[pjnews] One-year anniversary of Saddam Hussein's capture
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. Here is the partial transcript of an interview between Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and CNN's Wolf Blitzer (Late Edition, 12/5/04, 12:19PM). Blitzer: Is the world safer today as the result of the invasion of Iraq? Musharraf: I think it's less safe, certainly. Blitzer: So, it was a mistake for President Bush to order this invasion, with hindsight? Musharraf: Yes, with hindsight, yes. We have landed ourselves in more trouble, yes. Approximately ten minutes later (12:29PM), Mr. Blitzer returned with the following announcement: ...early after the interview a Pakistani government spokesman told me that General Musharraf didn't want to be that categorical in his assertion that President Bush had made a mistake by invading Iraq. -- From Donna Mulhearn, an Australian woman in Iraq. To receive her updates, send an e-mail to: ThePilgrim-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Friends, When Saddam Hussein was captured, a year ago today, I was in Baghdad and wrote a reflection called: Saddam is captured: what has changed? based on the comments of a philosophical young Iraqi who I spoke to that day. I have just re-read his comments and was struck numb by their disturbing insight. Have a read. At the end, Ill update you on what has changed in the last 12 months. -- The gunshots are firing thick and fast. Some are in the distance, others are just outside my window. It's about 7pm on Sunday night, the shots have been regular since news of the capture of Saddam Hussein started to spread around Baghdad at about 2pm this afternoon. Be careful Miss Donna, my Iraqi friends are saying. Don't go outside or a bullet might fall on your head! I appreciate their concern (and yours) but how can you ask a former journalist with an ingrained news sense to stay inside when the world's biggest story is happening outside her front door? I have to go out, but I promise I won't stay out late! Many Iraqis are in a state of disbelief tonight - as I was until I saw images of a dazed, bushy-bearded Saddam willingly having his teeth checked in a video shown at the occupier's press conference in Baghdad this afternoon. I stood around a television with a bunch of Iraqis and watched their jaws drop in unison as they saw their deposed former president pose sedately for a mugshot, his bushy-beard newly shaved and his hair neatly trimmed for the picture. Now many are celebrating the capture (hence the gunshots). When I first heard the news I felt a sense of relief and laughed out loud with the Iraqis around me. My landlord told me the gunshots will go all night... Do you want a gun? he asked. I can give you one to fire too. I politely declined. I'll just have a beer and a falafel, I said. But some Iraqis are still wary, after being betrayed by so many people so many times, they want more confirmation. Others are sad and angry: What is our hope now? one man asked under his breathe as he watched the press conference. My friends have just returned from one suburb in Baghdad where a large pro-Saddam mob are nearing a riot if Saddam is gone, said one man Mustafa, we will fight even harder... One philosophical young man I spoke to shrugged his shoulders. What does it mean? he said. One man is captured... Did so many people have to die for this? So many thousands of people ... for this? What will change now? As I walked back to my home this afternoon I wondered what would change now. I looked at the 2-kilometre long queue for petrol along Sadoon Street. Iraqis with cars have to leave home early in the morning and wait seven hours before getting to the bowser for their ration of petrol. Tensions are rising as taxi drivers, transporters and businesses are thrown into disarray by the delays. This won't change overnight. I walked past the generators that sit on the footpath outside shops and hotels, big dirty things, chugging out clouds of black smoke with the noise of a thousand lawnmowers. The generators are necessary for survival here, with power only lasting a few hours a day. For those without generators life is cold and dark. That won't change overnight. I thought about the 15,000 people detained in the bleak Abu Graib prison without charge or trial. Many were taken from their homes in the middle of the night by gunpoint and their families have not heard from them. I wonder if tomorrow they get legal representation, a family visit and a fair trial? I thought about the poor family we know who live in the concrete basement of a bombed out building. They huddle in a corner and try to hide from the wind coming in the open doors. We've given them mattresses and blankets, but the nights are bitter cold. I wonder what they think of the news and what it might mean for them - husband without a job, with a wife and five small children. I asked the philosophical young man what
[pjnews] U.S. media still hiding bad news from Americans
Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. http://snipurl.com/bbh0 9 December 2004 The Toronto Star U.S. media still hiding bad news from Americans ANTONIA ZERBISIAS And now the good news from America's accomplished mission in Iraq ... The other night on ABC News Nightline, Ted Koppel asked National Public Radio war correspondent Anne Garrels, who has been in Iraq throughout the war, When you hear people in this country, Anne, say, look, the media is only giving the negative side of what's going on there, why don't they ever show the good side, what do you tell 'em? I tell them that there isn't much good to show, she replied, describing how even military commanders have only bad news to share. Two weeks ago on CNN, Time's Michael Ware, who has been covering Iraq for two years, gave an alarming account of being trapped in his Baghdad compound, which is regularly bombed and encircled by kidnap teams. He reported that the U.S. military has lost control and that Americans are the midwives of the next generation of jihad, of the next Al Qaeda. At the end of the exchange, anchor Aaron Brown warned, (O)ther people see the situation there differently than Michael. We talk to them as well. The next day, when the interview was repeated, anchor Carol Lin closed with, And of course there are others who disagree with that. Never mind that those others never had Iraqi sand in their shoes, let alone been under fire there. Freedom is on the march! We're making progress! The terrorists will do all they can to disrupt free elections in Iraq, and they will fail. These are just some of the slogans that U.S. President George W. Bush now spouts, while the American cable channels duly carry his speeches live and the American print media give them front-page play. Not that they aren't sneaking in a little bad news, mind you. But not much. This week, we learned, mostly via a text crawl at the bottom of the screen, that the milestone of 1,000 U.S. troops killed in combat had been reached. If you blinked, you would have missed news of a Pentagon strategic report to Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld revealing that U.S. actions have not only failed, they may also have achieved the opposite of what they intended. There was a bit in some newspapers about a damning classified cable from the Central Intelligence Agency's station chief in Baghdad that painted a dismal picture of Iraq's economic, political and security prospects. And, while it got notice when published in October, there's been no follow-up on a study in an esteemed British medical journal suggesting that up to 100,000 civilians had died since the invasion. No follow-up, that is, except to trash the research. It figures that, on Tuesday in Camp Pendleton, California, all media eyes were on Bush giving a rousing crowd-pleaser, urging every American to find some way to thank our military and to help out the military family down the street. That while yesterday Rumsfeld was in Kuwait, dismissing concerns from troops about a lack of armour. You go to war with the army you have, he said. Want to guess whose comments got better play? Biased coverage in Iraq; Bad News Overwhelms The Good, asserted the Washington Times last week. If you trust most media accounts fed to American viewers and readers, Iraq is an unmitigated disaster, began Helle Dale of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, insisting that 40 per cent of Iraqis say their country is (now) better and at least 35 per cent want the United States to stay. Dale exhorted readers to check all the wonderful progress being catalogued by the U.S. Agency for International Development (http://www.usaid.gov), which, if you examine carefully, doesn't contain that much good news at all. For example, compare and contrast one vaguely-worded USAID report from last spring with another from last week and you'll see the dirty water situation has not much improved. Still, Dale claims, Much of this good work you will never find reported, precisely because no news is good news for much of the U.S. media. Well, here's a positive piece of media news from Iraq: Farnaz Fassihi, the Wall Street Journal reporter whose harrowing private e-mail to friends describing the hazards of Baghdad made international news, is back on the war beat after what many suspected was a month-long suspension. She returns despite vicious criticism from the right that she is too biased to work there just because she felt it was a deadly situation. But then, what would she know? She's just there, in very real danger of getting killed. Stateside, she's threatened with being shot down, along with other reporters, just for telling the truth. Antonia Zerbisias writes every Thursday. [EMAIL PROTECTED] _ Note: This message comes from the peace-justice-news e-mail mailing list of articles and commentaries about peace and social justice issues,
