22 June 2006 @ 12:11PM >> It is now considered gospel among those opposed to the U.S. invasion of Iraq that “Bush lied” about Saddam Hussein’s weapons. That’s despite the fact that many prominent Democrats made the same claims during the Clinton Administration, and that virtually every other Western intelligence service believed Saddam was hiding such weapons. That’s despite the fact that Saddam Hussein himself discussed having those weapons, and that he felt the need to bribe French and U.N. officials during his cat-and-mouse game with U.N. weapons inspectors. That’s despite the fact that Saddam Hussein used those weapons before, and that’s even despite the fact, since the war started, that we’ve seen many bits of evidence that point to Iraq’s possession of WMDs.

No, despite all that, if your only source of information is the editorial page of The New York Times, you probably still believe that Saddam Hussein was an innocent man wrongly deposed by a bloodthirsty American president. You’ll probably also find ways to discount this latest report:

U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq have found about 500 chemical weapons since the March 2003 invasion, with more thought to exist, according to portions of an intelligence report made public yesterday.

“Since 2003, Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent,” said an overview of the report, which was declassified at the behest of Sen. Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania Republican, and Rep. Peter Hoekstra, Michigan Republican and head of the House intelligence committee.

“Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq’s pre-Gulf war chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf war chemical munitions are assessed to still exist,” according to the report.

Expect this story to pass in a couple of days without much further discussion. There’s simply no good angle for using it to criticize the war effort. The media that spent a decade covering up for Saddam Hussein has too much invested in the “Bush lied” storyline, and deviating from that storyline now would require one massive correction for the last three years of reporting.

21 June 2006 @ 5:57PM >> Last week, I posted some e-mails received in response to “Why Do They Hate Us?” Although those e-mails took issue with my article, it’s always refreshing to read an argument that is literate and informed, even if it is tinged with bit of condescension.

Unfortunately, most of the arguments that end up in my inbox don’t quite live up to that standard. Case in point, this note from an Australian e-mail account listed only as “LDupont2”:

Dear Mr. Coyne,

I read your article on Why do They hate us? and would wish to point out to you that they hate us because we are hypocrisy. The rest of the World used to look to the United States for leadership. I remember during Clinton leadership that yes I would gladly acquiesce to America being the leader of the free world Clinton was so statuesque so intelligent, so charismatic then he leaves office and what do you present me with a Bush cabal of mental midgets. Sadam as you know had no WMD yet our troops are locked in a battle to the death with the Iraqis and the Iranians are licking their lips. They hate us because we can no longer command their respect. Our soldiers like the Jews bomb people’s houses murder innocent women and children. They hate us because despite our 500lbs bombs we couldn’t even kill Zawquari. He lived long enough to embrace death and his martydom 52 minutes and the cause of his actual demise is arbituary

Thanks for that healthy round of hearty guffaws.

The fact that the United States was so respected during the Clinton Administration must explain all these terrorist attacks that didn’t happen during his presidency.

22 April 2006 @ 2:57PM >> Jonah Goldberg of National Review proposes an interesting idea: “Why not let the Iraqis have a referendum on whether US forces should stay?”

Goldberg then lists a number of reasons why such a move would be beneficial:

The formation of the government is the last major political benchmark for the Iraqis, and it’s not going well. Sectarian feelings have hardened and there are few events left that can foster a sense of national unity. But a national referendum on whether Americans should stay would be exactly that.

If Iraqis vote yes on continuing America’s presence — which I think they would — the Iraqi people will feel more “bought-in” to America’s project.

It will once again signal that America is on the side of democracy while many of its opponents are not.

It will (further) pull anti-American elements into the electoral process.

It will take the burden off the new government of seeming like a lap dog to the gringos. The president and prime minister can say “I’m bowing to the will of the people” or “this issue has been settled by the people already” whenever presented with that charge.

It would deflate the impact of the “occupiers” epithet against Americans.

It would send an important signal to opponents of the war in Europe and America about the nature of the project. Could Ted Kennedy really say this is a war for Bush’s ego or for oil with so much spittle if the Iraqi people poured into the polls to ask for America to stay?

It would help American troop morale.

It would take the heat off allies — current or future — when it comes to helping in the war effort.

It would marry Iraqi nationalism to democratic norms and force Iraqis to think very seriously about what their country would like if America left.

Even the American media would have to celebrate such an event.

It would further bind the next president — Democratic or Republican — to finishing the job in Iraq.

I think it’s a great idea, regardless of the outcome.

If Iraq asks the U.S. to leave, then Iraq takes immediate responsibility for its own security situation. While that could lead to short-term instability, the instability itself could push the Iraqis to a breaking point where they have to choose between complete chaos and resolving differences through the political processes that the U.S. helped erect. The choice between peace and civil war can only be made by the Iraqis themselves. But currently, the continued U.S. presence gives the Iraqi factions an excuse to avoid making that decision while the responsibility for security still rests largely on the U.S.

And if the Iraqis vote to keep the U.S. forces longer, the vote confers legitimacy on our presence there in a way that no external actor (like the U.N. or the E.U.) could do. It gives cover to us and to our allies, and it takes the argument off the table that “they don’t want us there in the first place.” American support for the war effort would increase as well, because the politicians and media elite demagoguing the issue would be putting forth a position—namely, that we shouldn’t be there—that the Iraqis voters themselves visibly rejected.

In either case, such a vote could be helpful, although in different ways.

18 April 2006 >> Independent online journalist Michael J. Totten took a recent trip to Kurdish Iraq with blogger Sean LaFreniere. Totten’s report is a fascinating read, and it is supplemented by many pictures—some of them quite eye-opening—of life in northern Iraq.

Combining the spirit of blogging with the economic model of public broadcasting—minus the taxpayer-funded subsidies—Totten is providing unique reports from around the middle east and financing it through reader contributions. I think his model represents the future of online reporting, and I hope it succeeds.

If you find his work valuable, please consider hitting the PayPal donation button at the end of his report.

29 March 2006 @ 1:42PM >> Saying the paper published a “fatally flawed” story on Abu Ghraib, New York Times public editor Byron Calame explains the problem:

The March 11 article profiled a man who said he was the hooded Abu Ghraib prisoner famously photographed about two years ago, standing on a box with wires attached to his extended hands. The article included an interview with the man, Ali Shalal Qaissi, a one-time neighborhood mayor under the government of Saddam Hussein and now a self-styled activist for prisoners’ rights in Iraq. He had been invoking that symbol of the torture at Abu Ghraib in helping to push lawsuits on behalf of the prisoners.

...so naturally, the Times bought his story.

It turned out that The Times had the wrong man. And clear evidence of the error had existed in an unnoticed 2004 Times story.

To the credit of The Times — and to the benefit of readers — editors did not allow the embarrassment to impede a timely and very open exploration of the mistake. When the online magazine Salon quickly disputed Mr. Qaissi’s story after the article ran in The Times, the paper immediately reported on the challenge on March 14 and promised its own investigation. In a front-page story published a week after the original article, The Times reviewed the mistaken identity and Mr. Qaissi’s life in recent years. And an extensive Editors’ Note the same day acknowledged the original article’s shortcomings.

This openness, however, didn’t involve fully exploring some journalistic practices that raised questions in my mind about the handling of the story.

Searching out what has already been published about a subject — “checking the clips” in newsroom parlance — is part of the blocking and tackling of journalism. When someone claiming to be the person behind such a powerful symbol is going to be displayed on Page 1 of The Times, extraordinary care is necessary. And the absence of any intense competitive or deadline pressure left time for extra care.

Is it possible that the story was “too good” to be fact-checked?

Although the initial reporting was sloppy, as Calame points out, the way the Times handled the scandal beyond that is commendable. Calame comes off as a straight-shooter, too. Hopefully his quality-control suggestions will be adopted. But without a competition of ideas and viewpoints inside the newsroom, these sorts of errors in reporting will continue. People tend to ignore the mistakes that further their own arguments, so if the newsroom is ideologically monolithic, the mistakes that favor the dominant ideology will likely continue.

Intellectual diversity can bring about a balance that helps keep everyone honest. If the Times really wants to improve its reporting, it doesn’t just need to perform more rigorous fact-checking, it needs to create a newsroom environment in which new perspectives challenge the most closely-held assumptions of the current employees.

20 March 2006 @ 10:25AM >> In the three years since the Iraq war started, 2,317 American military personnel have made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. In a war that’s constantly compared to Vietnam, it is quite illuminating to note that in a single month of fighting during the Vietnam war—May 1968—2,316 Americans lost their lives. Every soldier’s life is precious, and I generally recoil at treating people’s lives as mere statistics. But, since our media tries relentlessly to portray the Iraq war as today’s Vietnam, it is left to folks like me to provide the context that the establishment media leaves out.

Speaking of context, here’s a little more.

14 March 2006 @ 10:29AM >> The Washington Times reports that Saddam Hussein sure talked a lot about a weapons program he supposedly didn’t have:

Audiotapes of Saddam Hussein and his aides underscore the Bush administration’s argument that Baghdad was determined to rebuild its arsenal of weapons of mass destruction once the international community had tired of inspections and left the Iraqi dictator alone.

In addition to the captured tapes, U.S. officials are analyzing thousands of pages of newly translated Iraqi documents that tell of Saddam seeking uranium from Africa in the mid-1990s.

The documents also speak of burying prohibited missiles, according to a government official familiar with the declassification process.

[...]

“The tapes show that Saddam rebuilt his program and successfully prevented the U.N. from finding out about it,” he said.

There also exists a quote from the dictator himself, who ordered the tapings to keep a record of his inner-sanctum discussions, that Mr. Tierney thinks shows Saddam planned to use a proxy to attack the United States.

“Terrorism is coming ... with the Americans,” Saddam said. “With the Americans, two years ago, not a long while ago, with the English I believe, there was a campaign ... with one of them, that in the future there would be terrorism with weapons of mass destruction.”

[...]

So far, the tapes do not shed light on what ultimately happened to Saddam’s large stocks of weapons of mass destruction. None were found by the ISG, whose director, Charles Duelfer, filed a final report in 2004.

Some pundits and recently retired military officers are convinced that Saddam moved his remaining weapons to Syria. They cite satellite photos of lines of trucks heading into the neighboring country before the invasion and the fact Saddam positioned his trusted Iraqi Intelligence Service agents at border crossings.

This news reminds me of a little-noticed Chicago Tribune analysis released at the end of last year:

After reassessing the administration’s nine arguments for war, we do not see the conspiracy to mislead that many critics allege. Example: The accusation that Bush lied about Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs overlooks years of global intelligence warnings that, by February 2003, had convinced even French President Jacques Chirac of “the probable possession of weapons of mass destruction by an uncontrollable country, Iraq.” We also know that, as early as 1997, U.S. intel agencies began repeatedly warning the Clinton White House that Iraq, with fissile material from a foreign source, could have a crude nuclear bomb within a year.

4 February 2006 @ 2:38PM >> A little historical perspective:

President Lincoln had to try five different commanders before settling on Ulysses Grant, and even Grant stumbled many times on the way to victory. The Union Army suffered 390,000 dead in four years, with fully 29 percent of the men who served being killed or wounded in what some critics claimed was “an unnecessary war.”

World War II was a serial bloodbath. Battles like Iwo Jima, Anzio, Ardennes, and Okinawa each killed, in a matter of days and weeks, several times the number of soldiers we have lost in Iraq. Intelligence was wrong. Planning failed. Brutal collateral damage was done to civilian non-combatants. Soldiers were killed by friendly fire. POWs were sometimes executed. Military and civilian leaders miscalculated repeatedly. During WWII, 7 percent of our G.I.s were killed or wounded.

Korea was first lost before it could be re-taken, at great cost, and thanks to political interference the war ended in a fruitless stalemate. Fully 8 percent of the American soldiers who fought on the Korean peninsula were killed or wounded.

The Cold War spawned by President Roosevelt’s expedient alliance with Stalin and other communists brought totalitarian bleakness and death to millions, endless proxy wars that consumed hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of American and allied lives, and a near-nuclear exchange during President Kennedy’s watch.

Yet ugly as they were, each of the wars above eventually made the world a less bloody place by removing tyrants and transforming cultures. Those same goals drive our war against Middle Eastern extremism that is now centered in Iraq.

In Iraq, 4 percent of our soldiers have been killed or wounded. Those losses are lower than we suffered in nine previous wars. The Civil War, Mexican War, War of Independence, Korean War, WWI, WWII, Vietnam, and Philippine War were all half-again or more as costly as Iraq has been.

26 January 2006 @ 9:10AM >> Saddam Hussein:

[L]awyers for Saddam Hussein Wednesday distributed copies of a lawsuit against President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair for destroying Iraq.

25 January 2006 >> This seems to dispel the notion that Afghanistan or Iraq could rightly be considered a quagmire:

Iraqis and Afghans are among the most optimistic people in the world when it comes to their economic future, a new survey for the BBC suggests.

[...]

In Afghanistan, 70% say their own circumstances are improving, and 57% believe that the country overall is on the way up.

In Iraq, 65% believe their personal life is getting better, and 56% are upbeat about the country’s economy.

People aren’t going to be optimistic about their economic future if their country is sliding into chaos. They’re going to be optimistic if they’re noticing improvements. So it seems interesting to note that we Americans—informed by our media yet thousands of miles away—are far more pessimistic about Afghanistan and Iraq than the people who actually live there.

2 January 2006 @ 1:26PM >> In times past, the valor of our men and women in uniform was worthy of coverage from the establishment media. Nowadays, the media rarely notices our soldiers unless they can be added to the death count. Leave it to the blogosphere to cover the stories that the establishment media ignores. The website Riehl World View presents 2005: The Year in Military Heroism.

22 December 2005 @ 2:17PM >> The rhetoric of Saddam Hussein is converging with that of the Democratic Party and the anti-war left, as he criticized President Bush as “the number one liar in the world.”

He is also accusing the U.S. of torturing him while in prison, although given how he and his former henchmen now define brutality, his idea of torture may simply consist of not having enough salt with his meals.

It’s too bad he wasn’t so sensitive to mistreatment while he was in power, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis might still be alive.

16 December 2005 @ 10:17AM >> The optimistic anticipation of the Iraqi people was detected by polling in the days before the election:

Interviewers found that 71% of [Iraqis] questioned said things were currently very or quite good in their personal lives, while 29% found their lives very or quite bad.

When asked whether their lives would improve in the coming year, 64% said things would be better and 12% said they expected things to be worse.

American soldiers are similarly upbeat about Iraq’s prospects:

When I told people that I was getting ready to head back to Iraq for my third tour, the usual response was a frown, a somber head shake and even the occasional “I’m sorry.” When I told them that I was glad to be going back, the response was awkward disbelief, a fake smile and a change of subject. The common wisdom seems to be that Iraq is an unwinnable war and a quagmire and that the only thing left to decide is how quickly we withdraw. Depending on which poll you believe, about 60 percent of Americans think it’s time to pull out of Iraq.

How is it, then, that 64 percent of U.S. military officers think we will succeed if we are allowed to continue our work? Why is there such a dramatic divergence between American public opinion and the upbeat assessment of the men and women doing the fighting?

[...]

We know the streets, the people and the insurgents far better than any armchair academic or talking head. As military professionals, we are trained to gauge the chances of success and failure, to calculate risk and reward. We have little to gain from our optimism and quite a bit to lose as we leave our families over and over again to face danger and deprivation for an increasingly unpopular cause. We know that there are no guarantees in war, and that we may well fail in the long run. We also know that if we follow our current plan we can, over time, leave behind a stable and unified country that might help to anchor a better future for the Middle East.

One factor contributing to this optimism may be the growing marginalization of terrorists within Iraq:

In a move unthinkable in the bloody run-up to the last election, guerrillas in the western insurgent heartland of Anbar province say they are even prepared to protect voting stations from fighters loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq.

Graffiti calling for holy war is now hard to find.

[...]

The shift is encouraging for Washington, which hopes to draw Sunni Arabs into peaceful politics in order to defuse the insurgency.

Far from our actions creating more terrorists, as some argue, it appears that the terrorists are creating more people eager to support democracy. Whatever the outcome of yesterday’s elections, Iraqis and the chances for democracy and peace are the big winners. For the third time in a year, facing the prospect of death, Iraqis turned out to vote in far higher proportions than we Americans do. Some might even say that Iraq, like most societies still in the process of cleansing the bloodstains of tyranny, savors the promise of freedom and democracy far more than we do. We’ve had 219 years to become complacent about liberty, whereas the scars of the Saddam regime are still visible, quite literally, on the Iraqi people.

Arab News looks at the elections and declares them “a vote for peace”:

It was the voice of the Iraqi people that was being heard yesterday, not the bomb blasts of the terrorists. What little violence there was as millions crowded toward their local polling stations only served to demonstrate how incoherent and pointless are the efforts of the men of violence to change the country through further bloodshed.

[V]irtually every voter who was asked agreed that this was a momentous day, which well deserved the often party-like atmosphere that gripped the heavily patrolled, traffic-free streets. Time and again Iraqis told inquiring journalists that this was the moment when they took control of their country, the beginning of the end of the US-led occupation and — though this was generally voiced more cautiously — the beginning of the end of insurgent violence.

Meanwhile, the editorial pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post, which rarely miss a chance to declare Iraq a complete failure, couldn’t be bothered to say anything about the Iraqi elections. James Taranto notes a contradiction in the media coverage of Iraq:

There is an interesting disconnect in the U.S. media, and it goes beyond the usual complaints of pessimism or hostility to the American war effort. Go back and look at the transcript of NBC’s “Meet the Press” for Nov. 27, which we noted the next day—and in particular the journalist roundtable, which features five senior Washington journalists, all of whom seem to agree that democracy in Iraq is a dead letter. The only mention of Iraq’s then-forthcoming election was in a setup quote from the White House press secretary. To hear the journos talk, it was as if they hadn’t even heard that Iraqis were going to the polls.

And yet the producers at CNN and Fox appear to have regarded a genuine election in Iraq as such a routine event that it didn’t merit continuous live coverage. (Both stations did break into the recorded fare for occasional live updates.) It’s quite a striking indication of just how out of touch with the outside world are those within the Beltway media bubble.

The media pessimism can’t last forever. Eventually, people will recognize the truth about Iraq. In the meantime, though, large portions of the media and many politicians are setting themselves up for future irrelevance. What happens if you spend years declaring Iraq a disaster and it turns out not to be? What happens when you continually tell voters that we have no hope of winning and we do? Fear of success more than fear of failure may be driving the recent calls for an early departure from Iraq. After all, with each passing day there is less of a chance to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And if we succeed in our mission in Iraq, there are going to be a lot of people whose credibility is utterly destroyed. Luckily for them, credibility is not a requirement for employment in politics or the media.

It’s still far too early to declare Iraq a complete victory, but given the tremendous progress that the country has made in less than three years, how anyone could possibly claim Iraq is a lost cause is beyond me. By what measure is Iraq is a disaster? Compared to what war is Iraq a failure? Anyone with a passing knowledge of history knows that every war will have its setbacks. There were many times during the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II, for example, when the eventual victors looked certain to lose. Compared to most wars in history, what has been achieved in Iraq to date can only be considered a stunning success. We’re helping the Iraqis build a republic. Let’s hope they can keep it.

12 December 2005 @ 10:40AM >> The governing body of the Palestinian territories has authorized a plan to encourage terrorism by making routine payments to the families of suicide bombers.

Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas recently signed the new law:

Under the new law, the terrorist’s family will be paid a base sum of $250 per month. The law takes into account extended family arrangements commonplace in Arab societies. The families of married terrorists are entitled to an additional $50 per month, and $15 are added for each child, $25 for each parent, and $15 for each brother who lived with the terrorist prior to his death.

The monies, to be paid out of the general budget of the Palestinian Authority, are significant sums for average Arab families living in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.

No word yet on when the Palestinian Authority plans of make similar payments to the families of victims of those suicide bombers.

This scheme reminds me of Saddam Hussein’s old policy of making lump-sum payments of $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers who strike outside Iraq. Of course, as we all know now, Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with terrorism.

The article also notes that “[t]he budget of the Palestinian Authority is largely subsidized by grants from European nations and the United States.” So, in effect, American and European taxpayers are rewarding terrorism by ensuring that the families of suicide bombers are well taken care of. Yet another example of government money well-spent!

9 December 2005 @ 3:57PM >> Just a few days after Saddam Hussein exposed the brutality he faces in US custody comes word that the imperialist American warmongers are victimizing even more innocent Iraqis:

Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam’s former intelligence chief and one of his most feared sidekicks, also said the food was bad and he was not given blankets. He lost 18 kilos in just two months in captivity, he complained.

“We were detained by one of the wealthiest countries in the world, yet it was only after four months in detention that they gave me cigarettes,” said Barzan, charged with crimes against humanity.

“And then they were of the worst quality in the world.”

We gave him cigarettes? What are we trying to do, kill him? What’s the point of even fighting the so-called “War on Terror” if we’ve become just as barbaric and inhumane as the supposed terrorists we’re trying to defeat?

6 December 2005 @ 1:47PM >> Shed a tear for Saddam Hussein, the latest victim of American terrorism (emphasis mine):

Saddam Hussein shouted Tuesday that he will not return “to an unjust court” when it convenes for the fifth session of his trial Wednesday. As the end of the session, when the judges decided to hold a session Wednesday, Saddam suddenly shouted: “I will not return. I will not come to an unjust court! Go to hell!” Saddam also complained that he had no fresh clothes and had been deprived of shower and exercise facilities. “This is terrorism,” he said.

In a world where the humiliations of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay are considered torture, it only makes sense that dirty clothes constitute terrorism. Still, terror victim Saddam looks like he’s doing much better than when he was pulled from the rathole.

29 November 2005 @ 10:21AM >> When a Democratic politician argues that we should leave Iraq, it gets front page treatment. After Democratic Representative John (”Jack”) Murtha recently called for an immediate pullout in Iraq, it was the top news item for several news cycles. But in order to spin Murtha’s position as a major defection from the ranks of the war supporters, the media had to overlook his comment in the spring of 2004 calling the war “unwinnable.” If we can assume he didn’t support the war when he made that statement—politicians usually don’t go on record supporting unwinnable wars—then Murtha’s call for a pullout is a stunning example of non-news dominating the headlines for days.

An old adage about media coverage stipulates, “When dog bites man, it’s not news. When man bites dog, that’s news.” But Democrats maligning the war effort has been dog-bites-man non-news for a couple of years now. Yet whenever it happens, it seems to get top billing in each news cycle.

Now, if you really want news of the dog-bites-man variety, there is at least one Democratic politician of national stature who can still articulate a compelling reason for finishing the job in Iraq. You may remember him; in 2000, he was the Democrats’ nominee for Vice President. That’s right, Joe Lieberman (emphasis mine):

I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real progress there. More work needs to be done, of course, but the Iraqi people are in reach of a watershed transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood—unless the great American military that has given them and us this unexpected opportunity is prematurely withdrawn.

Progress is visible and practical. In the Kurdish North, there is continuing security and growing prosperity. The primarily Shiite South remains largely free of terrorism, receives much more electric power and other public services than it did under Saddam, and is experiencing greater economic activity. The Sunni triangle, geographically defined by Baghdad to the east, Tikrit to the north and Ramadi to the west, is where most of the terrorist enemy attacks occur. And yet here, too, there is progress.

[...]

It is a war between 27 million and 10,000; 27 million Iraqis who want to live lives of freedom, opportunity and prosperity and roughly 10,000 terrorists who are either Saddam revanchists, Iraqi Islamic extremists or al Qaeda foreign fighters who know their wretched causes will be set back if Iraq becomes free and modern. The terrorists are intent on stopping this by instigating a civil war to produce the chaos that will allow Iraq to replace Afghanistan as the base for their fanatical war-making. We are fighting on the side of the 27 million because the outcome of this war is critically important to the security and freedom of America. If the terrorists win, they will be emboldened to strike us directly again and to further undermine the growing stability and progress in the Middle East, which has long been a major American national and economic security priority.

[...]

In the face of terrorist threats and escalating violence, eight million Iraqis voted for their interim national government in January, almost 10 million participated in the referendum on their new constitution in October, and even more than that are expected to vote in the elections for a full-term government on Dec. 15. Every time the 27 million Iraqis have been given the chance since Saddam was overthrown, they have voted for self-government and hope over the violence and hatred the 10,000 terrorists offer them. Most encouraging has been the behavior of the Sunni community, which, when disappointed by the proposed constitution, registered to vote and went to the polls instead of taking up arms and going to the streets. Last week, I was thrilled to see a vigorous political campaign, and a large number of independent television stations and newspapers covering it.

None of these remarkable changes would have happened without the coalition forces led by the U.S. And, I am convinced, almost all of the progress in Iraq and throughout the Middle East will be lost if those forces are withdrawn faster than the Iraqi military is capable of securing the country.

The leaders of Iraq’s duly elected government understand this, and they asked me for reassurance about America’s commitment. The question is whether the American people and enough of their representatives in Congress from both parties understand this. I am disappointed by Democrats who are more focused on how President Bush took America into the war in Iraq almost three years ago, and by Republicans who are more worried about whether the war will bring them down in next November’s elections, than they are concerned about how we continue the progress in Iraq in the months and years ahead.

Here is an ironic finding I brought back from Iraq. While U.S. public opinion polls show serious declines in support for the war and increasing pessimism about how it will end, polls conducted by Iraqis for Iraqi universities show increasing optimism. Two-thirds say they are better off than they were under Saddam, and a resounding 82% are confident their lives in Iraq will be better a year from now than they are today. What a colossal mistake it would be for America’s bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory.

If only there were more Democrats with the backbone on Senator Lieberman. Unfortunately, politicians live off publicity, and Democratic politicians know the way to get on the news is to trash the war effort. Because it doesn’t fit the model of the story the media wants to report, Lieberman’s man-bites-dog stance on the war isn’t going to get any attention. But some things—like security for our nation and freedom for the 27 million people of Iraq—are a little more important than winning the next election or getting your mug on the nightly news. It might be hard for this nation of cynics to believe, but there was a time when politicians put their own ambitions behind the best interests of the country. Will that ever happen again?

21 November 2005 @ 12:57PM >> Slowly but surely, the corruption of French and U.N. officials is being exposed:

One of France’s most distinguished diplomats has confessed to an investigating judge that he accepted oil allocations from Saddam Hussein [...]

Jean-Bernard Merimee is thought to be the first senior figure to admit his role in the oil-for-food scandal, a United Nations humanitarian aid scheme hijacked by Saddam to buy influence.

The Frenchman, who holds the title “ambassador for life”, told authorities that he regretted taking payments amounting to $156,000 [...]

The money was used to renovate a holiday home he owned in southern Morocco. At the time, Mr Merimee was a special adviser to Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general.

[...]

The ambassador said the French authorities had known of his every move. France has been gravely embarrassed by oil-for-food allegations against senior figures, including Charles Pasqua, the former interior minister. He has denied receiving any benefit from the oil allocations issued in his name.

Inquiries have also found that French firms benefited disproportionately from oil-for-food contracts as part of an Iraqi policy to influence French votes on the UN Security Council.

11 November 2005 >> Former news producer Mary Mapes is still defiant.

Shortly before last fall’s election, Mapes was forced to resign in disgrace from CBS News after she and Dan Rather were caught peddling bogus memos intended to hurt President Bush’s chances for re-election. But Mapes still can’t figure out why people questioned her reporting:

In her first television interview since the National Guard story, Mapes sat with ABC’s Brian Ross to talk about the events surrounding the story and her book. She defended the story and asserted, “I think I’m somebody who got fired for trying to do their job in a difficult atmosphere,” adding, “I don’t think I committed bad journalism. I really don’t.”

Ross asked Mapes if she still believed the story on President Bush’s National Guard service was true and she answered, “absolutely.” She said of the Killian memos, which were used to validate the story before their authenticity came under intense scrutiny, that they have not proven to be inauthentic, adding, “I’m perfectly willing to believe those documents are forgeries if there’s proof I haven’t seen.” Ross asked Mapes if the standard ought not to have been for her to prove their authenticity, to which she responded, “I don’t think that’s the standard.”

Mapes assumes everything she sees is true, assuming it fits with her preconceived political notions. Apparently, she’s not alone in the media these days.

Many media outlets have breathlessly reported the charges of Jimmy Massey, a former Marine who became a prominent peace activist after witnessing what he says were war atrocities in Iraq. Problem is, none of the reporters who repeated his accusations ever bothered to check them out. And now that Massey’s been exposed as a fraud, it leaves a bunch of credulous reporters with egg on their faces:

For more than a year, former Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey has been telling anybody who will listen about the atrocities that he and other Marines committed in Iraq.

In scores of newspaper, magazine and broadcast stories, at a Canadian immigration hearing and in numerous speeches across the country, Massey has told how he and other Marines recklessly, sometimes intentionally, killed dozens of innocent Iraqi civilians.

[...]

Each of his claims is either demonstrably false or exaggerated - according to his fellow Marines, Massey’s own admissions, and the five journalists who were embedded with Massey’s unit, including a reporter and photographer from the Post-Dispatch and reporters from The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:

Editors at some papers look back at the Massey articles and are surprised that they ran them without examining whether the claims were true or without ever asking the Marine Corps about them.

“I’m looking at the story and going, ‘Why, why would we have run this without getting another side of the story?’” said Lois Wilson, managing editor of the Star Gazette in Elmira, N.Y.

David Holwerk, editorial page editor for The Sacramento Bee, said he thought the newspaper handled its story, a question and answer interview with Massey, poorly.

“I feel fairly confident that we did not subject this to the rigorous scrutiny that we should have or to which we would subject it today,” he said.

Rex Smith, editor of the Albany (N.Y.) Times Union, said he thought the newspaper’s story about Massey could have “benefited from some additional reporting.” But he didn’t necessarily see anything particularly at odds with standard journalism practices.

[...]

“You could take any day’s newspaper and probably pick out a half dozen or more stories that ought to be subjected to a more rigorous truth test,” he said.

“Yes, it would have been much better if we had the other side. But all I’m saying is that this is unfortunately something that happens every day in our newspapers and with practically every story on television.”

7 November 2005 >> Before Corporal Jeffrey B. Starr was killed in Iraq, he left a note on his laptop to be read by loved ones in the event of his death. Last week, The New York Times found itself embroiled in controversy after the paper was caught selectively editing Starr’s letter to remove any mention of his support for the war effort. Now, Starr’s surviving girlfriend Emmylyn Anonical is blasting the paper, saying that she was “upset about what they took out of that letter”:

In her first public comments since the letter scandal erupted, Anonical told The [New York] Post that going public with the private letter was one of the hardest decisions of her life.

Seeing it used by the Times to misrepresent her boyfriend’s beliefs about the war stung deeply, she said.

“The reason I chose to share that letter was the paragraph about why he was doing this, not the part about him expecting to die. It hurt, it really hurt,” she said by phone from Seattle.

The fallen Marine’s family and conservative critics are now accusing the “paper of record” of inserting its anti-war stance into news pages.

Starr’s uncle, Timothy Lickness, told MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough that the family’s reaction to the Times and its editing “was not so much anger as it was disappointment.” Apparently, even before this incident, the Times was not held in high regard by the family. “[T]his being the story in the Times, I don’t think anybody is all that surprised,” Lickness said. He’s now waiting to hear back from the paper:

We really are not a bitter family. We are not a family that holds grudges. We want to honor Jeffrey, and so we wanted the rest of his story to be told. I did write to the Times, and I asked them, I thought very politely, if they would run the rest of the story. I did not get a reply.

Meanwhile, in the context of a hard-to-locate correction from Times columnist Nick Kristof, Mickey Kaus discovers another possible explanation for the paper’s decision to hide some content behind the $50-a-year firewall known as TimesSelect. It turns out that TimesSelect is the new dumping ground for corrections that the paper would rather not print:

Kristof may have hit on the marketing breakthrough that will save TimesSelect. Call it TruthSelect. Here’s the plan: Have the op-ed columns in the print edition contain flagrant inaccuracies. Figure out what the factual version of events is, but print the corrected, accurate version only on the restricted, premium portion of the Web site, where people have to pay $49.95 to get at it. The B.S. is free. The truth you have to pay for! It’s so simple and intuitive it’s genius.

3 November 2005 @ 10:05AM >> When you turn on the news or open the paper for reporting from Iraq, what do you see? These days, news coverage is little more than a recitation of the latest casualty reports on our side. One solider was killed by a roadside bomb. Another soldier was killed in a helicopter crash. Do you ever wonder what these soldiers were doing while they were alive? You’ll rarely hear that. Are you ever curious about any of our military operations? If we still had the media of World War II, you might actually learn something beyond the latest death count. But today’s media can’t be bothered with that.

And how about the political progress in Iraq? There have been two historic national elections, one to fill a parliament, and another to ratify the country’s new constitution. Iraqis literally risked death just to vote, and they still had higher turnout than American elections do. Yet I saw more media coverage of long lines at polling places in Ohio than these two Iraqi elections combined. It’s pretty damn remarkable that a country went from a brutal dictatorship to a struggling but hopeful democracy in two years. So why aren’t we hearing more about it?

Whether it’s bias, laziness, incompetence, or just a fascination with the bloody, if you get all of your news from the establishment media, you’re getting a pretty skewed vision of the new Iraq. Many people have noticed this for a long time, soldiers especially. Recently, CNN interviewed one soldier who gave a critique on the media’s coverage:

[I]t is kind of disheartening sometimes to see everything focused on just the, the death and destruction and the IED strikes and not focused on how well the U.S. and coalition forces are doing building up the Iraqi police services and the Iraqi army. It really is a tremendous effort being put into that infrastructure and building a self-sufficient government over there. And they’re absolutely making progress.

But you almost never see that progress covered. Instead, you see the exact same story—with a few variables changed—repeated over and over.

The media’s decisions about what to cover and not cover are made by a handful of people in New York and Washington, DC. If they all share similar views, that may explain why virtually all coverage of Iraq is identical: the latest death count, and little more. It’s been this way for so long that even journalism students are beginning to notice. In the Columbia Journalism Review, certainly no bastion of neo-conservatism, one columnist questions the state of Iraq reporting:

[T]he 2,000th military death in Iraq happened to fall on exactly the same day as the Iraqi constitution was officially passed. The constitution story, though appearing on many front pages, paled in placement and headline size to the 2,000-death story, with many papers boldfacing and enlarging the number “2,000,” so that it eclipsed any other nearby story. As one would expect, conservative critics jumped at this as further proof that, once again, the liberal media was trumpeting the bad news and suppressing the good news.

The columnist did a quick search and found that “[i]n the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times there was just one story each about the constitution passing. Whereas the 2,000 deaths story inspired three to four stories and a couple op-eds and editorials per paper.”

In my mind, every soldier who dies is significant. The first, the fiftieth, and the five-hundredth death are equally worthy of our sorrow and our gratitude that some people are willing to sacrifice their lives for others. But the 2,000th death is a story only because we happen to use a base-10 counting system. Is one number a bigger story than another because it has a few zeros on the end? Is it a big enough story to eclipse something as historic as a freed people voting themselves a new constitution?

In the media’s reporting, the storyline for each event in Iraq is set even before it happens. To the small clique of media bigwigs who make these decisions, negative stories get prominence and virtually everything else gets ignored. So what happens when reality doesn’t quite fit the predetermined model? Well, that’s just a minor inconvenience that can be fixed with a little selective editing. Take, for example, The New York Times and its body count watch for the 2,000th soldier killed in Iraq. The Times coverage mentioned Corporal Jeffrey B. Starr, who died earlier this year on Memorial Day. Starr left a note for his loved ones to be read in the event of his death. Here’s some of what he wrote:

Obviously if you are reading this then I have died in Iraq. I kind of predicted this, that is why I’m writing this in November. A third time just seemed like I’m pushing my chances. I don’t regret going, everybody dies but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, it’s not to me. I’m here helping these people, so that they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark.

Here’s how the Times reported Starr’s statement:

Sifting through Cpl. Starr’s laptop computer after his death, his father found a letter to be delivered to the Marine’s girlfriend. “I kind of predicted this,” Cpl. Starr wrote of his own death. “A third time just seemed like I’m pushing my chances.”

Starr’s words posed a problem for the predetermined storyline, so the Times just left most of them out. That’s how a statement in support of the operations in Iraq became a simple fatalistic prediction of death. And that’s far from the first time the Times has shaped quotes to fit its worldview.

So what does this all mean? For now, it means that the media’s artificially negative portrayal of Iraq is sapping U.S. support for the war. But in the long run, it’s proof that the establishment media is willing to destroy itself in the process of furthering a political agenda. The media’s only real asset is their credibility, and they’re pimping out that credibility every time they try to jam current reality into a Vietnam-era model of the world.

Psychologically, it is understandable. The media has never been as powerful as it was when it turned the nation against the Vietnam war. Some people have a hard time letting go of their glory days. But for an industry that’s already in decline, selling a product with so many obvious flaws makes about as much sense as shooting yourself in the head while you’re jumping off a skyscraper.

---

(Correction: An earlier version of this post erroneously referred to Corporal Jeffrey B. Starr as the 2,000th U.S. soldier who died in Iraq. His profile was included in New York Times coverage of the 2,000 mark, but was not himself the 2,000th soldier killed.)

2 November 2005 @ 7:08AM >> Professor Glenn Reynolds gives a history lesson to the apparent amnesiac who leads the Democrats in the Senate.

I tried performing a similar educational service nearly two years ago, to little avail. I guess it takes a while for facts to sink in.

26 August 2005 @ 6:16PM >> Many have grown bored with the predictable reporting from the establishment media. It’s simply a running count of deaths—unless, of course, it’s the enemy that dies, in which case you never hear about it.

For a good example of what real war reporting looks like, you must look outside the major media. This is the kind of reporting that occurred in World War II—and rarely since, it seems.

26 August 2005 @ 6:09PM >> Jack Kelly reports:

Colonel Thomas Spoehr is annoyed with New York Times reporter Michael Moss, for what I think is a good reason.

The story is a good example of how The New York Times manufactures bad news from Iraq.

24 August 2005 >> The media is taking great pains to paint the Iraqi constitution as a major failure because Islam is mentioned as the country’s religion. Alenda Lux notes that the Afghani constitution contains similar phrasing:

Could someone let me know where to find the Post or Times article predicting the descent of the Dark Ages on Afghanistan because of the provisions in their Constitution?

Yet, almost two years later, Hamid Karzai is still President, no Islamic Revolution, record numbers of women are registering to vote and registering to run for the Wolesi Jirga, for which there is a provision stating that a minimum required number of seats that must go to women. The only threats to women come from the neo-Taliban. All ethnic groups have equal rights under the Constitution, and a draft for the new national anthem came out last week, the text of which symbolizes the equality of the different ethnic groups. (And Afghanistan is FAR more ethnically diverse than is Iraq.)

Meanwhile, Instapundit gathered a good collection of links with commentary on the new Iraqi constitution and notes:

My own sense is that this stuff isn’t as important as we like to make it. Americans are unusually legalistic and unusually focused on constitutions. But plenty of constitutions have wonderful language on paper (the old Soviet constitution was great that way) and plenty of countries (Britain, for example) manage to get by without written constitutions at all. What matters more is political culture. If the Iraqi people want a free, prosperous country and are willing to work for it, they’ll get that. If they don’t, or aren’t, then they won’t.

17 August 2005 @ 12:37PM >> NBC morning news man Matt Lauer, on the receiving end of a soldier’s wisdom.

1 August 2005 >> This is the sort of story that should be on the evening news:

Sheik Horn floats around the room in white robe and headdress, exchanging pleasantries with dozens of village leaders.

But he is the only sheik with blonde streaks in his mustache - and the only one who attended country music star Toby Keith’s recent concert in Baghdad with fellow U.S. soldiers.

Officially, he is Army Staff Sgt. Dale L. Horn, but to residents of the 37 villages and towns that he patrols he is known as the American sheik.

[...]

Horn, 25, a native of Fort Walton Beach, Fla., acknowledges he had little interest in the region before coming here. But a local sheik friendly to U.S. forces, Mohammed Ismail Ahmed, explained the inner workings of rural Iraqi society on one of Horn’s first Humvee patrols.

Horn says he was intrigued, and started making a point of stopping by all the villages, all but one dominated by Sunni Arabs, to talk to people about their life and security problems.

Moreover, he pressed for development projects in the area: he now boasts that he helped funnel $136,000 worth of aid into the area. Part of that paid for delivery of clean water to 30 villages during the broiling summer months.

Mohammed, Horn’s mentor, eventually suggested during a meeting of village leaders that Horn be named a sheik.

Some sheiks later gave him five sheep and a postage stamp of land, fulfilling some of the requirements for sheikdom. Others encouraged him to start looking for a second wife, which Horn’s spouse back in Florida immediately vetoed.

19 July 2005 @ 11:11AM >> Item 1:

[Brigadier General Jay] Hood was briefing the subcommittee on one particular terrorist detainee [who] had lost his leg. During his stay at Guantanamo, American military doctors provided him—at taxpayer expense—with a modern prosthetic leg, Hood said. A subsequent review of his status resulted in the decision to release him from American custody.

Hood told the subcommittee that this terrorist has since rejoined the fight with his jihadist brothers in Afghanistan.

Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), chairing the hearing, revealed some of his outrage at that fact with biting sarcasm.

“Has he reported back from the battlefield against Americans how well the leg we provided him with works?”

Item 2:

During a routine patrol in Baghdad June 2, Army Pfc. Stephen Tschiderer, a medic, was shot in the chest by an enemy sniper, hiding in a van just 75 yards away. The incident was filmed by the insurgents.

Tschiderer [...] was knocked to the ground from the impact, but he popped right back up, took cover and located the enemy’s position.

After tracking down the now-wounded sniper with a team from [the] Iraqi Army Brigade, Tschiderer secured the terrorist with a pair of handcuffs and gave medical aid to the terrorist who’d tried to kill him just minutes before.

(Emphasis mine.)

6 July 2005 @ 5:32PM >> In an article entitled “US delight as Iraqi rebels turn their guns on al-Qa’eda”, the Telegraph (London) reports that a split is developing between al Qaeda and native Iraqi insurgents:

American troops on the Syrian border are enjoying a battle they have long waited to see - a clash between foreign al-Qa’eda fighters and Iraqi insurgents.

Tribal leaders in Husaybah are attacking followers of Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born terrorist who established the town as an entry point for al-Qa’eda jihadists being smuggled into the country.

The reason, the US military believes, is frustration at the heavy-handed approach of the foreigners, who have kidnapped and assassinated local leaders and imposed a strict Islamic code.

[...]

Shops selling music and satellite dishes had been closed. Women were ordered to wear all-enveloping clothing and men forbidden from wearing western clothes.

The native Iraqi insurgency is largely a nationalist movement, mostly remnants of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. They originally accepted support from al Qaeda because they both had a common enemy: the United States.

Throughout the war, towns on Iraq’s western border have been a haven for al Qaeda elements entering through neighboring Syria. Initially, the foreign fighters were welcomed by the Iraqi insurgents. But now, after growing weary of living in al Qaeda’s vision for an Islamist dictatorship, the nationalist insurgents have begun to turn their guns away from the U.S. and towards al Qaeda:

Fighting, which could be clearly heard at night over the weekend, first broke out in May when as many as 50 mortar rounds were fired across the city. But, to the surprise of the American garrison, this time it was not the target.

If a shell landed near the US base, “they’d adjust their fire and not shoot at us”, Lt Col Tim Mundy said. “They shot at each other.”

[...]

Arkan Salim, 56, who left with his wife and four children, said: “We thought they were patriotic. Now we discovered that they are sick and crazy.

“They interfered in everything, even how we raise our children. They turned the city into hell, and we cannot live in it anymore.”

Let’s hope this rift widens. Many native Iraqi insurgents are Sunni Arabs who took up arms in an effort to restore the dictatorship of fellow Sunni Saddam Hussein. The Sunnis, a minority in Iraq, benefitted disproportionately from Hussein’s rule, and therefore may fear diminished status in any representative government. Still, if they come to realize that their role in a democracy will still be more pleasing than subjugation to radical Islam, they may end up embracing the new Iraqi government in an alliance to push out the Islamists.

3 June 2005 @ 9:03AM >> Wait a minute...I thought Iraq had no WMD capabilities:

U.N. satellite imagery experts have determined that material that could be used to make biological or chemical weapons and banned long-range missiles has been removed from 109 sites in Iraq, U.N. weapons inspectors said in a report obtained Thursday.

U.N. inspectors have been blocked from returning to Iraq since the U.S.-led war in 2003 so they have been using satellite photos to see what happened to the sites that were subject to U.N. monitoring because their equipment had both civilian and military uses.

In the report to the U.N. Security Council, acting chief weapons inspector Demetrius Perricos said he’s reached no conclusions about who removed the items or where they went. He said it could have been moved elsewhere in Iraq, sold as scrap, melted down or purchased.

He said the missing material can be used for legitimate purposes. “However, they can also be utilized for prohibited purposes if in a good state of repair.”

He said imagery analysts have identified 109 sites that have been emptied of equipment to varying degrees, up from 90 reported in March.

The report also provided much more detail about the percentage of items no longer at the places where U.N. inspectors monitored them.

From the imagery analysis, Perricos said analysts at the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission which he heads have concluded that biological sites were less damaged than chemical and missile sites.

The commission, known as UNMOVIC, previously reported the discovery of some equipment and material from the sites in scrapyards in Jordan and the Dutch port of Rotterdam.

Perricos said analysts found, for example, that 53 of the 98 vessels that could be used for a wide range of chemical reactions had disappeared. “Due to its characteristics, this equipment can be used for the production of both commercial chemicals and chemical warfare agents,” he said.

The existence of this much “dual use” equipment—combined with the cat-and-mouse games played by Saddam Hussein whenever the weapons inspectors were in Iraq—means that we would have had to take Hussein at his word that nothing nefarious was going on. That begs the question: how much trust should we have put in Saddam Hussein?

This story also sets up a new twisted-logic opportunity for the perpetual critics of the United States. On the one hand, the fact that the equipment is dual-use means that they can still claim that Saddam Hussein had no WMD program. At the same time, they can complain the United States failed to secure this dangerous equipment after the invasion. (Of course, this assumes that we didn’t move it ourselves, which the U.N. would have no way of knowing.) By this reasoning, the equipment was completely innocuous until the day the U.S. invaded, at which point it became very dangerous. This allows the Saddam-was-never-a-threat argument to conveniently coexist with the United-States-is-completely-negligent argument. Everybody wins!