Nir Rosen on Iraq

Nir Rosen's consistently delivered some of the best coverage on Iraq, which we've featured in August 2007 and March 2008. Here's some other recent Rosen appearances.

Rosen spoke with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! on 4/1/08. He has harsh words for both Democrats and Republicans on Iraq. Some excerpts:

AMY GOODMAN: “The Myth of the Surge”—why is it a myth?

NIR ROSEN: Well, it’s been propagated by the right and accepted by the left in the US that the surge, which is really an escalation of troops—“surge” is just a euphemism—the escalation of troops by 30,000 soldiers, somehow brought peace to Iraq. And this is just an absolute lie. Violence has subsided somewhat in Baghdad, that’s true, but it’s not the result of the increase in American troops directly. It’s the result of a few other factors...

So you have this two—the Shia and Sunni ceasefire and the decline in people to kill, the consolidation of control that we saw with various warlords and militiamen throughout Baghdad. Each neighborhood is walled off. You have a warlord or militiaman in charge of it, which actually makes things easier as a journalist, because there’s a guy you can go to to get a security guarantee. It also makes things easier for aid organizations like the Red Cross. They can now function as they do in Somalia, because Iraq has really become Somalia: different warlords controlling different areas.

Talk of the government is just absurd. There is no government in Iraq. It’s a collection of different militias, who, as we see, even fight among themselves. And we see in the recent Shia-on-Shia fighting, it’s not the government against the Mahdi Army; it’s one Shia militia, the Badr Organization that belongs to the Iraqi Islamic Supreme Council—sorry, Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council—it has different names—and Dawa, so basically the pro-American Shia militias backed by the Americans fighting the largest Shia movement in Iraq, the Sadrist movement, for control over turf, over resources, and of course over the control of the population in the upcoming elections, which may or may not happen.

Jonathan Schwarz at A Tiny Revolution notes this remarkable exchange from Nir Rosen's recent Senate testimony (emphasis his):

BIDEN: Based on what you've said, there's really no hope, is there? We should really get the hell out of there right now, right? There's nothing to do.

ROSEN: As a journalist, I'm uncomfortable advising an imperialist power about how to be a more efficient imperialist power. I don't think we're there for the interests of the Iraqi people. I don't that's ever been a motivation. However, I have mixed emotions on that issue. Many of my Sunni friends, beginning about a year ago, many of them who are opposed to the Americans, who supported attacking American troops in Iraq, began to grow really nervous at the idea of the Americans leaving Iraq because they knew they would be massacred. It could be Rwanda the day the Americans leave. The creation of these Sunni militias, the Awakening groups, militates against that kind of a massacre of civilians occurring because now there are actually Sunni safe zones...But I do believe that if Americans were to withdraw you'd seen an increase in violence at least temporarily, until some sort of equilibrium is reached—

BIDEN: But the good news is we wouldn't be imperialist anymore in Iraq, from your perspective.

ROSEN: (smiling widely) Only elsewhere in the region.

BIDEN: Only elsewhere in the region. I'm sure glad we invited you, I tell you. [Bloviates for ninety seconds, then turns to other witnesses.] Gentlemen, to the non-imperialist side of the witness stand...

As Schwarz wryly notes, "I think we can guess Rosen won't be invited back anytime soon. After all, when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee meets, the last thing you want is for someone to start telling the truth about America's foreign relations." The same post features links to video of Rosen's testimony and a pdf of his prepared statements.

Back in March, Schwarz wrote a brilliant short post I should just quote in full:

Nir Rosen And Frederick Kagan On Surge

Here's a transcript of Nir Rosen debating Frederick Kagan about the "surge" on the Lehrer Newshour. You can watch the video here.

Oddly, the fat, pale man who doesn't speak Arabic and is paid by defense contractors thinks everything is going great, while the guy who's fluent in Arabic and has spent years on the streets of Iraq thinks it's a catastrophe. Huh. You'd assume it would be the other way around.

Here's my favorite section of Kagan's huffy bloviating:

FREDERICK KAGAN: No. I think it depends very much on who you talk to in Iraq and how you talk to them about what kind of responses that you get. And I've spoken with Sunni local citizens and various people, and you get some responses that are along these lines. And you get some responses that are along other lines.

I think what's very important to understand is that this is a very local phenomenon.

People have decided to join these movements because of local conditions on the whole and not because of some big pan-Sunni "Well, you know, now this is how we're going to get them this time" plan, because you have to keep in mind people also forget the sequence of how these guys become concerned local citizens.

The first reason why they become concerned local citizens is because they don't want to be killed, because they're in a middle of a war that they're losing. And so the first and only deal that we give them is we will agree not to kill them.

We aren't paying these guys to come over to our side; we certainly aren't arming them. What we're doing is promising not to kill them in the first instance. Now, that happens on a local basis.

And then I have to contradict Mr. Rosen. There is reconciliation happening on lower levels. When you go out into Diyala, where you have mixed tribes and where you have tribes on both sides, you do have CLCs from both groups. In areas to the south of Baghdad, you're starting to see some reconciliation initiatives reaching out to one another.

JIM LEHRER: You don't see that?

NIR ROSEN: There are exceptions, of course. And Iraqis were never sectarian. They've been pushed into this by various militias.

But when you hang out with the Sunni militiamen, with the concerned local citizens, when you hang out with the Mahdi army, when you're not with the American soldiers, but when you're with them naturally, and then you ask them who they were and why they joined these forces, they're quite clear.

They're former Islamic Army of Iraq, former 1920 Revolution Brigade, former Army of the Mujahedeen, the Iraqi Resistance. Some of them are even former al-Qaida.

And, yes, they realize they have lost the war against the Americans and they have lost the war against the Shias. "And we have to get the Americans off of our backs so we can control some territory."

So now they have territory inside Baghdad and elsewhere and they can use this as a foothold. And they are attempting to become a political movement. I accompanied some of these guys from Dura (ph), guys who controlled 150, 300 men who had been in the resistance.

They went to Ramadi to pay homage to Abu Risha, one of the main leaders of the awakening, and to try to join his political movement. And why? "So that we can fight the Iranians. So we can fight the Shias."

As Nir Rosen details in "The Myth of the Surge" (covered in our March post), and other news organizations have reported as well, we are arming these guys, or have done so inadvertently, and we're certainly paying them, in part not to kill Americans. Basically, we're bribing our way to (highly) relative peace, and even that isn't working very well anymore. My favorite bit is when Kagan refers to the Awakening militias as "concerned local citizens." Bush used the same language in his speech for the fifth anniversary of the invasion. It's hilariously Orwellian, considering these "concerned local citizens" are pretty heavily armed, and some of them were killing American troops as recently as last year.

Kagan's full of such bullshit, though. Later in March, as Glenn Greenwald documented, Kagan met with a number of other unrepentant war hawks at AEI and opened by declaring:

The first thing I want to say is that: The Civil War in Iraq is over. And until the American domestic political debate catches up with that fact, we are going to have a very hard time discussing Iraq on the basis of reality.

Greenwald writes that "One has to watch the video to fully appreciate how pompously he sits there on his war throne issuing his decree about "reality" in Iraq." As Greenwald notes, less than 24 hours later, a new civil war had started to erupt in Basra.

At some point, it'd be nice if the unrepentant hawks who have been consistently, disastrously wrong were shown the door, and some genuinely smart and wise people were accorded respect, and oh, much more air time, since they rarely seem to get any even now in the corporate media. But that's no way to run an empire, now is it?

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)

Carnival of the Liberals Call for Submissions

Carnival of the Liberals #62 is due out later this week, hosted by A Revolution of One. The theme is "new media," but apparently submissions are still needed, with a deadline of Wednesday, 4/9. If you can, write a brief post to help out. As A Revolution of One explains:

I'd like to ask for submissions that either include, or are on the topic of new media, with special emphasis on video. I'll leave it as broad as possible, but topics could include anything from how new media has affected this years presidential campaign, or the war in Iraq, to citizen journalism around the world. As long as it somehow involves new media in some way.

The blogcarnival.com form is the best way to submit.

Meanwhile, I'm hosting carnival #63 at Vagabond Scholar on April 23rd. I'm happy to read all submissions, but I'd like to concentrate on "Human Rights" posts, which can cover torture, due process, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib or any of a number of related subjects. Given the recent release of the 2003 Yoo torture memo, Philippe Sands' new book Torture Team, the upcoming Guantanamo trials, the stances of our presidential candidates, and situations around the world, there's plenty of angles to take on material that unfortunately needs far more attention than it's receiving.

Consider submissions open. I'm asking for a Monday, 4/21 submission deadline, but earlier is better and much appreciated. Again, I'm happy to read all submissions, but posts related in some way to human rights are preferred. Thanks!

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)

Iraq Watch 4/7/98

A few things really haven’t changed much in terms of Iraq and Iraq coverage over the last few years. The Bush administration, at best, rarely offers accurate accounts capturing the complexity of the situation, and at worst, distorts what’s happening or outright lies. Sadly, many pundits, television talking heads and the rest of the press are content to repeat the Bush line. Thus, we have Charlie Gibson bullying the Democratic presidential candidates in a nationally televised debate a while back to acknowledge that the “surge” is working, and you can hear the same delusional blather far too often. Here are some pieces to counteract that.

From Dan Froomkin, ”Another Bleak Milestone” (3/24/08) gives an overview of the realities in Iraq, while ”Spinning the Bloodshed in Basra” (3/27/08) covers more recent developments.

Glenn Greenwald explores ”The ongoing exclusion of war opponents from the Iraq debate,” and provides a valuable video segment from Charlie Rose.

Via A Tiny Revolution come three important pieces. ”Ensuring Permanence” (3/26/08) by Spencer Ackerman, explores the Bush administration’s maneuvers to sabotage the next administration and ensure a long-term occupation of Iraq. ”Five Things You Need to Know to Understand the Latest Violence in Iraq” (3/27/08) by Joshua Holland and Raed Jarrar gives valuable insight into the conflict between Mailki and the more popular Sadr: “Maliki's goal, shared by the like-minded allies among the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities that dominate his administration, and with at least tacit U.S. approval, is to kill off the opposition and then hold a vote.” Finally, ”Taking Stock of the War on Terror: A Defeat Only American Power Could Have Brought About” by Mark Danner examines how much the Bush administration’s policies have hurt America and helped Al Qaeda.

Petraeus and Crocker will be speaking to Congress soon enough, and the Bush administration is making ridiculous positive claims about a new Iraq NIE they unsurprisingly refuse to declassify. It’s not hard to run into simplistic, inaccurate or downright propagandistic accounts of Iraq in the media. It’s going to be a problem for the rest of the year, it’ll be a problem next year, it’ll be a problem until we’re completely out, and it’ll be a problem for years afterwards as yet again, bloodthirsty conservative hacks will screech about how their magnificent work, this time in Iraq, was undermined by treacherous liberals and the press. The short game is important, but the long game is even more so. Shoving accurate accounts in the bastards’ faces every time they serve up bullshit can’t happen enough.

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)

Eclectic Jukebox 4/3/08

Alison Krauss — "You Will Be My Ain True Love"

Written by Sting for the film Cold Mountain, directed by Anthony Minghella, who died recently, and far too soon. You can hear Alison's other performance for the film, "The Scarlet Tide" (written by Elvis Costello), in a fan video here. Both songs were up Best Original Song Oscars.

Fool's Day 2008

Happy Fool's Day! It's a good day to read or watch a comedy, or better still, a satire. We're always in need of Shakespearean fools who speak truth to power, especially given the idiots and knaves we have in high places. At the very least, please take a moment today to mock our preznit. Really, it's your duty as an American.

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)

New Digs, New Looks, New Blogs

The tireless crew at the Newshoggers have a new site...



A while back, Gin and Tacos got a new look… (although it really should be Vodka e Khachapury with that Soviet design!)



Finally, it's hard to pass up on a blog titled The G Spot, which focuses on "Politics, Economics, Feminism, Labor, Culture" (and salutes Voltaire as well). The added benefit of titling one's blog "The G Spot"? Conservatives will have a hard time finding it.

But stop by and say hi!

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)

Signs You're Spending Too Much Time Online

(Click for a larger view.)

From 3-27-08. It this reminds you of yourself, it might be time to follow Neil Postman's advice and take a break from technology for a day (the delirium tremens go away after a while).

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)

A Philosopher Fool and his Tooth are Soon Parted

LEONATO
…Brother, men
Can counsel and speak comfort to that grief
Which they themselves not feel; but, tasting it,
Their counsel turns to passion, which before
Would give preceptial medicine to rage,
Fetter strong madness in a silken thread,
Charm ache with air and agony with words:
No, no; 'tis all men's office to speak patience
To those that wring under the load of sorrow,
But no man's virtue nor sufficiency
To be so moral when he shall endure
The like himself. Therefore give me no counsel:
My griefs cry louder than advertisement.

ANTONIO
Therein do men from children nothing differ.

LEONATO
I pray thee, peace. I will be flesh and blood;
For there was never yet philosopher
That could endure the toothache patiently,
However they have writ the style of gods
And made a push at chance and sufferance.

Much Ado About Nothing, 5.1, 21-39

I've always loved that toothache line, and the preceding speech is so great it couldn't resist quoting at least a little. (And I've played or read both the characters above, actually!)

I haven't been blogging much recently, due to some dental issues and a dying computer. That's my excuse this time, anyway. The wisdom teeth are now out and a new computer is on the way, both of which are good, but insurance companies always find creative ways to charge ya for necessary procedures, so my bank account is far from happy.

Still, dental pain is just nastier than several other types, so I'm happy to move from fairly excruciating to soreness and dull aches with some happy pills (actually, I haven't needed many). But damn, you'd think I was in a nursing home for all my health whining the past month. I feel bad for those with no insurance, and I know that plenty of people have it far worse off than I. Gotta keep it in perspective.

Well, at least I provided some Shakespeare, and now continuing the dentistry theme, we'll go to film, specifically Marathon Man (1976). It's an odd, uneven film, but features a few memorable scenes, and a script by William Goldman, based on his own novel.

The late Roy Scheider is good as always, but the stars are Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier, who had very different approaches to acting. There's a famous story most actors will have heard that Hoffman went "method," and stayed up all night on a bender to get into character, and came in looking bedraggled. When Oliver saw him and asked him what happened, Hoffman explained. Olivier responded, "My dear boy, you really should try acting," or something to that effect. According to IMDB, Hoffman has since denied this story, although he says he was indeed up late many nights because he was going through a divorce from his first wife and was depressed. As to the credibility of Hoffman versus Goldman, I've heard enough tales about both (and have heard Goldman speak three or four times), I have to trust Goldman much more, even if he might get details wrong here and there. Goldman sometimes does the cranky old man shtick, but entertainingly so, since he's not interested in sucking up to anybody. He's refreshingly candid, and frequently tells tales on himself.

In any case, on to the clips! In this first one, the sound goes out at one point, alas. But for sheer evil, it's hard to beat a Nazi dentist! Man! If you have severe dental anxiety, you won't want to watch these:



What makes this is a great scene for study for me is Olivier's vocal performance. He says "Is it safe?" several times, but each time he means something slightly different. My first director/acting teacher described this as saying a line with "intention," a tool for attacking the subtext. Using "neutral scripts" is also a neat acting exercise for highlighting this approach: playing the lines, but in specific circumstances, with specific dynamics (which may shift). There are many effective methods of acting, and I've found most good actors develop a grab-bag of techniques they find work for them. Still, I've always really appreciated good voice work, and most British training spends a great deal of time on developing one's voice and reading the text carefully. (Peter O'Toole was just on Charlie Rose, and was talking about this; O'Toole goes off to his study and memorizes the whole script, feeling the words aloud for a few weeks, as the first step of his process.)

The IMDB trivia page claims the filmmakers trimmed down the dentistry scenes because they were just too much for the test audiences. On that note, here's a slightly later scene:



Like Stephen King (and Goldman adapted Misery, actually), Goldman often puts things that scare him into his scripts. Hence the Nazi dentist. Goldman's told the tale that once he had some pain and reluctantly had to go the dentist. This was after Marathon Man had come out. The dentist asked Goldman if he wrote "that movie." Goldman had to admit he did. The dentist said he didn't want to treat Goldman, because then everyone would assume Olivier's character Christian Szell was based on him!

In any case, while smoke from a drill or seeing a fairly fit man yank with all his might as he struggles to pull a tooth from your mouth are both rather unsettling, dentistry is much less fearsome than it used to be. Well, other than the bill.

Eclectic Jukebox 3/27/08

Steve Martin — "Dentist!"

From Little Shop of Horrors. Recapping my life of the past two weeks...

Lovable Saint McCain

Via Howard Kurtz, actually, here's one of the best pieces I've read recently on McCain. It's from Kevin Drum on 3/24, and I'll quote it in its entirety:

McCAIN'S CRED.... Via Steve Benen, MSNBC analyst Chuck Todd tells us why John McCain can get away with routine demonstrations of abject ignorance, like his recent proclamation that Iran is supporting al-Qaeda in Iraq:

Even if he gets dinged on the experience stuff, "Oh, he says he's Mr. Experience. Doesn't he know the difference between this stuff?" He's got enough of that in the bank, at least with the media, that he can get away with it. I mean, the irony to this is had either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama misspoke like that, it'd have been on a running loop, and it would become a, a big problem for a couple of days for them.

Italics mine. Let's recap. Foreign policy cred lets him get away with wild howlers on foreign policy. Fiscal integrity cred lets him get away with outlandishly irresponsible economic plans. Anti-lobbyist cred lets him get away with pandering to lobbyists. Campaign finance reform cred lets him get away with gaming the campaign finance system. Straight talking cred lets him get away with brutally slandering Mitt Romney in the closing days of the Republican primary. Maverick uprightness cred allows him to get away with begging for endorsements from extremist religious leaders like John Hagee. "Man of conviction" cred allows him to get away with transparent flip-flopping so egregious it would make any other politician a laughingstock. Anti-torture cred allows him to get away with supporting torture as long as only the CIA does it.

Remind me again: where does all this cred come from? And what window do Democrats go to to get the same treatment the press gives McCain?

That's a great summing up. As to how we wound up in this mess, let's turn to Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler on 3/24:

WE DON’T TRY HARDER: In this morning’s New York Times, John Harwood authors a fairly standard piece about John McCain’s current advantages. But at one point, Harwood offers an unintentional, stinging indictment of liberal and Dem Party leadership:

HARWOOD (3/24/08): Democratic operatives have prepared a sustained attack against what they call myths underlying Mr. McCain's reputation for straight talk. ''It's going to take a while to tear that down,'' said Jim Jordan, a consultant who will lead a Democratic Party advertising campaign to aid its nominee. Lamenting the Clinton-Obama fight, Mr. Jordan added, “That's why it would be nice to get this over with as soon as possible.”

That highlighted statement is revealing—and sad. Speaking of McCain’s undeserved “reputation for straight talk,” Jordan makes this pitiful statement: ''It's going to take a while to tear that down.''

If only people of Jim Jordan’s ilk had thought of that ten years ago!

As everyone on earth must know by now, McCain has been relentlessly pimped—as an authentic straight-shooting straight-talker—for at least the past dozen years. This pimping hasn’t been done by the RNC; it’s been done by the mainstream press corps. No one has ever really disputed the claim that the mainstream press corps pimps McCain hard. Indeed: All the way back in May 1998, Brother Chas Pierce wrote a tongue-in-piece profile for Esquire, entitled “John McCain Walks on Water.” Once again, this was May 1998—a year before the start of McCain’s first White House run. But even then, Brother Pierce was rolling his eyes at the way the big pundit corps pandered:

PIERCE (5/98): By any standard, McCain has become a star in that increasingly elastic firmament in which politics is emulsified with modern celebrity. His national profile never has been higher. His influence—particularly among the nation's chattering classes—at times seems comically powerful. He sends Don Imus into stammering flummery, and he turns Tim Russert into a puddle on the floor. During the 1996 campaign, when McCain was Bob Dole's most effective surrogate, Michael Lewis of The New Republic wrote about McCain more rapturously than he'd once written about his second wife's derriere.

“The nation's opinion makers have come to regard him as more than simply a reliable source of informed commentary,” Pierce wrote. “Instead, they look to him as a source of moral witness.” Again, Pierce wrote this in the spring of 1998, long before the full-blown fawning which defined press coverage of McCain’s first White House run. The press corps has always fawned to McCain. And everyone always has known this.

Everyone has always known this—except, of course, for your Dem Party leadership. Only now, in the spring of 2008, do these slumbering city mice announce that “it's going to take a while” to tear down McCain’s reputation. Voters have heard that McCain is a saint for ten years. Today, Jordan gears for the fight!

But this has been the shape of Dem Party leadership over the course of the past two decades. This also reflects the type of “leadership” which has come from liberal and progressive “intellectual elites.” To all appearances, these elites just don’t really care—they don’t really care who wins our elections. They’ve mal-adapted that old Avis slogan. We’re number two—and we don’t try harder.

The RNC (and the rest of the conservative world) would never have tolerated the sanctification of some Big Major Democrat of McCain’s type. But liberals and Dems have stared into space as McCain has been endlessly vested with sainthood. By any normal interpretive standard, our liberal/Dem elites just don’t seem to care. Judged in any normal way, they don’t care who wins our elections.

We’ll be exploring these themes all week. We’ve been number two—and we haven’t tried harder! Why is that? we’ll ask all week. Why is Jordan gearing up for a fight about McCain’s public profile long after the fight has been lost?

Somerby's the best source I've found for documenting the fraud of the original "Straight Talk Express" over which so many journalists still gush. Basically, back in 2000, when McCain was trumpeting that everything would be "on the record," he'd occasionally ask for something to be taken off the record, or the press, liking McCain, would cover for him even when his remarks was newsworthy. I'm hoping Somerby will recap some of his greatest hits (if not, I'll dig up my favorite). Regardless, this is the biggest challenge we face in this election season, and it'll be the same whether it's Clinton or Obama as the nominee. The press loves McCain, and they will cover for him to ridiculous lengths. The SNL sketches depicting the press fawning over Obama were comedic exaggeration, but that fawning's highly relative. Obama fandom among the press is nothing compared to their worship of McCain. Howard Kurtz, who gushes over McCain quite a bit, has repeatedly insisted that the press was shamed by the SNL sketches and 'toughened up' on Obama as a result (over shallow versus substantial issues, of course, as noted by John Amato, Glenn Greenwald and Digby). We need to create the same shame over McCain. Kurtz belatedly recognized the seriousness of McCain's "gaffes," although he could have found out the same if he merely read major liberal blogs or had simply bothered to take seriously the Americablog post he initially dismissed in disgraceful fashion (ignoring Obama's response, among many other things). Kurtz is the norm in this respect.

Sadly, when it comes to our major pundits, and far too many journalists, there's plenty they should feel ashamed of, but let's start with this. As I've written before, the press always tries to play kingmaker, they don't mind lying to do so, and their judgment is consistently disastrous. Let's consider that they picked Bush not once, but twice, and despite the devastation Bush has left on a staggering number of fronts, some of them are still reflexively disparaging even moderate liberalism, denouncing the most tepid of oversight, and bucking for a third Bush term in McCain. We can't really afford our three trillion dollar war or nine trillion dollar national debt either, but we definitely can't afford any more of the radical, reckless Bush/Cheney regime. Let's accurately report matters, challenge McCain on everything, and press the media on why they aren't doing the same.

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)