Gareth Porter, independent researcher and journalist, discusses the continuing struggle over control of the Iraq war narrative, the influence of retired general Jack Keane on the Bush Administration’s Iraq policy, the surprising strength and stability of the Iraqi government and why General Petraeus’s proposal for an extended Iraq withdrawal is a ploy get more time to scuttle the SOFA agreement.

MP3 here. (22:38)

Gareth Porter’s articles appear on the Huffington Post, Inter Press Service News Agency and on Antiwar.com

Robert Dreyfuss, reporter for The Nation, discusses the Iraqi resistance, the myth of the surge’s responsibility for the reduction in violence, Iran’s brokering of Sadr’s cease-fire, Maliki’s tightrope act in needing the U.S. to back him now, but leave soon, the problem of Kirkuk and Russia’s role in the changing Mideast dynamic.

MP3 here. (40:00)

Based in Alexandria, Va., Dreyfuss been writing for Rolling Stone for at least a decade, and currently covers national security for Rolling Stone’s National Affairs section. He’s a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, and a senior correspondent for The American Prospect. His articles have also appeared in The Washington Monthly, The New Republic, Newsday, Worth, California Lawyer, The Texas Observer, E, In These Times, The Detroit Metro Times, Public Citizen, Extra!, and, in Japan, in Esquire, Foresight and Nikkei Business. His blog, The Dreyfuss Report, is now at The Nation.

Steve Connors and Molly Bingham discuss their movie “Meeting Resistance” about the Sunni occupation resistance, how Saddam Hussein’s capture freed more Iraqis to fight against the Americans, the psych-ops aimed at America framing the insurgents as social outcasts instead of the normal citizens they are, the complex interplay between the Iraqi, Iranian and American factions in Iraq, the similarity in the way the West and Islamic traditions venerate war dead and the difficulty they had in getting the film made.

MP3 here. (42:18)

Steve Connors was born in Sheffield, England. He began taking photographs while serving as a British soldier in Northern Ireland in the early 1980s. After leaving the military in 1984 he worked for London newspapers and housing charities, but maintained a preference for photographing the quirkiness of British life.

At the end of 1989 Connors started traveling – first to Czechoslovakia as the communist government fell and then into Sri Lanka in 1990. Connors spent the early1990s covering the wars following the break-up of Yugoslavia and later spending time in Russia and the former Soviet Union as the euphoria of a new age gave way to the miserable realities of economic meltdown. Connors has worked for most of the worlds’ newspapers and magazines including Time, Newsweek, The New York Times in the United States; The Guardian, The Observer and The Telegraph in London and in Europe he has worked for Der Spiegel, Stern and Paris Match among others. Connors spent fifteen months from November 2001 on in Afghanistan. Starting during the invasion, he went to Iraq, and spent fourteen months there total, working ten months solidly on Meeting Resistance, Connors’ directorial debut.

Molly Bingham was born in Kentucky and graduated from Harvard College in 1990. She began working as a photojournalist in earnest in 1994, traveling to Rwanda in the wake of the genocide. She spent a good amount of her energies for the following four years focused on the regional fallout of that event. Aside from her photojournalistic work, Bingham has also completed two special projects for Human Rights Watch – one on Burundi and another on small arms trafficking in Central Africa. From 1998 through 2001 Bingham worked as Official Photographer to the Office of the Vice President of the United States.

In 2001 Bingham returned to work in Central Africa, producing a story for the New York Times Sunday Magazine (published in August 2001) on the mineral “coltan” that is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Washington on September 11 Bingham got some of the only close up pictures of the Pentagon, and followed the story of America’s response to the 9/11 attacks to Afghanistan later in the fall. 2002 found Bingham in the Gaza Strip and Iran before heading to Iraq shortly before the US attack in March 2003. Bingham was detained for eight days by the Iraqi government security services and held in Abu Ghraib prison with four other westerners during the war, and released to Jordan in early April 2003. Bingham’s first major written story – on the Iraqi resistance – was published in Vanity Fair in July 2004. Bingham teamed up with Connors in August of 2003 to begin a film about who was behind the emerging post-war violence in Iraq.

Gareth Porter, independent historian and investigative journalist for IPS News and Antiwar.com, deconstructs the incredibly lousy reporting of one Pamela Hess from the Associated Press, whose recent article “Quds, Hezbollah training hit squads in Iran” is in the running for the Olympic Gold Medal in Pentagon stenography and false accusations, explains the complex truth behind the U.S. and Iraqi governments’ relationship with Iran, the 2 and a half year history of the Cheney Cabal’s claims that Iran is responsible for the higher quality land mines in Iraq, the fiction of Mahdi Army “Special Groups,” Maliki’s distancing from the U.S. and thwarting of Cheney’s plan for a major assault on the Mahdi Army this summer, some of the many holes in the AP’s case, Pamela Hess’s justification for helping the Pentagon to cover up and disseminate half-truths and the need for the people who are able to contradict the official line to get their voices out.

MP3 here. (40:22)

Dr. Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist on U.S. national security policy who has been independent since a brief period of university teaching in the 1980s. Dr. Porter is the author of four books, the latest of which is Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam (University of California Press, 2005). He has written regularly for Inter Press Service on U.S. policy toward Iraq and Iran since 2005.

Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for the Independent, discusses the slightly less violent, yet still horrific, conditions in Iraq, the fear and violence that dominates daily life there, the various factions influencing Maliki, the Sunni “Awakening” movement and the volatile tensions in Kurdistan.

MP3 here. (35:05)

Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent of The Independent, has been visiting Iraq since 1978. He was awarded the 2005 Martha Gellhorn prize for war reporting in recognition of his writing on Iraq. He is the author of, his memoir, The Broken Boy (Jonathan Cape, 2005), and with Andrew Cockburn, Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession (Verso, 2000), The Occupation: War, Resistance and Daily Life in Iraq (Verso, 2006) and Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia revival and the Struggle for Iraq.

Dahr Jamail, reporter for IPS News and author of Beyond the Green Zone, discusses the new effort by the Maliki government to allow the former Sunni insurgency – now known at the “Sons of Iraq” or “Concerned Local Citizens” – into the police forces in Baquba in order to fight “al Qaeda in Iraq,” the various militias’ within the government and their primary loyalties, precarious politics in Kirkuk, Maliki’s statements in favor of American withdrawal, the irony of the U.S. backing the also-Iranian-backed Dawa Party and Supreme Islamic Council since the elections of ‘05 and danger to U.S. troops in the event of war with Iran.

MP3 here. (37:48)

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.

Philip Giraldi, former CIA counter-terrorism officer and columnist for Antiwar.com, discusses the possibility of and precedents for an Israeli “False Flag” operation in Iraq to frame Iran and draw the U.S. into attacking, the conflicts within the administration over Iran policy, the likely catastrophic consequences of any attack, U.S. covert operations within Iran, America’s support of the Iranian Islamic Revolution back in 1979, how real conservative principles apply to foreign policy, the extensive databases of “dangerous” Americans kept by the government, total lack of accountability in Washington, provocative stance toward Russia and demented neocon view of the world.

MP3 here. (39:41)

Philip Giraldi is a former DIA and CIA officer, partner at Cannistraro Associates, Francis Walsingham Fellow for the American Conservative Defense Alliance, contributing editor at the American Conservative magazine and columnist at Antiwar.com.

Dr. Gareth Porter discusses his recent article about how the War Party’s excuses to attack Iran are actually great reasons not to, how the U.S. and Israel share the common roles of being both dominate forces and fearful victims, U.S. manipulation of the IAEA against Iran, the many political ploys the war party is using to provoke Iran into retaliating, the two war resolutions in Congress that are about to be passed, the attacks on the U.S. military in Iraq that will take place if we assault Iran, Gen. Petraeus’s direct line to the vice president, the Israel Lobby’s vast influence over U.S. foreign policy, the impotence of Bush’s character and Khalilzad’s plan to switch back to the Sunnis.

MP3 here. (44:36)

Dr. Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist on U.S. national security policy who has been independent since a brief period of university teaching in the 1980s. Dr. Porter is the author of four books, the latest of which is Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam (University of California Press, 2005). He has written regularly for Inter Press Service on U.S. policy toward Iraq and Iran since 2005.

Gareth Porter discusses his newest article: “How Cheney Outfoxed His Foes On Iran And EFP’s,” about how Cheney used General Patraeus to circumvent the intelligence agency’s disagreement with the War Party about supposed Iranian provided EFP’s to Shi’ite militias in Iraq.

MP3 here. (33:03)

YouTube here.

Dr. Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist on U.S. national security policy who has been independent since a brief period of university teaching in the 1980s. Dr. Porter is the author of four books, the latest of which is Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam (University of California Press, 2005). He has written regularly for Inter Press Service on U.S. policy toward Iraq and Iran since 2005.

Dr. Gareth Porter discusses his article: “Where are those Iranian weapons in Iraq?” and how the U.S. war party has had to de-emphasize their assertions that EFP’s in Iraq are coming from Iran, he exposes as total lies the U.S. claims of Iran arming the Shi’ite militias in Iraq, how the White House continues to divulge preposterous propaganda reports, the role of the compliant media in continuing these false allegations, how the Sunni resistance in Iraq is patiently waiting for the opportune moment to re-emerge, and how Iran would not try to destabilize the Maliki government since he is their servant.

MP3 here. (25:31)

YouTube here.

Dr. Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist on U.S. national security policy who has been independent since a brief period of university teaching in the 1980s. Dr. Porter is the author of four books, the latest of which is Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam (University of California Press, 2005). He has written regularly for Inter Press Service on U.S. policy toward Iraq and Iran since 2005.

Dr. Porter was both a Vietnam specialist and an anti-war activist during the Vietnam War and was Co-Director of Indochina Resource Center in Washington. Dr. Porter taught international studies at City College of New York and American University. He was the first Academic Director for Peace and Conflict Resolution in the Washington Semester program at American University.