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Reporter Finally Admits Things are Worse in Iraq than the Media Says

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by glynch, Aug 3, 2004.

  1. glynch

    glynch Contributing Member

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    Posted on Sun, Aug. 01, 2004
    The situation in Iraq right now is not as bad as the news media are portraying it to be. It's worse.
    By Ken Dilanian

    Inquirer Staff Writer


    A kind of violence fatigue has descended over news coverage of Iraq. Car bombings that would have made the front page a year ago get scant mention these days.

    Assassinations and kidnappings have become so common that they have lost their power to shock. More U.S. soldiers died in July (38) than in June (26), but that didn't make the nightly newscasts, either.

    The U.S.-led effort to restore basic services has become a story of missed goals and frustrations. Hoped-for foreign investment in Iraq's economy hasn't materialized - what company is going to risk seeing its employees beheaded on television?

    Simply by staving off stability and prosperity, the insurgents are winning.

    These are painful observations for me to make, because in early April, I wrote on this page that the media had been underplaying the good things happening in Iraq, and were missing the potential for a turnaround.I still believe the first part. But when I returned to Iraq in June, I found that the situation had deteriorated so dramatically that a lot of those good things have become irrelevant

    As for the turnaround, I couldn't have been more wrong.

    Don't take my word for it: Listen to Sgt. Maj. John Jones, a First Infantry Division soldier who recently told my colleague Tom Lasseter that he grows annoyed every time he hears politicians and journalists on television talking about Iraq.

    "When people come over here, where do they stay? In the Green Zone. I call it the Safe Zone," he said, referring to the heavily fortified area in Baghdad where most U.S. officials live and work. "They miss the full picture."

    In the spring, I wrote: "I have seen a lot of good that has come of this painful expenditure of blood and treasure - very real progress that has made life better for some Iraqis, and promises to make it exponentially better, over time."

    The article generated a flood of e-mail from readers who seemed to be thirsting for upbeat news out of Iraq, convinced that the media were hiding it from them.

    "I am very happy to see The Inquirer allow a 'positive' article on the Iraq rebuilding effort to take up space in their pages," one person wrote. "I knew there was more to the situation than just what the sound bites allow in a quick TV flash."

    I still believe the U.S.-led effort in Iraq is accomplishing many good things, most of which get no publicity. And I still think it's too early to abandon hope that a stable and democratic Iraq will emerge from this crucible.

    But I learned this summer that the insurgency has been far more successful than I would have imagined at sowing instability and halting progress. Most Iraqis aren't seeing the improvements they had hoped for, and they're not blaming the guerillas - they're blaming the Americans. Sovereignty seems to have had zero effect on this equation.

    In March, as I was writing, the $18.4 billion reconstruction effort was just getting off the ground. I had sat in on a briefing in which a senior U.S. official confidently predicted that, by June, thanks to American rebuilding efforts, Iraq would have electricity 18 hours a day throughout the country.

    I called that promise "credible," and argued that, once Iraqis could see that kind of progress from the rebuilding program, perhaps the insurgency would abate.

    I just couldn't conceive, given how severely the lack of electricity undermines everything they are trying to achieve, that the Americans would publicly set a goal and then fail to meet it.

    But that's just what they did.

    It's now August, and that goal still hasn't been reached. Throughout much of the country, the power goes off for half the day or more. That has meant another summer of babies sweltering in 120-degree apartments, of factories that can't run, of despair turning to hatred.

    One reason the goal was missed is that the uprising by Muqtada al-Sadr's militants - and the since-abandoned Marine effort to pacify Fallujah - ushered in the worst violence since the United States and its allies invaded Iraq last year.

    That explosion of insecurity upended another observation I made in that April article. I said the insurgents thus far had not been able to substantially undermine the rebuilding effort.

    Well, in April and May, that changed. U.S. contractors hunkered down or pulled out, supply lines were attacked, and the reconstruction sputtered to a near halt. The Sunni triangle has always been risky, but now, so is the Shiite south.

    Those battles are over, but the results were mixed, at best. The First Armored Division chased Sadr's men from several southern cities, yet he and his armed followers remain active in Najaf and parts of Baghdad, a force for instability. The Marines backed off in Fallujah, and that city is now a safe haven for foreign terrorists and Iraqi insurgents.

    Some reconstruction work has resumed in the last two months, but continued attacks have driven up security costs astronomically. The current wave of kidnappings may halt the rebuilding again. Security issues pervade everything.

    Take telephones. In my April piece, I said Iraq's new mobile-phone network was an unheralded success story that has changed the lives of many average Iraqis, at least in Baghdad. That's still somewhat true.

    But the service has degraded considerably in the last few months because the network is badly overloaded. Why hasn't the provider, Iraqna, expanded it?

    "There was a delay in receiving the equipment. Also, they depended on foreign engineers," Iraq's communication minister explained recently.

    "Those engineers were pulled out of Iraq because of security."

    Similar problems plague the entire reconstruction effort, which is moving so slowly that the Bush administration is thinking of overhauling it. A near-total lack of visible progress has prompted even the most pro-Western Iraqis to lose faith in the capabilities - and worse, the intentions - of the United States.

    It's amazing how many Iraqis are convinced that the Americans are withholding electricity to punish them. Absurd, sure - but people who think like that are more inclined to plant a bomb, pick up a gun, or at least look the other way when their neighbor does.

    That's one reason large swaths of the country that once were safe are now considered danger zones. I felt that myself, driving south to Karbala a few weeks ago in an unarmored car with no guards or weapons. There is where the two Polish journalists were killed, my driver noted. There's where the CNN guys got hit.

    Earlier this year, U.S. journalists were able to drive to Fallujah and roam the city asking questions. One of the last Western reporters who tried that in May ended up writing about how it felt when machine-gun fire raked his vehicle. Only the armor plating saved him.

    Those First Division soldiers know far more than any reporter does about such hazards. They spend their days dodging bullets and roadside bombs in insurgent-filled Al-Anbar province, west of Baghdad.

    Staff Sgt. Sheldon Rivers doesn't speak in the nuanced language of a television talking head. The full picture as he and his buddies see it is much more practical - and much more telling:"I'm tired of every time we go out the gate, someone tries to kill me

    link
     
  2. Faos

    Faos Contributing Member

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    "Reporter finally admits things are worse in Iraq than the media says"?

    I'm still looking for the positive stories from the media. Please help me find them.
     
  3. FranchiseBlade

    FranchiseBlade Contributing Member
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    I've posted links to them. They are from NPR.
     
  4. aghast

    aghast Member

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    Well, if you ignore his latest filing, Dilanian here has some great news to tell you about Iraq. But that would kind of be missing the point, wouldn't it Faos?
     

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