Tag: journalism

[updated 25jan06]

Shortly after midnight last Saturday, U.S. troops used explosives to enter Dr. Fadhil’s Baghdad home. The soldiers began shooting haphazardly around the house where Fadhil, his wife and young children were sleeping.

Fadhil, an Iraqi physician, described the raid in Wednesday’s Guardian:

My three-year-old daughter Sarah woke to this nightmare. She pushed herself on to me and shouted “Daddy, Americans! They will take you! No, no, not like this daddy …”

U.S. Army officials later claimed that they had mistakenly entered the wrong house, but it was in fact the third time Dr. Fadhil’s home had been invaded by U.S. troops, as he explained to CBC radio Wednesday night [listen].

But it was no mistake. Today U.S. Brig. Gen. Donald Alston characterized the raid of Fadhil’s home as “appropriate,” according to CNN.

Dr. Fadhil is employed by Guardian Films for Channel 4’s “Dispatches” television documentary program in the UK. He recently won the 2005 Foreign Press Association young journalist of the year award for his reporting in Iraq.

A blue-eyed captain came to me holding my Handycam camcorder and questioned me aggressively: “Can you explain to me why you have this footage?”

I explained. “These are for a film we are making for Channel 4 Dispatches. There is nothing sinister about it.”

According to Fadhil’s account, he was then hooded and taken for questioning.

Dr. Ali Fadhil is best known for his fifteen documentary on the aftermath of 2004’s Fallujah battle, “The Fall and Fallout” [watch]. His current project was an investigation of British and American construction projects in Iraq and most likely exposed rampant corruption.

The director of the film, Callum Macrae, told the Guardian:

The timing and nature of this raid is extremely disturbing. It is only a few days since we first approached the US authorities and told them Ali was doing this investigation, and asked them then to grant him an interview about our findings.

We need a convincing assurance from the American authorities that this terrifying experience was not harassment and a crude attempt to discourage Ali’s investigation.

It seems there are absolutely no assurances for any journalist who is not embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq. Fadhil’s recordings were seized five days ago and have not been returned, and to this point it seems only the Guardian has had the nerve to expose these unacceptable and unnecessary military actions. These actions, followed by general acceptance, is yet another indicator that the U.S. truly has no intention of making Iraq a better, safer, and freer country any time soon, if ever.

UPDATE: Sheldon Rampton, of the essential Center for Media and Democracy blog, along with Professor Juan Cole, exposes the widespread disappearance of Iraqi bloggers / journalists. So far, Dr. Fadhil’s journalistic history has not been clarified in the press, however, as Mahablog suggested earlier this week, it is quite possible that this Fadhil is the same Dr. Fadhil who once authored the blogs Iraq the model and Free Iraqi.

UPDATE: Fadhil was interviewed January 25 by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now.

ONE roadside bomb killed ten marines and wounded eleven others, some seriously, as they entered a neighborhood outside Fallujah on “foot patrol,” according to the Pentagon. It was one of the single deadliest attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq (see Reuters’ chronology of deadliest attacks).

“Where were the damn Iraqi troops accompanying our Marines?” asks Larry Johnson in Booman Tribune, refering to the “ambush.”

The U.S. admitted to paying off editors to publish articles written by U.S. troops and passing them off as unbiased accounts in Iraqi newspapers. BIG DEAL, is all I can think, as this represents one of the most traditional strategies in American military (and business) culture — IO (Informational Operations). You want bad propaganda? Just ask Arnold – corrupting his constituency with the help of fake VNR’s.

Iraq Dispatches blog criticizes the medias continuous references to cities like Fallujah as being “pacified,” only to be followed by reports of elaborately planned attacks such as this one

Its not so much the propaganda on the ground that is to blame, as it is the “presstitutes talking on the radio from their hotel rooms in Baghdad,” blogs Dahr Jamail.

Blackfive agrees that the exaggerated reporting of Reuters and other international journalists works best for the propaganda of the enemy. He references the hundred of armed men reported to have been controlling the streets of Ramadi yesterday, claiming there were only about a dozen, “all with a look of ‘Are you getting this?’ to the collaborator journalist filming them.”

Not sure how this coincides with the “shocking” reports of Iraqi journalists are being “paid-off” to print positive spin in their newspapers (as opposed to death threats they would receive for not attending to the insurgents/ELIGs/Saddaammists side)? … but consider this mass e-mail to news organizations from Capt. Jeffrey Pool, a spokesman for the 2nd Marine Division:

“Today I witnessed inaccurate reporting, use of unreliable sources, media using other media as sources, an active insurgent propaganda machine, and the pack journalism at its worse”

Abu Aardvark points to this ever-befuddling quote from an AP story in which General Rick Lynch is asked about the “Iraqi press blowback scandal”:

Lynch did not answer directly but quoted a senior al-Qaida leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, as having told Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the main terrorist leader in Iraq, “Remember, half the battle is the battlefield of the media.” Lynch said Zarqawi lies to the Iraqi people and he said that the American military does not.

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Zogby is soon to release a poll surveying the opinions of residents of the Middle-East and their opinions on the United States’ ambition to spread democracy. Robin Wright previewed the following results in the Washington Post:

—77 percent of those surveyed in six countries — Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, all U.S. allies — say Iraqis are worse off than before the war began in 2003.
— 58 percent believe the U.S. intervention has produced less democracy in the region,
— Almost 70 percent said they do not believe democracy was the real U.S. goal in toppling Saddam Hussein.

This poll has yet to be released, as promised in the Post article.

So, how exactly does our not-as-the-Constitution defined administration maintaining democracy?

Glenn Smith at BOPNews points to this very backwards quote by Condoleezza Rice in the November 28 USA Today, justifying secret U.S. prison camps:

“you can’t allow somebody to commit the crime before you detain them. Because if they commit the crime, thousands of innocent people die.”

With three years of utter disbelief to go, Smith interprets:

“Were we not committed to democracy, we could have applied her principle to the Bush Cabinet in January, 2001, before they committed their crimes. Many innocents who have died would still be alive.

Retired Lt. Gen. William Odom told NPR this morning that by staying in Iraq, U.S. troop are only assisting al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremists. Listen here, or watch him reiterate his sentiments that leaving Iraq is the ONLY way to begin stabilizing the Middle East on CNN (h/t: Daily Dissent)