Remember Iraq? The War Is Still Being Misreported

The News Dissector Has Been Covering The Coverage For Five Years

New York, April 7: April is mosquito season in the swamps south of Baghdad. It is said, ‘they’re thicker than carpets.’ Could the return of those locust-like ‘carpets’ be driving local politicians to distraction? Did Iraqi President Maliki avoid their bite by getting out of town while driving his poorly trained and even more poorly managed forces on to Basra to wipe out Mr. Sadr’s uncontrollable militia? (So far, it is his forces that are biting the dust, and deserting in droves, while President Bush remarks on the “return to normalcy.”)

To hear Daniel Schorr tell it on NPR on Saturday morning — the outlet my colleague Norman Solomon now calls National Pentagon Radio — Maliki acted “on his own” to start the current round of fighting. How did he know that? No source was given, of course, while others more in the know pointed out that he actually acted just after Dick Cheney’s visit to lobby (i.e. order) him to impose the oil privatization law that the Busheviks and our oil companies want. Earlier in the week, there was a new study report saying Iraq has bigger oil reserves then was hitherto believed. (I can’t believe the CIA didn’t know that, can you?)

Sadr was targeted just after he called for non-violent resistance against Maliki’s US controlled and occupation supporting regime. There had been protests in the streets of several Iraqi cities with large crowds comparing Maliki to Saddam, shouting “No to Dictatorship.” Of course, our media painted all of this as an intra-Shiite rivalry, blaming religious differences not diverging ideologies and politics. Sadr is now staging a tactical retreat.

Despite his calling for a cease fire, US troops went after Sadr themselves Sunday by invading Baghdad’s heavily populated Sadr City in a raid that killed and wounded many, a clear intervention by the US into an internal political conflict. Three American soldiers were killed, 31 wounded. Sadr is planning a million person march on the 5th anniversary of the staged collapse of the Saddam statue in Baghdad. That takes place Wednesday in Najav. Sadr seems much more popular than the hapless Maliki.

All of this macho posturing by the US is designed to create new “facts on the ground” showing “progress” that General Petraeus can brag about when he testifies before Congress. (There are reports in the British press that the General denounced Iran and set the stage for a possible escalation of the war there.)

This is all part of a perception management/propaganda exercise for media consumption geared to influence domestic public opinion. There’s supposedly even a new Intelligence document claiming that the security situation is improving, although the White House refuses to release it to Congress.

Iran’s Press TV reported last week that whatever so-called “progress” there is in Iraq, the reduced levels of violence that the “Surge” claims credit for was actually the result of a ceasefire that Sadr’s forces unilaterally proclaimed last June, in part at Iran’s urging. Analysts have credited Iran - that centerpiece of the ballyhooed “axis of evil” - with encouraging a turn away from violence in hopes, perhaps, that it would speed an American withdrawal - i.e. provide a pretext for American politicians to declare victory and go home.

Instead, in line with so many mishaps, the gang that can’t shoot strait provoked more violence and instability. In response, the White House canceled troop withdrawals and seems to be digging in for an ever-longer haul. Even Blackwater’s mercenaries have been re-upped with more wild-west-like shoot-em-ups guaranteed.

And where is the press? AWOL — absent without leave — as usual, talking about everything else but Iraq - from Jay Z marrying Beyonce to the man who claims he’s pregnant to the Clinton’s million dollar tax returns. Even a veteran journalist like Dan Schorr, once one of the best, can’t seem to pay close enough attention to the details and isn’t given the air time to report on them even if he was. He seems to be relying on information from the very press that has done such an embarrassing job “reporting” the war.

Five years ago, this month, I was “embedded” in my living room watching TV News, using my remote control, that powerful tool of media analysis, following what was then all the cheerleading all the time.

On April 7, 2003, I reported on those “decapitation” strikes aimed at Saddam that ended up killing civilians. Another item: “In Baghdad, US Marines staged one of their raids into the center of town because it was there, and so were they. Its point: to demonstrate the weakness of the town’s defenses, to prod and to probe, and to score more psychological warfare points by strutting through one of the palaces and hanging out on the lawn. Sadly eight died in this demonstration. So a soldier called Flip told his buddy Greg of Fox News.”

At that point, only 75 US soldiers had died. Secure behind its blinders, the White House thought they were on a “cakewalk.” No one at the Pentagon was prepared for the resistance (dubbed the “insurgency”) that followed and continues.

On that same day, I found this small report, but not on any of the US networks I monitored, with an obsessive sadness. It was from the Canadian press:

“Red Cross doctors who visited southern Iraq this week saw ‘incredible’ levels of civilian casualties including a truckload of dismembered women and children, a spokesman said

‘There has been an incredible number of casualties with very, very serious wounds in the region of Hilla,’ Huguenin said in an interview by satellite telephone. ‘We saw that a truck was delivering dozens of totally dismembered dead bodies of women and children. It was an awful sight. It was really very difficult to believe this was happening.”

Americans were never told what was really happening, and still aren’t. Most don’t know about credible reports putting civil casualties at over a million. Two days later, Al Jazeera’s correspondent on the roof of a widely known press building was killed by a US warplane. Two foreign journalists were later shelled at the Palestine Hotel, another media location well known to the invading forces. These crimes have never been punished.

I later incorporated that incident into WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception), a film I made to show what was not being shown and why. Journalists were dying to tell a story that media outlets here are no longer telling. Many still die while the dominant media narrative here still lies.

Editor & Publisher editor Greg Mitchell skewered newspaper coverage of the war over these 5 years. His new book, “So Wrong For So Long” collects his critical columns. He told me he was surprised that media coverage was not even an issue for major media outlets when the war’s anniversary was marked with a score of ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ retrospectives.

I wasn’t surprised.

The reporting on the war in corporate media outlets has been shamefully consistent. The fourth estate has long ago become, in War Commander Tommy Franks words, “The Fourth Front.”

What does surprise me — to this day — is that anti-war groups never targeted the media in any systematic way. They whined about errors and ommisions but never really actively protested the industry’s complicity. They focused only on politicians, not corporations, including media companies that profited from this three trillion dollar fiasco. They never understood as Black Star News reports: “The reality is that corporate American media is just as responsible for the Iraq war as the Bush White House.”

The media withdrew from Iraq well before the troops. Even mainstream journalists and war reporters saw this coming, even if many activists did not. My least favorite NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who continually rationalized the war in the NY Times, later noted:

“The buildup to this war was so exhausting, the coverage of the dash to Baghdad so telegenic, and the climax of the toppling of Saddam’s statue so dramatic, that everyone who went through it seems to prefer that the story just end there. The U.S. networks changed the subject after the fall of Baghdad as fast as you can say ‘Laci Peterson,’ and President Bush did the same as fast as you can say ‘tax cuts.’”

What has changed?

April Fools is no longer just a day. They are still at work.

– MediaChannel’s News Dissector Danny Schechter wrote two books about Iraq news coverage: Embedded and When News Lies. He also directed the film WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception). Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org

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If Maliki was to be interrogated, he would sing “Cheney made me do it”. There is no way Maliki would have personally let the attack on Sadr’s malicia without being forced. You see how fast he left with his tail dragging behind him. With the US Presidential election closing in Cheney wanted violence to start up again to take the heat of the Republicans. When are we going to dissavowal everything Bush/Cheney and everyone associated with this administration is saying is false? The American people are being led down the path of no return. The Bush/Cheny adm.is the cause of all the violence in the WORLD since 911.
May GOD truly BLESS us.

Wow, what a sad state of affairs we have to digest these days…too bad it has been like this in the United States for most of our history. It is not enough to just disavow ourselves from the current administration and believe, without conviction, that in doing so something more positive will eventually come our way. No matter who wins this year’s presidential election, out of the three offerings provided us, the only thing to change will be the name of corporate interests’ spokeperson (POTUS). It is our duty to become independently educated about the wars, and other issues, and engage in intellegent discourse that allows us to truly dismember multi-cultural division and finally build a consensus of what the electorate wants as opposed to what we are told we want. Thank you Media Channel for being a part of the solution.

It’s not good when the journalists turn into Judas’s and betray the nation.
Whos arses are they kissing?

Danny you are such a tool, quit being a douche.