Embed Who Broke Big Story Returns to Iraq

By: Greg Mitchell The last time he was in Iraq, Mike Francis broke a national story, partly based on photographs of prisoner abuse taken through the scope of a high-powered rifle. Now the Oregonian embed is heading to Baghdad again, on Friday, to rejoin a local National Guard unit at perhaps the most dangerous point of the war.

He could have stayed away. Other ?real strong people? at the Portland paper volunteered to go, he told me this week, but he craved the assignment. I wished him luck, but, I have to admit, I hope more controversy finds him.

Last August, Francis exposed a high-level U.S. military decision ordering Oregon guardsmen to return Iraqi prisoners to their Iraqi jailers in Baghdad after the American soldiers had intervened to halt the abuse they witnessed. He broke the story after one of the guardsmen bravely gave him a written account of the June 29, 2004, episode. The Oregonian story was accompanied by 15 photos of the abuse, some shot through the sniper scope.

When the U.S. military responded by saying its investigation was closed, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore) pressed the Pentagon to reconsider. Francis told us at the time that he still wanted to know who ordered the guardsmen to retreat.

Two months later, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, responded to the Wyden request by commending the Oregon guardsmen, but he also suggested that the order to retreat came because ?it is critically important to our success in Iraq that we reinforce, whenever possible, the authority and responsibility of the Iraq government to handle its internal affairs.?

It turns out that the sergeant who ordered the guardsmen to intervene was also the man who shot the abuse photos through the rifle scope. Staff Sgt. Kevin Maries, who hails from Salem, Ore., said that the Abu Ghraib prison scandal was fresh in his mind at the time of the June 29 incident and he wanted to show that the vast majority of American soldiers ?wouldn?t consider? tolerating torture. He told Francis that, on June 29, he was prepared to shoot at least one of the Iraqi guards if the beatings did not stop.

Sgt. Maries also declared that he was ?disgusted? with the order to withdraw. Nearly seven months after the episode, Francis says he still does not know who, in the chain of command, gave that order.

Now Francis is heading back to the war zone -- succeeding the paper?s most recent embed, Helen Jung -- along with photographer Randy Rasmussen. As he says, ?it looks like we will need someone there for a long time yet.? Another National Guard unit from Oregon arrived in Iraq around Thanksgiving, and Francis recently learned of ?another big deployment? from east-central Oregon scheduled for 2006.

One reason for his return: He wonders "what 's happening to the guys I know there.? For the immediate future, however, Francis will spotlight the Jan. 30 Iraqi elections, if they actually happen. ?Will they move toward democracy, or more disorder?? he asks. But he will be better equipped this time to make a sense of things, building on his previous experience and the work of fellow embed Jung.

The Oregonian, he admits, was a little slow to join the post-invasion embed program, not dispatching him to Iraq until after the unexpected deaths among local guardsmen ?hit home.? One analysis, sadly, puts the death rate among that state?s guardsmen as the highest in the country, one in every 210 killed.

But what stories will Francis report, beyond the human interest? After breaking a story about heroic soldiers intervening to halt abuse, will he take an honest look at misbehavior on the U.S. side? "I can't be everywhere,? he admits, ?but I can describe what I see in front of me."

While most Americans soldiers and Marines have probably acted with restraint, under severe pressure, it has often seemed to me that our embeds have failed to report on, or softened, abuses they must have seen on our side. By all accounts, tens of thousands of iraqi civilians have died, thousands more wounded, nearly all off stage or out of camera range. Firsthand journalistic testimony has been rare. Most of the brutally frank eyewitness accounts from embeds that I have seen have come from English reporters traveling with U.S. troops, most recently in a remarkable account this week in The Economist.

Why is that? Mike Francis told me this week that my instinct about American reporters holding back is ?probably right.? But he directed me to an eye-opening feature that ran this past Monday in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette by an embed he much admires, Amy Schlesing. She probed a rarely mentioned subject: alcohol and drug abuse among U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

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Tomorrow in Part II: More on Francis, and this week?s articles in The Economist and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.