How Media Deceive You About Iraq Posted Oct. 2, 2003 By J. Michael Waller Remember the "quagmire" about to consume U.S. and coalition forces in the first days of the invasion of Iraq? Some home-based journalists and talking heads all but warned that Saddam Hussein's formidable military and a hostile Iraqi desert were sure to bog down U.S. troops in another Vietnam [see "Out of the 'Quagmire,'" April 29-May 12]. Nonsense, the Pentagon said, with civilian and military leaders alike confidently describing the remarkable progress being made despite the sandstorms and stretched supply lines. The front-line reporting by embedded journalists supported the Pentagon's prediction of the imminent fall of Baghdad. Half a year after the liberation of Iraq, it is quagmire time again. To judge from much of the reporting and commentary during the last few months, the United States is headed for an even bigger Vietnam in Iraq with little to show for its efforts. Critics point to continued scarcity of electricity, potable water and sanitation, a decrepit oil infrastructure, anti-American protesters, divided political forces, street crime, U.S. insensitivity to local culture, assassinations of moderate Iraqi leaders, friendly-fire incidents against supportive Iraqis and the almost-daily shootings and bombings that on average have taken the lives of one U.S. or allied soldier a day. And, oh yes, the United States hasn't yet produced enough evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, so the whole invasion was based on a lie. The sky is falling. Again. But the emerging facts tell a different story, one of remarkable successes against tremendous odds and despite major screwups in the occupation of Iraq. During the few weeks of combat operations last spring, more than 700 embedded Western journalists provided the world with a window on the victorious U.S.-led coalition forces and the realities of Saddam's Iraq. Today, however, only about 27 Western journalists are on the ground in Iraq, and the reduced quality of reporting shows. A bipartisan group of congressmen visited Iraq in September to see the situation firsthand. One of their conclusions: The big media generally have it wrong. "The media stress the wounds, the injuries and the deaths, as they should, but for instance in northern Iraq [the U.S. Army 101st Airborne Division] has 3,100 projects, from soccer fields to schools to refineries. All good stuff that isn't being reported," said Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee who organized the seven-member bipartisan delegation. Rep. Jim Marshall (D-Ga.), a Vietnam combat veteran, came back convinced that "we have a reasonable chance of success." But, he added in a hard-hitting op-ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "I'm afraid the news media are hurting our chances. They are dwelling upon the mistakes, the ambushes, the soldiers killed, the wounded." The press and television, Marshall alleged, are "not balancing this bad news with 'the rest of the story' - the progress made daily, the good news. This falsely bleak picture weakens our national resolve, discourages Iraqi cooperation and emboldens our enemy." Emboldening the enemy? "We have a narrow window to get this right and things could still go very badly," Skelton told reporters. "In fairness, the war is neither going as well as the administration says it's going or as badly as the media say," added Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.). One of the returning lawmakers, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), noted the differences in news coverage of an attack in which three U.S. servicemen were killed. "It was a classic differential. I saw the Fox News presentation on the three troops who had been killed. The next segment was the report on the Florida National Guard opening a school [in Iraq]. That's reporting the bad and the good." Wilson tells Insight that while driving in his car he heard a different story. "On the radio, I heard the CBS report on the three deaths, and it had an analyst come on and, in a virtually hysterical analysis, announce that this was a new stage in the conflict and that the remnants of Saddam's forces had clearly re-established themselves. I almost went off the road. Our three troops had stumbled across Saddam's remnants in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit. That's not a surprise. That's not a regrouping of the forces." U.S. military leaders agree. Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of Combined Joint Task Force 7 in Iraq, told reporters, "When you look across this country there is no practical threat. There is no tactical threat. There is no strategic threat or operational threat that exists to the coalition or to America." Sanchez added with a shake of his head, "It is very disturbing to me to sit here every day and watch the news back home that focuses on the bad things that are happening in Iraq." Some see the bias as symptomatic of pack journalism, in which reporters based in foreign capitals hang out with each other at the same hotel and develop the same story. An occasional soldier getting blown up makes more exciting headlines than good news and is easier to report. Wilson sees another problem: politicization as the 2004 presidential campaign heats up. "There are some people in the press, not all, who are emphasizing the negative. It's very short-sighted. It has a short political agenda as opposition to George W. Bush," Wilson tells Insight. Based on Saddam's emergency plans captured at the end of the war, his Ba'athist loyalists were depending upon Western correspondents to continue hyping the militarily insignificant but emotionally charged daily attacks on coalition forces, as in Vietnam. "Indeed, I think the media are putting our soldiers at risk by giving false encouragement to remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime," Wilson says, "by emphasizing the perceived dissolution of resolve in America, a perceived Vietnamization in America where the public grows tired of supporting the troops." The Bush administration is on the offensive, emphasizing real accomplishments in Iraq in what it acknowledges will remain a tough and costly challenge. For all the inevitable mistakes and difficulties, the coalition is making extraordinary progress in helping Iraqis get back on their feet, administration officials say. "If one looks back at Germany or Japan or Bosnia or Kosovo and measures the progress that has taken place in this country [Iraq] in four or five months, it dwarfs any other experience that I'm aware of," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters while visiting Iraq in early September. The facts show substantial progress - and tend to vindicate President Bush's policy. Forty-five of the 52 Iraqi figures on the deck of "Wanted" playing cards either have turned themselves in or have been captured or killed. Saddam Hussein's defense minister, Sultan Hashim Ahmad, surrendered peacefully to the 101st Airborne in Mosul on Sept. 19. The feared enforcers of Saddam's rule, and the only ones capable of resurrecting his regime, are dead. A senior Pentagon official tells Insight, "The order is capture or kill the high-value targets. I stand by that order. I have no preference, particularly." More than 45 countries have offered military forces to the peacekeeping effort in Iraq, with more than 13,000 forces from 19 nations in-country at last count. Even Russia is considering the dispatch of troops to Iraq under U.S. command. The United Kingdom and Poland are preparing to lead multinational divisions. Fourteen countries are committed to deploy another 12,000 troops, Defense Department documents say. Iraqis are starting to assume security roles in their country. The United States and its coalition partners already have trained and armed more than 50,000 Iraqis for new police and civil-defense forces, and for a new Iraqi army, Pentagon and congressional sources say. "A relatively new concept is a civil-defense force, roughly a cross between a police and paramilitary force," says a senior Pentagon official. "They will take over fixed sites where we don't need our troops, like hospitals," and are intended to establish security nationwide. The coalition is raising a new Iraqi Militia Force to help root out Saddam loyalists, death squads and foreign terrorists. The United States now is training 4,000 Iraqi militiamen, the first of whom are expected to graduate soon and will work under U.S. command. Some Iraqi security forces, such as the 500-man Basra River Police, have been on patrol since June. Already 58 of Iraq's 89 cities have their own police forces, with 34,000 police already hired and trained, the official said, "with uniforms, with guns, in place and more coming online all the time. It's not without hazard because they're being intimidated and they're paying a price." The United States is sending nearly 30,000 more Iraqis to Hungary for police and military training. "In less than a year they'll have a division, and in less than three years they'll have two divisions," a senior administration official tells Insight. "They will free up U.S. forces to do what we need to do." Gen. Sanchez rejects calls from politicians calling for deployment of more U.S. troops, insisting, "I don't need any more forces here." While international teams quietly continue their search for weapons of mass destruction, evidence is mounting of a connection between the former Iraqi regime and al-Qaeda. Gilbert Merritt, a federal judge helping Iraqis rebuild their judicial system, wrote an article in July describing "strong proof" of a connection between an Iraqi official in Pakistan who was "responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group." Merritt, a Democrat and family friend of former vice president Al Gore, said, "Until this time, I have been skeptical about these claims. Now I have changed my mind." Vice President Dick Cheney described the al-Qaeda-Baghdad connection to NBC's Tim Russert on Sept. 14, including Iraqi involvement in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City. The United States and the coalition are making headway on the soft hearts-and-minds side, too. The internationally funded programs are being implemented seemingly without end. U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded projects in Iraq span the social spectrum in the hearts-and-minds campaign. Through them U.S. taxpayers will refurbish the Aqrah Sports Stadium in Arbil (to "foster interethnic friendship in Aqrah and the surrounding villages," USAID says); equip soccer teams in Fallujah, from field refurbishment to soccer balls, cleats and uniforms; and provide education programs for lactating women. Emergency USAID grants have strengthened new Iraqi human-rights groups to help them document the crimes of the Saddam Hussein regime. One of the projects was to assist Iraqis "to continue collecting and researching information on missing persons and mass graves." More and more Iraqis are collaborating with U.S. forces, yielding big results. Iraqis are coming forward to provide intelligence to the United States. "Increased Iraqi-civilian help to U.S. forces has resulted in many of the great accomplishments of late, especially identifying wanted figures and arms caches," a senior Pentagon official tells Insight. A U.S. official working in Iraq tells this magazine, "We couldn't have made the weapons discoveries we've been making without a lot of help from the local people." CIA adviser David Kay, a weapons inspector, agrees, saying more Iraqis are "collaborating and cooperating" with the United States. U.S. troops report that most Iraqis like them in place. Rep. Wilson met in Iraq with servicemen of all ranks from his home state of South Carolina who told him that between 70 and 90 percent of Iraqis support the U.S. troop presence. "That's an astounding number," Wilson says. "For politicians we're looking for that 50 percent plus one." Such support is necessary if the coalition is to ensure an orderly transfer of power to the Iraqi people. The transfer process began on July 13 when Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, chief of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) who technically has dictatorial powers in Iraq, formally established a transitional national political leadership called the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC). Meanwhile, "Iraq has no constitution, no laws, no civil or criminal code. It has no functioning judicial system. Almost everything remains as under the Saddam Hussein regime," a senior administration official tells Insight. "We just can't leave Iraq without putting in place the necessary structures to ensure a stable civil society." So the 25-person IGC that Bremer assembled after consultations with Iraqi tribal and regional leaders is organizing itself and forming commissions and committees to serve as Iraqi-led task forces to identify problems and devise solutions. It is empowered to name interim government ministers, oversee their performance and require testimony from them about how they plan to run their respective ministries, according to a senior U.S. official in Baghdad. It prepares policy initiatives for Bremer and proposes policies on reform of police, the judicial system, the armed forces and national security in general. The IGC increasingly is taking on responsibility for a national government budget. "The council will be able to consider amendments to the 2003 emergency budget," according to a Pentagon fact sheet. Iraq's 2004 budget will be subject to IGC approval. The United States intends for the IGC to assemble a Preparatory Constitutional Commission to recommend guidelines for writing and ratifying a new constitution. Already the IGC is considering a process for regional assemblies to elect their own delegates to a national constitutional convention. Once ratified, the constitution would provide a legal basis for an independent and sovereign government through national presidential and legislative elections. In a series of diplomatic breakthroughs that have legitimized U.S. policy, the IGC has been gaining greater acceptance and legitimacy in the Arab world. The Arab League recognizes the IGC as the legitimate representative of Iraq. The IGC represents Iraq at the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. The United Nations has yet to recognize a new Iraqi government, but the IGC has sent envoys to the world body and some of its members met with Secretary-General Kofi Annan in late September - a meeting that IGC officials say is the first tacit recognition that the United Nations recognizes and accepts new realities about U.S. strategy against terrorism. Realities in Iraq, and recognition that the situation is still very fluid, appear to have cemented bipartisan support for a continued and costly U.S. commitment. "I was very pleasantly surprised," Rep. Wilson says of his mission with his Democratic colleagues. "I didn't want to be argumentative when I was on the trip. I was very surprised to see that Congressman Skelton said we were in 99 percent agreement. I agree with him." These lawmakers see the constant carping about continued attacks on U.S. personnel to be damaging in the long term. "Congressman Marshall was very pointed in his view that the negative reporting from the media was very injurious to our troops," Rep. Wilson says. "If I said that as a Republican, it wouldn't mean anything. For a Democrat to say it, that's startling." http://www.insightmag.com/news/507343.html I'm sure that some of this will anger the left wing of the left wing(glynch, MacBeth, rimrocker, etc), but take heart that the media is working very hard to force our defeat there.
For the 370th time...not that it'll sink in...I'm not even all that liberal, let alone extreme. Look at key liberal/conservative issues: Abortion, I'm against it...Death penalty...against...1 for 2...Affirmative action: against...gay marriage: for...1 for 2...get the drift? Unlike some people, I don't fovaor one delineated method of detrmining my position on things...let's look at the top two current threads in this forum and the standard liberal/conservative positions...: Gun Laws: Didn't post, but I'm for no guns...Liberal position. Treeman is against them: conservative. I knew your position as soon as I saw your name in there....wonder why that is? Schwarzeneggar, Hitler" I defended him, sort of, and so did you. Both conservative positions. I would think maybe...maybe you'll say you're pro-choice, as it's by far the majority position. Other than that I would expect you, as you do in here, to come down on the conservative side every time on every issue. Posters on the 'liberal' side will tell you that I have debated with them over affirmative action, abortion, and I have defended religious rights in popularly unacceptable realms, all conservative positions. If you are using yourself as the compass, yeah I'm liberal...as are most. I voted Republican in 5 of the last 6 elections, for God's sake. But, having told you this for the umpteenth time, I await being labeled an extreme liberal again...some people just don't listen. And as for this article...it is what it says it opposes; spin for political purposes. Not that it doesn't contain some truth, but I love the Rep. portrayal of Fox as the neutral bastion of objective reporting...lol...I don't know if you saw it or not, but a poll showed that of the Americans who happen to currently believe inaccurate data on raq; ( ie we've found WMDs, proof of Saddam-9-11 has been shown, etc.) Fox viewers are far and away the leading group in believing these misconceptions...must come from too much objective truth, huh?
In fairness, the war is neither going as well as the administration says it's going or as badly as the media say," added Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.). This statement I absolutely agree with. U.S. military leaders agree. Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of Combined Joint Task Force 7 in Iraq, told reporters, "When you look across this country there is no practical threat. There is no tactical threat. There is no strategic threat or operational threat that exists to the coalition or to America." Sanchez added with a shake of his head, "It is very disturbing to me to sit here every day and watch the news back home that focuses on the bad things that are happening in Iraq." Lt Gen Sanchez has also said: CBS/AP) Nearly six months after the fall of Baghdad, U.S. troops are suffering an average of three to six deaths and 40 wounded every week, the commander of American forces in Iraq said Thursday "The enemy has evolved — a little bit more lethal, a little more complex, a little more sophisticated, and in some cases, a little bit more tenacious," said Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. "The evolution is about what we expected to see over time." U.S. soldiers are facing 15 to 20 attacks a day, including roadside bombs, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said. Seven to 10 attacks a day involve small groups of fight Source: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1003iraq-mil03.html http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/03/iraq/main576386.shtml This is not to say that there are not many positives going on, because obviously there are, but at the same time I feel like the media has an obligation to inform us not only of the good news.. but the bad news as well.. To be honest I don't understand the bad rep that the network news gets in this reguard, they on average have a 30 minute evening news broadcast to fit in the entire day's news both international and domestic. This illustrates my point: Forty-five of the 52 Iraqi figures on the deck of "Wanted" playing cards either have turned themselves in or have been captured or killed. The overwhelming majority of high profile "wanted" figures are taken care of, we're not going to hear about many of them anymore.. The deaths, injuries, bombings, etc.. are ongoing as is the reconstruction... I wouldn't be opposed to seeing positive news stories.. a camera crew for instance following some children to school or going "in depth" on the recovery efforts.. maybe embedding and updating on a paticular electrical plant or school being repared... I'd really like to see some updates from Afghanistan which has been forgotten completely by the big TV Media... Based on Saddam's emergency plans captured at the end of the war, his Ba'athist loyalists were depending upon Western correspondents to continue hyping the militarily insignificant but emotionally charged daily attacks on coalition forces, as in Vietnam. "Indeed, I think the media are putting our soldiers at risk by giving false encouragement to remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime," Wilson says, "by emphasizing the perceived dissolution of resolve in America, a perceived Vietnamization in America where the public grows tired of supporting the troops." Should the media censor negative news information from Iraq for the betterment of the rebuilding efforts?
No, absolutely not. I think the point is that there is little mention of the positives in Iraq which paints a far bleaker picture than reality. Obviously that comment about Fox News is a joke, but I think the point is still relevant. Unfortunately with a media that is based largely on sensationalism, a rocket attack can make a headline, whereas a school opening doesn't grab the attention of the public that easily. That's nothing new though, just think of the local nightly news. What gets more coverage on a daily basis, a shooting at a convenience store or the opening of a local community center? The problem is that on the national and international scale the ramifications are much larger.
I don't think any of us want our country to fail... we just have different ideas about what success and failure mean. You have your reasons for supporting the war, some of which I am sympathetic to, but none that could cause me to support the war. I don't think we should be in Iraq and I think by being there we are wasting blood and treasure and prestige and the ability to say to the world "Here is the better course." I think that this is the wrong path for the US and the world, and I'm quite sure you feel the opposite. We're not going to change each other's opinions, but I expect we'll keep trying to stridently re-educate the other. By the way, I'm not left-wing. I am a combo New Deal/classic liberal, which makes me much more conservative than the folks currently running our economic and foreign policy.
rim, don't bother. Seriously, treeman doesn't want to hear that you have strong, positive feelings about your country, the soldiers, and the future. I'm not sure why, but perhaps the idea that caring, intelligent people can disagree with him is too complicated a notion.
In rimrocker's case I wouldn't believe it anyway, B-Bob. Just as I don't think that MacBeth can honestly classify himself as a conservative or moderate on this issue, since he has taken the liberal Democratic party line on it from day one, neither can rimrocker claim that his motives are altruistic here. Their motives are the same: they care more about unseating Bush than anything else in the world. And that includes winning wars. Why should I show flexibility with someone who will not respond in kind? You yourself know that if you don't constantly spout propaganda, and if you show a willingness to actually discuss issues, then I will listen. You and I can usually discuss a topic civilly. I have put MacBeth and rimrocker on ignore for one simple reason: I have not had a productive conversation with either of them in months. That is probably partly my fault, as I am a stubborn a-hole, but it is also their fault, because they are both chronically dishonest and will not get off of their negativity trips. Hell, MacBeth and I can't even have a dialogue anymore that doesn't immediately turn personal; that helps no one.
I agree with a good bit, but not all, of that paragraph. And this has me thinking of a new thread... Hmm... Might be combustible. I *did* actually get into a heated argument with someone recently... I was waxing optomistic about the economy, or at least waxing hopeful, and this person said "yeah, but that would help Bush, blah blah." And I found that kind of repugnant in a way. I want unemployed people working, I want peace in the Middle East, I want improvements in education, et ceterea. And if all those things take shape before November 2004, and if that helps Bush's campaign, fine. But a feisty poll might be in order...
Exactly. I told MadMax the same thing over lunch not too long ago. While I disagree with many of Bush's policies, I'm still hopeful for an economic recovery and success in Iraq. If this occurs and it means Bush stays for four more years, that's OK by me.
Not true. (And I appreciate how you do the thinking for me.) It is true I don't want to see Bush serve a second term, but that is because of his policies and the damage that i think he is doing ot the country. It's nothing personal (much anyway), it's just business (and pre-emptive war, favoritism, jingoism, etc.). For many on the right (and it doesn't look like you are the exception), actually discussing the issues means accepting the viewpoint of the right. Discussing a topic in a civil manner means don't bring up facts and examples that disprove my point or shatter my illusions. You can call me a bunch of things, but don't call me a liar. Everything I post on here I try to back up with facts and sources. Sometimes I don't do it to the level I should, but that doesn't make me chronically dishonest. And if negativity trips means pointing out the failings of the administration and its policies, then I am guilty of that, but keep in mind that I cede my patriotism and love of country to no person. Pointing out flaws and trying to make things better is one of the foundations of this country. Blindly following our leaders is a true negativity trip.
Wow. First time that I've been on ignore, that I'm aware of. Even though I am apparently speaking to myself, I'll say a few things: A) I have no preoblem with your putting me on ignore...if I didin't think it was a silly thing to do, I'd have considered using it myself a few times. What bothers me, tree, si the kind of person who puts someone else on ignore, and then takes ( that I've counted so far in this and other threads) 5 shots at the person they are 'ignoring'...Saya a lot about the poster, IMO. B) You have ( falsely) accused me of being a liar on several occasions. I have never done so. This is not about ending an ongoing mudslinging attack back and forth. You call me a liar time and again...I prove you wrong...you dissapear or act like it didn't happen, or better still come up with ridiculous claims like you never said proven, you said supported by evidence...and then call me a liar again. You get personal; I respond. Or, like you did last time, you spen half of a post taking personal shots at me, and the other half predicting that I will lower the thread by responding with personal attacks. Despite this I have repeatedly avoided calling you a liar, or any other names, for that matter. I have never even called you a right wing extremist, despite the fact that you have called me the reverse almost every single time we've debated. I have responded to your posts, and about your posts; I have never called you anything other than a pro-Iraq war/Bush supporter, which you agree with. You make claims like, for example, that I have never made one correct prediction about the Iraqi war...I prove several; you even admit some are true, but say you think I was wrong about something else, etc., totally ignoring the fact that being right about even one...and there were several...invalidates your original position. I have, sadly, along with most other anti-war people, seen my pre-war predictions/positions come true one after another...including my prediction...in the days immediately following 9-11...that we would use this as a pretext for invading Iraq, which was laughed at at the time...and until you challenged me on it I never bothered to go on about it because it is not a source of pride, it is a source of sadness and worry for me; I don't like what I see us becoming and doing. But you seem to reduce everything to an ego-driven argument about being right, and as such have an incredibly hard time admitting you were wrong if it means that someone like me was right. And as such you suspect me of lying, etc. just to win a damded internet argument, which is so ridiculous I would never even address it were it not repeated so often. Despite all of this I have repeatedly given you due praise for your guts in signing up, for which you have usually responded with sarcasm or dismissal. And now, when confronted with a list of predictions which you cannot refute, and which counter your claim, as you have always done with me, you chose to sidestep accountability, this time by using ignore. And now you put me on ignore and then take shots at me...well, tree, it's been swell. But the kind of poster who takes repeated shots from behind an ignore button is not worth debating with, so all I can say is it's been swell, and if you have to go fight, I wish you safetyl.
Let's revisit a media person's take on Iraq: from www.salon.com: Fleeing Baghdad I didn't want to leave the nation my country tore apart. But then came warnings that our house was targeted. A farewell portrait of a place on the edge of the abyss. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Jen Banbury April 7, 2004 | AMMAN, Jordan -- Last week, before followers of Muqtada al-Sadr began actively fighting coalition forces, before four Americans working for a private security company were killed and mutilated in Fallujah, I left -- or perhaps I should say fled -- Iraq. In the week or so preceding my departure, I felt the country undergo an essential, albeit subtle, shift. The anger previously focused on soldiers and members of the Coalition Provisional Authority seemed to morph, almost daily, into an indiscriminate ire toward Westerners in general. Almost overnight, I stopped feeling safe. Many of my biggest concerns were wrapped up in the fact that I had been in the country so long. I (and the house I shared with other freelance journalists) had become well known. Some seasoned war correspondents -- friends who had actually lived in the house last fall -- warned us that they felt the house might be marked as an easy "soft target." Journalists and contractors were moving en masse out of small, lightly protected hotels (such as the Mount Lebanon, which was bombed a few weeks ago) into hotels that lay within heavily guarded and restricted compounds. With fewer easily available Western targets, my friends believed that the house might be ripe for an attack. Up until a month ago, my housemates and I joked about Western journalists and civilians who were obsessed with security. We made fun of our friends who worked for TV networks and had to get permission from New York just to come to our house for dinner. When they did come, they traveled in armored cars with armed British former special ops soldiers. For six months we had gone all over Baghdad and Iraq, driving in a regular old Iraqi car with an unarmed translator and driver. Going shopping, walking on busy streets, wandering into crowds. There was always some risk, but it was small. The soldiers were the real targets. Iraqis might hate the occupation, but they didn't hate Americans per se. Then, seemingly overnight, everything felt different. It began with the Mount Lebanon bombing. Though many journalists I talked to also sensed the city's mood shift, it was hard to figure out exactly why that particular attack made us feel so different. We had been to blown-up hotels before; it happens every few months. But it wasn't the bombing, it was how Iraqis were talking to us. Iraqis are fed up with the occupation. They're fed up with what they consider to be a year's worth of false promises. They're fed up and the situation is getting very ugly. A driver we worked with told us that our house had been targeted and we needed to "take a break" from Iraq. One of my housemates (who had been in Iraq as long as I had) heard that there was a rumor circulating that he was actually CIA. It was time to leave. In the few days that passed between when I made the choice to leave and actually got the hell out, I became even more aware of the threat in the city. I wore a hijab pulled close around my face when I drove through town. Now all female journalists I know wear a hijab and even a full-on abaya when they leave their hotel. And not just female journalists -- a few guys I know who are unfortunate enough to have blond hair have taken to covering it with a head scarf when driving through the city. On the one hand, we joke about it -- "****, you make a good-looking old Iraqi woman" -- but it's deadly serious. Now in Baghdad, in addition to the fortified "Green Zone" occupied by the Coalition Provisional Authority, other heavily guarded compounds have sprung up to encircle the hotels most populated by Westerners. During the war, almost every Western journalist who chose to stay and tough out the conflict took refuge in the large Sheraton and Palestine hotels that sit, almost lobby to lobby, a block away from the Tigris River, opposite the river from the Green Zone. Following the fall of Baghdad, American soldiers parked tanks in front of the hotels and (somewhat informally) secured the grounds. Still, it was possible to drive a car filled with luggage into the parking lot (as I did the day I first arrived in Baghdad last May) and move freely around the streets flanking the hotels. Over the course of the last year, however, the security perimeter for those two hotels has slowly but surely expanded to encompass an entire neighborhood. Roadblocks, cement barriers, concertina wire, and legions of private guards keep a tight rein on anyone entering the area. A big chunk of Abu Nawas Street, the wide boulevard that parallels that side of the Tigris, is completely blocked to traffic. News organizations and foreign companies have rented many of the larger homes inside that secured zone and each employs its own security guards. Men with Kalashnikovs roam the empty street or park themselves at the front gates of the sandbag-wrapped houses. If you look up, you're likely to see more men with guns pacing the flat roofs and keeping watch on passersby. The New York Times was one of the first organizations to take up residence there. Last spring, before Westerners of all kinds were being targeted, they rehabilitated a large home and painted the outside bright pink and purple. I used to joke that it looked like an MTV "Real World" Baghdad house. Not long ago, I noticed that the house had been repainted to a dull white-gray. The isolation of Westerners only feeds the danger, in a kind of vicious circle. With journalists and civilians in Baghdad now living the same way soldiers and CPA staffers do, it's no wonder the Iraqis differentiate among those groups less than they used to. After our friends expressed their concerns about our house being vulnerable -- but before we received the more specific threats -- my housemates and I decided to consult with some of the security companies working in Baghdad to get an assessment of our danger level. The house we lived in was not in a cordoned-off area but rather a quiet residential neighborhood. Our idea was to be as low-key as possible. We had a guard at all times but he usually stayed inside the wall that fronted our house. Early last fall, when we rented the house, low-key was the best way to go. In fact, part of the impetus for getting the house in the first place was that hotels (even those with security) seemed the greatest risk to Westerners. Private security companies can be found all over Iraq right now. Most of them consist of a cadre of well-trained Westerners -- usually some version of former special forces guys from the U.S., Australia or South America -- supplemented by Iraqi guards. The biggest companies, like Custer Battles (whose unfortunate moniker actually derives from its two founders' last names) and Blackwater (the employer of the four men killed in Fallujah), are hired almost exclusively to act as armed security support for the military and Coalition Provisional Authority. They provide escorts for contractors and create secure areas (like the Green Zone) in which different arms of the coalition live and work. Some of the contracts are massive. Custer Battles essentially runs the airport. A number of security companies have carved out multiblock areas in the wealthy Mansour neighborhood of Baghdad. I drove to Mansour with one of my housemates to talk to some people at Erinys Security, a large firm (with ties to Pentagon favorite Ahmed Chalabi) working throughout Iraq. When my housemate and I made an appointment over the phone, the Erinys guy had given us rough instructions to their compound. He told us to drive to a street behind the wrecked communications building and then look for a lot of men in blue shirts. We followed his instructions and, sure enough, came across a gaggle of beefy Iraqis wearing blue Oxford-type shirts and holding Kalashnikovs and mini-machine guns. My translator, Amjad, who was with us, explained we had an appointment. The men directed us to pull up to a barrier that marked the beginning of a blocked-off fragment of the neighborhood. We milled around outside our car while one of the guards crossed the barrier and ducked into a house just beyond to announce us. The dozen or so guards around us seemed bored. Some stood with their rifles hanging in front of them, supported by the kind of neck straps I associate with guitars. They chain-smoked cigarettes and laughed in surprise at my housemate's decent Iraqi Arabic. After a few minutes, a very scrawny American guy came out of the nearby house and walked over to greet us. He was casually, even sloppily, dressed with longish lank hair and teeth that reminded me of late-season corn on the cob. There was something decidedly creepy about him. Certainly, he didn't inspire any strong feelings of security. After a slightly confused exchange, it became clear that we weren't even at the Erinys headquarters. This was a different security company with different blue shirts and a separate compound. The man offered to help us, but we told him we had another appointment and had to move on. We asked if he knew where the Erinys compound was -- we knew it was close. He shrugged and said that there were lots of security compounds in the area and he wasn't sure which was which. Though Mansour lies in the heart of Baghdad, it feels more like a suburb, or like parts of Los Angeles. Imagine driving through a suburban town in which, at any given moment, you're likely to come across a roadblock manned by up to a dozen heavily armed men, marking the entrance to a small compound. If you live inside, you will have to show an I.D. and have your car checked for explosives whenever you enter the compound. Though right now Mansour seems to have the highest concentration of these compounds, they are quickly springing up all over Baghdad. For Westerners, it's increasingly unrealistic to live outside the bounds of these mini-Green Zones. Iraqis whose houses get inadvertently annexed by these zones choose to rent their homes to whichever company has taken over. Others choose to stay and accept the trade-off: hassle for high security. We did eventually find Erinys that day. As it turns out, they are a very large and high-tech operation with a contract to guard oil pipelines throughout the country. For that, they employ more than 10,000 Iraqi guards. Advising a handful of journalists on the safety of their living situation wasn't exactly the company's regular gig, but they were incredibly amenable to helping us and, the following morning, a consultant came by our house to advise us. He recommended that we increase the number of guards and line the inside of the wall in front of the house with sandbags. In general, he felt that we could make the house safe enough to warrant staying. Then came the change in the atmosphere, and the threats. The viciousness of the attacks on the four Blackwater employees in Fallujah illustrated, in an incredibly depressing way, the shift I felt on the streets of Baghdad. An explosive anger just below the surface of daily life. Of course not all Iraqis want to kill Americans. But the violent minority could easily tip the country toward yet another out-and-out war with the coalition. As I write this, coalition forces are fighting Saddam loyalists in Fallujah and nearby Ramadi and followers of Muqtada al-Sadr in a number of cities throughout the middle and south of Iraq. At least 18 U.S. Marines have been killed over the last three days, with 12 more reported slain today in Ramadi; at least 130 Iraqis have been killed. The next few days on those fronts will be very telling. On the surface, the clashes in Fallujah and Ramadi aren't related to the Shiite actions: The Saddam loyalists of Fallujah don't historically have much in common with Shiite hard-liners, who were persecuted under Saddam's rule. In that sense, the timing couldn't be worse. The coalition is now fighting battles on several different fronts simultaneously. Their hard clamp-down may quell some of the violence. But I think it's more likely that it will severely aggravate it. Al-Sadr's followers, including his well-armed Mahdi militia, will fight fiercely to block his arrest. If enough of them get gunned down, non-Sadrists might join the fray. Though al-Sadr doesn't command nearly the same respect as the more moderate Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, his outspoken vilification of the United States may position him as a "mouse that roared" figure and enable him to sidestep into Iraq's severe leadership vacuum. But even before the current crisis, something may have happened to ordinary Iraqis that cannot be reversed. When I sensed the country's mood change before I left Iraq, I wasn't hanging out with Saddam loyalists or members of al-Sadr's militia. I was in Baghdad talking to average people. To be fair, I think part of what changed in the last few weeks was me. After seven months in Baghdad, with low-level stress all the time and high-level stress a few times a day, the heightened danger and the disappointment of seeing the country fall apart was too much. Last May I felt some sense of optimism about the future of Iraq. But since then I've witnessed the nation's slow decline toward the present chaos. The occupation, perhaps doomed from the start, is proving to be a failure. I've heard from plenty of CPA employees (off the record, of course) that the governmental situation is a mess. Reinventing an Arab-nationalist socialist dictatorship as an American democracy is too great a task. The Bush administration's fantasy about how it was going to transform postwar Iraq reminds me of a "Star Trek" episode in which a confident multicultural, quasi-military group beams down to a planet where people are following the wrong leader. The Enterprise crew quickly implants American-style democracy and, by episode's end, are light-speeding toward another galaxy, safe in the knowledge that the changes they've wrought are good and right and will endure. It doesn't work that way in real life. Though I was against the war, when I first got to Iraq I couldn't help feeling (especially after a trip to the mass graves) that getting rid of Saddam would improve the lives of Iraqis. Now I'm no longer sure. In my final weeks in Baghdad, I started feeling constantly on edge. The gunfire that I had become so accustomed to hearing as part of Baghdad's background noise was suddenly sending my stomach into my throat. Getting stuck in traffic no longer felt like a petty annoyance; it felt like a trap. When I visited a university to interview some students, I encountered a much more hostile reception than I had at the same university last fall. Pretty much all the American journalists I knew began saying they were Canadian (much to the chagrin of the actual Canadian journalists). Certain news reporters started "covering" stories about events in Iraq by recycling what they read on the Web and watching CNN instead of actually going to the scene. Then, too, I became very worried about the safety of my driver, Thamer, and my translator, Amjad. In the last month, Iraqis working for American news outlets such as Time magazine, Voice of America, and the Washington Post have been threatened and killed. (Both Time and the Washington Post moved out of their relatively low-key houses and into hotels within security compounds.) While neither Amjad nor Thamer expressed any fear to me, the idea that they might be targeted truly terrified me. Neither had exactly advertised the fact that he worked with an American but, after seven months, word gets round. The same experienced war correspondents who warned of the danger to our house told me that they believe the situation in Iraq right now is much more hazardous than it was during the actual invasion of the country (and they were both in Baghdad for it). It's a question of the unknown. The increasingly large X factor of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. On the day before I left, I was driving back to my house with Amjad, Thamer and another journalist. I was famished and asked Thamer to stop at my favorite roadside kebab stand to get some sandwiches. Amjad, the other journalist and I stayed in the car while Thamer jogged across the street (with its raised dirt median) to the kebab stand. I slouched in the back seat and watched a man sweeping the sidewalk nearby. Across the street, two men in jackets and ties sat at a small plastic table, eating a mound of food from the kebab place and laughing at some shared joke. Down the block, a woman in an abaya looked over the pile of lettuce at the vegetable stand. Cars passed us -- junky orange-and-white paneled cabs, new-looking Mercedes, minivans filled like buses, a black car with no license plate. Across the street, Thamer stood waiting for the kebabs with some other Iraqis. Amjad and the other journalist played games on their phones. The black car without a license plate passed us going in the other direction. Then, a minute later, it passed us again. I told Amjad to move into the driver's seat and take off. We sped away, making a bunch of fast turns to be certain we weren't followed. Minutes later we were at the house and Amjad went back to pick up a confused but understanding Thamer. It's possible that the driver of the black car (which contained at least one passenger) was lost or looking for an address or cruising for prostitutes. That he had no idea some Westerners were hanging out in a parked car, waiting for some sandwiches. It's possible I was experiencing a case of short-timer's paranoia. I've seen too many bad cop movies where the old sarge who's retirin' in a week to finally do that fishin' he's been talking about for so long gets blown up in the third scene. There's no way to know. But right now in Iraq, the assumption of danger is the safest bet. It is not safe. - - - - - - - - - - - - About the writer Jen Banbury is the author of "Like a Hole in the Head." Her Web journal chronicles her life in Baghdad. Sound Off Send us a Letter to the Editor
The media is misrepresenting Iraq, it's not like the US versus Vietnam, it's more like the Soviet Union versus the Taliban. Heck, at the rate we are neglecting Afghanistan, Afghanistan is starting to look like the Soviet Union versus the Taliban.
Will be actually be able to hand over authority to Iraq on June 30 (is that the date)? Fresh rounds of fighting make us all wonder. As far as the President, I know some people who are turned off by how much of a mess the situation has become, and I know others who will vote for GWB because they don't think we should change leadership during a time of war. Certainly GWB will appeal to the public to get more of the latter. By the way, I'm insulted at having been excluded from treeman's original list of leftist lunatics. Guess I need to ramp up my liberalism.
You know, left-wing alternative media are also quite convinced that the mainstream news media is misrepresenting Iraq... by glossing over the horrors of the war and trumpeting American positions. I think the fact that both liberal and conservative extremists are pissed about the mainstream media's coverage of the war indicates that they're doing a pretty good job.
