Dahr Jamail, unembedded independent journalist now back in the U.S., discusses the absolute humanitarian catastrophe that the U.S. has created in Iraq, the fact that all the propaganda about the surge is “working,” is a bunch of lies, increasing casualty rates for the American soldiers, compares the recent redirection toward the Sunni insurgency to an earlier plan which failed in Fallujah in the spring and summer of 2004 and measures the fate of Nouri al-Malaki’s government in the face of the proposed Allawi coup.
MP3 here. (16:29)
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.
In a Press Conference held on 9-20-1991 (Eight months after he launched the first invasion of Iraq) President G.H.W. Bush said, “We destroyed Israel’s most dangerous adversary, Iraq.) Apparently this was not completely accurate as later Bill Clinton authorizing bombings and the younger George Bush completing the devestation we now see today. The boast that Iraq would be turned into a parking lot did not envision the cars parked their would be used as bombs.
Joe,
I recommend you read the article by US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowsky "Soldier for the truth"
The following is an excertp:
The neoconservatives pride themselves on having a global vision, a long-term strategic perspective. And there were three reasons why they felt the U.S. needed to topple Saddam, put in a friendly government and occupy Iraq.
One of those reasons is that sanctions and containment were working and everybody pretty much knew it. Many companies around the world were preparing to do business with Iraq in anticipation of a lifting of sanctions. But the U.S. and the U.K. had been bombing northern and southern Iraq since 1991. So it was very unlikely that we would be in any kind of position to gain significant contracts in any post-sanctions Iraq. And those sanctions were going to be lifted soon, Saddam would still be in place, and we would get no financial benefit.
The second reason has to do with our military-basing posture in the region. We had been very dissatisfied with our relations with Saudi Arabia, particularly the restrictions on our basing. And also there was dissatisfaction from the people of Saudi Arabia. So we were looking for alternate strategic locations beyond Kuwait, beyond Qatar, to secure something we had been searching for since the days of Carter — to secure the energy lines of communication in the region. Bases in Iraq, then, were very important — that is, if you hold that is America’s role in the world. Saddam Hussein was not about to invite us in.
The last reason is the conversion, the switch Saddam Hussein made in the Food for Oil program, from the dollar to the euro. He did this, by the way, long before 9/11, in November 2000 — selling his oil for euros. The oil sales permitted in that program aren’t very much. But when the sanctions would be lifted, the sales from the country with the second largest oil reserves on the planet would have been moving to the euro.
The U.S. dollar is in a sensitive period because we are a debtor nation now. Our currency is still popular, but it’s not backed up like it used to be. If oil, a very solid commodity, is traded on the euro, that could cause massive, almost glacial, shifts in confidence in trading on the dollar. So one of the first executive orders that Bush signed in May [2003] switched trading on Iraq’s oil back to the dollar.
For the last four and half years i have intensly followed this illegal and destructive war our country has imposed on Irag. Many theories have evolved from this mayhem, and chaos, we have forced upon the Iraquis. Myself, has several ideas as to why we are there, and like Dahr Jamil points out there are alot of smoke and mirrors being presented by the Bushites. Is this going to be like Vietnam; 10 years wasted. What is the real reason we are in Irag??
The war has not been fought for Israel. Rather, it has been fought for the twisted vision of Greater Israel spearheaded by the rabid and racist Zionist fanatics in the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and other European countries. Not satisfied with making Aliyah with Israel or serving in the IDF, these bloodthirty lunatics have effectively and efficiently used their political and financial muscle to legally, yet immorally, focus the ancient hatred of Islam so well established in latently arrogant Westerners to apply the full power of the military-industrial-congressional-(parliamentary)-media-academic-complex (Freudian?) to destroy and devastate supposed enemies of Israel, i.e. basically anyone who challenged their vision of Israel. Whether it is Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or you name the victim; they can confidently declare that the democrats, republicans, conservatives, laborites, liberals, greens, etc. are in their pockets. If you have waited a hundred years for this moment, now is not the right time to be squeamish. The destruction of Babylon and Persia are at hand. Five thousand year old pay back is a bitc………
The real reasons why we are in Iraq, some of which are contained in the foregoing comments, BREAK my heart. How ignorant and ignoble is our government. Please, people, don’t join the U.S. Military Forces.
The US now sits on $30 trillion dollars worth of oil at current prices. The cost of securing this oil is about $1 trillion. The cost in lives to the war criminals and oil companies means nothing. Second, the US felt compelled to establish a lasting prescence in the Middle East even the great friend Israel or Saudi Arabia was not willing to provide. By occupying Iraq, it now has a prescense to balance the emergence of Iran, India, and China as regional players in the region. If everything had gone “right” since the invasion, the US would be expected to leave Iraq, so the what we see as ineptitude is nothing less than part of the plan. The US will NEVER leave Iraq, just as it has never left the Phillipines, Cuba, Japan, Germany, and Korea.