Greg Mitchell At Salon.com: The Unsung Heroes Of Iraq War Coverage

[Hissyspit]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/03/21/iraq_journos

The unsung heroes of Iraq war coverage

Here are some of the voices that delivered the truth about Iraq while the mainstream media failed us.

By Greg Mitchell

March 21, 2008 | In the five years since the tragic U.S. intervention in Iraq began, many journalists for mainstream news outlets have certainly contributed tough and honest reporting. Too often, however, their efforts have either fallen short or been negated by a cascade of pro-war views expressed by pundits, analysts and editorial writers at their own newspapers or broadcast/cable networks. This sorry record is detailed in my new book, "So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq."

But allow me -- for once -- to focus on the positive by suggesting that many of the most critical and important journalistic voices exposing the criminal nature of, and the many costs of, this war have emerged from an "alternative" universe that includes former war correspondents, reporters for small newspapers or news services, comedians, aging rock 'n' rollers and bloggers, among others.

We can all name our favorite not-famous reporters or online scribes who have covered the war in Iraq in ways that should have been far more common, or offered biting commentary here at home. A full list would be long indeed. But with the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, here is my modest tip of the hat to just a few of my own favorites, based on what, to some, might seem an idiosyncratic definition of "journalist":

Chris Hedges: Looking back at my extensive, and often critical, commentary on media coverage of the Iraq war over the past five years, I'm struck yet again by the way Chris Hedges stands out as a kind of prophet. The former New York Times war reporter, who is now affiliated with the Nation magazine and other "outsider" venues, was among the few who recognized from the start that taking Baghdad would be the easy part.

We interviewed him at Editor & Publisher magazine, where I have long been editor, three times just before and after the war was launched. Speaking of the coming occupation of Iraq in April 2003, for example, he said: "It reminds me of what happened to the Israelis after taking over Gaza, moving among hostile populations. It's 1967, and we've just become Israel."

About a month into the occupation, in May 2003, he explained: "We didn't ever discover how many civilian casualties occurred in the first Gulf War, and I doubt we'll ever know about this one." He then added: "We don't have a sense of what we have waded into here. The deep divisions among the varying factions could be extremely hard to bridge, and the historical and cultural roots are probably beyond the American understanding ... For occupation troops, everyone becomes the enemy ...

"My suspicion is that the Iraqis view it as an invasion and occupation, not a liberation. This resistance we are seeing may in fact just be the beginning of organized resistance, not the death throes of Saddam's fedayeen."

Mark Benjamin: He now writes tough pieces for Salon, but his vital early exposure of hidden damage to -- and mistreatment of -- our troops in Iraq in 2003-4 came when he worked for a well-known news service that these days might just as well be considered "underground" for all the influence it wields: United Press International.

In October 2003, for starters, he revealed that hundreds of soldiers at Fort Stewart, Ga., were being kept in hot cement barracks without running water while they waited, for months at a time in some cases, for medical care. (Twelve days later he exposed ghastly conditions at Fort Knox in Kentucky.) The stories produced quick and measurable results rather than mere promises. Army Secretary Les Brownlee flew to Fort Stewart; new doctors were dispatched; and, within a month, the barracks had been closed. Pentagon officials later declared that they would spend $77 million the following year to help returning troops get better treatment.

And the media started paying more attention to the injured. The 2,000 nonfatal casualties to that moment had rarely been highlighted until Benjamin went to work.

He was also one of the first reporters to link illnesses and deaths among American troops in Iraq (and elsewhere) to the possible side effects of various vaccines being administered by the Pentagon. In addition, in 2003 and 2004, he was the first journalist to analyze closely and repeatedly noncombat injuries and ailments in Iraq -- a step E&P had advocated as early as July 2003. Benjamin showed that one in five medical evacuations from Iraq was for neurological or psychiatric reasons. He followed that with a probe of the unnervingly high suicide rate among soldiers in Iraq and also revealed that two returning soldiers had killed themselves at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington (a fact the military had kept hidden). Only later did these issues finally gain a wider airing in mainstream newspapers.

Lee Pitts: Everyone remembers the uproar caused when, in early December 2004, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that vehicles carrying our soldiers in Iraq were poorly armored -- and his famous quote about going to war with the Army you have, not the one you want. But did you know that the whole incident was sparked by a reporter for a local Tennessee paper?

Lee Pitts of the Chattanooga Times, embedded with a military unit based near that city, had learned in early December 2004 that Rumsfeld was slated to appear at a "town hall" gathering in Kuwait at which only soldiers would be allowed to ask questions. Already aware that the troops were angry about the lack of protection offered by their largely unarmored vehicles -- they were finding scrap metal and adding their own ad hoc armor to their trucks and Humvees -- he made sure Rumsfeld was challenged by arranging for a couple of soldiers whom he knew to be in a critical mood to get a chance at the microphone.

Spc. Thomas Wilson, a scout with the Tennessee National Guard, asked the key question at the gathering. (His picture would appear on the front page of the New York Times.) Pitts had previously written two stories about the lack of armored vehicles in Iraq to little effect and now, as he related in an e-mail, "it felt good to hand it off to the national press ... The soldier who asked the question said he felt good b/c he took his complaints to the top. When he got back to his unit most of the guys patted him on the back but a few of the officers were upset b/c they thought it would make them look bad."

Then, in an understatement, he added: "From what I understand this is all over the news back home."

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