CNN’s Ware: McCain ‘has no idea what is going on in Iraq.’»

Michael Ware (born on March 25, 1969) is an Australian journalist reporting for CNN as an international correspondent based in Baghdad. He joined CNN in May 2006, after five years with sister-publication Time Magazine.

He is one of the only mainstream reporters to have lived in Baghdad near-continuously since before the American invasion and he gained early acclaim as one of the few reporters to establish contacts with the Kurdish Peshmerga and the Iraqi insurgency. Ware was one of the first mainstream journalists to report on the severity of the growing opposition Western coalition forces faced in mid-2003, and his contacts have provided him with controversial videotapes of attacks on coalition forces, including the murder of four Blackwater contractors. <1>



In September 2004, while investigating reports that Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi's nascent "al-Qaeda in Iraq" group was openly claiming control of the Haifa Street area of Baghdad, Ware was briefly held at gunpoint by terrorists loyal to Zarqawi who had pulled pins from live grenades and forced his car to stop. The men dragged him from the car and stood him beneath one of the banners, intending to film the execution with his own video camera. By threatening them with immediate and violent retaliation, his local guides, including members of the Ba'athist Party, were able to win his release. (Ware has stated that had this happened only a few months later, when Zarqawi's group had grown stronger, he would have been killed.)