“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” — Thomas Jefferson
I just returned home from a trip to Fallujah, where I was the only reporter embedded with the United States military. There was, however, an unembedded reporter in the city at the same time. Normally it would be useful to compare what I saw and heard while traveling and working with the Marines with what a colleague saw and heard while working solo. Unfortunately, the other Fallujah reporter was Ali al-Fadhily from Inter Press Services.
Mr. al-Fadhily is unhappy with the way things are going in the city right now. It means little to him that the only shots fired by the Marines anymore are practice rounds on the range, and that there hasn’t been a single fire fight or combat casualty for months. That’s fair enough, as far as it goes, and perhaps to be expected from a reporter who isn’t embedded with the military and who focuses his attention on Iraqi civilians. The trouble is that Mr. Al-Fadhily’s hysterical exaggerations, refusal to provide crucial context, and outright fabrications amount to a serious case of journalistic malpractice.
I would advise Michael Totten to embed himself with the 200,000 Iraqi civilians for ninety days, living exactly as they do to see what kind of a perspective he would gain. It would probably mirror that of the "other" reporter.
Mark,
Are you saying that if I "embed" with Iraqi civilians that I'll start saying that 70 percent of Fallujah was destroyed when it wasn't?
I spent more than 2 months umembedded in the north and never wrote such lies.
Living as an Iraqi would suck. It would be obvious to you that I am well aware of this fact if you bothered to carefully read what I wrote. Obviously you did not.
I also spent 8 months in Beirut, six of them in a crappy apartment. Somehow I managed to maintain my perspective and was able to restrain myself from running off and joining Hezbollah.
Sorry to upset you Michael. It was not my intention.
To be sure, you've been to Iraq and you've seen it from your point of view. However, I wouldn't completely discount the "other" reporter's perspective. Did you engage him socially? Compare notes? Have you personally challenged his viewpoint? If so, what did he have to say about your viewpoints?
While you were in Beirut, if the only place you could receive much needed social services was Hezbollah, you would probably be grateful.
And what exactly is your perspective to maintain? Does it include objectivity and sensitivity? I would hope it does, sir.
Mark,
My point is that my article is factually accurate. His isn't. "Perspective" (or opinion or judgement) doesn't have a anything to do with it. Either 70 percent of Fallujah is destroyed or it isn't. (It isn't.) Fallujah is either under siege or it isn't. (It isn't.)
No, I have never met Ali al-Fadhily.
"While you were in Beirut, if the only place you could receive much needed social services was Hezbollah, you would probably be grateful."
Probably.
"And what exactly is your perspective to maintain? Does it include objectivity and sensitivity?"
Yes.
And the other reporter writes for Asia Times whose front page boasts a link to the collected works of Pepe Escobar. The same Pepe Escobar who writes in "Che Lives",
The above statement, if true, is the one time the CIA got something right. Seems to me that Asia Times and their writers are just more US haters on the hoof. Useless nits.
I will believe Michael Totten more often that I will some guy writing for AT or some dude named al-Fadhily who obviously has some kind of axe to grind.
From their own webpage:
So, am I thick here? Who travels in the region? Which one of them? al-Fadhily? It does not read that way. Michael does travel extensively in the region. I will give Michael more credence than these nitwits.
You have to almost feel sorry for al-Fadhily. His heroes the "insurgents" have lost, and are no longer able to murder the people he claims to pity.
Are you saying that if I "embed" with Iraqi civilians that I'll start saying that 70 percent of Fallujah was destroyed when it wasn't?
I strongly doubt that 70% of Fallujah was destroyed.
However, your expertise to say how much of Fallujah was destroyed is very small. You walked a decidely nonrandom path through a small minority of Fallujah streets. You have looked at a Google map. Have you had training in estimating damage to buildings based on Google maps? There's strong reason to believe that 70% is high. There's no particular reason to believe your estimate either.
Fallujah is either under siege or it isn't. (It isn't.)
Fallujah residents have apparently given up attacking their "defenders". Some of the Marines' duties have been given to the shia army. Deciding whether to call the current occupation a "siege" looks to me like an exercise in spin -- it could be argued either way.
I'd figure that by technical definitions it shouldn't be called "siege" since after all the enemy besiegers go wherever they want inside the walls. "Military occupation" looks more appropriate to me. But the argument you're having is a spin argument. You don't want him to call it a siege because you want to spin it as us protecting the Fallujah citizens from bad guys, like we don't point our guns at them every day just in case they turn uncooperative.
Your spin, his spin, I kind of prefer your spin. But it's still mostly spin.
So, JT, it's all spin ... and we just pick what we like best? "Tastes great" or "Less Filling"?? There's no 'better' or 'worse' here?
A.L.
AL, What do you use to chose among spins, if not your personal preference?
It would be nice to have facts to go by, but when it's mostly spin you can try to scrape a few facts out of the mess -- but how do you use them? Infer a bigger picture from a few facts and then try to spin from that?
It would be nice to have statistics collected by unbiased third parties. But the last I heard, third parties weren't allowed into Fallujah at all.
JThomas, I answered your charges over at Commentary, but you have an additional one here that is false.
Nothing has been turned over to the "Shia Army" in Fallujah. There is not one Iraqi soldier in the entire city.
There were 3,000 Marines, but there are now only 250. They are there to train the Iraqi Police, and they do joint patrols.
And by the way, I am trying my absolute best to present Fallujah as it is. I am a flawed human being, but I am not deliberately "spinning" a damned thing here.
Michael, thank you for presenting the Fallujah situation to the best of your ability.
Are you saying that some of the Marines' duties were turned over to sunni police, not police sent in by the shia national government? That would be a good thing from my point of view.
"The last battalion of Iraqi soldiers with 2nd Brigade, 1st Iraqi Army Division, withdrew from the Anbar Province city of Fallujah, Sept. 1, leaving the city’s security and stability in the hands of the local police and government."
source
"U.S. Trains Ex-Sunni Militias as Iraqi Police Morning Edition, June 21, 2007 · In Iraq's Anbar province, west of Baghdad, thousands of men have signed up to become police. But there aren't enough academies to train them. So instead, the national government has sanctioned the creation of extra neighborhood security teams made up largely by former Sunni tribal militias who now support U.S. forces.
On an open dirt field just a few miles outside the U.S. base in Fallujah, about 50 Iraqi men dressed in dusty green uniforms march in formation while their Iraqi drill leader shouts instructions.
They're part of the new provincial security force in Anbar province, trained by U.S. forces."
source
Michael goes over there and puts himself on the line. JT stays home and perfects the art of the sneer. Telling, as the lefties say.
JThomas: Are you saying that some of the Marines' duties were turned over to sunni police, not police sent in by the shia national government?
Almost all the Marines' duties have been turned over to local Sunni police officers from Fallujah.
More than 90 percent of the Marines have cleared out of Fallujah entirely.
From NPR, cited by Mark Buehner: They're part of the new provincial security force in Anbar province
There is nothing "new" about the provincial security force. It is very old. And it is not a militia. It is a police force sanctioned and paid by the government in Baghdad.
It would be nice to have statistics collected by unbiased third parties. But the last I heard, third parties weren't allowed into Fallujah at all.
One completely unbiased party was allowed into Fallujah. Google maps. You ask "Have you had training in estimating damage to buildings based on Google maps?"
What expertise does one need to use Google maps?? Is there a specific PhD. out there for looking at standing buildings surrounded by cars? Or maybe for moving the little zoom arrow up and down?
Here is an expert analyis of the satellite image I posted.
It would exceedingly unlikely that Laos veterans would have been involved in the Bolivia search for Che. Veterans of the conflict in the Congo, possibly. It maybe he's confusing fmr Navy Seal's Chuch Pfarrer's Che novel with reality. Pepe Escobar, whose byline included the nine nuclear devices that AQ supposedly had.
[i]It would exceedingly unlikely that Laos veterans would have been involved in the Bolivia search for Che. Veterans of the conflict in the Congo, possibly.[/i]
Perhaps it's not as unlikely as all that. I believe Ted Shackley was station chief in Laos at the time. Previous to that assignment he'd been station chief in Miami, dealing almost exclusively with Cuban affairs. Several of his peers and subordinates followed him from Miami to SE Asia. So I can see where some Laos personnel might be used to preserve compartmentation.
What expertise does one need to use Google maps??
Mary, it takes no expertise whatsoever to misinterpret Google maps.
JT, I'm not sure if you're flat-out lying here or just being disingenuous. In #19here, Michael has alreadylinked to a comment on the Commentary thread - where someone with explicit BDA experience read the Google maps, and agreed with Michael.
Did you miss that, or were you just hoping we had?
A.L.
Evidently the sneer is not perfected yet.
Follow the link below to satellite images of Grozny pre and post bombing. Thats what a destroyed city looks like.
Link
Are we still trying to quantify destruction? Perhaps the "other" reporter was including elements of the city in addition to physical structures, that are now missing. You think?
A lot of preoccupation with another report other than your own, Mr. Totten. I'd be more interested in your own perspective on how it feels to live as a citizen of Fallujah, such as how long you have to wait in line to get in or around the city, where you get water, how food is distributed, difficulties in getting medical attention, the disappearance or death of families and friends, daily duration of electrical power, quality of education, quality of life, etc.
Mark Buehner, I was interested to look at the Grozny pictures. They were much higher resolution than the Google photo that Mike linked to, with no "before" comparison.
It was interesting that many of the places that looked worst were under tree cover in the Grozny before picture. With the trees gone the place looked much more -- barren. Some of the large buildings had obvious holes in them that wouldn't show up at lower resolution. And of course the longer shadows in the before version hid some things. It was interesting but not particularly comparable to the public Fallujah shot.
So Mary says that anybody can look at a Google map and know what it means. You all agree? You figure I can look at a Google map and understand just as much about how much damage there is, as a trained expert? I expect you all agree with me that it isn't necessarily that easy.
Perhaps the "other" reporter was including elements of the city in addition to physical structures, that are now missing.
I expect he was conflating two different numbers. US official estimates are that more than half of the homes were damaged and 25
Perhaps the "other" reporter was including elements of the city in addition to physical structures, that are now missing.
I expect he was conflating two different numbers. US official estimates have it that more than half of the homes were damaged and 25% were destroyed or unlivable. Perhaps he went from "homes" to "buildings". And an early official iraqi government estimate claimed that 70% of buildings were destroyed, and he might believe that.
JThomas, you can zoom the Google image of Fallujah in much more closely than the Grozny images by clicking the + sign.
JThomas: I expect he was conflating two different numbers.
I expect he was propagandizing. I suppose you can innocently make a conflation of numbers error if you aren't in Fallujah. But as someone above pointed out, Fallujah ain't Grozny, and that's obvious if you're standing in it.
al-Fadhily is basically saying Fallujah is Grozny.
Yes, but Ted Shackley was a little busy trying to interdict Viet Minh
supply lines; out of Vientiane and
Long Tieng to be worried about Che.
He had surfaced most prominently in
the Congo first; and that was where
the search goup had started. As it
was the primary personnel who were
involved in the operation were Felix Rodriguez and Gustavo
Villoldo; two Cuban Americans only the former would later be assigned to Region 111, RVN. Villoldo, we recently find out, kept a souvenir of that experience; which he later
sold on E-bay. Both Rodriguez and Villoldo would later be slandered by the Kerry committee's'drive by' assault coordinated with the MoveOn.org of the time; the Christic Institute. If you can mess up such a basically knowable fact; what confidence do we have in the rest of the report.
The fact is that historical trends are re-occurring and just the Dulaimi sub tribes of Fallujah eventually settled into a modus vivendi with the Brits specially after the Ilkwan incursion of the
late 20s. The same is true today.
Gen. Petraeus and co; are what John Glubb were three generations ago
As an aside, the utter inanity and shortsightedness of the original invasion, in particular and the Neo-Con foreign policy "vision" for the region becomes more and more apparent now that Turkey has made its incursions and Russia has sent nuclear fuel to Iran.
The end product of this "policy" is that we are alienating ourselves from our traditional ME allies, strengthening our enemies, wasting lives and treasure for what? A decades long occupation?
I thought it impossible that there could be a worse administration than Carter's nor a worse president than Jimmy, but I guess I was wrong.
The crowning blunder has to be letting Russia back into the ME as a player. Putin has taken this administration and had it for lunch. We will pay for decades because of these Neo-Con fools.
I think this al-Fadhily article on Fallujah from August gives you a pretty clear idea of what kind of "reporter" he is, beginning with the overture:
Umm. I must have missed the part where we le them do that. I've been out of the loop for a couple of news cycles. Has the story been that we "let" them do it, or that they did it? I only heard the latter.
Were we supposed to learn of their intentions and discreetly threaten Defcon elevation? Or just pre-empt?
Or do you mean that the administration has been inappropriately (un)communicative since the news hit the wires?
Confused, fighting a bad head cold,
(s)Nort
Russian advances to the South can mean only one thing:
The Russians have developed a NeoCon advantage.
We need to begin a rapid program of accelerating NeoCon growth by splicing the genes of Richard Perle with Bill Kristol.
#34 from Nortius Maximus at 7:08 pm on Dec 18, 2007
Well, you must have missed that part, Nort. Russian nuclear material is now in place to begin powering an Iranian Power plant. Combine that with our bumbling foreign Policy in the area, we have let them walk in.
If you don't think that this is a significant event geopolitically, sit back and watch things unfold. Russian influence in the area will grow. Their defiance of U.S. interests in the area will grow. Those that are our allies will start hedging their bets, even if ever so slightly. Look for a lot more Russian diplomacy in the Gulf. I think we are looking more and more like a paper tiger in the area.
The latest Caspian initiative by the Russians was a direct challenge to us and we had no credible response. A foolish blunder of invading Iraq allowed for us to be exposed. We cannot invade Iran. We have, with the ridiculous saber-rattling followed by Intelligence agencies report on the Iranian nuclear program has made us look like fools. I do not blame this on Intelligence, since that is only a part of Foreign Policy.
The problem is that the adolescent, military power based Foreign Policy Philosphy of the Neo-Cons combined with their misplaced missionary zeal has gotten us in a fix. Part of that fix is the Russians in the Middle East
As far as us "letting" them do that, the job of our foreign Policy people is not to let an adversary get off the ground once you have them down. In this they have failed miserably.
#34 from Nortius Maximus at 7:08 pm on Dec 18, 2007
Were we supposed to learn of their intentions and discreetly threaten Defcon elevation? Or just pre-empt?
Statements like this do not add to the conversation, nor, if you think that they score points, I do not see how they do, so plese spare me the toil involved in reading them.
Or do you mean that the administration has been inappropriately (un)communicative since the news hit the wires?
The job definition of foreign Policy people includes making sure this stuff doesn't happen, not waiting for a response when it hits the wires.
TOC: Sorry I rubbed you the wrong way. Feelings run strong. I was being coldly analytical with my question. You interpreted it as some sort of mockery. I regret your interpretation.
I think speaking of "letting" the FSU do something grants entirely too much power to the US. That the FSU did send fuel appears to not be in doubt. That the US was capable of stopping it is very much an open question to me. Not to you, apparently. So I asked bluntly: How? Go to the mattresses?
It looks as if the US was caught flat footed with a Russian fait accompli. Saying that I wish the US could have stopped it is very different (to me) than saying that the US "should" have stopped it (and, implicitly, could have).
Contrapositives Counterfactuals, and all that.
Let me put it another way: it seems that Russia just decided to see what we'd do if they did what they did.
I don't know whether we blinked, or weren't looking, or how little the Russkies telegraphed this fuel move, or if there actually was backchannel information and the US was stuck with only having countermoves that were perceived as potentially too destabilizing (the Defcon elevation sort of option).
I do know that Russia just cranked up their influence in the Arab world, and they thought it was worth trying to get away with, and they did.
Superpower, schmuperpower.
Bush, over neocon objections, has supported foreign supply of nuclear fuel to Iran for years, though preferably through the EU.
JThomas, you can zoom the Google image of Fallujah in much more closely than the Grozny images by clicking the + sign.
Thank you, Michael. The first time I clicked on your link I didn't see that.
A close look shows me a whole lot of buildings with irregular-shaped holes in the roof. But there are also a whole lot of buildings with regular-shaped holes in the roofs. It looks like they like to make their bigger buildings with U shapes or with an enclosed plaza. When I look close I see some U-shaped buildings with one wing of the U gone or partly gone, with something irregular that tends to match the background colors in its place.
But when I look at it at lower resolution it all looks normal except for the blank areas where there aren't any buildings left.
I keep thinking I see the shadows of a lot of walls between buildings and the streets. Not everywhere, but a lot of places. Does that fit your experience?
I don't know whether we blinked, or weren't looking, or how little the Russkies telegraphed this fuel move, or if there actually was backchannel information and the US was stuck with only having countermoves that were perceived as potentially too destabilizing (the Defcon elevation sort of option).
I do know that Russia just cranked up their influence in the Arab world, and they thought it was worth trying to get away with, and they did.
The russians supported us through two levels of announced sanctions. They could provide fuel for a reactor with exported wastes that the russians would reprocess, and still support a third level of sanctions. They could, although the media is reporting they may not. Is this really news, or is it just another overblown news event?
All along our plan was that as a NNPT signer iran could have a castrated russian reactor. Isn't that what this is about?
But then the russians do seem to be acting like they aren't completely defeated even though their empire was dismembered and their economy temporarily destroyed.
link
The way I see the whole foreign policy in the ME Region and that towards the FSU is one part of the same challenge. They are irrevocably intertwined. The blunders we have made since the initial blunder of invading Iraq, based on an extremely naive and uniformed view of the region, have followed from the foolishness that the Neo-Cons sold as a serious geopolitical strategy.
From the Neo Cons. (In Brief)
1. Invade Iraq.
a. Don't wait for inspectors because they are naive.
b. Trust our intelligence, even though it comes from some (I will be gentle here) dubious characters.
c. Ridicule the U.N.
d. Begin talking in terms of Empire.
e. Get on talk shows and talk about this being the opportune time with us being the only superpower to push our morality on others through the use of force. I am not criticizing our morality here but the cockeyed idea that you can send armies to impose it without flattening a country like we did in Germany and Japan. Nation building under almost any othe circumstances is a loser.
f. go on television and tell the American people that the Iraqis are going on welcome us with open arms, once they have gotten over the elation of the overthrow of the Saddam regime.
2. Beginning of the Occupation
a. Allow widespread looting.
b. Allow widespread destruction of the former regimes records.
c. Dismiss the Army, thereby destroying any Iraqi security organization.
d. De-Baathification before There is any idea of the consequences.
e. Embracing the Shia and the Kurds and alienating the Sunni. This opens a floodgate of problems. It alienates our traditional Sunni allies in the region. Puts us in direct opposition to the wishes of ouor closest ally in the region, Turkey. (We must have missed the fact of how displeased with they were with the invasion. You might remember they refused to let us open a second front. They ahve a long history with the Kurds. I make no judgment onthe Kurds or the Turks here as good guys or bad guys. I will say that it is in our interest not to be in a position of defending the rights of a totally landlocked people who have never had a state over those of an ally who is defending its territorial integrity. (This is Geostrategy 101.)
3. Next Phase of the Occupation.
a. It is my firm belief that, for the most part, the threat of using a weapon is more potent than actually using them. Before the invasion, the world was absolutely terrified of American Power. The conflicts in Kosovo and Afghanistan did wonders for our aura of invincibility. The occupation has poisoned it.
b. No weapons of Mass Destruction are found. No nuclear program is in place. It appears now that the U.N. inspectors were correct. Of course, this crew of incompetents would never admit that.
The reason for the invasion and occupation (Which only magnified the blunder of the invasion)now becomes that we are setting up a Democracy in the Middle East and that this is a responsibility we won't run away from? My God, how did they ever come up with such missionary zeal? I am not against democracy nor democracy in The ME. I am against using a method that was tantamount to Preaching salvation in the middle of time Square. It might make you feel good but it is not very effective.
c. Very soon, it becomes apparent that Shinseki might have been right as well about the number of troops we might need to occupy and pacify a country like Iraq.
d. In a moment of brilliant insight, the administration admits that it underestimated the deterioration of the Iraqi electrical grid and blames that on Saddam. This itself is another under-estimation, They underestimated the very effective destruction we did to the system in the first Iraq War,the embargo that followed and the very effective bombing campaign launched during the second Iraq War.
e. One Neo Con, I forget who, said that the underestimated the differences between our mindset, culture and political thought and that of the Iraqis. When I read this in the NYT, all I could think of doing is why doesn't the interviewer tell this guy, (Duhh! That's why they call it FOREIGN POLICY.
f. Our misunderstanding of the Iraqi mindset was obvious with our pushing of the drafting of the constitution and the elections, which any number of Iraqis and General Sanchez has said were pushed for Political reasons.
I could go on with this, but I feel it is a waste of time. I am sure that this administration will be looked at as one that:
- Weakened the U.S. diplomatically and ultimately economically.
- Will be remembered as helping the resurgence of the influence of the FSU by its blunders in Iraq, its humiliation by Iran, who seems to have revealed us as a Paper Tiger by ignoring our threats with impugnity.
- Eroded our relation in Europe and the Middle East.
- Squandered treasure and lives for no discernible purpose and with no discernible gain.
- And, probably most of all, missed a great economic opportunity in stifling scientific thought for political expediency and passing up the opportunity of becoming the world power in alternative energy.
Again, I never thought that I would live to see an adminisration as incompetent as Carter's and if I did, I would never have thought it would be Republican.
But life is full of surprises.
One other thing, Bush said he could do business with Putin. I grew up in Queens near what was then Idlewild Airport. The movie Goodfellas is more or less a documentary of my growing up. Anyone from where I come from could tell that Putin was a gangster, just by the was he walked. Apparently, these phony tough guys that we call an administration also underestimated what a thug he is.
Our military has done an excellent job during the past 8 years with some very difficult assignments, under very difficult circumstances, in some of the most difficult terrain in the world. They deserved a lot better political leadership.