[Peace-discuss] Re: [Peace] NG on Dahr Jamail

[Karen Medina]

Mike Monson of the NG did ok on covering the "Beyond the Green Zone" talk. A few things sounded just a bit different when they placed them in the incorrect paragraph. 

Dahr Jamail's case is made, even though the NG doesn't state the reports that Dahr was citing -- like the Oxfam Report for the statement that 
 "Another 4 million Iraqi residents are said to be in
  dire need of emergency care, needing water, food or
  medical care."
This was placed in a paragraph where Dahr Jamail is estimating how many people have been wounded, so it sounds like he himself is estimating all the numbers. 

I was surprised to see Mr. Monson at the talk yesterday. And surprised the NG put the write-up in the paper.

-karen medina

>The News-Gazette.com
>Journalist: Media picture of the war inaccurate
>By Mike Monson
>Monday October 29, 2007
>
>   URBANA – A U.S. bombing attack against Iran in
>   coming months is almost a certainty, according to an
>   independent journalist who went to Iraq four years
>   ago because he believed the American media was not
>   accurately reporting the realities of the war.
>
>   Dahr Jamail works for the Inter Press Service and
>   the Asia Times and has been published in The Nation,
>   the Sunday Herald and The Guardian. He spoke Sunday
>   afternoon to an audience of about 100 people at
>   Gregory Hall on the University of Illinois campus.
>   Jamail is the author of the book, "Beyond the Green
>   Zone: Dispatches From An Unembedded Journalist in
>   Occupied Iraq."
>
>   His visit was sponsored by Haymarket Books, Iraq
>   Veterans Against the War, the Anti-War Anti-Racism
>   Effort and other local groups.
>
>   Jamail said he sees the same kind of propaganda
>   campaign for attacking Iran under way that occurred
>   five years ago prior to the Iraq invasion, with
>   unsupported statements that Iran is getting close to
>   developing a nuclear bomb and that it is sending
>   fighters into Iraq.
>
>   Once again, the corporate-controlled U.S. media is
>   not asking for proof or evidence from the Bush
>   administration, he charged.
>
>   "That proof doesn't exist," he said.
>
>   A bombing attack on Iran is probably now inevitable,
>   he said.
>
>   "I think it's when, not if," Jamail said. "All the
>   ex-CIA guys I'm talking to are saying basically the
>   decision has been made. As (journalist) Seymour
>   Hersh said last spring, it's a ground invasion
>   before it's an air strike. Three thousand Marines
>   will have to be sent in to take out surface-to-air
>   missiles."
>
>   Jamail said he was working as a tour guide and
>   rescue ranger on Mount McKinley in Alaska in 2003
>   when he decided that the U.S. media wasn't telling
>   the truth about the war in Iraq. Using his savings,
>   he headed to Iraq, despite a limited background of
>   having written just a few freelance articles.
>
>   "My anger was why I decided to go to Iraq," he said.
>   "I felt I needed to do something more to try and get
>   accurate information out about what was being done."
>
>   His first stay began in November 2003 and lasted
>   nine weeks. He said one of his first stories took
>   place in Samarra, about 100 miles north of Bagdad,
>   when he heard reports that remnants of Saddam
>   Hussein's Fedayeen paramilitary organization had
>   attacked a U.S. patrol and that, in the ensuing
>   fight, 48 Fedayeen had been killed.
>
>   Suspicious because the Fedayeen had not been active,
>   Jamail said he interviewed hospital doctors and a
>   hospital mortician and found that eight people had
>   been killed, including six civilians and two Iranian
>   religious pilgrims.
>
>   Jamail said was present during the two sieges of
>   Fallujah in April and November 2004. He said the
>   first siege was ordered by the White House in
>   retaliation for the killing of four Blackwater
>   military contractors, whom he referred to as
>   "mercenaries."
>
>   "It's very, very clear this was a vendetta," he
>   said. "The revenge said, including to the military,
>   that taking care of Blackwater is more important."
>
>   During the second siege, which he said killed 5,000
>   Fallujah residents, U.S. troops set up checkpoints
>   around the city and wouldn't let men between the
>   ages of 15 and 48 leave, while others were allowed
>   to flee the city before it was attacked. Jamail
>   helped break the story that the military used white
>   phosphorus weapons and cluster bombs there.
>
>   He described the war as causing widespread misery,
>   citing studies that estimate that between 655,000
>   and 1 million Iraqi civilians have been killed
>   during the war, that 2 million are internal refugees
>   and another 2.5 million are refugees who have fled
>   the country.
>
>   Another 4 million Iraqi residents are said to be in
>   dire need of emergency care, needing water, food or
>   medical care. Those numbers don't include all the
>   Iraqis who have been wounded, which he estimated at
>   3 million.
>
>   All this in a country that had 27 million residents
>   prior to the invasion, he said.
>
>   "The Iraqi people, if you take out the foreign
>   military forces, are more than capable of taking
>   care of themselves," he said.
>
>     ------------------------------------------------
>
>   Find this article at:
>   http://www.news-gazette.com/news/2007/10/29/journalist_media_picture_of_the_war
>
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