It’s very dif­fi­cult to get accu­rate infor­ma­tion out of Iraq. Spin is the order of the day, and it’s even more dif­fi­cult when the U.S. mil­i­tary does it in the Green Zone. I’ve seen my share of that. Once, I asked an Amer­i­can trainer about the makeup of the Iraqi Army unit he was work­ing with. How many Shi’ites, Kurds, Sun­nis? “Oh, we’re about half Shi’ite and half Sunni,” he said. “It’s a great exam­ple of the two sects work­ing together.” I found this hard to believe, as this was a unit in Bagh­dad and it was about a year before the Sunni tribes had turned on Al Qaeda in Iraq and started join­ing the secu­rity forces. No Kurds? “Well, you know Kurds are mainly Sun­nis,” he replied.
What rub­bish. He knew the mes­sage of the day was Sunni and Shi’ite sit­tin’ in a tree, f-i-g-h-t-i-n-g al Qaeda together, and he was deter­mined to get it out, even if he had to push Kurds’ Sunni-ness on me. (Kurds are prob­a­bly the most sec­u­lar of all Iraqis, and their eth­nic iden­tity is what defines them to other Iraqis, not their religion.)

It’s appar­ently get­ting worse. The Wash­ing­ton Post today ran a story from Jonathan Weis­man about the codels (“Con­gres­sional Del­e­ga­tions”) run­ning around the Green Zone. In Weisman’s words, the codels are “brief, chore­o­graphed and care­fully con­trolled,” and have often “[showed only what the Pen­ta­gon and the Bush admin­is­tra­tion have wanted the law­mak­ers to see](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/30/AR2007083001848.html).” On recent codel, Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher, D-Calif., and Rep. James P. Moran Jr., D-Va., both wit­nessed their bios — com­plete with their harsh anti-war lan­guage high­lighted — dis­trib­uted to mil­i­tary offi­cials they were meet­ing with. The bios seem to split the vis­it­ing Con­gress mem­bers into “for us” and “agin’ us” types, with Moran’s most inflam­ma­tory anti-war com­ments high­lighted, and Tauscher’s vot­ing record dis­torted to make it look like she voted against the troops.
“This is beyond pars­ing,” Tauscher said. “This is being slimed in the Green Zone.“
But that’s not the worst of it. At one point, An Amer­i­can who urgently wanted to get their atten­tion, “appar­ently to voice con­cerns about the war effort,” was whisked away by secu­rity guards before he could talk to them.
“Spin City,” Moran grum­bled. “The Iraqis and the Amer­i­cans were all singing from the same song sheet, and it was delib­er­ately manip­u­lated.“
And speak­ing of spin, it seems Repub­li­cans just can’t bring them­selves to crit­i­cize their Iraqi clients in the Green Zone even when it’s com­pletely war­ranted. In a meet­ing with Iraq’s national secu­rity advi­sor Mowaf­fak al-Rubaie, the two rep­re­sen­ta­tives tried to turn off a big TV with a children’s car­toon on that was prov­ing dis­tract­ing. “But this is my favorite tele­vi­sion show,” Rubaie protested.
Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., basi­cally said it was weird and dis­re­spect­ful — this was the *national secu­rity advi­sor* watch­ing car­toons in the mid­dle of the day and dur­ing a meet­ing with mem­bers of a for­eign gov­ern­ment — but at least they had elec­tric­ity. “I don’t dis­agree it was an odd moment, but I did take a deep breath and say, ‘Wait a minute, at least they are using the lat­est tech­nol­ogy, and they are mon­i­tor­ing the world,’ ” Porter said.
He did allow that it was “pretty annoy­ing.“
By the way, al-Rubaie is a joke. He has no qual­i­fi­ca­tions for being national secu­rity advi­sor and he reg­u­larly showed his con­tempt for reporters. Once, while work­ing for TIME Mag­a­zine, I had an appoint­ment with him. He kept me wait­ing on the street out­side the Green Zone for half an hour. A poten­tially fatal delay. He finally called the guard shack near where I was wait­ing and told me he couldn’t see me because “I have an appoint­ment with a reporter from TIME Mag­a­zine.” I replied that *I* was that reporter. “Oh,” he said. “I will call you back in 10 min­utes.” A few min­utes later, he called back and said he couldn’t see me and would I like another appoint­ment. What a dick.
Porter again makes excuses for the dog and pony show that are codels to the Green Zone by say­ing that despite the spin, trip was worth it. (Pre­sum­ably his two col­leagues would dis­agree.) Yes, there are peo­ple spout­ing the com­pany line, he said, “But I spent time with peo­ple who were not offi­cers, four of them from Nevada, two who were very blunt” *about their sup­port for the war and their anger over par­ti­san fight­ing in Wash­ing­ton.* Really? Porter got straight talk from peo­ple who were “very blunt” about their sup­port for the war and their anger over “par­ti­san pol­i­tics”? Wow, sounds like he got some enlisted men he already agreed with and used that as evi­dence of his keen inves­ti­ga­tory pow­ers.
I have a lot of respect for the guys fight­ing this war, but the PR cam­paign com­ing out of CPIC, the Pen­ta­gon, the Embassy and the White House is just sick­en­ing. The happy talk, spin and excuses for fail­ure are grow­ing really, really tiresome.