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Reporting
From Baghdad
By Scott Ritter
09/08/07 "Truth
Dig" -- -- It should come as no surprise
that the Bush administration’s newest
military-man-of-substance-turned- political lapdog, General
Petraeus, maintains that the situation in Iraq is not only
salvageable, but actually improving, due to the “surge” of
U.S. combat troops into Iraq over the past year. All the
president and his collection of GI Joe hand-puppets ask for
is more time, more money and more troops.
There is no reason to believe that the compliant war
facilitators who comprise the “anti-war” Democratic majority
in Congress will do anything other than give the president
what he is asking for. No one seems to want to debate, in
any meaningful fashion, what is really going on in Iraq.
Why would they? The Democrats, like their Republican
counterparts, have invested too much political capital into
fictionalizing the problem with slogans like “support the
troops,” “we’re fighting the enemy there so we don’t have to
fight them here,” and my all-time favorite, “leaving Iraq
would hand victory to al-Qaida.”
There simply is no incentive to put fact on the table and
formulate policy that actually seeks a solution to a
properly defined problem. Like the Republicans before them,
the Democrats today seek not to govern with the best
interests of the people in mind, but rather to game the
system in order to consolidate political power. Political
sloganeering has so trumped reality that any political
backlash that is generated from the so-called “Petraeus
Report” will be limited to how the Democrats could better
sustain a conflict that kills American troops, since no
mainstream Democratic leader has expressed a true “get out
of Iraq now” policy.
Nearly 4 1/2 years after President Bush’s ill-fated (and
illegal) decision to invade and occupy Iraq, few people in a
position to influence policy formulation and implementation
in America have actually grasped the horrible truth about
what has transpired, and what is transpiring, in Mesopotamia
today. As the United States places the finishing touches on
Fortress America, the new half-billion-dollar Embassy
complex in the heart of the Green Zone in downtown Baghdad,
and more troops pour into mega-bases throughout Iraq, the
reality (and futility) of permanent occupation has yet to
sink in. What could be going through the minds of those
members of Congress who keep signing blank checks for the
president? Is there no oversight of how and why this money
is spent? How can someone fund permanent infrastructure one
day, then speak of the need to get out of Iraq the next?
The compliant mainstream media, of course, is no help. The
war in Iraq has become a major generator of advertising
revenue for these corporations, so there is no incentive to
actually report the truth, but rather manipulate the
fiction. Iraq has become a prestige destination for every
aspiring journalist or struggling anchor, determined to get
“the big story.” The most recent manifestation of this
syndrome is CBS News anchor Katie Couric, who earlier this
week traveled to Iraq because she was (in her own words),
“Curious about very basic questions regarding living
conditions, about how much fear there is in the street,
about how the soldiers really are doing.” That the situation
in Iraq has been boiled down to these three big, burning
issues (living conditions, fear in the streets, and how the
troops are really doing), and that CBS is sending their
multi-million-dollar investment to investigate, speaks
volumes about the truly degenerate state of American
journalism today.
The real big three she should be addressing are “Why do
Americans keep dying?” “Who is killing them?” and “Why?” Of
course, answering these questions would undermine the very
fantasy world Couric is being sent to cover, one where
Americans are doing good deeds in the name of peace and
justice for downtrodden Iraqis. Couric’s jaunt is fraud on a
massive scale. Ironically, she herself acknowledged this
when she admitted that her upbeat reports from Iraq were
reflective of what the U.S. military wanted her to see, and
not honest “reporting” on her part.
If Couric and her ilk won’t answer these questions, I will.
“Why do Americans keep dying?” Simple: Because we are in
Iraq. We don’t belong there. Our presence is derived from
our own violation of law, not someone else’s, and as such
any effort to sustain our presence is tainted by this same
foundation of illegitimacy. In short, Americans will keep
dying in Iraq as long as we remain in Iraq. If Katie wanted
to really get to the bottom of this story, she could venture
out on her own to any one of the villages and towns where
Americans have been killed recently. Of course, she would
probably end up dead herself, which would defeat the purpose
of trying to report the story.
“Who is killing them?” Another easy answer: Iraqis. We are
occupying their homeland. We are violating their
sovereignty. We are butchering, abusing and torturing their
citizens. Our continued presence is an affront to the
socioeconomic-political fabric that is (or was) Iraqi
society. If someone occupied my hometown in the same manner
Americans occupy Iraq, I’d be killing them any way I could.
And I would be called a hero by my own people, not a
terrorist. The Bush administration, in an effort to deflect
public attention away from this reality, has created the
fiction of a massive al-Qaida presence in Iraq, working in
parallel with a similarly large Iranian Revolutionary Guard
Command presence, which apparently is responsible for the
majority of anti-American violence and dead U.S. troops.
Rhetoric aside, however, American officials who make these
claims have been unable to back them up with hard facts and
figures. There is an al-Qaida presence in Iraq. However, the
majority of what is known as “al-Qaida in Iraq” is composed
of Iraqis, not foreigners. The whole phenomenon is a direct
result of the American occupation of Iraq, and would
dissipate the moment America left the country. Likewise, the
accusation of direct Iranian involvement in anti-American
violence is questionable. Iranian political support of Iraqi
Shiite groups who violently oppose the American occupation
of Iraq is real, but then again we know this: We invited the
Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq to join
us in toppling Saddam. Based out of Iran, functioning as a
de facto arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command,
SCIRI did as we asked. Why, then, are we shocked when SCIRI
maintains ties with the very entity that created and
nurtured it? It is Iraqi Shiites who are killing Americans,
not Iranians. And they would kill us with or without the
support of Iran.
Now we come to the third and perhaps most difficult
question: “Why?” In some odd way, Katie Couric’s jaunt to
Iraq answers that question: Because Americans truly don’t
care. Oh, we care about vague softball issues, such as
“conditions in the street,” “fear,” and of course, “how the
American troops are really doing,” especially when they are
fed to us in 30-second sound bites or three-minute
“in-depth” stories. Little feel good segments planted in
between commercials, designed not to infringe on our
intellectual curiosity for more than 30 minutes so we don’t
loose our focus watching the latest “reality” show or
made-for-television drama.
The fact is, Couric’s made-for-television news is to what is
really happening in Iraq as “CSI: Las Vegas” is to what is
really happening on the streets of Sin City. CBS knows that,
which is why they are packaging Katie in this fashion. The
shame is that for most Americans watching, they think
they’re getting the real deal. They are not, but will
continue to wallow in their ignorant indifference. Katie
will struggle to tell us that our kids keep dying in Iraq to
“improve the quality of life” and “reduce the level of fear”
on the streets of Baghdad. She solemnly informs us that “our
boys and girls” are suffering, but they know it is in
support of a just and noble cause. Katie will continue to
report the story in Iraq from the perspective of an American
political dynamic, not Iraqi reality.
She won’t go visit one of the American mercenary units in
Iraq, the private military contractors who challenge the
American military for numerical supremacy. She won’t burrow
into the never-never land of legal ambiguity that allows
these mercenaries to commit murder at will, to treat Iraq
(and Iraqis) as second-class citizens in their own nation,
and whose continued abuse of Iraq results in a deep and
undying hatred for all things American. Katie may catch a
movie in a hardened underground theater on one of the
Pentagon’s mega-bases, or go shopping in a PX inside the
“Green Zone” to get a “feel” of life for our troops, but she
won’t venture up north, into Kurdistan, where other secure
outposts of foreign occupation sit, out of sight and mind.
If Couric would visit the Iraqi Oil Ministry, she might be
shocked to witness the legal maneuvering and exploitation
carried out by foreign oil companies (including, directly or
indirectly, American oil companies).
Working with local Kurdish officials, small oil exploration
and drilling camps are sprouting up all over northern Iraq,
where they siphon off the wealth of the Iraqi people.
Shipped out of Iraq via Turkey and (surprisingly) Iran,
using long-established smuggling routes, these illegal
ventures are generating billions of dollars in income for
oil companies, and because these ventures aren’t supposed to
exist, this income goes unreported. You can’t miss these
sites. Any review of Google-Earth imagery would show these
facilities springing up like mushrooms over the last few
years. The U.S. military knows about them, and yet does
nothing. Note to Richard Kaplan (Katie Couric’s producer):
If you want to investigate this story, I’ll provide you with
the geographic coordinates. Drive up and try to talk your
way into the security perimeter. Position Katie well for the
camera shot and demand answers. Just look out for the
Canadian, South African or American mercenaries who are
charged by “Big Oil” to keep this dirty little secret
“secret.”
Instead of going to Iraq to report on why Americans keep
dying, Katie could just stay here, in America. There are any
number of corporations whose boardrooms she could visit. Or
she could smooth-talk her way into a number of country
clubs, to interview the human face of the “military
industrial complex” that President Eisenhower warned us
about a half-century ago. She might take a look at
congressional campaign financing, where the profits from
these corporations fund the campaigns of the politicians who
continue to do nothing about Iraq. Then, and just then,
would Katie come close to answering the question of “Why?”
But she won’t. Or should I say, she can’t. CBS is owned by
General Electric. GE is working hard to get favorable
trading status with any number of foreign trading partners.
The U.S. trade representative is working hard on GE’s
behalf. Hard-nosed “reporting” by the likes of Couric would
not go over well in the bowels of the White House, where
instructions to the U.S. trade representative are issued.
“I’m Katie Couric,” her broadcast could begin. “Tonight I am
declaring independence from corporate control over how I
report (i.e., read) the news.” Answering the “why” of Iraq
requires confronting the layers of corruption and corporate
domination of America on so many levels that even if Katie
wanted to, she couldn’t—at least not from her perch as
anchor of the CBS Evening News.
In a way, Iraq is a manifestation of all that ails America
today. A complete breakdown of fundamental societal checks
and balances brought on by greed and hubris. From General
Petraeus who will give it, to the mindless corporate-owned
minions who populate much of Congress who will receive it,
to the entertainment-as-news media which will report on it,
and to the American people who will consume it with no
foundation upon which to evaluate it, the “Petraeus Report”
will have little relevance to what is really going on in
Iraq. Once again, Americans will be searching for a solution
to a problem they have yet to properly define.
Just ask Katie Couric. Or better yet, watch her.
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