Whew! It’s been a busy day, what with ana­lyz­ing the Turk­ish elec­tions, becom­ing out­raged at the com­plic­ity of the Kuwaitis in help­ing the U.S. thumb its nose at wimpy Euro­peans and … (drum roll) a redesign! Hope­fully, read­ers will find Back to Iraq 2.0 eas­ier on the eyes, and eas­ier to nav­i­gate through the extra stuff, which I’ve now draped over the sides like bunting instead of drip­ping down the right (I never did like that.)
Do let me know what you think of the new look and how it can be improved. Thanks every­one for reading.

Who­ever donated on 10/28 via Ama­zon, please email me. I can’t see who you are to thank you prop­erly! I’d like to add you to the list of donors who gets on the spe­cial email list… Thanks very much!

Not that I par­tic­u­larly rel­ish com­pe­ti­tion, see­ing as I’m a nat­ural monop­o­list at heart, but it seems there’s a site called IraqJour​nal​.org that has a lot of report­ing from Bagh­dad coor­di­nated by Jeremy Scahill.
I point to this site in a spirit of “we’re all jour­nal­ists, check it out!” but I gotta be hon­est. I think Mr. Scahill and his team are pretty biased. First of all, they’re based in Bagh­dad, which means they’re there with the per­mis­sion of Saddam’s regime. It’s unlikely they’re going to report on things that make the Iraqis look bad. Sec­ondly, his bio has a cou­ple of telling quotes (empha­sis added):

• “He pri­mar­ily cov­ers inter­na­tional sto­ries, focus­ing on the ugly face of US for­eign policy.”
• “He spent more than a month in Iraq (May-June 2002) where he reported on the ongo­ing suf­fer­ing there caused by the US-led sanc­tions and con­tin­u­ous bombing.”

Now, I don’t want to take away from Mr. Scahill’s accom­plish­ments. As his bio says, he’s the youngest per­son to ever win the George Polk Award for For­eign Report­ing, (He’s 28). And liv­ing in Iraq as a West­erner is hard.
But the cov­er­age is over­whelm­ingly sym­pa­thetic to Sad­dam. Two sto­ries on the prison amnesty fairly brim with admi­ra­tion. The impli­ca­tion is, “See? He’s not so bad!” Reports that polit­i­cal pris­on­ers and those accused of spy­ing for Israel and the United States were not released or — worse — “dis­ap­peared,” are breezily dis­missed. He trashes John Burns’ (NY Times) account of many pris­on­ers thank­ing Bush for their lib­erty by say­ing:

Many pris­on­ers thanked Bush? Is he kid­ding? “Many” implies that thou­sands must have been rush­ing up to Burns (on the day of their “lib­er­a­tion” back into “Saddam’s Iraq”) to make sure that The Times relayed their mes­sage back to the Oval Office (which is cur­rently threat­en­ing to destroy Iraq). Even if Burns had man­aged to hunt down that hand­ful of Iraqis who do have affec­tion for the US pres­i­dent, none of them would have been stu­pid enough on that day, when they had just hit “free­dom,” to come out swing­ing at Sad­dam and prais­ing Bush to an Amer­i­can reporter. And “many” is a flat-out fairytale.

Now, I have no idea if “many” or “a few” or “every god­damned one of ‘em!” thanked Bush for their free­dom, but it’s clear from Scahill’s word­ing that he doesn’t either. There are no quotes from recently released pris­on­ers back­ing up his claims and his reportage is pep­pered with “would have“s and “could have“s. In short, he’s assum­ing.
In another story, run­ning under the head­line “Bush Cor­leone,” Scahill makes the claim that “These days most UN offi­cials here, while derid­ing the infa­mous Iraqi bureau­cracy, speak of deep col­lab­o­ra­tion with the gov­ern­ment in attempt­ing to deal with the dev­as­tat­ing impact of the US-led sanc­tions.“
That?s sim­ply not true. When I was in Iraqi Kur­dis­tan, Mike Parker of the Mine Advi­sory Group, which helps locate and cleanse the mas­sive mine­fields laid dur­ing the 1980 – 88 Iran-Iraq War, told me that 12 expa­tri­ates and UN work­ers had been killed in the four years he had been work­ing in Suleimanya. They were killed by car bombs, snipers and other may­hem. He also trav­eled with an armed escort and after I met him for din­ner, refused to let me return to my hotel with­out my own armed escort. Mike isn?t with the United Nations, but for­eign­ers there are only safe when they coop­er­ate with Sad­dam, and that includes talk­ing to the press — espe­cially in Bagh­dad.
OK. So per­haps I’m being hard on Scahill and his team. After all, they’re on the ground doing work and I’m still in New York. But is it really so hard to say, as one of my friends did recently, “Sad­dam is a bad guy and a mon­strous tyrant, but now is not the time to go after him.” Why are some peo­ple on the left unable to take this at least intel­lec­tu­ally hon­est approach? Because it would mean the United States has a point?
So here?s my bot­tom line: I des­per­ately want to be in Scahill’s posi­tion and I have a lot of respect for him that he’s man­aged to get him­self there and do report­ing. His site looks nice, too, and I guess I’ll link to it. But — and this is a big but — report­ing pro­pa­ganda, regard­less of where it comes from doesn’t serve the most impor­tant peo­ple jour­nal­ists should be think­ing about: their read­ers. Also: I oppose the seem­ingly inevitable war in Iraq not because I think Sad­dam is a swell chap or because I think every­thing the United States does is in quest of yummy oil. He?s not and not every­thing the U.S. does is evil. I oppose it because it’s geostrate­gi­cally dan­ger­ous, because it vio­lates many aspects of estab­lished inter­na­tional prac­tices and laws and it shows a shock­ingly short­sighted vision of for­eign pol­icy. From var­i­ous reports, it seems the United States will hang the Kurds out to dry, and that?s not fair. War with Iraq will also dis­tract us from the impor­tant task of con­tain­ing Al Qaeda and alien­ate our allies mak­ing every­thing the United States does harder. So, yes, I?m opposed to the war, but not at the expense of truth, the famous first casu­alty.
But if I was assured that the United States had the back­ing and bless­ing of the United Nations, that there was proof of Iraq?s evil machi­na­tions to inflict seri­ous and imme­di­ate harm and the Kurds were pro­tected by a solid com­mit­ment to democ­racy, then hell, I don?t think I could oppose tak­ing out Sad­dam.
At least I?m honest.

Well, it’s up, obvi­ously. If you’re read­ing this, the back​-to​-iraq​.com domain name has prop­a­gated out through the Net and all is work­ing well… Again, kudos to supe​ruser​.net for get­ting me up and run­ning so quickly. And extra kudos to Move­able­Type for cre­at­ing very cool soft­ware to run these blogs.
Some infor­ma­tion: This blog will be about things Iraq: What’s hap­pen­ing there and war prepa­ra­tions here at home. There will occa­sion­ally be per­sonal infor­ma­tion, but it’s not really about me. It’s about the world. To that end, please con­sider donat­ing some cash through either Pay­Pal or Ama­zon to the right. The funds col­lected will be used to send me back to Iraq for more report­ing, at which you gen­er­ous souls will get a first look.
So that’s about it. There’s a lot of items com­ing in the next day or so, but since I have a 9 a.m. meet­ing with Microsoft tomor­row, I’ll call it a night and pack it in.