Fallujah: One Year Later

“That kind of paranoia is one reason the U.S. troop presence, while an irritant to many Iraqis, may be the only thing preventing a slide into a sectarian bloodbath.”

oh, horseshit.

There wasn’t a sectarian bloodbath going on in 2002.

Chris, you win an award for outstanding cheerleading for US military actions! Unfortunately, you fail as a decent human being at the same time. Your story was entirely how the US military sees Fallujah, with nothing on how the Iraqis are thinking and feeling and coping with the military occupation of the city of Fallujah.

What a shame you are.

Chris, Any comment about the use of napalm in Fallujah?

US admits it used napalm bombs in Iraq

http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2003/030810-napalm-iraq01.htm

When Falluja was first invaded, I remember all the U.S. public relations stories about the need to do it; that the city residents even WANTED the invasion so their streets would be safe from outside terrorists. After the invasion I followed U.S. militaries press conferences on Falluja - how they had allocated so much money to rebuild it even BETTER than before, denying the massive destruction in the city. We claimed we wanted to make it safe for the residents to go vote! I was so upset over the lies we were being told and of a press that DID NOT look into it. Most days there was NO new Falluja story on the web. And now we have to contain the destroyed city where they hate us while the “terrorists” have moved elsewhere and we continue to bomb and destroy more cities. How will history record this? Remember all the early boasting about the success of the “shock and awe” campaign that was going to go down “in the history books?”

Chris I was wondering how difficult it was to get imbedded with the U.S. military since so few stories from reporters have come out of Falluja. Did Time or you have to work very long to get clearances to go? Were there any restrictions on what you could see or write? How long where you there? Did your story have to be cleared by the military before Time published it? CNN broadcast a clip a few months ago that showed things getting back to “normal” - local “employed” residents in orange jumpsuits pushing wheel barrels picking up debris. Later Dahr Jamal reported the whole scene was a “set up” for the CNN cameras.

“Powerful new evidence emerged yesterday that the United States dropped massive quantities of white phosphorus on the Iraqi city of Fallujah during the attack on the city in November 2004, killing insurgents and civilians with the appalling burns that are the signature of this weapon.”

Susan, the sectarian bloodbath in 2002 was the government. The Sunni minority continued to oppress the Shiites and Kurds by way of secret police and public executions. Instead of a violent street war, it was a systematic repression. Saddam Hussein contained the sectarian tensions with an iron fist; in his absence, they’ve been released.

Sorry, Chris. I admire your courage in reporting from Iraq, but the evidence is mounting that US forces committed war crimes in Fallujah. They are doing the same now in Haditha. We are doing everything that we used as grounds for the war in the first place…. Torture, chemical weapons, collective punishment. We need to get our forces out yesterday!

“Oh horseshit!” Language, Susan, language! But why do I get the strange feeling that, with the alteration of just a few names and Unit numbers, reading these two Time articles must be rather similar to reading articles in Signal, the Wermacht news magazine in about 1942: “Mit Our Brave Honourable troops in der Ukraine, Nein?” Obviously it’s not safe for Christopher to be unembedded nowadays, but I do feel that two years ago he would have been out reporting on the 25,000 citizens of Husbeyah, 85% of its population, who are presumably camping out in the desert until they’re allowed back into their town - what they’re feeling, thinking, going through. I mean, that’s the real news, isn’t it?

I know you probably don’t care, Chris, but there must surely be better ways to make a living than as a third-rate apologist for crimes and murder?

I have to agree with Susan here; this is shameful stuff in a day and age where people like yourself have already redefined the notion of shame.

“One year ago, the Marines launched an assault to take back Fallujah from insurgents, including some loyal to al-Qaeda leader Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi,”

Is there any real evidence this guy is even in Iraq, or are you just parroting Pentagon propaganda?

“A week of house-by-house fighting left hundreds of insurgents dead”

And not a single civilian? Or did you just ‘forget’ to mention that?

“When the Marines of Fox Company set out for a night patrol, supporters of the insurgency announce the Americans’ movements through the loudspeakers of city mosques.”

Eh, Chris, shouldn’t this read “local religious leaders announce….”? And doesn’t this say something about the level of support for the so-called ‘insurgency’?

“supporters of the insurgents have somehow trained the birds to signal when troops are in the area”

Well, obviously….. (ahem)

“Residents who are reluctant to help the U.S. identify insurgents are equally unwilling to cooperate with the U.S.-trained Iraqi forces, whom some xenophobic Fallujis consider foreigners.”

Xenophobic? Are you really this blinkered? Of course they don’t trust them.

“the U.S. troop presence, while an irritant to many Iraqis, may be the only thing preventing a slide into a sectarian bloodbath.”

While that may be true, you fail to mention that the same US troop presence is also the thing which has facilitated any future slide into a sectarian bloodbath.

“So don’t expect U.S. troops to leave anytime soon.”

LOL! Don’t worry, I don’t expect them to leave any time soon.

Chris, it brings me no pleasure to say this but I think that has to be the most sycophantic piece of garbage you’ve ever penned. It tells us nothing new and is skewed by ommission. What on earth has happenned to you? Is this what embedding does to journalists?

Chris -

Read your piece in TIME, and I think it captures the environment that our soldiers are in quite well.

Many of the commenters seem to have missed your point that you are - reporting- the story, you are not there to cheerlead one side or the other. Many of the posters seem to WANT to hear that all things happening in Iraq are bad, that our soldiers are commiting bad acts, using chemical weapons, etc.

The story, as I see it is more complicated than the Left’s “we are doing terrible things, so we shouldn’t be there” vs. the Right’s “things are going great, stay the course”.

The Iraq story seems more about our soldiers who have been sent into a mission that they are trying to fullfil against long odds. But they are doing the best with what they have, they follow their orders, sometimes with success, sometimes failure. None of the political gyrations taking place at home regarding their fate is theirs to credit or to blame.

The soldiers are not criminals, not heroes, they are doing their job. I disagree with the Iraq war, have since day one. We shouldn’t be there, IMHO. That said, I support our solders over there, and think that, overall, they are really trying to secure a future for Iraqis, and I hope that they can improve the lives of Iraqi citizens.

The fault, blame, and bitterness is not against our soldiers serving; rather it is with the President. Bush, who never served in a combat zone, seemed to have no problem putting thousands of our troops into harms way without sufficient armor, no exit plan, and no real basis to go in the first place (WMD’s? Flypaper Theory? Spreading Democracy?). He should apologize to our military for what he has done.

the fallujah freedom, hurry usa!!!

www.rainews24.rai.it/ran24/inchiesta/video/fallujah_ING.wmv

“you know your friend???.”

“March 2003, I made it back in time for the war, becoming the Web’s first fully reader-funded journalist-blogger. With the support of thousands of readers, we raised almost $15,000. You can read my dispatches here. It was one of the moments in journalism when everything worked. It was a grand — and successful — experiment in independent journalism.” WHAT A JOKE

@marceau:

Reporting is one thing but this article appears skewed to, more from ommission than anything else. a couple of examples: 1. The presence and stature of Zarqawi is presented as an accepted fact, which (unless there is evidence I’m unaware of) is far from the case. 2. The attack on Fallujah is presented as having killed only ‘insurgents’. Complete bollox, I’m sure even Chris would agree.

Now, I’m not saying these are intentional but they certainly appear that way. This, IMO, explains some of the more vitriolic responses on here so far, which obviously touched a nerve with our intrepid reporter. ;-)

here is a good read. It is an Iraq discussion board. You can not post if you are not a member. You won’t become a member unless you’re an Iraqi.

Topic: “Is it alright when the Americans treat us this way you think? “

Link: http://www.aliraqi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=52146

Wow, there’s almost as many delusional trolls posting on here now as there are on slashdot. Quite amusing. cough Susan and your many alter-egos nowcough

Btw, this isn’t Chris the owner of the site. No affiliation to him at all.

Tho he did steal my name, bastard (I kid I kid!)

I find it interesting how if Chris had met your pre-conceived notions then he is a fearless joournalist, otherwise he is a fraud. Maybe the facts on the ground are not as you thought they were, ever thought about that? Poor Chris having to apologize for not making stuff up, and being forced to highlight that yes indeed it may well be pointless. Chris is a journalist not a fiction writer, and not an activist. He reports the news, not makes it up. The irony, of course, is that no one can confuse Chris for the Fox news crew. In actual fact Chris may well be too cynical, and we all won’t know how things turn out for another 10 years or so, but I make allowances given that he is in the thick of things. The civil war in lebanon, where i grew up lasted 16 years! 9 years beyond the Israeli invasion, and 8 years after the Marines bailed. When the Marines left all the journalists like Chris left as well, but the darkest moments of the war happened after that in the dark, when no one outside cared. If the US withdrew, all you guys woud turn off amd move on, Chris would come home and write a book, he would be lauded as a brave war correspondent, and the Iraqi civilians would be left holding the bag.

The proof is in one sentence are the iraqis better off now or before we shocked and awed them. Seems that we never kill innocent civilians, just the pesky insurgents and terrorists. Sure I believe that crap the same as in Viet Nam we were there killing the VC but they seemed to disguise themselves as little kids and women. Our soldiers are doing a dirty job, and it isn’t their fault that thier jackass leaders haven’t a clue, but they shouldn’t have to do it. Period, and when they come home the support of the VA? Lacking because the repugcrooks need another tax break for their base. Bah, bring them home and let the iraqis figure it out, and oh yeah, Zarqawi hasn’t been proven to exist he is a figment of the administration so the repeating of the lies by someone that thinks they are helping is futile. But hey Chris I hear there is an opening at the NYT seems Judith Miller is hitting the road so you might just fit right in there. Good luck in your new life style.

Great piece in Time. Our guys are a lot like the IDF, upholding a purity of arms versus a very evil Arab enemy in Iraq. Yes it may well be true that they have murdered, tortured brutalized and falsely imprisoned many civilians but thats soldiering in an occupation isn’t it.Our troops are regular American guys caught up in a bad and dangerous situation and deserve our support.

Media Must Stop Minimizing War Crimes in Iraq

By George Monbiot

The Guardian, November 9, 2005

We were told that the Iraqis don’t count. Before the invasion began, the head of US Central Command, Gen. Thomas Franks, boasted that “We don’t do body counts.” His claim was repeated by Donald Rumsfeld in November 2003 (“We don’t do body counts on other people”) and the Pentagon last January (“The only thing we keep track of is casualties for US troops and civilians”).

But it’s not true. Almost every week the Pentagon claims to have killed 50 or 70 or 100 insurgents in its latest assault on the latest stronghold of the ubiquitous monster Zarqawi. In May the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said that his soldiers had killed 250 of Zarqawi’s “closest lieutenants” (or so 500 of his best friends had told him). But last week, the Pentagon did something new. Buried in its latest security report to Congress is a bar chart labeled “average daily casualties — Iraqi and coalition. 1 Jan 04-16 Sep 05.”

The claim that it kept no track of Iraqi deaths was false. The report does not explain what it means by casualty, or if its figures represent all casualties, only insurgents, or, as the foregoing paragraph appears to hint, only civilians killed by insurgents. There is no explanation of how the figures were gathered or compiled. The only accompanying text consists of the words “Source: MNC-I,” which means Multi-National Corps — Iraq. We’ll just have to trust them.

What the chart shows is that these unexplained casualties have more than doubled since the beginning of the Pentagon’s survey. From January to March 2004, 26 units of something or other were happening every day, while in September 2005 the something or other rose to 64.

But whatever it is that’s been rising, the weird morality of this war dictates that it is reported as good news. Journalists have been multiplying the daily average of mystery units by the number of days, discovering that the figure is lower than previous estimates of Iraqi deaths, and using it to cast doubts on them. As ever, the study in the line of fire is the report published by the Lancet medical journal in October last year.

It was a household survey — of 988 homes in 33 randomly selected districts — and it suggested, on the basis of the mortality those households reported before and after the invasion, that the risk of death in Iraq had risen by a factor of 1.5; somewhere between 8,000 and 194,000 extra people had died, with the most probable figure being 98,000. Around half the deaths, if Fallujah was included, or 15 percent if it was not, were caused by violence, and the majority of those by attacks on the part of US forces.

In the US and the UK, the study was either ignored or torn to bits. The media described it as “inflated,” “overstated,” “politicized” and “out of proportion.” Just about every possible misunderstanding and distortion of its statistics was published, of which the most remarkable was the London-based Observer’s claim that: “The report’s authors admit it drew heavily on the rebel stronghold of Fallujah, which has been plagued by fierce fighting. Strip out Fallujah, as the study itself acknowledged, and the mortality rate is reduced dramatically.” In fact, as they made clear on page one, the authors had stripped out Fallujah; their estimate of 98,000 deaths would otherwise have been much higher.

But the attacks in the press succeeded in sinking the study. Now, whenever a newspaper or broadcaster produces an estimate of civilian deaths, the Lancet report is passed over in favor of lesser figures.

For the past three months, the editors and subscribers of the website Medialens have been writing to papers and broadcasters to try to find out why. The standard response, exemplified by a letter from the BBC’s online news service last week, is that the study’s “technique of sampling and extrapolating from samples has been criticized.”

That’s true, and by the same reasoning we could dismiss the fact that 6 million people were killed in the Holocaust, on the grounds that this figure has also been criticized, albeit by skinheads. The issue is not whether the study has been criticized, but whether the criticism is valid.

As Medialens has pointed out, it was the same lead author, using the same techniques, who reported that 1.7 million people had died as a result of conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). That finding has been cited by Tony Blair, Colin Powell and almost every major newspaper on both sides of the Atlantic, and none has challenged either the method or the result. Using the Congo study as justification, the UN Security Council called for all foreign armies to leave the DRC and doubled the country’s UN aid budget.

The other reason the press gives for burying the Lancet study is that it is out of line with competing estimates. Like Jack Straw, wriggling his way around the figures in a written ministerial statement, they compare it to the statistics compiled by the Iraqi health ministry and the website Iraq Body Count.

In December 2003, Associated Press reported that “Iraq’s Health Ministry has ordered a halt to a count of civilians killed during the war.” According to the head of the ministry’s statistics department, both the puppet government and the Coalition Provisional Authority demanded that it be stopped. As Naomi Klein has shown, when US soldiers stormed Fallujah (a year ago today), their first action was to seize the general hospital and arrest the doctors. The New York Times reported that “the hospital was selected as an early target because the American military believed that it was the source of rumors about heavy casualties.”

After the coalition had used these novel statistical methods to improve the results, Blair told the UK Parliament that “figures from the Iraqi Ministry of Health, which are a survey from the hospitals there, are in our view the most accurate survey there is.”

Iraq Body Count, whose tally has reached 26,000-30,000, measures only civilian deaths which can be unambiguously attributed to the invasion and which have been reported by two independent news agencies. As the compilers point out, “it is likely that many if not most civilian casualties will go unreported by the media … our own total is certain to be an underestimate of the true position, because of gaps in reporting or recording.” Of the seven mortality reports surveyed by the Overseas Development Institute, the estimate in the Lancet’s paper was only the third highest. It remains the most thorough study published so far. Extraordinary as its numbers seem, they are the most likely to be true.

And what of the idea that most of the violent deaths in Iraq are caused by coalition troops? Well, according to the Houston Chronicle, even Blair’s favorite data source, the Iraqi Health Ministry, reports that twice as many Iraqis — and most of them civilians — are being killed by US and UK forces as by insurgents. When the Pentagon claims that it has just killed 50 or 70 or 100 rebel fighters, we have no means of knowing who those people really were. Everyone it blows to pieces becomes a terrorist. In July Jack Keane, the former vice chief of staff of the US Army, claimed that coalition troops had killed or captured more than 50,000 “insurgents” since the start of the rebellion. Perhaps they were all Zarqawi’s closest lieutenants.

We can expect the US and UK governments to seek to minimize the extent of their war crimes. But it’s time the media stopped collaborating.

“I’m not proud of these medals. I’m not proud of what I did to receive them. I was in Vietnam for a year and our company policy was to take no prisoners. A whole year we never took one prisoner alive. Just wasted them with the door gun, dropped down to check their bodies for maps or valuables, and split. If it was dead and Vietnamese, it was a Viet Cong.” Ron Ferrizzi, quoted in “The New Soldier,” by John Kerry and Vietnam Veterans Against The War, Collier-McMillan, 1971.

ah, reporting the suffering of countless iraqis, reporting the atrocities of the us-troops is an ‘agenda’. wasting time with meaningless stories on soldiers who mostly have no clue what this war is all about and couldn’t care less anyway is ‘serious journalism’. three cheers for this dumb blog.

good reporting, chris, as ever. thank you.

I read your site regularly and, am for one, glad that you are doing what you are doing. You have shown what you have seen and it has been an invaluable inside look at Iraq.

Pay no heed to the trolls in this thread and continue your excellent reporting and blogging.

You seem to attract a lot of Chrises. :)

moron99

I checked out your link

This link “Baghdadee”; http://baghdadee.ipbhost.com/index.php?showforum=5

Has become “Iraqi-fied big time. The posts are mostly in Arabic. Few “Englishmen” posts are visable nowadays. LOL example post; - (م . ر ) عربي سني من يعود الى اصول سوريه من مواليد 1959يسكن في حي الجامعه وهو من مواليد الاعظميه خريج كلية اداره واقتصاد اختصاصه امين مخزن

عمل في عدة اماكن منها السفارة الامريكيه والسفاره التايلنديه والامم المتحده وبصفة امين مخزن في جميع هذه الدوائر اخر دائره كان ينتمي اليها الامم

See? It’s all high plaines jibberish to me.

But that progress in Iraq

And Chris,

Looks like you got a new batch of posters who found their “SOAP BOX” in your SAND BOX’s comment section lol -good luck with that

Your statement that the US troops are the only thing stopping Iraq from sliding into a sectarian bloodbath is not journalism, it is a prediction.

and I think a very wrong prediction, at that.

This type of nonsense lets the American public go on thinking that what we are doing and have done is Iraq is a good thing, and we are somehow helping them by what we are doing.

And the Americans go on about their lives worrying about their own little concerns and doing nothing to stop this.

WE did not go in there because Iraq was a threat to the USA and we did not go in there for the benefit of the Iraqi people either. That is clear.

And Iraqis go on being killed, and their country wrecked, and I hope someday there will be a reckoning in the USA for all this killing for no damn good reason.

Like maybe someone will bring your family “freedom and democracy” via bullets and bombs.

If the presence of US troops in Iraq are the only thing preventing a slide into sectarian violence, then the logical extension of this claim is that there will be less and less sectarian violence in Iraq every day the US troops are present.

why, after 30 months in the country, that sectarian violence should be almost all gone!!!!

questions about Iraq:

when was that last WMD uncovered by the UN team?

how many WMDs did the UN inspectors find without any help from the Iraqis themselves?

How many mass graves sites have been evacuated in Iraq so far? How many bodies were found? How many sites have yet to be uncovered? And how many mass graves is Saddam credited for having made?

How many of that original deck of cards were Sunni and how many were Shi’ias?

Hey, I watched two films about Fallujah this week… one mostly focused on how 2/3 of the city was reduced to rubble and the five “inspection points” for Fallujah residents to go through…. and the other one was on the chemical weapons used in Fallujah in 2004. It showed many people lying in bed with their clothes on, skin and flesh melted off thier bodies, clothes pretty much intact.

Our US tax dollars at work.

First, the US vetos a condemnation of Saddam’s use of chemical weapons in 1988, then in 2003 Bush launches a war over immaginary chemical weapons (ohhhh…. a green cloud over Baghdad!) and later in 2003 both Rumsfeld and Powell go to Halabja and proclaim that the Iraqis are now free of the threat of chemical weapons from Saddam (15 years too late, but there were buddy-buddy with Saddam in 1988) and then in 2004, US military uses chemical weapons in another part of Iraq…. to get THE BAD GUYS, DONCHA KNOW.

Oh, it all makes perfect sense if you are STOOOPID AND GULLIBLE AND HAVE NO MORALS WHATSOEVER.

Interesting. I was anti-invasion before the administration began overtly threatening Saddam, and believe there is nothing but deep denial or foolhardiness in any conjured rationalization for occupation. But I didn’t read any ‘cheerleading’ in the TIME story. It wasn’t painted quite as darkly realistic as it might have been, but TIME remains a part of the mainstream media. What do you expect? These are the folk who blindly accepted whatever Judith Miller, Chalabi and the WHIG fed them, and in doing so, contributed to scaring our country into this mess. I don’t think TIME has said they were sorry, and neither have the rest. Now Iraq is so dangerous, Mr. Allbritton cannot enjoy any measure of safety in Baghdad without the auspices of TIME, or venture into the countryside without the protection and ‘OK’ of the Marines. At least you get SOMETHING of reality in his dispatches.

If you’ve been following this fellow’s reports for any time at all, I don’t see how you could have missed the swings in his attitude and ‘apparent’ position. This shouldn’t be surprising, considering the complex, shifting layers of hazard and safety within which he has spent much of the past couple of years. I’d think the effect would be a little like Stockholm Syndrome, as experienced by one with a multiple personality disorder.

I’d think that’s pretty much how most Iraqis go through their days, too.

susan,

You seem to be a very special person. It is apparent that you participated in special education courses where the ideas of causality and parsimony were not heavily stressed. You will always find it difficult to communicate with men of reason, science, and objectivity until you learn to speak their language. Your words are rich with propaganda triggers but short on cohesiveness. Those who will be convinced by them already are. Perhaps you do not need a new message but you certainly need a new method of delivery.

while you are worrying about my “delivery” let us take note of the fact that 58 more Americans were killed in Iraq in the last two weeks, and god-knows-how-many-Iraqis-because-we-may-be-bringing-them-freedom-and-democracy-but-that-does-not-mean-they-get-to-live.

And, the war on terror is working out so well, I heard that the terrorists gave 60 people in Ammon today a bunch of flowers, and another 115 got chocolates.

let’s hear it for “freedom and democracy” and immaginary WMDs that we are now safe from.

And we can expect flowers and chocolates here in the USA one day, too.

“What a Difference Embedding Makes” Jimmy Massey, Ron Harris and Ambush Journalism By STAN GOFF

When I wrote Hideous Dream, a memoir about the 1994 US invasion of Haiti, I noted a book by Bob Shacochis entitled The Immaculate Invasion, that I only read after I’d completed my own book. In my introduction I praised Shacochis for his engaging rococo prose describing the places he’d been in Haiti for the first few months of that occupation. I also took him to the woodshed for over-identifying with the troops he ate and slept with in Special Forces; because behind his lively writing was a piece of pure military hagiography. Shacochis was an embedded reporter before we knew what embedded reporters were. By living with these troops, and on a few occasions depending upon them for his physical security, he had set himself up to fall in love with them.

His book became such a fine paean to Special Forces, and one that papered over much of their sheer racism and nastiness, I have to wonder if it wasn’t The Immaculate Invasion that led the Department of Defense to adopt the whole notion of embedded reporters. It really is a propaganda masterstroke. In 2003, “The Measurement Standard,” a K. D. Paine & Associates Public Relations journal, stated (March 28, 2003):

“The current war has been called the best-covered war in history, and certainly the visuals and reports from ‘embedded’ reporters have been spectacular, bringing war into our living rooms like never before [T]he embedded reporter tactic is sheer genius. … The sagacity of the tactic is that it is based on the basic tenet of public relations: It’s all about relationships. The better the relationship any of us has with a journalist, the better the chance of that journalist picking up and reporting our messages. So now we have journalists making dozens — if not hundreds — of new friends among the armed forces. And, if the bosses of their new-found buddies want to get a key message or two across about how sensitive the U.S. is being to humanitarian needs or how humanely they are treating Iraqis, what better way than through these embedded journalists? As a result, most (if not all) of the dozens of stories being filed contain key messages the Department of Defense wants to communicate.”

On April 9, 2003, Ron Harris, a St. Louis Post Dispatch writer embedded with Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, posted a story about Resheed, an Iraqi military base near Baghdad, wherein he described a dramatic daylong battle which included RPGs hidden away in civilian clothes and guerillas “hiding behind civilians.” The battle, as the story turned out, was the apologetic context for the description of Marines firing into a car full of civilians, wounding all of them. Quoting the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Belcher, Harris wrote, “You’re seeing drive-by shootings, suicide bomb attempts, and they’re even trying to use civilians as shields.”

Researching other stories done by Harris over 2003 and 2004, the guerrillas hiding behind civilians becomes a recurrent topic. He was also as enamored of florid prose as Shacochis. That’s what happens when you are writing about those you love.

The problem was, according to former Marine Staff Sergeant Jimmy Massey, who was interviewed at the Boston Veterans for Peace Convention in 2004, Harris’ description was heavily embellished. Contact that day was thin and sporadic.

“As his Marine unit entered Iraq it came upon empty Iraqi military bases with weapons lying on the road. ‘We shot it up with everything we had, and we were laughing and having a good time. The Iraqis let us in the country; we didn’t take it.’

“Upon entering Baghdad his unit came upon an unarmed pro-Saddam demonstration. His unit killed several of the demonstrators. ‘I knew that we caused the insurgency to be pissed off because they had witnessed us executing innocent civilians.’ Massey told us how the U.S.-embedded reporter, Ron Harris, from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote that there was a ferocious battle between his unit and the Iraqi military, but it never happened. The reporter was writing what the Marines wanted him to write.”

Readers need to note the date of this publication: September 4, 2004. This was when Ron Harris was described as an embedded reporter doing precisely what PR experts said embedded reporters are designed to do.

If I were Ron Harris and I read that on the internet, I’d be madder than hell—even if I were guilty as hell. This is not a good time to be seen as an embed, what with the exposure of New York Times hack Judith Miller as a virtual employee of Rendon Group and its pet Iraqi embezzler, Ahmed Chalabi. “Journalists” these days are seen about as credible as Texas Republicans.

Jimmy Massey didn’t meet Harris that day, or ever, because while Harris was embedded with Lima Company 3/7, Jimmy was assigned to Weapons Company. In fact, Ron Harris has never so much as called Jimmy Massey on the telephone or attempted to send Jimmy Massey an email until he called several weeks ago to tell Jimmy to retract all his claims or be “exposed.” The reason I bring that up is that two days ago, Harris published an ambush piece on Jimmy Massey, a year and a half after Massey dissed Harris on his Resheed battle story, and just one month after the release of Massey’s devastating book, Kill Kill Kill, relating his experiences in Iraq, and naming names.

Don’t look for the book here. American publishers ran from this book like it was a rabid skunk. It has only been published in France in French. That’s why Jimmy Massey is pretty sure that Harris hasn’t read it.

Harris hasn’t read the book nor has he called Jimmy Massey except once to demand he retract his claims, but that didn’t deter him from writing his hit-piece—about which I will write more further down—nor did it deter him from getting on CNN yesterday morning and claiming that Jimmy is making mad money from lies on the jimmymassey-dot-com web site, where Jimmy is said to be vigorously hawking $100 copies of his story on CDs.

CNN, by the way, had Jimmy in an Asheville studio yesterday waiting for his opportunity to answer Harris. But, alas, Harris had his day and Jimmy was sent home without so much as ten seconds of airtime to respond to Harris’ accusations.

So let’s set the record straight. Www.jimmymassey.com is not owned or operated by Jimmy Massey, but by filmmaker Nancy Fulton, who posted the following message yesterday on her web site:

“Ron Harris, of the Washington Post-Dispatch has (apparently) volunteered to promote this set of DVDs for us in print and on CNN. It is worth noting that total revenues to Jimmy Massey from this project have been around $250 and 10 DVDs. This domain is registered to the owner of Metropole Filmworx LLC, which are the producers of the Back from Iraq documentary which will feature several soldiers discussing their service in the war in Iraq. Ron Harris didn’t contact us to find out who owned the JimmyMassey.com website or to determine our financial relationship with Jimmy Massey.

“This means Ron’s reporting on the ‘Jimmy Massey’ story is living up to the ‘high standard’ of his reporting in Iraq which failed to mention so much. If you want to know what Jimmy Massey has to say, we recommend that you purchase this set of DVDs. We consider Jimmy a leader in the pro-soldier/antiwar movement. Watch the DVD’s then determine for yourself if a man accusing himself of murder is actually executing some clever ploy for fast cash. — Nancy Fulton, Metropole Filmworx LLC.”

Oops! Ya messed up there, Ron.

In January, 2004, the Marine Corps charged Gunnery Sergeant Gus Covarrubias, 39, of Las Vegas, with making false statements when he told a reporter that he’s shot an Iraqi soldier in the back of the head. Covarrubias could not corroborate his story, so the Marine Corps charged him for making accusations of war crimes he said he had himself committed.

If the actual claims—which must be distinguished from the representations that Harris has made against Jimmy Massey—made by Massey were indeed incapable of withstanding close scrutiny, it seems more than a little odd that no one has charged him even in civil court, yet Massey has been talking for well over a year about his experiences.

Not a single legal charge has ever been leveled at Massey; and I’ll wager there won’t be any charges. That would risk too many exposures and too many questions, and Abu Ghraib is about to pop back into the news when the courts release a new set of photographs, whereupon we can all be reminded again of the humanitarian nature of this occupation.

Scandal is on the administration and the military like hungry ducks on hapless June bugs. They do not want to charge Jimmy Massey, because what he has been telling people—that civilians are being killed by the thousands in Iraq—is straight-up true.

Instead, the Marine Corps is refuting Jimmy Masseys allegations with the conclusion of its own “investigation” into the claims Massey has made, which according to Harris were made available to him, and which he repeated in his hit-piece in the Post-Dispatch as well as his one-man monologue on CNN yesterday.

The Marine Corps investigated itself and exonerated itself. Shocking! Lock up Massey right now and throw away the key!

Harris claims that Jimmy Massey said:

“Marines fired on and killed peaceful Iraqi protesters.”

That is a bald-faced lie. Massey said “unarmed” protesters.

“Americans shot a 4-year-old Iraqi girl in the head.”

You can google-search “jimmy massey 4 year old child” if you like. You will not find this quote from Jimmy Massey anywhere. Harris writes himself that Massey says that he once witnessed a dead 4-year-old in the road, not that he saw her shot in the head. But even with this backpedaling embedded equivocation, Harris got it wrong. This statement, according to the only stories I could scavenge off the internet, was made by another Marine and only cited by Massey.

Pretty different, I’d say.

Harris goes on in the same hit-piece to claim that Massey said he had personally killed a 6-year-old. But Massey says that this was a misquote that grew legs. There was a child among the dead when demonstrators were shot in Resheed. The original statement was “I brought these series of events up through the chain of command. Each time I was told they were terrorists, or they were insurgents. My question to the marine corps at that point became, how was a 6-year-old child with a bullet hole in its head a terrorist or insurgent?”

Reads a bit differently that Harris’ smear-job, doesn’t it?

If anyone doubts that reporters do in fact fuck up as well as misquote people, I will say for myself that I have been misquoted more than quoted in the last ten years, but let’s let Harris’ own accuracy be put to the test in this very article.

Harris says, “While touring with Sheehan in Montgomery, Ala., he told of seeing the girl’s body.” Sheehan did not join that leg of the three-bus tour until Atlanta. She was never in Montgomery. I just got an email from Cindy confirming that. No big deal in most circumstances. Just a minor error. But since what is good for the Massey-goose is examination with an electron microscope, let’s just say its sauce for the Post-Dispatch’s embedded-gander.

Second-hand scuttlebutt from blogs misquoting out of context does not strike me as very sound journalism, but then I’m not a journalist. Those are the only place, however, where you can find anything resembling Harris’ peculiar and venomous construction of Jimmy Massey.

Massey never claimed, as Harris reports, that he shot a 6-year-old boy either. He never claims to have shot a 6-year-old at all.

I have no way of knowing why Harris is doing what he is doing, or who may have put him up to it. Maybe he has cobbled his lurid war tales from the 2003-4 embedded period into a book of his own—“Ron and Lima Company’s Excellent Adventure—Traveling with the Jarheads and Watching Iraqi Terrorists Hide Behind Women and Children.”

Here may be some excerpts (taken from his “news” reports):

“What a difference embedding makes.” (1-13-2004, Post Dispatch) [He really made this the opening statement in a breathless and appreciative article about Donald Rumsfeld’s military. I couldn’t have made anything that rich up on my own. A bumper sticker maybe? ­SG]

“For this new offensive, journalists would travel as the men and women of the Navy, Air Force, Army and Marines did. They would eat what they ate, sleep (or not sleep) as they slept, bathe (or definitely not bathe) as they did.

“They could talk to all of the troops in their unit, from privates and corporals and sergeants to lieutenants and captains and colonels, and on some occasions, even to generals.” (Oh, gee whiz, even to generals!) The truth is that much of what journalists saw or did or the information that they gathered through conversations wouldn’t have happened without the assistance of the units they were with It was through the relationship that we established that they shared their stories, food, water and concerns with us. It was Capt. George Schreffler who urged us off the ground during a sandstorm for fear that we would get run over by a vehicle during the night.” (4-26-2003, Post Dispatch)

The story of Resheed wasn’t the only place he expressed himself about the terrorists “hiding behind civilians.” He likes that bromide, and though this seasoned reporter steeped in virtuous skepticism has never thought to ask himself how unusual it is that cities have civilians in them. He not only used this notion to excuse the shootings of civilian vehicles in Resheef, he eagerly rebroadcast this claim again when spinning a drama about “the road to Ramadi.”

“‘We’re trying to get the snipers in position for a shot,’ Major George Schreffler told the other commanders through tactical radio communications. “They’re looking at guys in blue uniforms and others with black clothes and black masks. Some are using children to shield themselves.’”

Great stuff! True grit and big brass balls!

Jimmy Massey’s sin is that he hasn’t transformed Iraqis into extras on the set of a modern-day frontier masculinity script. Though Harris yesterday on CNN claimed that Jimmy is motivated by “profit,” Jimmy and his wife have been living pretty close to the margin since Jimmy was released from service with severe post-traumatic stress disorder. Contrary to this scurrilous assertion, Jimmy Massey has been trying to tell anyone who will listen that a hell of a lot of civilians are being killed in Iraq the very thing that Harris has worked so diligently to excuse. Little wonder that the mirror that Jimmy Massey holds up to reporters who compulsively justify these killings is one they need to break.

The real sin, of course, is opposing the war. This is part of an escalation against war opponents. The LA Times just reported that one of the biggest churches in Pasadena was warned by the IRS before last year’s elections that it could lose its tax exempt status if it preached against the war.

Harris, a Black man, who right-wing bloggers love to love when they are doing a yeoman’s task for God, the Market, or the War, has now become the darling of these white nationalist internet denizens. These puerile neo-fascists gleefully blasted Harris’ November 8th hit-piece through the blogoshpere faster than you can say Free Republic.

But not everyone was so happy.

“Vanity Fair” was cited by Harris, and so was “USA Today.” Not exactly bastions of anti-imperialism, both publications reportedly called Harris on the carpet yesterday for misrepresenting Massey interviews they conducted, and for claiming that neither had checked their sources.

“He began turning up in the media last spring,” wrote Harris of Massey, “with stories about military atrocities. Massey’s primary thrust has been that Marines from his battalion—some of whom, he told a Minneapolis audience, were “psychopathic killers”—recklessly shot and killed Iraqi civilians, sometimes, he said, upon orders from their commanders.”

Evidence to the contrary, says Harris, is the fact that the Marine Corps denied it. Give that man the Seymour Hersh Muckraker Medal!

During the Marine Corps’ extensive investigation of Jimmy Massey’s claims, there was one person the Corps never once attempted to contact for a statement: Jimmy Massey. Whoever that investigating officer was, promote him immediately. Make him the commander of CENTCOM.

Jimmy has been diagnosed with a debilitating case of PTSD. In public presentations, he has repeatedly advised audiences that his memories are not clear. But since Ron Harris never attended a single presentation by Jimmy Massey, he doesn’t know that either. He does make a claim that Jimmy made statements in an interview with the Post-Dispatch that he couldn’t back up with documentation, but Harris himself does not provide documentation of the interview where Massey allegedly did this.

Here is what Dr. Craig E. Abrahamson, a PTSD researcher said today in response to an email:

“I am presently in Vietnam, and am conducting research regarding family violence, not just in this country, but in others as well. Just to give you some back ground, I have worked with veterans of the Vietnam War, Desert Storm, and now the War in Iraq. I also work with victims of domestic violence, both women and children. My belief and findings indicate that indeed initial memories of trauma are very vague, and in the process of flashbacks, nightmares, and talking, the memories become more vivid.”

“None of the five journalists,” says Harris, “who covered the battalion said they saw reckless or indiscriminate shooting of civilians by Marines, as Massey has claimed. Nor did any of the Marines or Navy corpsmen with Massey who was interviewed for this report.”

Let’s think about this for a second. A tactically dispersed 900-man battalion with five journalists, at least three concentrated in one company, and the members of the units do not shoot any civilians with journalists watching. Pretty unbelievable, eh? And no corroboration from the “MARINES AND NAVY CORPSMEN INTERVIEWED FOR THIS REPORT.” Well, hell, that’s just definitive, two years later no less.

Two people who Harris obviously didn’t interview were Andrew Howard and Ryan McFarland, two members of Massey’s platoon (not some distant sister company) who gave testimony to Jimmy’s publisher corroborating Jimmy’s claims.

Harris didn’t interview Brad Gaumont either, or if he did, Gaumont didn’t repeat what he said into a Danish reporter’s tape recorder last year: Referring to civilians who were killed, “They had it coming anyway; Iraqis are scumbags.”

Harris also missed Jeffrey Fowlers, who disliked Jimmy and told people Jimmy Massey had been “fired. “Jimmy is trying to slander the MC because they fired him but he was just as much a part of what we were doing [killing civilians]. We were assuming they were terrorists. There were no explosives but it’s highly probable there could have been weapons. We were all pissed off [at shooting women and children]. Nobody was doing it on purpose.” But they were doing it. They were killing civilians. Plenty of them.

Let’s just quote Harris’ (April 9, 2003) article, where Jesse Schutz of the 3/7 says, “We’re not trying to shoot civilians. If they don’t stop, then we fire a warning shot, and if they still don’t stop, it’s either them or us.’

See, I’m sitting here with a computer and a telephone for one day, and I seem to be able to do a better job of digging up the truth than Ron Harris was, and he was there with the 3/7.

“What a difference embedding makes.”

Chris, this piece reads a little like Nazi propaganda might have during WW2. The dehumanization of the enemy by only referring to “insurgents” is a slanted technique that undermines the credibility of your account. Also, the idea that people in Falluja are xenophobic is a little bizarre. Who wouldn’t be xenophobic after the systematic distruction of one’s home town?

I think you’re doing your best, but you’ve been smoking some of the same crap that the U.S. military has been smoking. Have you really bought the idea that the U.S. presence is keeping Iraq from Civil war? Actually the U.S. presence is a direct cause of the war, both by inflaming Iraquis and by rolling out the red carpet for Iranian radicals to virtually take over the country. (See http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/) No offence, but your article reads almost like an ad for the Pentagon. Did you really write it?

couple of things wrong (or out of date) in the article below. US Troops killed in Iraq is now 2,058. And, if you add to this the number of coalition troops killed, US contractors killed, troops killed in Afghanistan…. well, we have already topped 3,000 in our war on terror.

So, we lost more fighting terror than we did from terror on 9/11. And, we spent more money fighting terror than the attack on 9/11 cost us.

And the real kicker is this: we not only did not catch bin Laden, we have caused al Qaeda to spread and spread and spread… and spread!!

The Last Lie of the Iraq War Exposed

by Paul Sperry “Politicians hide themselves away. They only started the war. Why should they go out to fight? They leave that role to the poor, yeah.

“Time will tell on their power minds, making war just for fun. Treating people just like pawns in chess, wait till their judgment day comes, yeah.” - Black Sabbath, “War Pigs” (1970)

It seems like only yesterday U.S. deaths in Iraq had reached the grim milestone of 2,000. Now they’re already up to 2,055, reminding us all that the only ones really paying for this dishonest war are young GIs, with their lives and limbs.

The White House and its shameless surrogates continue to try to squelch criticism over the soaring body count by saying it dishonors and demoralizes the troops on the ground over there. In other words, if you don’t support the war, you don’t support the troops.

Excuse me, but who doesn’t support the troops? The war pigs need to take a long hard look in the mirror.

Let’s not forget it was the secretary of defense who told them to stop whining about missing Humvee armor, and then minimized their brutal roadside deaths by comparing them to random U.S. highway traffic fatalities on the Sean Hannity radio show last year.

For that matter, Donald Rumsfeld’s deputy couldn’t even remember how many of their soldiers had been killed in action.

Asked about the toll at a House hearing last year, during the deadliest month at that time for American troops, Paul Wolfowitz sat there with his face flapping. “It’s approximately 500 … I can get the exact numbers,” he stammered. He was off by nearly 250 soldiers – 250 brave Americans who left behind grieving mothers, fathers, wives, children – for what?

But Wolfowitz no doubt was thinking of other “metrics,” as he’s fond of saying, such as how many more pawns he’d need to make the Middle East safe for Israel. Never mind that the bastards who attacked this country are still on the loose.

Rumsfeld is so out of touch with fallen soldiers, he used a machine to sign his name to letters of condolence to the families of the first 1,000 service members who died in Iraq. He stopped only after he was caught.

Certainly their commander-in-chief is less callous, right? Fat chance. After sending troops into a shooting gallery with bull’s-eyes on their backs, he egged on their killers from the safety of the White House with the cry, “Bring ‘em on.” He no doubt said the same thing about the VC while knocking back bourbons in Alabama.

We’ve already taken more casualties than in the first three years of Nam. In fact, just by wounding more than 15,000 of our soldiers, the Iraqi insurgents have taken out a full Army division.

And these aren’t flesh wounds. These soldiers have had arms and legs ripped from joints, eyeballs blown from sockets, and skulls crushed in, permanently damaging gray matter. These wounded won’t be going back for another tour. They face a lifetime of painful rehab and depression.

For what? To capture Osama bin Laden? No. To keep WMD out of his hands? No. To protect America? No. To liberate Iraq? No. The only thing that’s been liberated is Islamic fundamentalism from under the thumb of secular Saddam Hussein. The new Iraqi constitution contains all the provisions necessary for an Islamic state, including Article 2: “No law that contradicts the established provisions of Islam may be established.” Praise Allah.

And the insurgency is not going to die with this election, or any election, so long as we’re over there. Listen to near-amputee Terry Rodgers tell it:

“There’s always gonna be insurgents trying to blow us up. There’s just too many of ‘em that are willing to do it. You’re never gonna catch all of ‘em. And it seems like they have unlimited amounts of ammunition. So I don’t think it’s ever gonna end.”

Rodgers, who was maimed by a roadside bomb while on patrol with the Army, is so mad at Bush for “getting people killed and mutilated for no reason” that he’s refused to see him in the few times the president has visited Walter Reed Hospital. And Bush hadn’t even tried to visit amputees, or attend funerals, before his reelection campaign.

But he had plenty of time to attend a black-tie dinner in Washington to joke about getting people killed and mutilated for no reason. “Nope, no WMDs there,” he quipped to then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on a slide showing him looking under White House furniture. Ha, ha.

Last year, an equally glib Bush was spotted taking in a baseball game with Rice just after wires reported several female marines were killed in an Iraq ambush that shocked the nation. That didn’t seem to faze either of them. Cameras caught Bush and his gal pal Condi yucking it up in a VIP box. It’s apparently all one big game to them.

The last lie of Iraq has been exposed – that Bush and the neocons care about the troops they sent needlessly into harm’s way in Iraq. This is the ultimate betrayal.

Now, more than 160,000 are deployed there as sitting ducks, and an increasing number will be picked off, as the insurgents perfect their methods and their attacks grow bolder and deadlier.

And when the death toll tops 3,000, it will mark a most tragic irony in U.S. history. Three thousand brave American soldiers died avenging the murder of 3,000 of their fellow Americans – all on the wrong front, thanks to the war pigs who sent them there.

Hey, I just did a little math…. it took 31 months for the US death toll in Iraq to reach 2,000.

But last week (Oct 30-Nov 5), we had 30 troops killed in Iraq. At that rate, we will 2,000 more dead Americans in 16 months or so. About half the time.

but-our-troops-are-stopping-that-sectarian-Iraqi-violence-that-wasn’t-there-before-we-got-there-and-gets-worse-every-day.

Thank goodness for that.

As an extra bonus, we are SAFE, SAFE, SAFE I TELL YOU, from those immaginary WMDs that don’t exist.

Unfortunately, the Iraqis are not safe from our chemical WMDs, that that is the price they have to pay for their freedom and democracy. Goodness knows, that freedom does not come cheap.

Just ask the Jordanians……

Security incidents in Iraq, Nov. 9 09 Nov 2005 19:04:52 GMT

Source: Reuters

Nov 9 (Reuters) - Following are security incidents reported in Iraq on Wednesday, Nov. 9, as of 1830 GMT.

U.S. and Iraqi forces are battling a Sunni Arab insurgency against the Shi’ite- and Kurdish-led government in Baghdad.

• Indicates new or updated item

• QUSAYBA - Five civilians were killed in a U.S. air strike on a house being used by insurgents on Nov. 7, the military said. The insurgents had killed two occupants when they forced their way into the house to use it to attack U.S. and Iraqi forces, who did not know hostages were being held, the military said.

BAIJI - Local police said they found the body of Imad Awadhallah, a local photographer with Egyptian nationality, who was shot dead in the town of Baiji, north of Baghdad.

BALAD - Two civilians were killed and another wounded when gunmen attacked their car on a road near Balad, north of Baghdad, police major Ali Hussein said.

RAMADI - A member of the Iraqi Islamic Party was found shot dead in the city of Ramadi, 110 km (68 miles) west of Baghdad, doctor Hamdi al-Rawi said. He was abducted on Tuesday by gunmen.

BAGHDAD - One civilian was killed and another wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a highway in the southern Dora district of the capital, police said.

BAGHDAD - The driver of a senior official in the education ministry was killed by gunmen in the impoverished Shula district of the capital, police said.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen shot dead a Sudanese driver at the country’s embassy in Baghdad, two days after a Sudanese diplomat was slightly injured after being shot at in the Iraqi capital, a Sudanese official said.

RUTBA - A U.S. Marine died on Tuesday after his vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb the previous day near Rutba, 370 km (230 miles) west of Baghdad, the military said.

MOSUL - U.S. forces said they had killed one suspected insurgent and detained two more in a raid on an Ansar al Sunna safe house in a village near Mosul, in northern Iraq.

BAQUBA - Seven Iraqi policemen were killed and nine wounded, three of them civilians, when a car driven by a suicide attacker exploded in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, targeting an Iraqi police patrol, medical and army sources said.

(well, thank goodness we are bringing peace and stability to this country!)

I think what Susan is saying, Chris, is: don’t write good stuff about the Marines. First thing I ever read on your Blog was your account of going into Najaf in 2004, with your descriptions of the cheerful courage of the young Iraqis facing almost certain death at the hands of the Marines. It seemed to me to be an outstanding and incredibly brave piece of journalism. So I’ve followed your writing from time to time. I’m sorry, maybe it was editorial constraints, but your two recent Time pieces don’t seem to be by the same author, or come to that about the same country. What’s changed - you or the country?

In a further attempt to explain or perhaps even defend Susan’s outrage: You have added above, to your original post, an account which seems to say that it has taken the US Marines a whole year to bring any sort of medical assistance, even if it’s only blankets and heaters, to a hospital in Fallujah. You make this almost incredible assertion, surely as damning a condemnation of the US and its Marines as anything a fanatic opponent could dream up, quite matter-of-factly, without any judgement or commentary. And you say: “I wrote about that in my file, but because of space restrictions it didn’t make it in. That’s life in the magazine business.” It may be, but it’s not necessarily life in the Blog business. When you initially posted nothing about Fallujah except a reference to your Time article, were we your readers not meant to assume that the article said all that you wished to say? Could you not have added, here’s a few things that were left out of the article, to give a bit of balance, or something like that? Was it Malraux who said “Les intellectuels sont comme les femmes. Ils se prennant aux militaires?” (Intellectuals are like women. They go for soldiers.)

I watched the build up of forces around falluja last year, with a hint of the same apprehension that I watched the build up of coalition forces in the gulf prior to the wests latest incursion into mesopotamia. Expecting the strike to come as a precursor to the U.S. election, I was suprised when the green light was only given after Bush’s re-election. Watching and reading our sterile media reports, I managed to get just an idea of the slaughter on the ground. This was enough to turn my stomach.
Despite constant assurances that the majority of civillians had left in the weeks before the massacre, I knew that many could not. Men of fighting age were refused exit. Many families were seperated - never to meet again in this life. Others were not, choosing to die together. Casualties were high on both sides. The kevlar clad U.S. troops suffered far more injured than dead - casualties shipped home at midnight to bypass any critical media attention. The iraqi dead recieved less attention.
This swift and crushing retribution was meant to avenge the death of 4 U.S. contractors and break the back of the insurgency. It achieved only the first of these objectives. The images coming out of iraq from falluja and more recently abu ghraib, offered an adrenalin shot to a dying al qaeda. Now an ever more effective global insurgency is strengthened through every coalition attrocity, as japanese, spanish and now italian troops peel away from the gamble America cannot afford to leave.
Yesterday “Al qaeda in iraq” struck 3 hotels in Jordan, defying the borders the British carved in the sand last century. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, England, Spain, Turkey, and Indonesia, all these countries and others have been attacked since the U.S. was in 2001. America, pursuing its own agenda, inadvertantly did Al qaeda’s bidding following 9/11. After the international consensus to invade Afghanistan, America defied the U.N. and destroyed Saddams secular regime, taking al qaeda a step closer to their dream of an islamic caliphate in the middle east. As I have noted previously Muslims from around the world who answered the call to jihad in Iraq, will eventually return home with weapons and training - spreading the arena of conflict wider and wider.
One year on from falluja the insurgency is raging fiercer than ever.
Whats done is done, things cannot go back, but perhaps we can review our tactics, to prevent alienating ever larger swathes of the worlds muslim population.

As I tried to explain in my post, the main point is this:

Don’t blame the soldiers, who are just doing their job the best they can with what they have. Blame the leaders who sent them there - THEY are the ones to blame for this debacle.

And before anyone bothers to mention some stupid analogy to “the nazis used the same excuse - they were just following orders” line: that’s a load of crap. Our country relies on our military to do the best job where it is sent. In return, our military expects our civilian leadership to use the military in ways that protect our country and in ways that minimize exposure of its soldiers to needless danger.

To carry the “excuses” analogy further, it was the german citizens who let Hitler come to power. Here, it was 52% of americans who chose to vote for Mr. pro-torture/PatriotAct/blacksites/XtraRendition Bush.

We, the American citizens, are to blame for putting Bush in power. We need to hold him (and ourselves) accountable. We do not need to be disparaging the people who are sent over there who have little say in the matter.

Thank you for your efforts to publish the Truth about Iraq. Reporting events in a fair manner is hard, I admire those who give it their best try. Keep it up.

Susan - since you seem to delight in these long comments and diatribes, why don’t you set up your own blog and stop taking up so much room on this one?

Chris made a profound statement that no one seems to have noticed

(Dhar Jamal’s reporting) “is not journalism — it’s activism”

So for two days I have been contemplating what is journalism and what is activism?

journalism is the seeking of evidence and information in order to establish new ideas and theories that bring us closer to the truth. Activism is seeking specific evidence to support a preconcieved theory about the truth.

For example, police detectives searching for evidence in the assaination of Harrari would be journalistic because they seek evidence and allow it to lead them closer to the truth. A defense lawyer and a prosecutor would be activists because they seek evidence that will support their version of events.

IMO, many of the posters on this board do not come even close to passing journalistic muster and they criticize Chris because he uncovers some evidence that they wish to supress. All I can say is that I hope Chris continues his career in journalism. It has, is, and will continue to make a difference in the world.

“I think what Susan is saying, Chris, is: don’t write good stuff about the Marines.”

NOPE. I am saying don’t write fantasy.

“Don’t blame the soldiers, who are just doing their job the best they can with what they have. Blame the leaders who sent them there - THEY are the ones to blame for this debacle.” NOPE. As you later mention, it is the American and British citizens who allowed this to happen who are to blame.

Of course, these citizens have the excuse of stupidity, since they don’t know what is going on. And that is thanks to TV “news”, our “news”papers and our “news” magazines like TIME.

If all they are being fed is “we are there to provide stability” then they are going to stay stupid. And no mention is made of how civilians are suffering, they are going to stay stupid. If facts like the 4 “contractors” in Fallujah killing incident happened the week AFTER US troops killed civilians in Fallujah, (including small children -I forget how many, but more than a couple- which was well know in Fallujah….), then they are going to stay stupid and go on thinking that the presence of US troops in Iraq is the thing that is stopping the “sectarian bloodbath” which is total and complete NONSENSE.

Well, stringing up 4 “contrators” takes on a different meaning when the slaughter of civilians has been going on repeatedly and just ignored and ignored and ignored and ignored.

The US forces in Iraq have killed AT LEAST ten times the number of civilians that were killed on 9/11….. so, you would expect them to have AT LEAST ten times the anger and response that we had, right? Or are they all supposed to be saints who are so understanding and accepting of the slaughter of their civilians in an effort to rehabilitate their society? Isn’t that what bin Laden is hoping to accomplish in our society?

The idea that having US troops in Iraq is making the place better is pure fantasy.

And promoting this fantasy gets innocent people killed.

And Americans not only need to make those phones in DC ring NON-STOP, they need to physically come to DC and sit in their elected officials office and tell them to get the hell out of the middle east - before we have such a massive war going that millions end up dead. They will not, as long as they read and watch fantasy in our media.

Well, most of them will not. Some have begun to realize that if we were making things better in Iraq, then fewer US troops would be dying. That small reality is somewhat sinking in.

MJ: I have my own blog.

I also contribute to Today In Iraq blog….

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com

I hope someday there will be a reckoning in the USA for all this killing for no damn good reason. Like maybe someone will bring your family “freedom and democracy” via bullets and bombs. Posted by: Susan at November 10, 2005 05:43 AM

well, I do wonder at times if anyone who is pro-violence to solve problems will ever, ever, ever, ever wake up. I guess not. Posted by: Susan at November 10, 2005 05:59 AM

teapot. kettle. black. With the comments above, and your fellows from TodayinIraq celebrating death, and openly here calling for Chris’ beheading (WTF?!), I’m sorry, but explain to me how exactly you are not pro-violence?

Feeling defensive, corporate media stooge? You’re broadcasting lies from a ruined city under martial law which the army basically demolished in primitive retribution for the deaths of a few mercenaries, but the army guys who are protecting you are like wicked cool dudes so that means there’s no such thing as war criminals, right? My only question is, why did you take up blogging? In the stoopid world of sleazy US corporate media, you’re a sure thing.

Sorry your staged propaganda show didn’t work out! :)

Well Chris, it’s certainly a mixed bag of reviews on this thread. Perhaps you can address the critics with a bit of enlightened self-criticism by answering one question:

What have you done WRONG in your reporting on Iraq? We know what you’d say is right about your reporting, but what are those things you really think you missed, were naive about, or just completely f’d up?

Be safe.

I’ve read this blog for quite a long time. (didn’t want to comment before bcz my english is not the best), but Chris is a reporter and writes on what he sees himself. He does not have an agenda as do Susan and her cohorts. The views of Susan and others on Iraq are usually directly related to their views on Bush policy and have nothing at all to do with what is happening in Iraq. The same trend I found in many newspapers (american and british) reporting from Iraq.. Keep up your good work, Chris. Many people want reliable views from Iraq and your blog is among the ones that try to provide this kind of information

Trying to prolong your fifteen minutes? Sure saying that the troops NEVER do anything even slightly questionable shows no knowledge of the reality of war. Hell in every conflict the troops act on their own fear, hatred, or just plain because they can. Don’t think so? Ask a vet, things are not always easy or even clear in a battle, too much going on, and reactions sometimes don’t have the best outcomes. But flogging the greatness or non greatness of our troops isn’t going to get this thing settled anytime soon. We can stay there a hundred years and there will still be bombs and gun fights, we provided a live fire training exercise for AQ. Good job, and reporting the one facet of it that you can access is not helping the matter. Report when you can sit and talk with the locals. How are your arabic lessons coming? Just curious, if you cannot communicate with the locals how then can your report objectively? One sided cheerleading for the occupiers doesn’t give a “fair and balanced” view of the situation at all. BUt, hey it is your blog, thanks for the bandwidth.

Chris~ Not trying to be a troll here, but your last TIME piece is really bad, to say the least.

You describe the emotions and thinking of the citizens of Fallujah with very basic and trite terms: xenophobic, paranoid and and reluctant to help the American “mission”

What have you added to the discussion of what a war really is? The Italian TV channel RAI broadcast a documentary earlier regarding the American invasion of Falljah last year. Your TIME piece and the how other media outlets do not jive at all.