someone moving. brought to a reuters cameraman is filming from his rooms balcony the entrance of the u.s. army in baghdad. during that time i was receiving mortar rounds to try to make the bridge collapse so when i'm sitting down here and i got all these fires coming from all directions

i don't think it could tell me is that somebody is looking for somebody else and then when i seen the individual standing up all about what a pair of binoculars. and they were talking and he was pointing. i did not immediately engage that individual i did not do that i called it up and told him what i've seen. and it took about ten minutes later for them to call back as a. firearm and that's what i did. every moment of the moment of the attack at deafening sound is that. we don't in sort of the for the i can't hear anything or hear the whole i feel is in internally slang. let's fill in the last two a superpowerful that i felt like i was breaking inside the building looking up my first thought was that i had some sort of internal bleeding him a couple grafter about ten seconds i saw the smoke rising from the upper floors of

the palestine hotel. at that moment i realized that the hotel had been hit. also damaged the floor below where spanish cameraman. had been filming immediately off the blas his friend and colleague john sixty rushes to help. you get that whistling noise in your ears after an explosion occurs nearby believes you somehow disoriented at the beginning to study and see if you like and then i heard the terrible screams of my driver shouting. and he said to me john john come quickly it's jose. i had to act fast. hit the floor and crawled along the road to style among broken glass and debris to reach it looks like.

confusion and panic spreads on the floor with ukrainian born cameraman was standing . as soon as i heard crying i grabbed my camera and friends passed to the corner jewelry looked. at it and they were people bleedin outside the elevators. this were helping them to get in and go quickly downstairs.

and we were the first ones to get into the room and what we witnessed was total chaos with wounded colleagues everywhere you know that either specifically i remember the whole past well a producer or i was lying on the floor in a pool of blood asking for help. for me. you know you're ok if you're here you're ok just give me ok and then there was terrorist protests yoke a camera model what i thought that he was unlucky enough to be on the balcony about moments filming with his camera. he was bleeding all over he was barely breathing. i was shocked when i saw him. and i thought that he situation was critical of.

the explosion kills. and severely wounds prosecutors. because you look at my belt from my trousers and tied it around his wounds to try and stop the bleeding. i was with them all the time and they remember whispering as we caused the hotel lobby of. course to read about jose i'll cover your face you will feel like being suffocated you'll feel like you will think that you can't breathe but outside there are many television cameras doing what you and i would do if we were up there filming and. the moment when people kept filming i saw a group of men carrying a wanted man wrapped in a white sheet he was in pretty bad shape there was a lot of blood. they were carrying him to a car i remember as eyes because when i reached the window of the car i remember

them looking at me as if they were asking me something or who did it but i was like why are you filming me what the hell is happening to me. but one bundle. we're going to. be that when we arrived at the hospital we faced down to ask situation. cars and taxis were coming from every direction carrying wounded people's families with women and children with men who were injured as a result of the bombings you know the doctors had to decide to whom they should give priority to who could be saved and who could be not going to. suffer through the story and i was having breakfast in my kitchen still in my pajamas. when i heard on the radio shack on the hotel palestine i began.

at that moment my feet started tremblin and it was a shock so. what i'm told us in the beginning really told us that he might lose his leg and i was thinking i don't mind as long as he returns. up and i was horrified at the thought that he would come back amputated i was thinking how will he do his job as a cameraman that his professional career was finished. how stupid it. would be for the tragic thing is he survived the surgery. covered with bandages and under heavy sedation. i miss the sea let us go into his room so we could be with him and it will be more stark or nearly. we have a. video about like in the movies there's the subtle machine that shows the

condition of the heart a lot like you need to believe the list of what i thought. started vibrating and beeping. and that line has started to decline i think is that i see it with us that ago must. we immediately called the doctors they came and started massacring us hard yes the worst novel so much that he got they put him on life support and so forth. if it are we shouted turned out and i don't know if he could hear us we were trying to get to a subconscious i want to be brave until a little machine stopped working like a record. but the beeping kept getting fainter and fainter until in the end it was all over. he said.

i could never imagine that this tragedy could happen to me i could never have imagined it. they mis purpose of your phrase when you know your son. but you never think that they'll bring him back to you in a coffin and. with his broken camera i don't know if. two cameramen two friends lost their lives doing what they love to do. especially for tired of us during his whole career showdown with death was constant .

conversation we had with doris he told me that the dream of every professional camera man the culmination of their career would be to film his own death you know that he had it is no there was. there are people who find their profession but actually it's the profession that finds them switch it with a professor in top of it is not with. you with this it would have been very difficult to imagine terrace without a camera cut off the best of the report that. he calls me i pick up the phone and to hear. mom i always cry when she calls me don't cry mom in cyprus not in baghdad there is no fighting here the journalese say here soon i'll come to see you with lyndon little downies the kids about five days

later they killed him. personally most of the world you can sleep in our profession and you don't just see the death of a human being but also a mother's grief when they bring her son's dead body tour with the mother. or maybe a wife who has just lost her husband. to just a beltway your knowledge dealing with only the end of a human life but also with the consequences of doubt and. the two men killed in the palestine hotel were not the only journalists who lost

their lives from american gunfire on that day. a few hours early a missile from an american fighter plane targets the office of al-jazeera channel in the center of baghdad. the palestinian journalist. gets killed on the spot. i see lights glowing in the sky i don't know if this is the beginning of an air raid or some random explosion this is. above the left eye coming over the roof five six people were in the basement the camera was sending a live shot storage as they had our building here in doha after the first rocket targeting the generator powered generator the camera was moving to keep people here also the commitment to come up and fix a faulty product actually volunteered to go up with a commitment to fix a fault budget that i was filming here when suddenly i heard the sound of a missile or you meant to that it was powerful you know more our thoughts off the list code. because i was afraid to watch t.v.

in case i saw him dead on screen after his death i could never watch anything again . it was not the first time that americans targeted al-jazeera office since they also bombed down to zero offices in kabul back in two thousand and one according to many london newspapers the us president george bush had suggested at some point to britain's prime minister tony blair to bomb around his ears head office in qatar algis or communicated it. coordinates longer chewton latitude to victoria clarke inside the pentagon so the americans knew exactly where the fury was and the bombs that killed the search analysts later that year landed exactly at the coordinates.

that al-jazeera had given the pentagon. his era the message was very very clear stop telling the truth. that's why they were targeted in baghdad and that's why they were targeted. al-jazeera almost revolutionized the reporting of wars. and incurred great anger. in military establishments among government. some jealousy amongst their colleagues i have to say. a great deal of admiration. that's the message that was the message to them to all those the others in the palestine hotel. the people who died there it was a warning to all of this. when that tank pulled up outside the palestine hotel and fired it was

a warning. you will do as we tell you to do as journalists or else. why did journalist become a target. in order to answer this question we need to go back in time. don't know what's our mission we're about to embark on our mission today is to report down to the site of the ambush seventy miles south of here and attempt to kill the b c one two three ball with the powerful but to be allowed to cronkite a distinguished t.v. reporter and presenter expresses at the time the official conception regarding the war coverage in vietnam the great way to go to war for the american media the conception that described the war as an exciting adventure gradually changed the vietnam war turned out very bad for america. and after that was it

news organizations in a to some degree felt responsible. in a pit so shaded protests and i want to pulitzer prize for writing stories that attacked the u.s. military in the u.s. government the pictures that a.p. people took eddie adams a picture of the police executing a viet cong in the streets of saigon a nine hundred sixty eight nick but another a.p. photographer take your picture of a young girl with the clothes burned off by napalm running down a country road these were very negative images. u.s. media turned away from. reporting. from then on independent journalism was regarded as a collateral and a. after the terrorist attacks of september eleventh two thousand and one the bush administration took

a chance on trying to control the media and manipulate american public opinion. i think the bush administration absolutely manipulated. the media in america at the time in hindsight of course their justification for the war were more spurious and best and it just they were they were falsehoods one of the things that was most disturbing about the nuclear issue was that. in november the inspectors went into iraq to look at whether there were weapons of mass destruction or programs for the. model darted put out reports that they were unable to find any trace and while it was not possible one hundred percent the thing that's going on it was a very very high likelihood that nothing was going on and this got very little coverage following the government's conception a large number of the american media demonize saddam hussein and discredited all

those who are against the war some american sadly not interested in victory and yet they want us to believe that their behavior is patriotic well it's not. for media organizations and it's people the war did not start with the invasion in iraq but from the very moment president bush demanded the withdrawal of all journalists from the area of operations. for their own safety off foreign nationals including journalists and inspectors should leave iraq immediately. the message was clear for all reporters and media personnel who had come to baghdad from all around the world they did not want them to move around and report freely without being monitored. what goes on in a war you know is deeply unpleasant people violate other people's rights people act in very cruel and inhumane way the last thing that military leaders want is to have independent observers of those sorts of violations and that's one of the reasons

why you find the journalists were targeted. on the other hand saddam's regime gave permission to many journalists to remain in baghdad they tried to control them very tightly and at the same time they kept giving them false information even hours before the american troops set foot in the iraqi capital. we would have thought that them all good and bad that there would be had to be a lock the war correspondents in baghdad were only the one side of the story but in that war there was another but journalists were embedded in the allied forces. what imbedded journalists could report it was in most cases predetermined severely limiting their point of view. this is if you like putting together a part of a jigsaw if we had relied just on embedded journalists just to report on their one hundred meters of desert then we would have been producing an incomplete picture of

you right there that going well could be embedded reporters became much more difficult due to the growing dependency they developed with the soldiers who they were following but you do get very close to them but you have to remember and i remember before i embedded the advice one journalist gave me says write in your notebook every day i am not one of them i am not one of them i am not one of them and you have to remember you're not a soldier your audience your bosses your job is different from theirs they're there to fight a war you're there to talk about that work report on that war to make sure the public that you're responsible to understands what's happening in that war there will be good things and there will be bad things will be here as i'm there will be atrocity. kevin sites was embedded with the american forces when he filmed such an atrocity

in a mosque in poland. one specific marine went into that mosque. he saw the five insurgents in there and he began shooting them. again even though they were unarmed. began shooting them initially with his m. sixteen rifle and then when his m. sixteen jammed he pulled out his nine millimeter beretta and gun and he started firing at them with me and. i see this marine out of course i say he's been faking he's dead he's faking he's dead. and at that point you raise m. sixteen and i raised my camera at the same time and he squeezed the trigger off and

fires directly into the man's head and i remember it very specifically i've seen a lot of people killed in coverage before in my past wars but i've never seen what i thought was next to shit i suggested to my network that maybe we don't show the video in its entirety we only show portions of it that we mitigate the impact of the video by self censoring in some ways by not showing that videotape people were completely confused about what the intentions of the marine was at that moment they basically accept that he might have been in fear for his life they had no other way to judge his actions because i didn't give them another way to me that was the ultimate betrayal of of my trust that the public in general to me to do this particular job. inside the mosque there was another man wounded kevin sites speaks with him but having in mind how he should report his story that's the mosque two

years later he discovers something that haunts him still that man that i had been talking to had been shot twenty three times in the back. basically flipped over and you know just murdered so perhaps the more definitive murder that occurred that mosque was not even the one. captured on videotape but the one that i walked out there are not many journalists that can say that in the failure of doing their job they cost a man their life i can. you know and that's a powerful powerful thing. it's

the military video gone viral marines urinating on dead afghan bodies we covered it and we were ready to move on but the overwhelming response we've gotten on our website says this story far from over well we're listening and we'll read some of your responses wherever we get all those state department documents to the wiki leaks website he's a traitor and should be executed or put in prison for life. and a martial law rules in these parts especially when it comes to alleged traitors u.s. prosecutors are getting ready to court martial private first class bradley manning for releasing classified documents to wiki leaks we'll show you how.