-Tim Cocks is a Reuters correspondent in Iraq.-
This month we reported that the number of civilians dying violent deaths in Iraq had hit a fresh low since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion — about 125 for September.
Sounds like a lot, but for a country that only two years ago was seeing dozens of bodies pile up in the streets each day from tit-for-tat sectarian killing, it was definitely progress.
And as I prepare to end my assignment in Iraq this week, I need no argument from numbers to convince me that things are better here than when I arrived in Feb. 2008.
During my first few months, militants loyal to to anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr were raising hell in Baghdad, firing mortars and rockets at the Green Zone almost every hour. We could hear or feel them thud on impact, especially when they fell short, on our side of the Tigris.
A rocket hit the BBC building opposite us, causing a blast loud enough to shake our windows, although thankfully no one at the BBC was hurt by the strike.
U.S. airstrikes on Baghdad’s Sadr City slum were killing many civilians. Roadside and car bombs were erupting all over the place and the streets were largely deserted after dark.
Eighteen months on and things are hardly back to normal but, as any Iraqi will tell you, Iraq feels safer than it was.
Security forces have been purged of Shi’ite militiamen and are doing a better job of stopping suicide bombings, enabling U.S. combat forces to largely pull out of Iraq’s cities in June.
We rarely hear explosions in Baghdad. A semblance of law and order seems to be taking shape.
Reporting from Iraq, as a Westerner or an Iraqi, has been a tough business for some time. For Westerners, apart from the fact that few foreign correspondents here speak passable Arabic, the big headache remains security.
Ever since insurgents started kidnapping Westerners and beheading them in 2004, the foreign press corps here have been living in a kind of semi-incarceration, behind rows of concrete blast walls that make you feel a bit like a lab rat in a maze.
It varies from media organisation to the next, but all of us are pretty restricted in our movements.
We generally keep a low profile, moving around Baghdad in low key armoured cars. We don’t wander the streets for long periods of time or frequent bars and nightclubs after work.
The assumption is that any Westerner is a prime target for kidnappers — for political reasons or for a juicy ransom.
And this is not to say there are no dangers to Iraqi media workers. More than 130 have died in violence since the beginning of the war.
Seven of our colleagues from Reuters have been killed in that time, most of them Iraqis.
Security restrictions have left us heavily dependent on dedicated local journalists who can visit places we cannot and help us cobble together stories we send to the wire.
That’s perhaps as it should be in a global news agency with strong local talent, but it’s hard not to miss roaming the streets as I would in almost any other country.
As a military correspondent, embedding with U.S. troops has been an experience, though it can hard to get the full picture that way — for instance, persuading a nervous bystander in the street to talk to you when you’re surrounded by heavily-armed American soldiers has proved a real challenge.
As security improves, our leash has been lengthened. I’ve been able to travel to places with that were once off-limits, like many parts of northern Iraq.
Will it continue getting better? No one can claim to know the answer to that question. Many Iraqis are pessimistic, as well they might be after decades of war, dictatorship, brutal sanctions and sectarian bloodshed. But since Iraq was pulled back from the brink in 2007, it has defied gloomy predictions.
But I’m reminded of comments by the head of the Red Cross Iraq delegation Juan-Pedro Schaerer about avoiding the temptation to write off Iraq’s persistent violence as “normal”.
This week, one of our journalists, Ahmed, was awoken in the middle of the night by loud gunshots.
Gunmen had stormed the house of his neighbour and family doctor, and shot him in the head. Ahmed took him to hospital, where he remains in critical condition. He may never walk or talk again.
Clearly, that feeling of nearly normality is fragile.
The embedded version of Iraq's history leaves much unsaid. Its omissions, lack of candid insight and substitution of anecdote for fact also tend to leave generations of American foreign policy to be based on derivative opinions of generally pig-ignorant hecklers with no concept of what has been destroyed there, how vastly and at what cost.
If you had seen Iraq in the 1970s, you would understand the differences brought about there by American intervention as universally deleterious.
And, frankly, unforgivable.
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Johnisgood, regarding your last posted comment:
“I just noted that it seems a little odd that you call the motives for the war ‘fabricated’ and ‘fraudulent’….
…and then you go on to not only assert that the WMD’s did exist, but then go on to provide references supporting that this was the case.”
Given the fact that there was no credible evidence to support the claim that Iraq had WMD’s in 2003, Iraq had always stated they did not have a current WMD program prior to the invasion and the fact that they were indeed found to posses no WMD’s. How is it contradictory for me to say that the US sold them the weapons when they were using them back in the 80’s and then fraudulently accuse them of possessing them in 2003?
Why do you think that’s odd?
“Let alone the fact that you have openly admitted to being socialist, left-wing and hate-filled. Meaning my ‘opinions’ as to your bias is well founded and evidenced by your own posts.”
I have neither openly admitted to being socialist, left-wing or hate filled?
Please show one quote where I have openly admitted to any of these 3 things. They are untrue and fabricated claims.
“And while you have evidence of oil contracts, reconstruction contracts and military bases, these are all circumstantial.”
You provide only a small excerpt of the evidence I quoted, and these 3 are not circumstantial, but in the context of the rest of the evidence are direct evidence themselves. Why did you only quote a small part of the evidence I provided?
“They only mean something sinister to you because of your opinion and are no actual proof of anything. Something any court of law would tell you, if you bothered to ask.
That same court of law would also tell you that I don’t have to prove that America’s wars are not imperialist. Because you have failed to prove that they were imperialist in the first place.
Once again leading me to conclude that your posts are completely incoherent”
“Bothering to ask” a court of law these things is an incoherent concept, so is assuming that a court of law would demand the defense be granted the right to not have to defend itself in the face of a wealth of evidence, as you state.
You’ll find the evidence is profound and conclusive. If you are going to deal with it seriously you should bring it all up and try to disprove it, piece by piece, witness by witness, not by making up some strange hypothetical courtroom scenario.
Evidently no one knows what deleterious means. Grievous, destructive, callous disregard and inhumane all come to my mind. Iraq has seen it’s standard of living tumble into depraved conditions since the first gulf war and the subsequent trade embargo. The occupation of Iraq has increased her woes exponentially.
Children regularly die of disease because of a lack of potable water and health care. Malnutrition has taken it’s toll on all Iraqi citizens not aligned with some criminal element of the existing or former governments. People die in the street regularly from sectarian violence still. All of this courtesy of the U.S. occupation.
After working in a prison for over a decade, I assure you one cannot make another do good by doing bad to them. The death and destruction we have left will one day produce a harvest we cannot avoid reaping. Not all who watch their parents die violently become a slum dog millionaire.
I just noted that it seems a little odd that you call the motives for the war ‘fabricated’ and ‘fraudulent’….
…and then you go on to not only assert that the WMD’s did exist, but then go on to provide references supporting that this was the case.
Let alone the fact that you have openly admitted to being socialist, left-wing and hate-filled. Meaning my ‘opinions’ as to your bias is well founded and evidenced by your own posts.
And while you have evidence of oil contracts, reconstruction contracts and military bases, these are all circumstantial.
They only mean something sinister to you because of your opinion and are no actual proof of anything. Something any court of law would tell you, if you bothered to ask.
That same court of law would also tell you that I don’t have to prove that America’s wars are not imperialist. Because you have failed to prove that they were imperialist in the first place.
Once again leading me to conclude that your posts are completely incoherent.
A boring and well known pathetic strategy of the desperate to attack the messenger with conjecture and speculation rather than the more difficult job of attacking the message.. laced with a few classic fallacies of argument such as the opinion observation (despite the impossibility what we say not being our opinions), which just as lamely implies that your opinion falls into the same category as the one you’re criticizing, and the assumption and conspiracy theory that I fall into some sort of boogey man group of stereotypes.
I’ll avoid the arrogant hate speech and deal with the snippets of relevant content in your post:
Firstly - just what esactly do you think I’m suggesting? Have you even read my posts?
The only solutions I have hinted at in relevance to this thread are for the criminals to be brought to justice now that the crime has been revealed, and now that the boogey man is dead leave Iraq to govern itself. And for the media to stop embedding with the criminals and report US actions within the war in the context of the crime being committed. If they can’t do this I have suggested that corporate media needs to become democratic media to prevent systemic abuses of power.
I’m not sure what ’suggestion’ you’re referring to but your statement makes no sense in light of the ones I’ve actually made.
Secondly - Sure.. I have ABSOLUTE motive, I have a proven historical track record of similar crimes, I have testament of many professionals, intellectuals, defectors and insiders, I have statements made by US officials and advisers on the imperative of US primacy and domination of the region, I have them lying on record, I have the nature of the crime itself, the nature of the US installed government, I have the oil contract divisions, no-bid reconstruction contracts, front companies, the threats on Iran and the now altered oil proviso. If this were a criminal case the evidence hearing would go on for years, case closed.
It’s like asking me what proof I have that a drug addict, hanging for a fix, with a needle in his hand, the deal being witnessed by the community, caught stoned out of his mind, with a history of drug felonies, inside a crack-house, is going to use drugs again.
What do you have? Weapons of mass destruction..?
Thirdly - I have no idea what you’re talking about…
Encase that was actually a serious question I’ll answer it by saying the weapons and technologies purchased during and after the Iran Iraq war and detailed in the 12000 page Iraqi weapons declaration stolen from the UN and blacked out for non-security council members. The information is public. Try a little research if you are afraid of MY opinions, here’s a good starting point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Stat es_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran%E2%8 0%93Iraq_war
Finally- I’m so glad you’re somewhat amused your highness but in all honesty I don’t think I can take much credit for that, you seem to know how to amuse yourself quite well..
Can you provide any evidence the wars in the mid-east are not imperialistic?
Brian.
I think the main issue you have is not the bias of media, but that they are not reporting the bias you prefer to hear.
Reading your post, I see a lot of personal opinion. Little more.
First of all, doing as you recommend would not actually affect or win the wars. All you want is for someone to officially confirm that your biased opinion is correct. You can just go to a left-wing hate blog for that.
Second, do you have any evidence the war was about oil or military bases? Just thought I’d ask.
Third, you mentioned that America sold WMDs to Iraq. Are you referring to the fabricated weapons, or just the fraudulent ones?
Finally, I am somewhat amused by your use of the term ‘idiotic fox-news couch potato opinions’.
Particularly since your general quality of posts not only show your terrible grip on history, but also draw indications as to your general level of education.
Finally back to the topic..
I think ‘The Bell’s comment is a great choice for best comment, really wraps it up quite nicely.
There are an ever increasing number of people out there who are crossing the threshold between suspecting something is systemically wrong with the news and knowing it.
The news is much like the bible, you need to have faith in it or go to great lengths to discover the truth for yourself, it’s controlled by a small group of powerful men, it’s organization is centralized and news is copied from centers of journalism to satellites (reuters, AP..), opinion is presented as fact, so the ideas are often not represented by the person who came up with them.
We talk a lot about winning in Iraq. How to win in Iraq? But if “we” win, the Iraqis still lose right. They have lost already.
The only way it is possible to ‘win’ a criminal invasion under the guise of a humanitarian (illegal) regime change you supported, for fabricated, fraudulent reasons of imminent threat of WMD’s you sold them in the first place.. is to cut the crap and say Yeah we went in there to control the oil, award trillions in no-bid reconstruction contracts to ourselves - in cash, control the government, install permanent military bases from which to attack Iran, and crush all opposition.
That is the only way to ‘win’ in Iraq because the damage done to the country by the US is almost impossible to reconcile.
You’re either with us or you’re against us!!!
Closet socialist?? Because I prefer democracy and socialism is democratic..
How am I in the closet? I just explained my exact views.
That’s good though you can save your idiotic fox-news opinions and leave the debate to the grown ups.
Every stereotype of the political party that is.
John,
I thought taxes were supposed to be a big deal to Republicans? Or is that just another way of modifying what it means to be a conservative to better suit your favorite political party?
I didn’t know my wording was being watched like a hawk. I care about how much EVERYONE is being taxed. You included sir.
We were taxed less and represented better in the 1700’s prior to the revolution.
I am glad though that you didn’t argue how every stereotype gov’t and media propogates is a lie though, not many people do.