LA Times correspondent Fineman dies

[flamingyouth]

LOS ANGELES -- Mark Fineman, an award-winning correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, died Tuesday while on assignment in Iraq of an apparent heart attack. He was 51.

Fineman was waiting with a colleague in the offices of the Iraqi Governing Council for an interview when he complained of chest pains and collapsed, Times staffers in Baghdad said. He was taken to a hospital but doctors could not revive him.

Fineman, whose story about Iraq's new foreign investment policy appeared on the front page of Tuesday's Times, worked for the paper for 15 years.

He was based in Washington, D.C., and had recently arrived in Baghdad. He reported for the Times from the Philippines, India, Cyprus and Mexico City and had been the paper's Caribbean correspondent based in Florida.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=Obit%20Fineman

[realFedUp]

1. oh no.....

what a loss for all of us.

[Merlin]

2. Whenever someone like this dies young of a heart attack, my tin foil...

hat comes out of the closet immediately. Remember that our CIA/DIA/FBI has long had a device for inducing cardiac arrest. It was described by CIA Director Helms before the Church Committee in 1976. It is a tiny needle which can be launched from several feet away via a device that looks like a pen. it imbeds itself usually in the back of the neck. It causes a fatal cardiac arrest within 20 minutes. God knows how it's been "improved" in the intervening years.

[flamingyouth]

3. I hear you, fellow tin-foil-hatter

I thought the same thing.

I swear, my stomach dropped 500 ft. when I read this article. Bad, very, very bad...

[CBHagman]

4. Put away the tinfoil hat.

Heart attacks strike a variety of people -- male, female, ages 30s and up. I know this from bitter personal experience. This could have happened to Mr. Fineman in L.A., in New York, or in Berlin.

That said, I am extremely sorry to hear of his death. May he be at peace in the next life, and may his friend and family be comforted.

[Suspicious]

7. Interestingly enough,

(although I am not ready to don a tinfoil hat with regard to Mr. Fineman's unfortunate, untimely death), I recently read something about the CIA and their capabilities in this area - I wish I could remember where I read it.

To sum it up, the article stated that the CIA possesses some type of liquid, which - when one droplet comes in contact with a person's skin - will induce immediate cardiac arrest and death.

I could not decide whether I wanted to believe that, or not - it's horrifying to think about - but I had a hard time convincing myself that such a substance could not exist, and that the shadowier elements of our government would not use it, if it did. :scared:

[R Hickey]

17. I read some speculation that J Edgar Hoover was offed this way.

In the book "His life and his Secrets" there was a theory expounded that, even though Hoover was old, some substance could have been put in the tooth-paste Hoover used each morning that would have given him a heart attack.

I noticed a few years ago that a cluster of three possible enemies of Poppy Bush died of sudden cases of Brain-Cancer. They were CIA man Casey, Bush campaign manager Lee Attwater, and anti-big tobacco Oklahoma Democratic Senator Mike Sinar.

At the times of their deaths, it looked like Casey was about to testify against Bush, and that Lee Attwater, may have been threatening to blackmail Bush about dirty campaign tricks, and it also looked like Mike Sinar had made enemies of the CEOs in the tobacco industry, all major Bush contributors.

[reprobate]

24. Actually, I have it on good authority ......

....that Mr. Hoover expired from asphyxia due to a tutu that was several sizes too small. It's said he was sensitive about his waist line.

[lebkuchen]

18. The CIA used to drop people from high places--"suicide"

In the Middle East, with all the high places "shocked and awed," perhaps dropletts is the best the CIA can come up with.

The likelihood of such a high percentage of young reporters dying of cardiac arrest is on par with healthy military members of Gulf War I dying of Lou Gerrig's disease.

[reprobate]

23. I had mine at age 54. Put away the hat.

Unfortunately, the first sign of a heart attack in half the victims is death. If everyone age 45 and up would get a stress test, we'd save a whole lot of people.

[Merlin]

25. I'm guessing here: you're not in a position to cause damage to the neocons

Right? It's just a guess. But if I'm right, that takes you out of the subset I was discussing.

Just because you had one at 54 of natural causes doesn't mean someone else may not have one of unnatural causes.

Also, with modern medicine and life saving techniques, the first sign of a heart attack these days is not usually death. Most survive heart attacks. You did. I had one at 51 (p.s. I survived). Unless a person is in notoriously bad health, a heart attack in middle age is usually neither massive nor fatal.

[CO Liberal]

5. "...and had recently arrived in Baghdad."

Could this be yet another blood clot death?

[scarface2004]

6. cheney wanted that bastard.....

gone!!!

get rid of that fucker fineman now!!! cheney sneered as his operatives went to work in irak this morning.

apparently fineman had the goods on the cash kickbacks going to cheney on the irak 'reconstruction' scam!!

[juajen]

8. I know this

Too damn many journalists have died in Iraq; so, every time I hear of one going I'm suspicious. Could also explain why the media is truly "in bed" with this administration. FEAR!!!!!

[CBHagman]

9. Would you guys listen to yourselves?

Get a grip! This sort of tragedy happens everywhere and every day. Don't exploit it pursuing a conspiracy theory. There are enough obvious misdeeds to expend your energy upon.

[indigo11153]

10. Yeah everyday

But it sure increases your odds if you are looking into the BFEE.:tinfoilhat:

[radwriter0555]

15. Yeah, how many reporters opposing the bush regime die every day!

it's all just a coincidence, like the accidental tank attack on the hotel that all the rogue/non-embedded reporters were staying in, in iraq. it's all accidental and coincidental.

The bush regime would never seek to destroy their enemies using some silly thing like death.. notwithstanding faked heart attacks, misdirected tanks, drownings, two-bullet suicides, drug overdoses with full pill bottles and electrode patches, accidental gun discharges, auto crashes and plane crashes.

Nah, they're an esteemable administration comprised of the finest murderous thugs and felons on the planet.

The bush regime really IS just MISUNDERSTOOD.

[stickdog]

19. Yeah. Many involving Iraqi reporters, it seems. (NT)

[screembloodymurder]

27. Everyday maybe,

but not five times a day. How many reporters have to die to turn coincidence into conspiracy? How about eighteen?

[smallprint]

11. David Bloom of NBC News

died of a sudden heart attack while covering the war as an "embed" back in March/April, before Baghdad fell. Some people tried to explain it as being result of the cramped conditions in his APC. No explanation here-- I'm with the tinfoilers on this one. Decent journalists in Iraq and Afghanistan tend to drop dead with alarming frequency.

:tinfoilhat: :tinfoilhat: :tinfoilhat: :tinfoilhat: :tinfoilhat:


edited for clarity

[CO Liberal]

12. Michael Kelly Died There, Too

And he was hardly a decent journalist - he was a mouthpiece for Karl Rove.

[smallprint]

16. True

I'm not saying every journalist that died was secretly bumped off by the BFEE. But there have been so many suspicious deaths (journalists and others) that I feel resistant to the theory that they are all just accidently dying.

[DemVet]

13. He died of a pulmonary embolism...

....caused by riding for hours on end in that APC he was in. The same principle they tell you to stretch often on long airline flights. Sitting for too long will kill you, literally.

[UTUSN]

21. & BLOOM Was One of the

CLINTON's penis hunters, besides having his own extra-marital odysseys.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

14. Reporter "suicides" in Afghanistan, shelling the Hotel Palestine,

Al Jazeera's Baghdad HQ, and "rules of engagement" considered classified...

Coupled with the RW's Coulter-esque logic of what a traitor is, I would hate to be a reporter in Iraq today.

How many Journalists have died in the ME since hostilities began?

[TacticalPeek]

20. True, clusters of events can be, and usually are merely coincidental.

On the other hand, there was a time when I thought it was totally tinfoil that the President of the United States would authorize the fire-bombing of a US think tank, or that senior US military would plan to shoot down unarmed US civilian airliners (or their military bretheren) to provoke war against Cuba.

Then came Nixon, and then proof of Operation Northwoods, and I had to adjust my 'unthinkable' boundaries. And because these atrocious undertakings are designed to be clandestine and 'deniable', we are left to wonder what other shoes have not and may never drop.

Like that earlier time, I now do not believe there is a plot to kill journalists. But that's because I find it 'unthinkable'. Yet.

:tinfoilhat:

[smirkymonkey]

22. Does any know where to find or access a list

on enemies of the BFEE who have died suspicious or untimely deaths? It just seems like there are too many to chalk up to coincidence - Wellstone was the straw that broke the camels back for me...

I really don't think this is far fetched at all...

[Wetzelbill]

26. wow, I cited an article of his for one of my essays.

That's too bad. RIP