great song mounting concern that the clock's failing to control its debt at the bend. next we'll take a look at the deadly path taken by war correspondents uncovering the truth in iraq .

i got it on my site. if. i didn't agree. with. 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 refugees. alone trying thousands of journalists and media personnel complete loop of. a war that was broadcast live the room to blur the complexity in the first time to instantly and insist the put me to see.

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. the whole 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. many and 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 of taken battle positions 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 see the individual standing up on 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 do. every moment of the moment of the attack at deafening sound is that. we don't in sort of the photo i can't hear anything or hear the call i feel is in internal we sang. in. less than the last two a superpowerful that i felt like i was breaking inside the building nothing of my first thought was that i had some sort of internal bleeding came 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. 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. among broken glass and debris to reach it .

confusion and panic spreads on the floor with the ukrainian born cameraman was standing. as soon as i heard crying i grabbed my camera and friends fast to the corridor it looked. at it that there were people bleeding outside the alligators. others were helping them to get in and go quickly downstairs. and we were the first ones to get into the room 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 again. you know you're ok if you're here you're ok just give me ok and then there was terrace protests yoke a camera model for 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 he thought that he situation was critical. the explosion kills. and severely wounds prosecutors.

because what took 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 they 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 europe 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 ice 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. going to me. when we arrived at the hospital we faced a situation. less than a boy. had 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 could be saved and who could be not going to. look for good if i was having breakfast in my kitchen still in my pajamas. when i heard on the radio attack 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 was the c.e.o. they let us go into his room so we could be with him a little bit more system. you ever. heard oh 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 last hours 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 go we must run or. we immediately called the doctors they came and started massacring us hard yes we were just normal so much like our they put them 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 in prayer until a little machine stopped working like me. but the beeping kept getting fainter and fainter until in the end it was all over. the cell phone.

i could never imagine that this tragedy could happen to me i could never have imagined it. they miss purpose of you're afraid when you know yourself. but you never think that they'll bring him back to you in a coffin and. with his broken camera i don't know. just. 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 not there was. there are people who find their profession but actually it's the profession that finds them switch if you will is the professor it's up if it isn't with. you with it would have been very difficult to imagine terrace without a camera could also. be. 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 back debt there is no fine here the journalese stay here soon i'll come to see you with lyndon little downies you think about five days later they killed him.

personally most of the what you can slip in our profession thank 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 mother. or maybe a wife who has just lost her husband. to the 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 is. the but we left a camera 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 and 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 but it was powerful you know more our thoughts all of the stoic. little 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 as offices they also bombed down jazeera 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 which is or a communicator if the coordinates longer chewton latitude 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 revolutionize 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 a 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 sir 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 be allowed to cronkite a distinguished t.v. reporter and presenter expresses at the time the official conception regarding the war coverage in vietnam about girls. a 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 you know 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 him yet. on the streets of saigon and one 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 the 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 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. modeled 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 very very high likelihood that nothing was going. 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 but 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 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 in. 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 have relied just on embedded journalist 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 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 g.m.t. pulled out his nine millimeter beretta and got he started firing at them with me and. i see this marine out of my i say he's been faking he's dead he's faking he's dead . he's legs. 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 an execution 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 exits 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 at that mosque was not even the one. captured on videotape but the one that i walked. in the failure of doing their job they cost their life. you know and that's a powerful powerful thing.

you know which brightened a few people from funniest impressions. start on t.v. dot com. the week's main news on r t there's no letter from the around the u.s. dispute over nukes and sanctions following the assassination of a top atomic research or into iran blamed on america and israel. a growing line of intervention supporters the army of qatar is the first arab leader who openly called for foreign military action in syria while former ally turkey keeps its forces on standby along the border. and turning up the heat wave of credit rating downgrades pound europe depriving france and austria of the top notch grades on mounting concern that the blogs failing to control its debt epidemic.