Are we getting the whole story out of Iraq? Will we ever? Is the deck stacked against us? Consider the following:

''I have a confession,'' wrote Salon Executive Editor Gary Kamiya on April 10. ''I have at times, as the war has unfolded, secretly wished for things to go wrong. Wished for the Iraqis to be more nationalistic, to resist longer. Wished for the Arab world to rise up in rage. Wished for all the things we feared would happen. I'm not alone: A number of serious, intelligent, morally sensitive people who oppose the war have told me they have identical feelings.''

Or take Jonathan Schell, writing in the Sept. 22 issue of the Nation: ''[Democratic Senator Joe] Biden says we must win the war. This is precisely wrong. The United States must learn to lose this war a harder task, in many ways, than winning, for it requires admitting mistakes and relinquishing attractive fantasies. This is the true moral mission of our time.''

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who recently described US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as ''the man who trashed two countries''. Paul Krugman who, as Iraqis were still celebrating their freedom on April 11, could only sniff: ''I won't pretend to have any insights into what is going on in the minds of the Iraqi people. But there is a pattern in the Bush administration's way of doing business that does not bode well for the future.

And in France, Mathieu Lindon, a journalist writing in Liberation, described the mood of his colleagues: ''We are very interested in American deaths in Iraq .... We will never admit it, [but] every American soldier killed in Iraq causes, if not happiness, at least a certain satisfaction.''

Given that there was so much opposition to this war in the world press (in America too) is it any wonder that we hear only of the failures and nothing of the successes? Is this the way news should be?

__________________
In this country, we don't need reasons to make things legal; we need reasons to make things illegal. - Startup

You make a very valid point. The deck is stacked against the US, and against Bush for starting the war. The US is looked upon as imperialistic aggressors for starting the war. I've heard some people claim that the war was started by big business as a way to get US products spread further into the Muslim world.

What I find most amazing is the switch we've seen. When 9-11 first happened, every article you'd see was about patriotism. About America standing up to fight against the attack. We saw flags everywhere. I think thta story got played out, and the press decided they could sell more papers by reporting on the evil US military rather than the patriots fighting for our freedom.

It's no wonder people hate the French. What kind of attitude is that? The journalist has an issue with the US government, so he's happy that a soldier who has been sent to Iraq on a mission is killed. It's a disgusting attitude!

The soldiers didn't all get together and say "lets all go to Iraq and kick some ass". They were given orders to go, and are there because they have a job to do. For anyone to feel happy about someone being killed is disgusting. To actually wish to see more Americans killed because you disagree with American politics is horrendous.

Sad, but true.

I'll get slammed for this, but it all comes down to the liberal media. Americans are growing up too liberal these days, and we're bombarded by liberal thoughts every day in the press.

It's wrong for an American to be proud of who they are, because that's seen as arrogance.

It's wrong for an American business to make it's products available to those who want them. That's imperialism.

We need villages to raise our kids now, because a parent can't seem to do that on their own.

It's wrong for an American to be wealthy. They're suppressing someone to get there.

It's wrong for an American to be white. The whites are always oppressing someone.

It's wrong for an American to be male. Males are evil and aggressive.

I could go on and on and on. How often do we hear something is wrong with the US, simply because? It's the liberals in the US who feel like every person who's ever had something go wrong needs the help of society. It's never the individual's fault or responsibility. It always comes down to a society that has failed them.

Do you see everything in black and white?

now come on, isn't America getting even more conservative these days? It's already the most conservative western country in the world. Maybe because I'm not an American, but this is how I interpret everything. Maybe America is polarizing?

Black, white, and a few shades of grey. It's not very hard to look at something and determine what it is. It's either one thing or the other.

America getting more conservative?

Read my previous post in this thread. All the things that I said people claim are wrong with American's these days. Those statements aren't coming from the outside, but inside the US.

No one is responsible for anything in the US anymore. You were either born into a situation that caused you to act a certain way. Or society messed up your mind and you're not responsible, etc. If anything, I'd say America has swung so far to the left that we're now terribly out of balance.

To me America is far more conservative than (western) Europe. So when the US is "so far to the left that we're now terribly out of balance" what are we in Europe then?

Actually the german institue for media analysis 'Medien Tenor' has compared the reporting of the Iraq-war between 03/20/2003 and 04/16/2003 on Al-Jazeera with the reporting on the two national (publicly financed) german channels ARD and ZDF. The result was, that the reporting by the german channels was much more naegative than by Al-Jazeera.
No wonder most germans publicly refer to Bush as being worse than Hitler.
I don't trust the media here anymore to have an objective approach.

A recent poll in Holland showed that more than half of the Dutch people view bush' policy as the biggest threath to world peace. (muslim) Terrorists and Israel scored a lot less points. And trust me, we don't consider Bush to be worse than Hitler. True, ARD & ZDF are not as objective as Dutch media (I can receive ARD, ZDF, NDR & RTL 1 here). But what I'm trying to say is it's not the media indoctrinating German people that Bush is evil, it's mostly Bush (US government) and his actions that give him that image. And the massive quantity of Americans still supporting Bush certainly doesn't improve America's image in the world....

You forgot: "It's wrong for an american to be liberal. They're the reason everything went wrong." ;)

Well. I rarely watch CNN, but when I do, there is always some murder or shooting happening, in between the weather. I've yet to see some news like "and on a lighter note, today three hundred school children protested and got their teacher ousted for 'bad language'". There's always some murder or disaster to take up the place instead. And that's really nothing new.

But particularly about the war, I do agree that the deck had been stacked against the US from the beginning. There might be some few reasons for that, though. All the same, that's no excuse for choosing articles based on what you somehow "know" is happening, rather than based on whatever seems to be going on. Still, I shall gratiously blame the US for that as well. The first thing that happened after the war broke out was that unless reporters were "embedded", they couldn't report. So unless something was said in the public briefings by command ("look, everything's fine.") or by the military commanders, it was sure to be a briefing by Pentagon, confirming the command's briefing ("everything's still fine."). That's not much to report about, and you immediately have a billion creative, intelligent, cynical and frowning journalists with nothing to do.

I remember one good example that will illustrate this somewhat. The embedded reporter with the unit where some tired solider fragged his sergeant's tent, had gathered the following info about the incident: the miscreant was black, had been somewhat of a loner, not very much liked, that it seemed he was muslim, and there were rumours that he might have some accomplices. Further rumours would say that these might be some Kurdish interpreters(that also were rebels, towards what we don't know) who had not checked in for a while. (I know this because someone posted the reporter's sensationally conducted statement sometime later to avoid confusion). His employer - Skynews - had picked up the solider's name as well, got to work and found his home adress, and found all his neighbours, interviewed them(exclusively) and found that - yes, he was considered somewhat of a loner with them as well and lived all by himself. In addition, they found that he was a converted muslim, but that he wasn't outspoken about it and that he apparently ordered much pizza to his appartment and owned a few too many automatic rifles and never washed the stairs very well when it was his week.

The article later appearing on Skynews' web sounded like this: "Black Muslim American solider and /nationalist Kurds/ successfully attack commanding officers in Camp of nnth batallion - several wounded, one killed". Some days later, an even less reserved newspaper in Norway printed a piece stating that "Allah retaliates", apparently based on the SkyNews report. Most assuredly, neither of these articles were written like this to actually try to tarnish the american image, or present the disaster that supposedly was happening, rather than perhaps attempting to justify the american presence in Iraq. What we wanted to hear was that the Iraqis was a threat, that they defended themselves with pure islamic fervour and that wmds would be falling down all over the place - hopefully not killing too many of our people of course. (admittedly, I wished the american army all the hell they could wish for, but nevermind).

However, we were disappointed. When the war was declared not open anymore, very few americans had died, the Iraqi resistance had fled, and generally there seemed to be a state of relative peace and our last hope for insurgents started to cooperate with the americans, and even the hard line clerics suggested peace and calm rather than proper outrageous fanatism. Then! One of the Clerics is brutally murdered by an angry mob. It was said that his thoroughly pierced and torn clothing leaked not only blood, but also his hidden filthy dollar bills. Finally, the people is rising up against the imperialist Satan and His lackeys!

Still we're being let down. The insurgents seem to be local ones, not concerted and the american troops stupidly waving flags and m16 in the streets are not being shot at much at all. And so relative peace comes to Iraq once again.

This is when it is about time to get into the depts. That means Real Investigative Journalism is awaiting to happen. Because there's nothing else worth covering. So globally famous reporters travel to Bagdad and interview someone in a café. Nothing is learned from it. Noone there really wants to have Saddam back after all, but would - they are pretty sure about that - would like to see more civil rights("America can't provide"/"America is providing"). Ahmed the taxi driver wants a new car and cheaper gas. The problem is that apart from these people having endured the worst regime ever(so we're told frequently) they are dull, ordinary people. It takes several weeks before one reporter finally finds a liberated inmate from the abu- ghraib prison to reminice about his broken wrists. When he is pressured on the matter, he admits that he hates America("Saddam or US, same difference") as well as Saddam ("Supressed captives can once again speak freely and breath the fine air due to heroical rescue from torture- prison of nightmares"). We will never know what the man did to be put in jail in the first place, though. One kind of reporter doesn't want to know, while the other assumes it was because of courageous outspokenness against Saddam the evil Tyrant. Or he is satisfied with "opposed the Saddam regime(?) <mutter, mumble>". In any event, we're not actually getting anything of value. No prison records exist to document the corageous victim's outspokenness, nor is any outstanding Iraqi welcoming the americans with promises of eternal gratitude, or even acknowledging their presence other than with an occational ak- burst. In other words, there's nothing to actually make a clear cut case about. And what is possible to make a case about do not have many reliable sources. In fact, the papers have to scavenge bits and pieces of available info just to cosmetically sustain some vaguely recurrent theme among the amassed piles of bullshit. The result in the end being something like: "Job and black market is reportedly blooming in Iraq while insurgents seem to still carry on for a bit". Since some apparently think they are balanced and unbiased, as well as excused for lying, if they slam both sides equally.

With this outlook(roughly) we are entering the present time. We're having a post war chaos, apparently, but not really chaos enough to make a convincing point about how the "plan", whatever that was, failed. On the other side, nothing, and truly nothing, is going exactly as it is supposed to. In every single celebrated occation, some ugly detail will emerge about some utterly tactless performance by the americans. There is fledgeling agreement within the interrim council, but the american ambassador takes heat because he is letting himself being used unwittingly by the hardliners to stall the settlement after he's worked with the guys for a year. The army chased the last remnant of the Iraqi army out of Bagdad, and unfortunately razed some of the walls in the famously unique historical museum and then failed to protect it from robbers in the following week, resulting in unreplaceable treasures disappearing - Responsible officials shrug it off as accidental. Achmed Chalabi is elected trusted advisor of the interrim government, a valuable comrade on the Iraqi way to democracy (and convicted for robbery and fraud in abstentia in Jordan and sees no problem with splicing Kurd and general Iraqi interests. Lately also, "all right, we didn't find any of those wmds I told you were there. Big deal. Saddam's gone and that's a victory"). It's in fact impossible to sport a frontpage with "Americans cheered in the streets", or perhaps "Superior american diplomacy settle centuries old strife", without it sounding like propaganda. Because always there are these unfortunate details showing up.

Why is this? Do the papers select one bad detail and one good detail before going to press? No, I'll tell you what happens. None of the good details are good enough, and none of the bad would be bad enough. Because the papers simply would have to lie horribly in order to meet the expectations we were given ahead of the war. That is, we've had no army obliterated by Iraqi anthrax, and the Iraqis are not celebrating their new national liberation day. There were no millions of frothing Islamists in the streets, and there were no immediate and painless transition from 50 years of violent Dictatorship into Western style democracy. In other words, we've all been had.

Meanwhile, every opportunity the american administration has to show it's mettle is similarly thrown off because they are not - as opposed to what was expected - cheered and carried around Bagdad by a crying and singing mass of liberated Iraqis whenever a decree is delivered, nor do reality change unsubtly in order to accommodate the President's state of the Union speech. Regrettably, something reminding somewhat of reality seems to be catching up with most of us.

(We are suckers for sensational news, however. That's a fact, and no speculation about it either.)

- Sorry about the long post. I'm having a terrible cold and I'm bored.

Gosh, I'm really sorry more American soldiers haven't died, Muspell. Buck up though, little buckeroo, there's still time left. Maybe the insurgents will find another one of those non-existent sarin gas shells, learn how to use it, and fire one into an American base and kill everyone in it. The gallon that was in the last one was enough to kill something like 60,000 people, surely enough to take out a whole base. Maybe that will make those sniffles a little easier to take?

__________________
In this country, we don't need reasons to make things legal; we need reasons to make things illegal. - Startup

Yes, it would be a band aid on the wound, as we say. No, seriously, I wouldn't be happy at all. And I am also bloody fed up with how every single newsitem author seems to have this fetish with american trooper doom. As I said, and I meant that, it seems like journalists are excused for lying if they lie equally bad for each side. But you still can't get around the fact that the doom many of us subconciously came to expect has it's roots in the ridiculous suppositions of the "greeted as liberators with roses" thinking. And this is really what is hitting the US in the back now. Now you'll need a lone sarin shell to kill off 60.000 people to justify the war. You need it so bad this predicted event is born from a failed attempt at setting up a booby trap designed to blow up a jeep. As it is with the other side, we've all put our expectations way too high.