Newsweek's x-Baghdad bureau chief: "It's worse than is reported"

[Rose Siding]

snips from an interview with FP:

FOREIGN POLICY: Are Americans getting an accurate picture of what’s going on in Iraq?

Rod Nordland: It’s a lot worse over here (in Iraq) than is reported. The administration does a great job of managing the news......

You can only manage the news to a certain degree. It is certainly hard to hide the fact that in the third year of this war, Iraqis are only getting electricity for about 5 to 10 percent of the day. Living conditions have gotten so much worse, violence is at an even higher tempo, and the country is on the verge of civil war. The administration has been successful to the extent that most Americans are not aware of just how dire it is and how little progress has been made. They keep talking about how the Iraqi army is doing much better and taking over responsibilities, but for the most part that’s not true.

....(T)he military has started censoring many (embedded reporting) arrangements. Before a journalist is allowed to go on an embed now, (the military) check(s) the work you have done previously. They want to know your slant on a story—they use the word slant—what you intend to write, and what you have written from embed trips before. If they don’t like what you have done before, they refuse to take you. There are cases where individual reporters have been blacklisted because the military wasn’t happy with the work they had done on embed. But we get out among the Iraqi public a whole lot more than almost any American official, certainly more than military officials do.

.....More.......

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3525

[Botany]

1. Of course it is worse .....

..... 24 million people 80% + who want us dead and or gone .... no water .... no power
.... few jobs .... the upper and middle class fleeing the country .... sectarian violence ...
kidnappings for $ ..... terrorist recruiting grounds .... over 100,000 civilians dead .....
not one iraqi combat ready battalion that can function on it's own ...... an occupation by
an outside army .....

<A good example: I traveled recently to Taji for the handover of a large swath of territory north of Baghdad to the Iraqi Army’s 9th Armored Division. This was meant to be a big milestone: an important chunk of territory that has lots of insurgent activity, given over completely to the control of the Iraqi Army. But when we spoke to the Iraqi Army officers, they said they didn’t have enough equipment. They are still completely dependent on the U.S. Army for their logistics, their meals, and a lot of their communications. The United States turned territory over to them, but they are not a functioning, independent army unit yet.>

[chill_wind]

2. Grim coverage today by LAT on collapsing US efforts

to stand up an Iraqi police force. As described at the baltimore sun link below. To roughly paraphrase Josh Marshall, who has the LAT/Sun story today at TPM, the Bush admin claims to be predicating everything on this, in terms of any timing for withdrawel, and while this depressing news isn't news per se at all, it continues to look as open-endedly bleak as ever..

Brutality, corruption pervade Iraqi police force
Documents allege officers involved in aiding insurgents and fatal beatings

By Solomon Moore
Originally published July 9, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq // Brutality and corruption are rampant in Iraq's police force, with abuses including the rape of female prisoners, the release of terrorism suspects in exchange for bribes, assassinations of police officers and participation in insurgent bombings, according to confidential Iraqi government documents detailing more than 400 police corruption investigations.

A recent assessment by State Department police training contractors underscores the investigative documents, concluding that strong paramilitary and insurgent influences within the force and endemic corruption have undermined public confidence in the government.

Officers have beaten prisoners to death, been involved in kidnapping rings, sold thousands of stolen and forged Iraqi passports and passed along vital information to insurgents, the Iraqi documents allege.

The documents, which cover most of 2005 and part of 2006, were obtained by the Los Angeles Times and authenticated by current and former police officials. The alleged offenses cover dozens of police units and hundreds of officers ranging from beat cops to generals and police chiefs.

Officers were punished in some cases, but the vast majority of offenses are either under investigation or were dropped because of a lack of evidence or witness testimony.

The documents are the latest in a string of disturbing revelations of abuse and corruption by Iraq's Interior Ministry, a huge, Cabinet-level agency that employs 268,610 police, and immigration, facilities security and dignitary protection officers.


(....)


much more (2 pages)
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/iraq/bal-te.corrupt09jul09,0,5107554.story?page=1&track=rss

[Arkansas Granny]

3. I think everyone realizes that things are going from bad to worse.

Even those who loudly proclaimed that we weren't hearing any of the good news from Iraq seem to have been pretty much quiet in the last few weeks. At least, I haven't heard as many people saying that all we're being told is the bad news. Maybe everyone has come to the conclusion that with very few execptions, all the news out of Iraq is bad.

[Cosmocat]

4. The final, weak gasp ...

is a carry over from the newspaper stuff of how it is treasonous to report any of it ... The fools are in a cover their ears and eyes and yell "na, na, na, na, na ..." mode ...

[peacetalksforall]

5. Do you think... could it be... is it possible that these people know

that covering up what is really happening as if we were in the middle ages has been made into a challenge for them - do you think that they have bet on themselves to keep things from us in spite of modern technology? Could they be playing a twisted game and expect to win - because, obviously, according to right wing corporate networks - thinga are all on the upswing ocwe there, right? Dick and Gerrge are all aoub raising money. Rumsfeld is flying, as usual. We've never been asked to sacrifice except the sacrifice of our young kids and their futures.

They have really been fortunate - friends in the right places that keep it all quiet.

[IndianaGreen]

6. Iraq was better off under Saddam

Saddam's brutality has been more than matched by the "freedom and democracy" that America has brought to Iraqis and, unlike Saddam's rule, Iraqis no longer enjoy even a modicum of law and order.

[suziedemocrat]

9. How True!! n/t

[Up2Late]

7. NPR's reporter Philip Reeves said the same thing last week...

He said, in his SEVEN tours reporting from Iraq, it's always gotten worst each time he went there.

Philip Reeves, who's travels on a New Zealand Passport, said this time he had to have all his fingerprints taken, and his retina scanned, just to get his travel passes.

Here's a link to his report: <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5532222>


And another report, from the Baghdad Morgue, they said in 2002-2003, they might get 5-7 bodies (of murder victims) a day, now they get a minimum of 40, but usually it's well over 100 per day.

Inside Baghdad's Overflowing Central Morgue

Listen to this story...

by Jamie Tarabay

All Things Considered, July 7, 2006 · Baghdad's accelerating murder rate is overwhelming the city's main morgue. There are too many bodies and more coming in every day. Last month, 1,600 bodies were received; the month before, 1,400. NPR's Jamie Tarabay reports.

<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5541981>

[dipsydoodle]

8. Watch this on the subject

Go here and then scroll down to "Iraq - The Hidden Story". It's a 50 minute documentary by Jon Snow originally shown some weeks back on UK TV's Channel 4.

http://www.thedossier.ukonline.co.uk/video_iraqwar.htm

[cyberpj]

10. Why isn't this in NEWSWEEK? Or some other PRINT format?

Surely this person has some pull when it comes to gettin a story in PRINT - in front of many many more Americans than the Internet.

[redqueen]

11. Operation Mockingbird

They said it stopped. I don't believe them.

[Labdad95]

12. Story Pulled?

The link no longer works. Perhaps, big brother didn't like the story.

[FighttheFuture]

13. Works for me...

[cyberpj]

15. working now.......

Seven Questions: Covering Iraq
Posted July 5, 2006

Reporting from Iraq has become one of journalism’s most difficult and dangerous jobs. FP spoke recently with Rod Nordland, who served as Newsweek’s Baghdad bureau chief for two years, about the challenge of getting out of the Green Zone to get the scoop.

http://web1.foreignpolicy.com/issue_julyaug_2006/covering_iraq/covering_iraq.html

[cyberpj]

14. self deleted.

[mhatrw]

16. But where is the GOOD news from Iraq?

That's what we all want to hear, whether or not it exists.

[Art_from_Ark]

17. It's in the same place all that good news from Viet Nam was

[Divine Discontent]

18. Our OWN state department

released info a few months ago I believe, saying that the conditions in Iraq are far worse than what our TV news is telling Americans!!

no one cares. (outside of the, what?, 25% of us progressive Democrats who bitch about how screwed up everything is)




www.cafepress.com/warisprofitable <<<--- check them and others out!