It appears that the MSM has been doing a “Katrina” on the aftermath of the Iraq shrine bombing. Looking for analysis, I found that Greyhawk of Mudville Gazette has done some careful research on MSM reportage versus reality. Greyhawk also offers useful analysis of why the reportage is biased. Here’s an excerpt in which Greyhawk quotes from a 23 February Roger Simon interview of Wall Street Journal’s Richard Miniter:
Richard Miniter: Everyone talks about intelligence failures, no one talks about media failures. The media is the people’s intelligence service, and it’s failing us.
You want to talk about why it’s so biased?
Remember before the war, CNN, Eason Jordan made that ridiculous thing where we had to hire the fixers from Saddam’s ministry or they’d be executed. We had to cover the Iraqi dictatorship in a certain way… paid Iraqis…
Roger Simon: The blogosphere was all over that one…
Richard Miniter: Who does CNN have working for them now covering the Iraq war?
The same people, the same Iraqi fixers.
So lets see, it’s 1946, it’s Germany, I need to understand German. Why don’t I hire some Nazis to interview some Jewish survivors and explain post-war Germany by hiring Nazis?
They’re hiring Ba’athist Sunnis, that’s why the coverage is so bad. They went from imbedded with the US troops and just reporting what they saw, and the effect was marvelous. It was accurate, it was up to date, it was interesting, it changed all the time.
And now it’s formulaic and ideological.
Why?
Because their fixers, their intermediaries between their safe little lives in the Palestine or al Rashid Hotels and the outside world are former members of the regime.
Definitely RTWT.
So far it appears the Shrine bombing is not working out the way Al-Qaeda planned. E.g., here is another translation by Iraqi-American Haider Ajina - this time of news published by the Iraqi Arabic newspaper Al-Raa’I on February 26th:
Many Iraqi cities witnessed large demonstrations after Friday prayers (yesterday). These demonstrations were calling for national unity, not being pulled into civil war after attacks on Sunni mosques as retaliation to the bombing of the samara Shiite shrine.
In Mousul 500 people demonstrated in Bartila (north west of the city). The demonstrations were lead by Sunni & Shiite leaders to condemn all bombings and call for a unified line and not be pulled into a sectarian war. Another demonstration started from the offices of the high council for Islamic revolution (Shiite). The demonstration was lead by Sunni and Shiite religious leaders. Banners condemned attacks on mosques, shrines and churches the banners also condemned terror also no to Saddam yes to Islam.
In Hillah over 3000 demonstrated after Friday’s united prayers (Shiite & Muslim together) at the Haytaween mosque. The united prayers were lead by Sheik Mohamed Alfateh (Sunni) and Sheik Jasim Alkalebi (Shiite). The two speakers called for Muslim unity and denounced all terror activity as unIslamic and asked for keeping unity.
In Al-Koot hundreds demonstrated after Friday prayers protesting the bombing of the samara shrine and the attacks on the Sunni mosques. Unified Friday prayers in Al-Koot were held at the large central mosque in the city. Speakers at the prayers call for rejecting sectarianism.
In Amarah over 15,000 demonstrated after Friday prayers condemning the samara bombing and attacks on Sunni mosques. Banners read, Sunnis & Shiites are like Hassan & Hussein (referring to two grand children of the profit Mohamed), banners also read that Muslim references (Shiite religious leaders) condemn terrorism in all its forms.
In Karbala Sheik Abdulmehdi Alkarblaa’i (representative of Sustain) in his Friday after prayers speech at the Hussein Shrine called for peaceful and brotherly coexistence, condemned violence and called for national unity. He added; “We know the nature of this crime and the ones before it, we also know these crimes are not of Sunni doings, but they are the deeds of the enemies of Sunnis & Shiites”.
In Basra over 10,000 demonstrated with banners asking to form the new government as quickly as possible.
I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the Al-Raa’l report. Iraq the Model (from Baghdad 27 February) reports that while Baghdad is getting back to normal,
Life is coming back to normal in Baghdad and marketplaces and offices are open again after being shut for 4 days. Although there were a few security incidents today people are mostly looking at these as part of the usual daily situation and not related to the latest shrine crisis.
Mohammed believes that the initial anti-Sunni activity was a consequence of Ayatollah Sistani’s fatwa. I’ve not seen this perspective elsewhere - and have no way of knowing if it is accurate:
As a person who lives in Baghdad I’ve been following the situation from the early hours after the attack; on Wednesday morning I was on my way to work when I heard the news on the radio and I began watching closely to probe the feelings of the common people. People were at work as they always are, clerks behind their desks, grocers looking after their goods and municipal workers picking trash from the streets and I haven’t noticed any unusual feelings among the people I came in contact with. In general life was normal until noon in the Shia majority district of Baghdad and there were absolutely no signs of a crisis of any sort. But on my way home I saw the men in black take to the streets after Ayatollah Sistani issued his fatwa (I wish my Shia brothers bear with me and read to the end).
Ayatollah Sistani issued a fatwa on Wednesday that sounded peaceful and normal from the first look but if you look closer at each word you will find that the “safety valve” became the igniter this time.
Two years ago the shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf was attacked and although this is the holiest shrine for Shia Muslims the incident wasn’t met with that much angry reactions instead we heard soothing statements like “these are mere stones and we can rebuild them and make them even better than before”.
This time things were different because the political situation is different; the Ayatollah called for nationwide protests (and not to attack Sunni mosques) and a week of mourning. Now let’s examine the part that said “do not attack Sunni mosques”…the sentence openly accuses the Sunni of being behind the attack or why would their mosques be mentioned in the first place?
In the government statements the term “Takfiri terrorists/Saddami Ba’athists” is the one commonly used but in the Ayatollah’s fatwa this was replaced by “Sunni”.
This fatwa which is sugar-coated with tolerance and restraint is actually pointing at the perpetrator that we-should-not-punish-because-we-are-merciful.
So…the protests were not spontaneous like clerics want us to think; in fact the only spontaneous protest was the one in Samarra itself!
I live here and I’ve seen the whole thing. The demonstrations in Baghdad began after the fatwa and I saw how shop keepers unwillingly closed their shops when the men in black with their arms and loudspeakers ordered them to do so “in the name of the Hawza” and I saw the sad look on the faces of people abandoning their only source of income for a time that could go indefinitely.
Mohammed gives high marks to the Iraqi Army, and poor marks to the Interior Ministry forces.
Although the Iraqi Army (or National Guard) is often targeted by insurgent attacks, it should be mentioned that most Iraqis tend to have higher trust in them, compared to the notorious Interior Ministry forces (Maghaweer Al-Dakhiliya). The Interior Ministry forces were formed early last year as special forces or commando units to backup regular army units. The earliest unit was the renowned Wolf Brigade, trained by US forces and comprised of elite members of the former Iraqi special forces. It operated in Sunni governorates and helped restore order in Mosul.
Zeyad of Healing Iraq offers a similar appraisal of Army/Interior Ministry, then supplies a history of the Interior Ministry forces:
Although the Iraqi Army (or National Guard) is often targeted by insurgent attacks, it should be mentioned that most Iraqis tend to have higher trust in them, compared to the notorious Interior Ministry forces (Maghaweer Al-Dakhiliya). The Interior Ministry forces were formed early last year as special forces or commando units to backup regular army units. The earliest unit was the renowned Wolf Brigade, trained by US forces and comprised of elite members of the former Iraqi special forces. It operated in Sunni governorates and helped restore order in Mosul.
Following Baqir Solagh’s (SCIRI) appointment as Interior Minister, he started forming his own units, the Scorpion Brigade, the Public Order Brigade, the Al-Karrar Brigade, and the Al-Hussein Brigade. These units were explicitly named after Shi’ite religious symbols, and are thought to be entirely composed of former members of Badr brigade (SCIRI’s armed wing). Solagh started a purge in his ministry around July, 2005, disposing of several Sunni officers -whom he labelled as ex-Ba’athists- and replaced them with high ranked officers of unkown origins. General Muntadher Al-Samarra’i, one of the purged officers, defected to Jordan and started disclosing secret documents proving the existence of death and torture squads inside the ministry. He uncovered a campaign of assassinations by the ministry against former Iraqi air force pilots, who took part in the Iraq-Iran war, as well as orders to assassinate several Iraqi academics, political and religious figures. Solagh strongly denied these allegations and pointed out that the assassinations and kidnappings were carried out by insurgents in stolen police uniforms and vehicles. When the Jadriya prison scandal was uncovered, he proposed that Ba’athist elements that had infiltrated his ministry were behind the torture and extrajudicial executions.
RTWT.
Powerline is doing a good job of analysis and resourcing on Paul Pillar’s ongoing undermining efforts. I have nothing to add.
Ex CIA intelligence officer Guillermo Christensen critiques Paul Pillar:
CIA officers on the cusp of retirement often enroll in a seminar that is supposed to help them adjust to life after the agency–teaching them, for example, how to write a resumé. I’ve begun to wonder if part of that program now includes a writing seminar on how to beat up on the Bush administration. The latest such blast comes from Paul Pillar, who, over the course of his long career, was arguably a central player in the CIA’s analysis of the Middle East, in particular Iraq. But now Mr. Pillar has decided to disclose to the world, in a recent article in Foreign Affairs, that he thought all along that the war was a bad idea, and that the president and his advisers ignored his intelligence.
Why Mr. Pillar would even attempt to argue that the White House ignored the CIA’s intelligence is beyond me–as innumerable investigations have demonstrated, all of the “intelligence” within his responsibility was 100% in agreement that Iraq posed a serious danger and that it had an active program for acquiring WMD. Over the course of a decade and a half, and thousands of pages of intelligence analysis, it is hard to think of anyone in the government who was more directly involved in reaching the wrong conclusions about what was going on in Iraq than Mr. Pillar himself.
[…]
Paul Pillar was right in the thick of the process and substance that reached those conclusions. Had he actually written a warning to the administration against going to war before the war, his conclusions could not have rested on any of the CIA’s intelligence analysis, but instead on his own political views against the administration–something which he has made no bones about in discussions with think-tank audiences long before he left the agency. This, incidentally, is prohibited behavior according to the professional practices of the CIA, the equivalent of betraying attorney-client confidentiality.
Not merely content to have played a leading role in the Iraq intelligence failure, Mr. Pillar is now following in the footsteps of others like Michael Scheuer, in undermining whatever credibility and access the CIA still may have with policymakers. By violating his confidences, Mr. Pillar is ensuring that those who succeed him–those who are, I hope, trying to fix the many problems facing the CIA–will be even less likely to see any real impact from their work because the president and his advisers will be loath to trust them.
[…]
For a CIA officer to discard this neutral role and to inject himself in the political realm is plain wrong. It will end up making the CIA even less relevant than it is today–if that is possible.
Mr. Christensen, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, served for 15 years as a CIA intelligence officer.
Here is another tidbit of positive post-bombing news. This DOD briefing was at 0900 EST 24 March, about 12 hours ago as I write - so the information is very current.
The briefer is Colonel Jeffrey Snow, commander of the 1st Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, operating primarily in Northwest Baghdad. Col. Snow’s brigade is supporting two Iraqi Army brigades. Snow reports that there have been no requests from the Iraqi commanders for US troop support. This report is for only one area of Baghdad, not all of Iraq - but encouraging.
Q: Colonel, have you had to deploy your troops in those situations over the past 48 hours?
COL. SNOW: We have not. As a matter of fact — and I think I said that earlier — it appears as though the people have really listened to the government of Iraq, as well as their religious leadership, in terms of not allowing this to break down in violent acts.
So at this point, the answer to your question is no, we have not had to respond to a single situation without — within our area of responsibility.
Powerline replays Austin Bay’s post of a captured 2002 al Qaeda letter from the West Point collection - easier to read than Austin’s post, which has some formatting problems.
This one is dated June 2002; it is a window into the state of affairs as viewed inside al Qaeda six months after the fall of the Taliban. Note especially the statement that the “East Asia, Europe, America, Horn of Africa, Yemen, Gulf and Morocco groups have fallen, and Pakistan has almost been drowned in one push.”
[…]
It seems obvious to me that we have won huge, but unreported, victories over al Qaeda during the past four years, and that this is a large part of the reason why there have been no successful attacks inside the United States. Someday, no doubt, the story will be told. I suspect that when that happens, a lot of the administration’s unrelenting critics will feel rather silly.
Very interesting.
Powerline’s frequent Iraqi-American commentator Haider Ajina contributes translations of two arabic articles on post-bombing developments. Note that Haider Ajina is writing from somewhere in the U.S., not from Iraq. Nevertheless these are insights I’ve not seen in any MSM coverage.
And his own comments:
Most of our news reports on the bombed shrine and all the damage sustained physically and emotionally. The news further reports on sectarian attacks and demonstrations. While this is true and accurate what is not being reported is the calling for calm and cooperation by all Sunni & Shiite religious leaders (except the young Alsadar who remains a thorn). The demonstrations of national unity. The mullahs in Sunni & Shiite mosques calling for support for injured brothers and sisters, national calm. They do not report on the Shiites standing guard outside of Sunni mosques in the south. Etc…There are two sides to this incident. The side of revenge, anger and the much larger side of unity and support. This bombing in Samarah has brought more unity amongst Iraqis than any other incident since the stampede on the Kahdumiah bridge (when Felujans [mostly Sunni] donated blood for the wounded in Kahdumiah [mostly Shiite] in Baghdad). Iraqi political parties, community leaders, religious leaders, political leaders all are strongly condemning this bombing and asking for national support and help for the people of Samarah. This outpouring of compassion, support and help is what is not being reported.
Let us hope that Ajina’s interpretation is valid. If so al Qaeda may have made a serious blunder.
Bill Roggio’s “Iraq civil war?” checklist is not graven on stone tablets - but I think it is useful, particularly in the context of ongoing media hysteria:
• The Shiite United Iraqi Alliance no longer seeks to form a unity government and marginalize the Shiite political blocks.
• Sunni political parties withdraw from the political process.
• Kurds make hard push for independence/full autonomy.
• Grand Ayatollah Sistani ceases calls for calm, no longer takes a lead role in brokering peace.
• Muqtada al-Sadr becomes a leading voice in Shiite politics.
• Major political figures - Shiite and Sunni - openly call for retaliation.
• The Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party and Muslim Scholars Association openly call for the formation of Sunni militias.
• Interior Ministry ceases any investigations into torture and death squads, including the case against recently uncovered problems with the Highway Patrol.
• Defense Minister Dulaimi (a Sunni) is asked to step down from his post.
• Iraqi Security Forces begins severing ties with the Coalition, including:
o Disembeddeding the Military Transition Teams.
o Requests U.S. forces to vacate Forward Operating Bases / Battle Positions in Western and Northern Iraq.
o Alienates Coalition at training academies.
• Iraqi Security Forces make no effort to quell violence or provide security in Sunni neighborhoods.
• Iraqi Security Forces actively participate in attacks on Sunnis, with the direction of senior leaders in the ministries of Defense or Interior.
• Shiite militias are fully mobilized, with the assistance of the government, and deployed to strike at Sunni targets. Or, the Shiite militias are fully incorporated into the Iraqi Security Forces without certification from Coalition trainers.
• Sunni military officers are dismissed en masse from the Iraqi Army.
• Kurdish officers and soldiers leave their posts and return to Kurdistan, and reform into Peshmerga units.
• Attacks against other religious shrines escalate, and none of the parties make any pretense about caring.
• Coalition military forces pull back from forward positions to main regional bases.
Personally, I think we need to start turning away from media, and the data shows that we are, at least from television news. I find that whenever I lack exposure to media I am much happier, and my life feels fresher. __ Michael Crichton, International Leadership Forum, April 26, 2002.
Critical thinkers will enjoy Crichton’s lecture “Why Speculate?”. While Crichton is not rigorous, his main themes are accurate. If he were rigorous nobody would read them…
Condi Rice’s speech at the Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service is essential reading - she is launching much overdue State reforms. Excerpt from the speech:
To advance transformational diplomacy, we are and we must change our diplomatic posture. In the 21st century, emerging nations like India and China and Brazil and Egypt and Indonesia and South Africa are increasingly shaping the course of history. At the same time, the new front lines of our diplomacy are appearing more clearly, in transitional countries of Africa and of Latin America and of the Middle East. Our current global posture does not really reflect that fact. For instance, we have nearly the same number of State Department personnel in Germany, a country of 82 million people that we have in India, a country of one billion people. It is clear today that America must begin to reposition our diplomatic forces around the world, so over the next few years the United States will begin to shift several hundred of our diplomatic positions to new critical posts for the 21st century. We will begin this year with a down payment of moving 100 positions from Europe and, yes, from here in Washington, D.C., to countries like China and India and Nigeria and Lebanon, where additional staffing will make an essential difference.
We are making these changes by shifting existing resources to meet our new priorities, but we are also eager to work more closely with Congress to enhance our global strategy with new resources and new positions.
We will also put new emphasis on our regional and transnational strategies. In the 21st century, geographic regions are growing ever more integrated economically, politically and culturally. This creates new opportunities but it also presents new challenges, especially from transnational threats like terrorism and weapons proliferation and drug smuggling and trafficking in persons and disease.
Building regional partnerships is one foundation today of our counterterrorism strategy. We are empowering countries that have the will to fight terror but need help with the means. And we are joining with key regional countries like Indonesia and Nigeria and Morocco and Pakistan, working together not only to take the fight to the enemy but also to combat the ideology of hatred that uses terror as a weapon.
We will use a regional approach to tackle disease as well. Rather than station many experts in every embassy, we will now deploy small, agile transnational networks of our diplomats. These rapid response teams will monitor and combat the spread of pandemics across entire continents. We are adopting a more regional strategy in our public diplomacy as well.
Ralph Peters writes “Her message was revolutionary and essential. As a result, she may go down in history as the SecState most hated by Foggy Bottom bureaucrats“. Here’s Peters’ summary [not a substitute for reading the speech]:
* Diplomats can no longer build careers by hiding behind desks in comfy capitals. They’ll have to accept dangerous assignments and serve in hardship posts; develop regional expertise in at least two areas; and speak at least two relevant foreign languages (French waiters need not apply). That ain’t going to make Rice popular with diplos accustomed to rotating between Rome and Northwest D.C. on their way to ambassadorships. Yet, it’s vital if we’re going to convert our failed, 19th-century- model State Department into a useful tool for the 21st century.
* Ouch! Condi really put Paris and Berlin in their places — pointedly noting that “we have nearly the same number of State Department personnel in Germany, a country of 82 million people, that we have in India, a country of 1 billion people.” Cancel that order for the big schnitzel, Mr. Ambassador. You’re going to be eating some development vindaloo. (Delicious, too, that la Rice smacked down Old Europe just as Jacques Chirac threatened to hurl nukes at terrorists to prove that France remains relevant.)
* Crucially, Condi named China, India, South Africa and Brazil as countries of the future while declaring that an initial 100 diplomatic slots would migrate from Europe immediately to countries that actually matter. More reassignments will follow, with even Moscow demoted to the international enlisted ranks — while Indonesia gets promoted (Double ouch!).
* Cutlass Condi intends to chop off the heads (or at least the careers) of those who wimp out on the dangerous missions and nasty assignments. This is essential. In working with State reps over the years, I met many who knew how to formulate tidy “non-papers”—but only a few who had the guts to go out and get dirty. I encountered some fine ambassadors and staffers, but too many resembled Chinese court eunuchs (one guy in Moscow even looked the part).
* Our SecState proposed a range of other innovative initiatives, from lone-gun outposts in major cities that lack a U.S. presence, through mobile diplomatic teams that would become the pin-striped equivalent of Army Rangers, to “Virtual Presence Posts” to harness the power of information technology. Not every program will succeed — but Condi’s trying everything she can to bring our Euro-trash diplomacy back from the dead.
* State Department officials are going to have to become true team players — the biggest challenge of all for that bunch. Rice speaks of “transformational diplomacy,” recognizing that cooperation between government agencies is vital to securing global advantages. But it’s going to be a bitter experience for an ambassador to have to listen to a DEA agent or to a Marine colonel who actually knows what’s going on outside the embassy compound.
* State’s capabilities to direct “stabilization operations” — as in Iraq — will be enhanced. Frankly, this may not work, given the lack of serious management expertise and the calcified arrogance within the department. Any hope of success will depend on promoting new blood fast.
They’ll never admit it publicly, but the Bushies realize how badly Ambassador Paul Bremer botched his Iraq mission (meanwhile, new-author Bremer’s been revising history in the finest Soviet tradition). The fact is that only our military has ever run successful occupations. Diplomats talk, soldiers do. That probably won’t change.
IN her breakthrough speech, Condi whacked the foreign service over the head with a hammer, while presenting the pain as a love-bite. But none can fail to recognize her message that she “got it,” that her experience in government convinced her that our blind adherence to European diplomatic norms has been utterly dysfunctional in dealing both with emerging threats and global opportunities.
If Rice can implement even half of the changes she proposed before an irate diplomat shoots her for canceling his assignment to Vienna, her effort may become State’s equivalent of the Army’s crucial Root Reforms of a century ago (diplomatic practices are more than a hundred years out of date). And the truth is that a functional State Department is essential to America’s role in the world.
The key will be the people. Can the department attract new recruits with courage and a spirit of adventure, in place of the fishbelly-white twits it’s always favored? Perhaps, instead of fishing in theory-poisoned backwaters such as Georgetown, State should poach military officers from the Pentagon, men and women accustomed to getting things done? (While we’re at it, how about a physical-fitness test for diplomats? And no, lifting a wine glass doesn’t count.)
The Rice Reforms may not have made headlines last week, but they could become one of the most important legacies of the Bush administration. American diplomacy has to race to catch up with the opportunities exploding in New Delhi, Beijing and Brasilia. Condi just fired the starter pistol.
The careerists at Foggy Bottom will erect bureaucratic barricades and try to wait the secretary out. They may succeed. But every American ought to hope that Condi Rice succeeds in breaking their rice bowls.
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