SwiftVets.com

[jimlarsen]

Farnaz Fassihi, the Baghdad correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, was recalled after a letter she wrote became public knowledge (by the LA Times, I believe). She has said that the letter, which gives a rather dismal view of things in Iraq, was sent to friends and never intended for the public to see. However, I disagree, as there are some things mentioned in the letter that seem to me to be allegations to the public against Bush’s policies in Iraq. I’ve taken the letter as published at http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/f/fassihi.htm which says that they’ve verified that Farnaz Fassihi did in fact write it, and I’ve added my comments in violet <in angle brackets> to show why I think this is just more election-time spin. See http://www.mfdistilled.com/MFKillFile.php?mode=trd&Thread=36222 if you want for an example of the opposite point of view.

Note: Some of my arguments are based on a timeline of events during the Iraqi war. Such timelines can be found by searching the net for “iraq war timeline”. Three timelines that I referred to are: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0908792.html http://www.npr.org/news/specials/iraq2003/war_timeline.html http://www.maryknollogc.org/iraqtimeline.htm


Subject: FW: From Baghdad

Advance warning... this is an incredibly powerful email from a Wall Street Journal reporter in Baghdad. it's not explicit or gory or anything, just terrifying and profoundly depressing. It's worth reading. Feel free to pass it on to anyone you'd like. <This paragraph, apparently not part of the original letter, clearly tries to set up to reader to see the report in a depressing/terrifying light in spite of the fact that some of the details might be seen with a measure of optimism instead. I believe this tactic is called “Poisoning the well.”>

[Date: 9/29/2004 2:58:10 PM] <date taken from the “mfdistilled” site linked above.>
From: "Farnaz Fassihi" <ff14@hotmail.com <mailto:ff14@hotmail.com
Subject: From Baghdad

Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me to this job: a chance to see the world, explore the exotic, meet new people in far away lands, discover their ways and tell stories that could make a difference. <This seems quite idyllic for a correspondent in a war torn country, and I have to wonder if it isn’t really intended to provide a convenient contrast to the report that follows, making it easier for the reader to find the report depressing. >

Little by little, day-by-day, being based in Iraq has defied all those reasons. <Is this reference to a gradual decline supposed to help the reader loose track of the timeframe, as the author does later in the report? > I am house bound. I leave when I have a very good reason to and a scheduled interview. I avoid going to people’s homes and never walk in the streets. I can’t go grocery shopping any more, can’t eat in restaurants, can’t strike a conversation with strangers, can’t look for stories, can’t drive in any thing but a full armored car, can’t go to scenes of breaking news stories, can’t be stuck in traffic, can’t speak English outside, can’t take a road trip, can’t say I’m an American, can’t linger at checkpoints, can’t be curious about what people are saying, doing, feeling. And can’t and can’t. <You can’t be honest either, or you would point out that these are not really abnormal circumstances when reporting from a war zone. > There has been one too many close calls, including a car bomb so near our house that it blew out all the windows. So now my most pressing concern every day is not to write a kick-ass story but to stay alive and make sure our Iraqi employees stay alive. In Baghdad I am a security personnel first, a reporter second. <As I said, it’s a WAR ZONE.>

It’s hard to pinpoint when the turning point exactly began. Was it April when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? <MISINFORMATION – Fallujah, a hotbed for Sunni dissidents who had sided with Saddam and did much of his dirty work, was never really in our hands before the recent bombing (Oct. 2004). See timelines and http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/fallujah.htm> Was it when Moqtada <Muqtada al-Sadr> and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S. military? Was it when Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq’s population, became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the insurgency began spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq? <These awareness raising rhetorical questions indicate that she anticipated a public venue instead of a private one. > Despite President Bush’s rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. <A reporter who is “under virtual house arrest” somehow knows all about conditions throughout Iraq? > If under Saddam it was a potential threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to imminent and active threat, < It’s called a WAR. > a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come. <Still trying to turn our (the public’s) attention from the fact that Iraq remains a war zone. Wars cause turmoil, threats and death, but are sometimes necessary to establish a fair and successful “foreign policy.”>

Iraqis like to call this mess the situation. When asked how are thing [sic.]? they reply: the situation is very bad.

What they mean by situation is this: the Iraqi government doesn’t control most Iraqi cities, there are several car bombs going off each day around the country killing and injuring scores of innocent people, the country’s roads are becoming impassable and littered by hundreds of landmines and explosive devices aimed to kill American soldiers, there are assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings. The situation, basically, means a raging barbaric guerilla war. <”Guerilla war” as in Viet Nam. The reference is so transparent she might just as well have said that it is another Viet Nam. For an interesting discussion on the “guerilla war” in Iraq look at http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=9213 > In four days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry of health which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers-- has now stopped disclosing them. <So, how many people died every day when Saddam ruled? >

Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day. <The exact number, huh? >

A friend drove thru the Shiite slum of Sadr City yesterday. He said young men were openly placing improvised explosive devices into the ground. They melt a shallow hole into the asphalt, dig the explosive, cover it with dirt and put an old tire or plastic can over it to signal to the locals this is booby-trapped. He said on the main roads of Sadr City, there were a dozen landmines per every ten yards. His car snaked and swirled to avoid driving over them. Behind the walls sits an angry Iraqi ready to detonate them as soon as an American convoy gets near. <Sadr City is the epicenter of the Muqtada al-Sadr Shiite faction which has a small following out of the 2.2 million people that live in Sadr City. This description is interesting, but hardly surprising. See http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1012/p01s01-woiq.html > This is in Shiite land, the population that was supposed to love America for liberating Iraq. <MISINFORMAION – Most Shiites aren’t followers of Muqtada al-Sadr. >

For journalists the significant turning point came with the wave of abduction and kidnappings. Only two weeks ago we felt safe around Baghdad because foreigners were being abducted on the roads and highways between towns. Then came a frantic phone call from a journalist female friend at 11p.m. telling me two Italian women had been abducted from their homes in broad daylight. Then the two Americans, who got beheaded this week and the Brit, were abducted from their homes in a residential neighborhood. They were supplying the entire block with round the clock electricity from their generator to win friends. The abductors grabbed one of them at 6 a.m. when he came out to switch on the generator; <Hmm.. The generator runs 24/7 but he had to switch it on at 6:00am? > his beheaded body was thrown back near the neighborhoods.

The insurgency, we are told, is rampant with no signs of calming down. If any thing, it is growing stronger, organized and more sophisticated every day. <Of course it is. Kerry made a deal with them: step up the fighting so Bush looses, and I’ll have the US troupes out in 6 months or even 3 months. > The various elements within it baathists, criminals, nationalists and Al Qaeda are cooperating and coordinating.

I went to an emergency meeting for foreign correspondents with the military and embassy to discuss the kidnappings. We were somberly told our fate would largely depend on where we were in the kidnapping chain once it was determined we were missing. Here is how it goes: criminal gangs grab you and sell you up to Baathists in Fallujah, who will in turn sell you to Al Qaeda. In turn, cash and weapons flow the other way from Al Qaeda to the Baathisst to the criminals. My friend Georges, the French journalist snatched on the road to Najaf, has been missing for a month with no word on release or whether he is still alive.

America’s last hope for a quick exit? <Here’s the theme of this letter and the reason for all the extraneous info and misinfo: The premise that we must have a quick exit from this mess. > The Iraqi police and National Guard units we are spending billions of dollars to train. <Yet only $1 Billion has been spent. > The cops are being murdered by the dozens every day over 700 to date- <About 7 per day, Terrible, but not aas bad as indicared.> -and the insurgents are infiltrating their ranks. The problem is so serious that the U.S. military has allocated $6 million dollars to buy out 30,000 cops they just trained to get rid of them quietly. <This accusation seems rather far-fetched. A search of the Web found no references to it, but did find references to other expenses of $6 million. >

As for reconstruction: firstly it’s so unsafe for foreigners to operate that almost all projects have come to a halt. After two years, <Gross MISINFORMATION. It's only been a little over one year since Bush asked for the $18 Billion.> of the $18 billion Congress appropriated for Iraq reconstruction only about $1 billion or so has been spent and a chuck [sic.]\ has now been reallocated for improving security, a sign of just how bad things are going here.

Oil dreams? Insurgents disrupt oil flow routinely as a result of sabotage and oil prices have hit record high of $49 a barrel. <The world oil price has nothing to do with a report on how things are going in Iraq. This is another clue that this is campaign spin intended for the public to read. > Who did this war exactly benefit? Was it worth it? Are we safer because Saddam is holed up and Al Qaeda is running around in Iraq? <Better to battle Al Qaeda on the plains of Iraq instead of the mountains of Afghanistan. >

Iraqis say that thanks to America they got freedom in exchange for insecurity. Guess what? <Guess what? The rest of this letter is a diatribe against Pres. Bush’s handling of the “situation” in Iraq with some quotes from apparently disaffected Iraqis. Of course a reporter “under house arrest” would be unable to talk to many Iraqis and could hardly draw any meaningful conclusions from those she did talk to. > They say they’d take security over freedom any day, even if it means having a dictator ruler.

I heard an educated Iraqi <Obviously a better quote because he’s “educated”; very Kerry like. > say today that if Saddam Hussein were allowed to run for elections he would get the majority of the vote. This is truly sad.

Then I went to see an Iraqi scholar <Scholars also make good quotes, even if they’re not “educated”. > this week to talk to him about elections here. He has been trying to educate the public on the importance of voting. He said, President Bush wanted to turn Iraq into a democracy that would be an example for the Middle East. Forget about democracy, forget about being a model for the region, we have to salvage Iraq before all is lost.

One could argue that Iraq is already lost beyond salvation. For those of us on the ground it’s hard to imagine what if any thing could salvage it from its violent downward spiral. The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as a result of American mistakes and it can’t be put back into a bottle. <Terrorism is not a genie, it's an infection, and it can be cured.>

The Iraqi government is talking about having elections in three months while half of the country remains a no go zone out of the hands of the government and the Americans and out of reach of journalists. In the other half, the disenchanted population is too terrified to show up at polling stations. The Sunnis have already said they’d boycott elections, leaving the stage open for polarized government of Kurds and Shiites that will not be deemed as legitimate <Aw, yes. Kerry’s argument of no World Legitimacy for the war or the peace in Iraq. > and will most certainly lead to civil war.

I asked a 28-year-old engineer if he and his family would participate in the Iraqi elections since it was the first time Iraqis could to some degree elect a leadership. His response summed it all: Go and vote and risk being blown into pieces or followed by the insurgents and murdered for cooperating with the Americans? For what? To practice democracy? Are you joking? <The Afghans did indeed go and vote in spite of predictions that were just as bad. >

-Farnaz

There are some who feel that this reporter was recalled and given a nice vacation only because she wrote something private that wasn’t supportive of Pres. Bush. But I think a careful reader will see that what she wrote was a campaign piece for Kerry, and that she tried to go around the Wall Street Journal to get it published by posing it as a private letter that somehow leaked out.
_________________
-I'm Jim, and I approve what I write, unless it's wrong.
Speak softly and carry a BIG STICK. -T. Roosevelt
Need some WOOD? -G. Bush

[Anker-Klanker]

And it just "accidentally" ended up at the LA Times. Yep, I think you are right. Is it even possible that this is a "LATGate"? (wouldn't put it past them).