Glimmer of hope in Najaf: Delegation Arrives in Najaf to Meet With Sadr (washingtonpost.com, 08/17/04). Iraqis sympathetic to the situation the people of Najaf find themselves in, and hoping to prevent a bloodbath, refocused the national conference on the siege of Najaf. They've drafted a document proposing amnesty for Sadr's militia, turning Sadr's group into a legitimate political party, and ending the standoff at the Imam Ali Mosque, returning it to common Iraqi use rather than the exclusive use of Sadr's group.
Contrast this with the interim figurehead Allawi's 'whatever the U.S. wants is fine' position.
Monday, August 16, 2004
I don't think I previously posted a link to this: IRAQI WAR CASUALTIES, 3/21 - 7/31/03. Raed Jarrar, Director of this survey, is the same Raed that Salam Pax, 'the Baghdad Blogger,' was writing to when he titled his blog "dearraed.blogspot.com." (Pax is on a "hiatus" to edit a film.)
The Baghdad Burning blog pointed me back to that link. River doesn't make the current situation sound any better than today's other reading has...
The Baghdad Burning blog pointed me back to that link. River doesn't make the current situation sound any better than today's other reading has...
More news which suggests the U.S. isn't making much progress on winning over people by attacking Najaf: Aljazeera.Net - Iraqi 'human shields' flock to Najaf (english.aljazeera.net, 08/16/04): "Around 2000 Iraqi civilian 'volunteers' have formed a human shield around Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr in Najaf as US-led forces beseige the city."
Aljazeera.Net - Najaf officials quit in protest (english.aljazeera.net, 08/13/04):
Sixteen of Najaf's 30-member provincial council resigned in protest at the US-led assault on [] Najaf.... The council's resignations came several hours after the deputy governor of Najaf resigned in protest against the US offensive on the city.... On Thursday evening, the director of tribal affairs at the Iraqi Interior ministry announced his resignation through Aljazeera and said he could no longer work with the interim government in good faith given the "carnage and barbaric aggression of the US-led forces in Najaf."This doesn't bode well.
Understatement of the day, from Informed Comment : 08/01/2004 - 08/31/2004:
I think the Americans are gradually incurring feuds with all the major clans of Iraq, and this is undesirable.
Voices in the Wilderness is alarmed that the U.S. "has told civilians to leave Najaf, in what appears to be the creation of a free fire zone, where anyone who moves becomes a target." This is near the the Imam Ali Mosque, one of the holiest sites in Islam (both Shia and Sunni).
It sounds like something very bad is about to happen.
*
This audio file discusses the Imam Ali Mosque in more detail: NPR : Najaf's Holy Shiite Mosque and the 'Valley of Peace' (www.npr.org, 08/12/04). It is an interview with Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan.
Professor Cole maintains an excellent blog called Informed Comment at juancole.com. Excerpt from his 08/16/04 entries:
It sounds like something very bad is about to happen.
*
This audio file discusses the Imam Ali Mosque in more detail: NPR : Najaf's Holy Shiite Mosque and the 'Valley of Peace' (www.npr.org, 08/12/04). It is an interview with Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan.
Professor Cole maintains an excellent blog called Informed Comment at juancole.com. Excerpt from his 08/16/04 entries:
Likewise, CNN appears to have been the victim of a second-hand psy-ops campaign, insofar as it is referring to the guerrillas as "anti-Iraqi forces." The idea of characterizing them not as anti-American or anti-regime but "anti-Iraq" was, according to journalist Nir Rosen, come up with by a PR company contracting in Iraq. Nir says that they were told that no Iraqis would fall for it. So apparently it has now been retailed to major American news programs, on the theory that the American public is congenitally stupid.I liked that comment for obvious reasons, but this one is even better:
The Allawi government forced all independent journalists to leave Najaf on Sunday, so that the only reporting we will have on operations there will come from journalists embedded with the US forces.
This week I watched the documentary film Control Room, which was filmed during the Iraq war. It provides an inside view of Al Jazeera, the most popular satellite channel in the Arab world, as it broadcast from U.S. Central Command.
The Bush Administration LOATHES Al Jazeera. The documentary provides clip after clip of Donald Rumsfeld, ranting, including a rant about how Al Jazeera must be planting women and children in front of homes bombed by U.S. air strikes to actually imply that women and children live in such homes in Iraq. Really. He said that. There's video. It's just amazing.
So it's worthwhile to see how the war looked from the people who worked at and ran the station that Rumsfeld (not the most credible person in the Bush Administration) loves to hate.
News flash: Arab people work there! And they have opinions! This includes those people who consider themselves to be or to have been Iraqis! THAT, in and of itself, is almost completely lacking from American reporting: what Iraqis thought about the war. (Aside from Ahmed Chalabi. (wikipedia.org) And he doesn't really count.) One reporter, who has a 'western' wife and previously worked for the BBC, tries to spread comprehension, using his experience in 'western' and Islamic cultures to explain to a young, go-team military official what the actual perception of U.S. actions is in the Arab world.
A senior manager of Al Jazeera is interviewed extensively. He comes across as somewhat arrogant, but provides some very interesting commentary. He remarked, for example, that once the war is 'won,' the details of exactly how it was 'won' will be shunted aside. History will be reduced solely to the fact of victory, and everyone will rush on to the next topic.
*
My partner reminded me of my favorite John Madden quote, "Winning is the best deodorant." Madden meant it in a sport context, but it certainly applies here. Prior to the U.S. war in Vietnam (which the Vietnamese call 'the American War'), there was a generic assumption that all wars were won cleanly and fairly by the victor -- that famous truism about victors writing the history books notwithstanding. I've been waiting for the modern mass media, and especially the use of video, to change that.
I don't think I fully comprehended the nationalism of the available media outlets, however.
*
'Control Room' provides a valuable point of view, and is worth seeing.
The Bush Administration LOATHES Al Jazeera. The documentary provides clip after clip of Donald Rumsfeld, ranting, including a rant about how Al Jazeera must be planting women and children in front of homes bombed by U.S. air strikes to actually imply that women and children live in such homes in Iraq. Really. He said that. There's video. It's just amazing.
So it's worthwhile to see how the war looked from the people who worked at and ran the station that Rumsfeld (not the most credible person in the Bush Administration) loves to hate.
News flash: Arab people work there! And they have opinions! This includes those people who consider themselves to be or to have been Iraqis! THAT, in and of itself, is almost completely lacking from American reporting: what Iraqis thought about the war. (Aside from Ahmed Chalabi. (wikipedia.org) And he doesn't really count.) One reporter, who has a 'western' wife and previously worked for the BBC, tries to spread comprehension, using his experience in 'western' and Islamic cultures to explain to a young, go-team military official what the actual perception of U.S. actions is in the Arab world.
A senior manager of Al Jazeera is interviewed extensively. He comes across as somewhat arrogant, but provides some very interesting commentary. He remarked, for example, that once the war is 'won,' the details of exactly how it was 'won' will be shunted aside. History will be reduced solely to the fact of victory, and everyone will rush on to the next topic.
*
My partner reminded me of my favorite John Madden quote, "Winning is the best deodorant." Madden meant it in a sport context, but it certainly applies here. Prior to the U.S. war in Vietnam (which the Vietnamese call 'the American War'), there was a generic assumption that all wars were won cleanly and fairly by the victor -- that famous truism about victors writing the history books notwithstanding. I've been waiting for the modern mass media, and especially the use of video, to change that.
I don't think I fully comprehended the nationalism of the available media outlets, however.
*
'Control Room' provides a valuable point of view, and is worth seeing.
Sunday, August 15, 2004
While the previous TMW link provides a link to the Washington Post article that inspired it's excellent diatribe, I should provide a link as well:The Post on WMDs: An Inside Story by Howard Kurtz (washingtonpost.com, 08/12/04), along with my personal favorite quote:
'We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power,' DeYoung said. 'If the president stands up and says something, we report what the president said.' And if contrary arguments are put 'in the eighth paragraph, where they're not on the front page, a lot of people don't read that far.'
Must read: This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow: August 08, 2004 - August 14, 2004 Archives entry entitled "No shit, Sherlock" on another media company's belated revelation that they shouldn't have been such zealous cheerleaders in the run up to the war based on untrue information.
There is strong language for well-deserved emphasis.
Favorite comment: " ...[the parrot-like media is] desperately afraid of being labeled 'unpatriotic' by a handful of fringe lunatics who not only don't deserve the attention they get, but in a sane world, would not deserve to be pissed upon if they were on fire."
There is strong language for well-deserved emphasis.
Favorite comment: " ...[the parrot-like media is] desperately afraid of being labeled 'unpatriotic' by a handful of fringe lunatics who not only don't deserve the attention they get, but in a sane world, would not deserve to be pissed upon if they were on fire."