Unembedded reporter Dahr Jamail discusses the continuing quagmire in Iraq, how the “surge” was just to appease Americans and buy time, how the decline in murders is due to the ethnic cleansing being complete, U.S. support for Iraqi separatists, U.S. claims of Iranian meddling in Iraq while we have over 300,000 occupiers and possible consequences for U.S. troops in Iraq in the event of war with Iran.
MP3 here. (26:59)
In late 2003, Weary of the overall failure of the US media to accurately report on the realities of the war in Iraq for the Iraqi people and US soldiers, Dahr Jamail went to Iraq to report on the war himself.
His dispatches were quickly recognized as an important media resource. He is now writing for the Inter Press Service, The Asia Times and many other outlets. His reports have also been published with The Nation, The Sunday Herald, Islam Online, the Guardian, Foreign Policy in Focus, and the Independent to name just a few. Dahr’s dispatches and hard news stories have been translated into French, Polish, German, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, Chinese, Arabic and Turkish. On radio as well as television, Dahr reports for Democracy Now!, the BBC, and numerous other stations around the globe. Dahr is also special correspondent for Flashpoints.
Dahr has spent a total of 8 months in occupied Iraq as one of only a few independent US journalists in the country. In the MidEast, Dahr has also has reported from Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Dahr uses the DahrJamailIraq.com website and his popular mailing list to disseminate his dispatches.
“Iraq floats on a sea of oil….”
I’m sure I speak for many Antiwar readers when I say that I just do not have 26 minutes and 39 seconds to listen to an interview that probably could easily be boiled down into a 1 or 2 page article. If Dahr Jamail doesn’t have time to write anymore – well, then I don’t have time to listen.
Dahr Jamail is very good indeed, but I agree with Michael … let’s have it written, please.
Maybe the real culprit for dissatisfaction with a lengthy radio interview is Scott Horton and Antiwar radio. Maybe radio interviews like this are just too time-consuming and old fashioned. There is a difference, however,between what you get if you sit down and right it out on your own, and the outcome when the interviewer guides the conversation toward where he wants to go, not the writer.
The odd thing about Iraq is that there is such an overwhelming number of opinion outlets and individuals who are against the war that 26 minutes with Dahr Jamail doesn’t seem as “needed” or as “important” as it might have been in a different opinion climate.
Whats all this moaning and groaning about long interviews–thats the way they should be. Pop them in your IPOD, go for a run or weight lift in the gym, or listen to them when your in your car or the subway. Scott Horton has one of, if not the best political talk shows in the country.
The key here has to be finally admitted–it is deliberate US and Israeli policy to destroy and fragment Iraq, and it has been from the beginning. A million and a half Iraqis killed directly or indirectly by the US invasion, millions more displaced or forced into exile, encouraging sectarian violence and even spreading cholera–that has been the United States’ deliberate aim and task, and the conclusion is unavoidable. The rest is propaganda and cosmetics.
Are all US military units in on the project? No–these troops think they are trying to rebuild, those think their goal is peace, and so forth, but they also are propagandized, as some of them are beginning to see.
Their real purpose, imposed from the top on unknowing pawns, is to kill and destroy and fragment and make it impossible to rebuild.
That is the goal of the NeoCons directing Bush policy and also of the Likudniks directing the NeoCons, who want a weak divided Iraq.
Note also that Senator Biden, who made the proposal to divide Iraq into three “sovereignties”, an old Israeli policy, and who recently publicly called himself a Zionist, now has his eyes on the US gaining control over Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, using domestic strife and the threat of a fundamentalist takeover as the cover.
This too is an Israeli policy and mapped out by the Necons to make the Near East “safe” for Israel.
That goal includes no nuclear weapons or capabilities in the hands of Arabs or Muslims in general, and disassembling Iraq was just the first step, with the tail of Israel wagging the dog of the US.
Will it succeed? No. But if present policies continue the US will go down in the attempt.
The US cannot afford to attack Iran. Before that it could not even afford the attack on Iraq.
Do the extremist Israelis care really?
Not a whit. The joke going around is that the Likudniks are now demanding all US monetary aid to Israel to be paid in Euros.
Eugene Costa above, you have it right.