Christiane Amanpour Sets It Off!

Drudge posted a hint of this earlier. Tonight, Larry King had a panel of journalists discussing Iraq in the aftermath of ABC anchor Bob Woodruff being injured. No wonder there were rumors that Bush was wiretapping her. The woman was "tellin' it!"

As soon as the transcript goes up, I will update this with some of her key quotes.

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Update: They've got the transcripts up so here are some things that she said:

... But I just think it is so sad. I mean, by an indicator Iraq is a black hole.

Yes, they have had elections. What kind of a government are they going to come up with. Will it be a national unity government? Or will it be the one that sows the seeds of civil war?

Yes, the U.S. has promised reconstruction, but the United States inspector general for reconstruction is about to come out with a report that is saying that it is just not going at pace and that it is difficult to see, according to this report, how they are ever going to get what they promised done.

Which means, according to a new poll that is coming out today, that most of the Iraqi people are now losing hope that the promised reconstruction is going to happen and that the quality of their lives is going to increase. This is a big drama because hope is the only thing they have in the middle of this spiraling security disaster. And by any indication whether you take the number of journalists killed or wounded, whether you take the number of American soldiers killed or wounded, whether you take the number of Iraqi soldiers killed and wounded, contractors, people working there, it just gets worse and worse."

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CALLER: Yes, my question is, why hasn't there been more outrage on the part of the American people and the U.S. media, government, on the recent bombing in Pakistan, killing all those women and children? Ignoring sovereignty and international law?

I mean, I haven't seen anything in the American media that has really claimed how awful it was and the anger, the legitimate anger on the part of the Pakistani people. It just floors me that there's no outrage.

KING: Christiane?

AMANPOUR: Larry?

KING: Go ahead. Do you want to take that?

AMANPOUR: You know, I think -- well, certainly there's been a lot of reporting about it. Perhaps not enough for that view of it. As you know, there's not enough international reporting on American television anyway.

But I think to the bigger point, why are we there? We're there because if we're not, whose word are we going to take for it? For instance, over the bombing in Pakistan, and for instance, over the constant atrocities in Iraq.

Are we going to take the Pentagon paid Lincoln Group who are paying positive stories to be written in the Iraqi press? Are we going to take what the administration tells us? Do you remember at the beginning of this war, Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defense, told us that these insurgents were just a bunch of dead enders who amounted to absolutely nothing.

Well, that was three years ago. You remember on your own show, not so long ago, the vice president of the United States said that the insurgency was in its death throes, in its last throes.

Well, we're there to report what's actually going on and we pay a heavy price for trying to get to the truth. And the truth is what our business is all about. And that's why we're out there, despite the enormous, enormous personal cost to us, to our families, and to our networks.

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CALLER: That's correct. It seems to me that the civilian media reporters are given more attention than the average, everyday American soldier.

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AMANPOUR: Well, I think it's an incredibly good question. The caller is absolutely right. And, as Bob Schieffer has just said, of course we focus on very well known people and members of our own community.

But the reason that the deaths and injuries of the American soldiers don't get as much publicity is because we are by and large banned from seeing it.

The United States government has made a decision that we are not allowed to see the coffins, that we're not allowed to see the burials, that we're generally not allowed to go to any of the areas where there are wounded, U.S. military hospitals.

Perhaps you can see a little bit more in Landstuhl in Germany. Perhaps when we go to the hospitals in the United States. But it's very, very difficult to get close to that kind of real tragedy that the American servicemen and women are going through as well.

The other panelists on the show also said similar things. Most of them had been there/seen that! Yet, there are still Americans who still have their heads in the sand and will bend over backwards to claim that somehow these reporters, who are risking life and limb to bring them the truth, are somehow exaggerating to make their King Bush look bad.

Yes, I believe that Bush probably was eavesdropping on Ms. Amanpour. She's seen the truth and she was telling the truth. I'm glad that she and the other journalists, who are suffering over seeing one of their colleagues taking a hit, spoke up! Iraq is not going well! It is not going to go well. It's been almost exactly three years and we are still losing people almost everyday.