Letters to the Editor
-
The Neocons' and Israel Lobby's War is a Crime against Humanity
The neocon war has succeeded in destroying the nation of Iraq and with it much of the US's moral, political and economic power, not to mention the lives of so many young American soldiers.
As if this wasn't enough, the Israel Lobby and the necons continue trying to push the US into another war that promises to be even more devastating. This time with Iran.
But with the scare tactics becoming less effective by the day, the American public won't be deceived again.
-
Cherry picking
Editors, I'm not sure why this is a "primary source" document. Couldn't you have listed the NSNs claims (accumulated from news services) without making us try to read teeny-tiny type?
On a more substantial note, anti-war types should be all over the Bush administration on this surge report. Cherry-picked intelligence, spun for the masses, is what they used to get us into this mess. We can't allow them to cherry pick their "signs of progress" to mislead people into continuing to support the thing. We already see the parallels to the run-up to the invasion -- including numerous talking heads stating as fact "the surge is working." Sounds suspiciously familiar to "We know Iraq has WMDs"
-
Where can we get reliable information?
Obviously the White House has an agenda and will not give reliable data. So can anybody point to sources that are relatively un-biased and can give clear and useful data about the violence in Iraq? There are so many conflicting reports and sources.
Among considerations:
-- Any assessment that shows progress in the summer months must compare not to previous months, but to last year's summer months. This is because summer months are apt to show less violence by simple virtue of less people being outside.
-- Levels of violence should reflect how many people are actually still in a region. Saying that "violence in Fallujah is down" is easy enough, but you have to take into account that 70% of the city was destroyed in 2004, with most of its population fleeing. So it would be natural for its violence level to be down since 2003 with or without a troop surge.
-- We rarely get much information about the number of refugees from Iraq who have fled to neighboring countries. What percentage of the Iraq population has left? How many are admitted to other countries as refugees? How many Iraq refugees are admitted into the United States? (From what I hear, almost none are admitted.)
-- Often the Bush administration will tell us that violence is down in Baghdad, without bothering to tell us that it's simultaneously up in other regions.
What we need is unvarnished information that provides a real context for the future decisions on maintaining troop levels and whether staying has a chance of success. We aren't going to get that from the White House, so what are the best sources?
I would be for maintaining troop levels if it actually appeared that Iraq was moving toward stability in all of its regions, and would continue to do so at a steady pace. But the idea that we need to stay in Iraq until 2015 or whatever is untenable.
We also get almost NO information on the amount of private troops who are in Iraq, the private companies working there, how much they're spending, etc. There's an excellent article in this month's Rolling Stone that summarizes the whole problem of private companies (KBR, Halliburton, etc.) looting government contract money. Levels of fraud, overbilling, shoddy work, sloppy record keeping, etc. are so high that if they occurred in the U.S. they would be considered among the worst scandals ever committed. But the Bush administration covers them up and refuses to pursue cases against them.
Other information we don't get from the major media involves the Pentagon's intentions for maintaining military bases in Iraq. Though we keep talking about withdrawing troops, the impression I get is that there is absolutely NO intention to ever shut down and move our forces out of the country. That's because we've invested hundreds of billions of dollars in building over a dozen "superbases" in Iraq that were built at the very time we were demolishing the bases in Saudi Arabia (appeasing the royalty, since our proximity to Mecca was a catalyst for extremism threatening their power). Our military presence in the Middle East is almost entirely invested in Iraq, and we're not going to give up having a presence there. So politicians are going to do everything they can to delay any withdrawal.
I wish news organizations would spend more time examining these issues.
-
weak, transparent and weak
The following headline is the reason you ran this "story."
"Is violence in Iraq really down?"
Intrigued by this headline, I clicked on your story with hopes of learning of some alternative evidence to the good news coming from Iraq on the military front.
Thank you for making this:
In a letter to Congress, the National Security Network calls for the Bush administration to provide evidence for its claim that violence has diminished in Iraq.
the very next line. I didn't have to read the story. With blinding transparency, you ran a non-story, a letter sent to Congress requesting information. Can you tell us which editor was responsible for this? How lame can you get?