Category: Current Affairs

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Our Iraq Mystery

A late night Iraq thought: One of the strangest things about the war is that we know virtually nothing about the people we’re fighting. Over the past couple of weeks, someone’s been slaughtering dozens of police officers, members of the Iraqi national guard, and other, near the city of Mosul. On Friday and Saturday, someone launched a wave of attacks that killed more than 50 and wounded scores more in Baghdad and Mosul. Someone attacked U.S. troops Friday and Saturday, too, killing at least half a dozen. Last month, we sent thousands of troops against someone we wanted out of Fallujah. Dozens of our troops died there along with hundreds of enemy fighters.

But just who’s carrying out all these attacks? How are they keeping this thing up after 20 months of fighting? Where do they get the fighters? The weapons? The money? Honestly, after reading the accounts of fighting for the past few months, it’s mostly a mystery. The labels attached to our enemies vary and have evolved: They used to be thugs, gunmen, and noncompliant elements; or sometimes Saddam loyalists or dead-enders. Now they are insurgents, rebels or anti-Iraqi forces (as well as the catch-all label, terrorists and murderers); sometimes guerrillas or even “resistors” as I saw on one web site. But those are all just labels. Some try to be neutral. Others are loaded with political or emotional spin. None really gets us to the nature of the people we’re trying to deal with.

Based on a story The New York Times ran the other day on intelligence our military says it gathered in Fallujah, here’s what we know about who’s responsible for all the above: Overwhelmingly, the fighters are Iraqis, with a sprinkling of foreigners mixed in. There are 8,000 to 12,000 “hard-core” insurgents, with another 8,000 closet insurgents rendering aid, for a total of 20,000. They are said to be a mix of ” former Baathists, radical Sunnis and Shiites, foreign fighters and criminals.” They get money from former Baathists and Saddam’s relatives; “Islamic charities” (the term the story uses) and donors in Saudi Arabia also move cash to the fighters through Syria. The story makes this unqualified and unattributed assertion: “The insurgency also has had no trouble recruiting new foot soldiers.” The article closes by saying that Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declined to speculate on the size of the insurgency. He did say that former Iraqi army and Republican Guard officers (cashiered en masse by the U.S. authorities soon after “mission accomplished”) pose the biggest security threat in Iraq now.

Does all that add up when you look at the continuing or growing ferocity of the insurgent attacks? That a group of guys who show up to fight in masks and tennis shoes, like a street gang that likes to pray a lot, a group of guys about half the size of the New York Police Department, is thwarting the will of the World’s Only Superpower and spreading mayhem over thousands of square miles on a daily basis?

At this point, you stop expecting anyone in the president’s group to talk straight to the public about what’s going on in Iraq. But you also start to wonder whether they talk straight among themselves about it, or whether they have any better idea of what they’re up against than The New York Times does.

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November in Iraq

Quotes:

“At some point in time, when Iraq is able to defend itself against the terrorists who are trying to destroy democracy, as I’ve said many times, our troops will come home with the honor they have earned.”

–President Bush, December 2, 2004

“There are some who feel like — that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring them on.”

–President Bush, July 2, 2003

Numbers:

The deadliest month for U.S. troops since the war began: 137 killed (compared to 135 killed in the second-deadliest month, April 2004, when both Shiite and Sunni fighters rose against U.S. forces. Another comparison: About 128 U.S. troops were killed in the first 30 days of the war, from March 19 through April 17, 2003. The total number of U.S. troops killed since the war started is 1,260).

Eighty of the 137 American Marines and soldiers who died last month were killed in the eight days from November 8 through November 15, when fighting was heaviest in Fallujah and areas where insurgents counterattacked.

The wounded in action in November: 1,265 or so. The Defense Department reports 654 of the wounded returned to duty within 72 hours, and 611 did not. The total wounded in action for the war so far is 9,552, including 5,049 wounded too seriously to immediately go back to their units. (The count of all troops evacuated from Iraq because of non-combat illnesses, injuries, and other medical reasons, such as psychological problems encountered on duty, is much higher. For instance, the Army alone reported 14,452 medical evacuations from Iraq through the end of September).

About one in nine U.S. military deaths in Iraq occurred in November. About one in eight of those wounded in action suffered their injuries during the month.

In November:

  • 125 U.S. troops died in action; 12 deaths are listed as “non-hostile,” mostly vehicle accidents.
  • By service: 72 Marines and 12 Marine reservists; 38 regular Army, 4 Army reservists, 10 members of the Army National Guard; one each from the Navy and Air Force.
  • By rank: One major, two captains, four lieutenants, 33 sergeants, one petty officer, 68 corporals and lance corporals (all Marines), 15 Army specialists, 15 privates (all Army).
  • By age: 73 of those killed were 19 to 22 years old; 34 were from 23 to 25; 19 were from 26 to 29; and 11 were from 31 to 45 years old (the oldest was an Army command master sergeant, Steven W. Faulkenberg).

Unknown:

How many enemy fighters or Iraqi civilians died during the month.

The Commander and the Troops:

“… If the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all ‘We died at such a place;’ some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection.”

–“Henry V,” Act 4 Scene 1

[In the play, King Hal does what a modern leader would do and answers by saying that what a subject does is a subject’s responsibility, not the king’s: “Every subject’s duty is the king’s; but every subject’s soul is his own. Therefore should every soldier in the wars do as every sick man in his bed, wash every mote out of his conscience: and dying so, death is to him advantage.” So, if you’re ready to meet your maker, the king, or president, is doing you a favor by sending you to your death in battle.]

Sources:

Bush quotes: www.nytimes.com/2004/12/02/business/02text-bush.html and www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/07/20030702-3.html



November casualties: icasualties.org/oif/ and www.defenselink.mil/news/

Army medical evacuations: www.armymedicine.army.mil/news/medevacstats/200409/oif.htm

“Henry V”: www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/henryv/

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Inherit This, You Godless Evolutionists

The San Francisco Chronicle has a story this morning about a school board near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, that has directed biology teachers to poke holes in the theory of evolution and instruct their students in something called “intelligent design.” The people who promote this curriculum or superstition or whatever you want to call it soft-peddle the religious aspect of it. They call their idea “the science of design detection” and seek to explain “living things and other natural phenomena that exhibit function or purpose.” They say they’re seeking the scientific truth behind life and the universe without philosophical or religious assumptions. That’s all great. But they tip their hand when they state they have an end in mind: “constitutional neutrality”; meaning they need to come up with a creation story that’s got enough science in it to jam into classrooms without raising the church/state alarm. And what creation story might that be? Hindu? Navajo? Norse? Or that god got bored watching Monday night football and fashioned the world out of a Cheeto for halftime amusement?

If the promoters of intelligent design try to obscure their Bible-centric agenda, the folks in Pennsylvania sure understand what it’s about. The Chronicle quotes one of the board members as saying she doesn’t believe in evolution and disapproves of teaching that suggests “we come from chimpanzees and apes.” A kid from one of the district’s high schools says, “There’s only one creator, and it has to be God.” Asked about what she’s learned about evolution, she said, “Evolution — is that the Darwin theory? I don’t know just what he was thinking!”

The Chron accompanies its story with some findings from a Gallup poll taken earlier this month. Looking at the numbers sparked a “what’s going on in this country?” moment for me. The survey found that 83 percent of respondents think God — not the bored Cheeto god, but the very industrious Jewish-Christian one — had a hand in creating man (13 percent said they didn’t think God had a role). It makes you wonder how the Scopes Trial would come out if William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow went at it again today. “Inherit the Wind,” my ass.

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What’s the Frequency? Seldom

Dan Rather‘s quitting as anchor of the CBS Evening News, and that’s on the front page of both papers we get (the San Francisco one and the New York one). We’re sort of a news-oriented family, but we don’t watch Dan (or Tom or Peter or Jim, or any of their cable counterparts) and haven’t for a long time. I watched the cable news outlets during the day when I was working at TechTV out of professional interest; after all, we were doing a daily news show. And yes, when there’s a compelling breaking-news reason, like the election or a disaster or we’re going to war again, we’ll turn on network news. Watching usually serves as a reminder of how shallow, wooden, obvious, and journalistically unadventurous TV news is. What it’s good for, mostly, is showing pictures of things, and given the quality of the information or commentary that come with the images, most of the time you’re just as well served with the sound turned down.

And the ratings numbers make it look like a lot of people feel the same way. When Rather took over the CBS anchor job from Walter Cronkite in 1981, the Chronicle says, the Evening News had a Nielsen rating of 13.6 — that’s 13.6 percent of all the TV households in the United States. Now the number is 5.1. The Chicago Tribune has a story today recounting the long slide of network news ratings; in 1980, the combined audience share for the evening network news shows was 72 — that’s 72 percent of all the TVs in use at a given moment; in 1990 the number was down to 57, and now it has fallen to 36.

Obviously, people have a lot more news choices now: many choices on cable TV as well as the most compelling and addicting news channel of them all, the Net. But you have to wonder if the decline and collapse of the network news model was or is really inevitable. Would better and deeper news values over the decades made a difference? One of the major irritations and disappointments of major cable and network news shows is that the presentation seems so formulaic and the stories so pat; that’s one reason “The Daily Show” seems so inspired — it both sends up the “real” news shows and lampoons them for the way they shy away from controversy.

One interesting thought for CBS from the 2004 “State of the News Media” report from the Project for Excellence in Journalism: The network should become the news voice for the major lifestyle and entertainment outlets its parent company, Viacom, owns. Quoting analyst Andrew Tyndall, the report says:

“If … CBS News was responsible for news for children (on Nickelodeon), for youth (on MTV), for African-Americans (on BET), for men (on Spike), on the radio (Infinity) and so on, it would once again address the mass market that Cronkite once did and put the Tiffany in Viacom, as it were. That potential audience for CBS News is already waiting in Viacom’s distribution system, but the news division just does not have the vision or the corporate ambition to revive its once-famous name.”

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Kevin Sites Speaks

First, let’s briefly recap the Kevin Sites saga: A freelance cameraman and journalist covering the Fallujah offensive, he videotaped a Marine shooting a wounded, unarmed Iraqi insurgent in a mosque. The tape was shot on a “pool” basis, so eventually it was fed not just to the company that Sites is under contract with, NBC, but to other outlets, too. Predictably, the image and the unclear context of the shooting — was the insurgent armed? was there an immediate threat there that could not be seen in the video? — have touched off a controversy. The video is the latest helping of anti-American fodder for broadcasters in the Arab world. In the United States, the main reaction to the video has come from the right: The video serves as further proof that the mainstream media is only interested in undermining our war effort and support for the troops. Sites has been the target of especially vicious commentary online, with many accusing him of trying to score a prize-winning scoop at any cost and some suggesting he ought to be physically harmed for reporting the incident.

Like a lot of people, I’ve been checking Sites’s blog daily to see if he’d post his account of the shooting and of the afternath. Of course, I hadn’t checked today,and then I got an email from my brother John saying there was a new post there. It’s titled “Open Letter to the Devil Dogs of the 3.1” — the unit he’d been accompanying during the fighting. He tries to explain to the Marines he’s been covering (in a sympathetic way, I’d add) exactly how the event unfolded before, during, and after the shooting. And he does his best to explain to the guys what’s at stake in reporting what’s going on over there:

“I interviewed your Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Willy Buhl, before the battle for Falluja began. He said something very powerful at the time-something that now seems prophetic. It was this:

” ‘We’re the good guys. We are Americans. We are fighting a gentleman’s war here — because we don’t behead people, we don’t come down to the same level of the people we’re combating. That’s a very difficult thing for a young 18-year-old Marine who’s been trained to locate, close with and destroy the enemy with fire and close combat. That’s a very difficult thing for a 42-year-old lieutenant colonel with 23 years experience in the service who was trained to do the same thing once upon a time, and who now has a thousand-plus men to lead, guide, coach, mentor — and ensure we remain the good guys and keep the moral high ground.’

“I listened carefully when he said those words. I believed them.

“So here, ultimately, is how it all plays out: when the Iraqi man in the mosque posed a threat, he was your enemy; when he was subdued he was your responsibility; when he was killed in front of my eyes and my camera — the story of his death became my responsibility.

“The burdens of war, as you so well know, are unforgiving for all of us.”

From reading this guy’s stuff since early last year, I believe he’s impeccably honest. I think he explains what happened and the bigger issues he was thinking about as well as can be expected. I’d love to know how the Marines he’s addressing react to what he says. I expect that few of people who’ve been screaming that he’s subhuman and a traitor will be mollified.

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Blow Up a Library Today

My friend Pete mentioned on the phone today that he had read about how Salinas, the Monterey County town where John Steinbeck once lived, is about to close its public libraries — that’s right, just shut them down — because after years of watching its costs rise and tax revenue decline, it no longer has the money to run them. And earlier this month, voters rejected three tax measures to raise $9.5 million to $12 million for city services.

They apparently did not believe or care about warnings that the libraries (a $3 million line item for next year) would be shut down and other city departments would be slashed, too (four recreation centers will be closed and the hiring of 10 new police officers will be delayed indefinitely). The electorate was in such an anti-tax mood that it even voted down a measure, placed on the ballot and supported by the business community, to raise a utility levy on the town’s biggest businesses. Think about that: Someone in town said “tax us so we can help the town out,” and the voters said “no way!”

So what do people in town think now? Reading the press accounts, most seem to be appalled. One resident quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle:

“My feeling is that this city is dying,” said Greg Meyer, a 25-year city maintenance worker who was given a layoff notice in September and will be unemployed in January. “We are opening the gates to urban blight and increased crime. Taking the libraries out of service is like a trumpet blast heralding the coming of our fall.”

And another, in the Monterey Herald:

“A town without a library is a town without a conscience,” said Gerald Oehler, president of Prime Care Medical Group in Salinas.

But based on the results at the polls, you’ve got to wonder whether this woman, also quoted in the Chronicle, is more typical:

“Carla Lane, browsing the stacks with her two young daughters, said that if the libraries have to close, that’s too bad.

” ‘We come here all the time, my kids love it, and I’m a big reader myself,’ said Lane, picking out an armload from the new-fiction shelf. “But I’m not sure the money is always being spent wisely.

” ‘I can’t believe that everything has been exhausted,’ Lane said. ‘If they have to close, so be it. Maybe they can just open one day a week.’ ”

She can’t believe that everything has been exhausted. Let’s see: The city fired more than 50 city workers and cut out frills like school-crossing guards and park maintenance to make it through the current fiscal year. It warned in a very public process that more would follow if the city doesn’t find the money. But still, this woman seems to be saying, you can’t really trust what the government says. They must have more money somewhere. They just want to rip us off for more taxes.

Her attitude is selfish and short-sighted, but it’s not indefensible. Government should be accountable — in many cases, much, much more accountable — for how it spends tax money.

But here’s what’s weird to me. It’s a good bet that many of the people in Salinas who voted against taxing themselves for something outrageous like keeping their libraries open and hiring more cops also voted for Bush. The voted for someone who denies accountability for the budget deficit he’s engineered, the lies he employed to lead us into war in Iraq, and for the awful, bloody catastrophe the war has become. So, there are people down there who have decided that the president doesn’t need to be held to as high a standard as their City Council.

(Speaking of Bush: One possible source of revenue for Salinas might be to see if the feds would refund the city’s share of the cash spent so far to arrest Saddam Hussein and turn Iraq into a festering cauldron of future democracy. The National Priorities Project puts our cost for the war so far at about $146 billion. That’s almost $500 for every American. So Salinas has about 150,000 people, and its share of the Iraq dough so far is just under $75 million. That’d put the town on easy street; maybe it could even open more libraries. What a choice: Blow up more stuff on the other side of the world — for peace and security’s sake — or keep the libraries open.)

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In Fallujah

I struggle every day with my feelings about what’s happening in Iraq. Not a subject I can write about casually. But occasionally, I read something that sort of cuts through all the anger and depression and turns the casualty statistics into wrenching flesh-and-blood reality. A great example today: A long dispatch from Dexter Filkins of The New York Times relating the Fallujah fighting as he saw it while accompanying a Marine company through the thick of the combat. One vignette:

“More than once, death crept up and snatched a member of Bravo Company and quietly slipped away. Cpl. Nick Ziolkowski, nicknamed Ski, was a Bravo Company sniper. For hours at a stretch, Corporal Ziolkowski would sit on a rooftop, looking through the scope on his bolt-action M-40 rifle, waiting for guerrillas to step into his sights. The scope was big and wide, and Corporal Ziolkowski often took off his helmet to get a better look.

“Tall, good-looking and gregarious, Corporal Ziolkowski was one of Bravo Company’s most popular soldiers. Unlike most snipers, who learned to shoot growing up in the countryside, Corporal Ziolkowski grew up near Baltimore, unfamiliar with guns. Though Baltimore boasts no beach front, Corporal Ziolkowski’s passion was surfing; at Camp Lejeune, N.C., Bravo Company’s base, he would often organize his entire day around the tides.

‘” All I need now is a beach with some waves,’ Corporal Ziolkowski said, during a break from his sniper duties at Falluja’s Grand Mosque, where he killed three men in a single day.

“During that same break, Corporal Ziolkowski foretold his own death. The snipers, he said, were now among the most hunted of American soldiers.

“In the first battle for Falluja, in April, American snipers had been especially lethal, Corporal Ziolkowski said, and intelligence officers had warned him that this time, the snipers would be targets.

” ‘They are trying to take us out,’ Corporal Ziolkowski said.

“The bullet knocked Corporal Ziolkowski backward and onto the roof. He had been sitting there on the outskirts of the Shuhada neighborhood, an area controlled by insurgents, peering through his wide scope. He had taken his helmet off to get a better view. The bullet hit him in the head.”

[Update on June 6, 2006: While doing a little reading and surfing for a post on Iraq War photography, I came across an unpublished picture of Corporal Ziolkowski shot by photographer (and sometimes New York Times stringer) Ashley Gilbertson. The picture depicts Ziolkowski and a spotter in a setting that well could be the Grand Mosque mentioned in Filkins’s report; that’s the the position from which the corporal killed is said to have killed three enemy fighters. The link to the picture, on the Aurora Photos site: http://www.auroraphotos.com/bin/Detail?ln=8158700002.]

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The Bile Variations

Irwin Graulich — the guy who says journalist Kevin Sites is an ally of al Qaida and Saddam for reporting on the Marine shooting in Falliujah — responded to my earlier letter. Graulich, who elsewhere describes himself as “a well known motivational speaker on morality, ethics, Judaism and politics,” promises to “kick the crap out of” Sites if he ever runs into him on the street. But compared to other online missives he’s credited with sending, he’s positively civil here:

Dear Dan

Thank you for your comments. I have seen the videotape and I stand by my article. I tried to place myself in the soldiers shoes, and knowing what had occurred with these so-called insurgents (who are actually terrorists and do not give a damn about their own lives), I would have probably shot them as well. It is frightening to go into that situation knowing these evildoers could set off a bomb hidden under their bodies or whip out an AK-47.

It is very easy for a journalist like Sites to take the situation out of context, which is what he did. I would always give the benefit of the doubt to our heroic, extremely moral military, whereas you and Sites apparently will not jump to that conclusion. That is where we differ. This is not a street fight in Brooklyn. This is an ugly war against some really bad monsters. Of course the marine was facing a life or death situation. If a branch to a tree moved, he should shoot it and ask questions later.

I know of Sites past reporting and some of it is commendable. However, this action was a very tragic and despicable error on his part and I do not want any other journalists to try to become heroes at our military’s expense. Frankly, if I ever run into Sites on the streets of Manhattan, I will personally kick the crap out of him for what he did to that marine. That is the justice I learned growing up on the streets of Brooklyn.

Remember, reporting a war in real time is in a completely different category than reporting on a political rally or factory opening. So lease do not give me this baloney about Sites honorable attempt to convey the truth. I know a ex-marine who captured a Nazi officer in the Dachau concentration camp at the end of WWII, and when the Nazi spit in his face, the soldier pulled out a revolver and shot him in the head. This was featured in a well known Steven Spielberg documentary called “The Final Days.”

Would you want to give this heroic African-American soldier who eventually became the Secretary of Education of the state of Massachusetts a trial and a prison term? Frankly, I would give him a medal, a dinner in his honor, a brand new Cadillac and a cruise to the Bahamas.

Irwin N. Graulich

President

Bloch Graulich Whelan Inc.

333 Park Avenue South

New York, NY 10010

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S&M, Meet MSM

A tardy discovery: There’s a new dirty word for people like me who have earned their living from the filthy advertising- and subscriber-derived dollars that support newspapers, magazine, television, radio, and online news sites. It used to be we were just lowlifes, practitioners of a sordid verbal form of sado-masochism. But now we’re MSM — mainstream media — as in MSM journalist. It’s not a complimentary term. Generally it denotes the dull, the slow-witted, the lazy, the dim defenders of the status quo (often to pursue secret liberal agendas; often just to lord it over and disrespect bloggers and anyone who’s not on the inside of the MSM world).

Go ahead, try Googling something like “MSM journalists.” Fascinating.