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A FOGGY NOTION OF THE NEWS

If you feel you have not been getting the nitty-gritty news from the Middle East, according to an international panel of on-the-ground journalists from Iraq, your suspicions are well founded. C-SPAN II covered this panel at the Columbia School of Journalism. The candid interchange of the journalists’ mutual experiences is an eye-opener. Following is a summation of what I heard:

THE SURGE: The partisan pitch we have been getting about the “success” of the so-called surge is just that—a partisan pitch. The erstwhile worst of the Baghdad neighborhoods have become Potemkin villages. The main streets are reasonably clear, giving the impression of safe passage; however, the connecting, inner streets are blocked off. They are under the control of the bad guys (whoever the hell they may be), biding their time until the indicated withdrawal of the “surge” forces next summer. BTW: We are paying Sunni civilians and giving them arms to keep the peace, to which they accede until the climate is propitious for them to resume the killing of Americans.

BLACK WATER: The recent public scrutiny of the Black Water security people in Iraq has come about only because of Iraqi government intervention. Apparently, Black Water has been running riot for years, killing Iraqis at will, impervious to any legal controls. They would barrel down the streets, haphazardly shooting anyone they deemed suspicious. The journalists agreed that if they attempted to film Black Water personnel, they themselves would be fired upon. In the Green Zone, it was impossible to interview them; they were in their own, cocooned universe.

“TRAITOROUS” NEWSFOLK: Following up on the ending theme of the previous paragraph, there is further revelation of why you do not receive accurate news accounts from Iraq—the reporters are dubbed “traitors” if they do not reveal their sources or report events contrary to the wishes of the Green Zone command.

THE MORGUE: A young Iraqi doctor whose family still lives there, much to his consternation, in perfect English described the unspeakable operation of a morgue. The bodies are stacked up in corridors, each with a number. Families would wait in an area with a large video screen upon which the bodies are reviewed until sudden wailing indicates recognition. Then, in order to effect proper burial, the family must extract the body from mounds of rotting corpses. He said the stench was unbearable. The doctor added that religious affiliation was paramount at the morgue. If someone with the wrong sect-identifiable name came to retrieve a body, it was quite likely that he himself might join the there departed.

IRAQI DEAD: That same doctor responded to a question as to the casualty count of Iraqis since the invasion. He indicated that it does not exist. We have known for some time that the U.S. government does not like to reveal losses of any kind, and has not been interested in keeping track of dead Iraqis. The doctor indicated that, for the same political reasons, the Iraqi government either does not keep, or does not release, such figures.