[Peace-discuss] Scott Ritter's view from Bagdad

[Morton K. Brussel]

  He understands.
	

Reporting From Baghdad

Posted on Sep 6, 2007
Couric and troops

What I did on my summer vacation: Katie Couric poses with Marines  
while awaiting a presidential visit in Anbar province.

By Scott Ritter

It should come as no surprise that the Bush administration’s newest  
military-man-of-substance-turned- political lapdog, General Petraeus,  
maintains that the situation in Iraq is not only salvageable, but  
actually improving, due to the “surge” of U.S. combat troops into  
Iraq over the past year.  All the president and his collection of GI  
Joe hand-puppets ask for is more time, more money and more troops.

There is no reason to believe that the compliant war facilitators who  
comprise the “anti-war” Democratic majority in Congress will do  
anything other than give the president what he is asking for.  No one  
seems to want to debate, in any meaningful fashion, what is really  
going on in Iraq.

Why would they?  The Democrats, like their Republican counterparts,  
have invested too much political capital into fictionalizing the  
problem with slogans like “support the troops,” “we’re fighting the  
enemy there so we don’t have to fight them here,” and my all-time  
favorite, “leaving Iraq would hand victory to al-Qaida.”

There simply is no incentive to put fact on the table and formulate  
policy that actually seeks a solution to a properly defined problem.   
Like the Republicans before them, the Democrats today seek not to  
govern with the best interests of the people in mind, but rather to  
game the system in order to consolidate political power.  Political  
sloganeering has so trumped reality that any political backlash that  
is generated from the so-called “Petraeus Report” will be limited to  
how the Democrats could better sustain a conflict that kills American  
troops, since no mainstream Democratic leader has expressed a true  
“get out of Iraq now” policy.

Nearly 4 1/2 years after President Bush’s ill-fated (and illegal)  
decision to invade and occupy Iraq, few people in a position to  
influence policy formulation and implementation in America have  
actually grasped the horrible truth about what has transpired, and  
what is transpiring, in Mesopotamia today. As the United States  
places the finishing touches on Fortress America, the new half- 
billion-dollar Embassy complex in the heart of the Green Zone in  
downtown Baghdad, and more troops pour into mega-bases throughout  
Iraq, the reality (and futility) of permanent occupation has yet to  
sink in.  What could be going through the minds of those members of  
Congress who keep signing blank checks for the president?  Is there  
no oversight of how and why this money is spent?  How can someone  
fund permanent infrastructure one day, then speak of the need to get  
out of Iraq the next?

The compliant mainstream media, of course, is no help.  The war in  
Iraq has become a major generator of advertising revenue for these  
corporations, so there is no incentive to actually report the truth,  
but rather manipulate the fiction.  Iraq has become a prestige  
destination for every aspiring journalist or struggling anchor,  
determined to get “the big story.” The most recent manifestation of  
this syndrome is CBS News anchor Katie Couric, who earlier this week  
traveled to Iraq because she was (in her own words), “Curious about  
very basic questions regarding living conditions, about how much fear  
there is in the street, about how the soldiers really are doing.”  
That the situation in Iraq has been boiled down to these three big,  
burning issues (living conditions, fear in the streets, and how the  
troops are really doing), and that CBS is sending their multi-million- 
dollar investment to investigate, speaks volumes about the truly  
degenerate state of American journalism today.

The real big three she should be addressing are “Why do Americans  
keep dying?” “Who is killing them?” and “Why?” Of course, answering  
these questions would undermine the very fantasy world Couric is  
being sent to cover, one where Americans are doing good deeds in the  
name of peace and justice for downtrodden Iraqis. Couric’s jaunt is  
fraud on a massive scale.  Ironically, she herself acknowledged this  
when she admitted that her upbeat reports from Iraq were reflective  
of what the U.S. military wanted her to see, and not honest  
“reporting” on her part.

If Couric and her ilk won’t answer these questions, I will.  “Why do  
Americans keep dying?” Simple:  Because we are in Iraq.  We don’t  
belong there.  Our presence is derived from our own violation of law,  
not someone else’s, and as such any effort to sustain our presence is  
tainted by this same foundation of illegitimacy.  In short, Americans  
will keep dying in Iraq as long as we remain in Iraq.  If Katie  
wanted to really get to the bottom of this story, she could venture  
out on her own to any one of the villages and towns where Americans  
have been killed recently.  Of course, she would probably end up dead  
herself, which would defeat the purpose of trying to report the story.

“Who is killing them?” Another easy answer:  Iraqis.  We are  
occupying their homeland.  We are violating their sovereignty.  We  
are butchering, abusing and torturing their citizens.  Our continued  
presence is an affront to the socioeconomic-political fabric that is  
(or was) Iraqi society.  If someone occupied my hometown in the same  
manner Americans occupy Iraq, I’d be killing them any way I could.   
And I would be called a hero by my own people, not a terrorist.  The  
Bush administration, in an effort to deflect public attention away  
from this reality, has created the fiction of a massive al-Qaida  
presence in Iraq, working in parallel with a similarly large Iranian  
Revolutionary Guard Command presence, which apparently is responsible  
for the majority of anti-American violence and dead U.S. troops.


Rhetoric aside, however, American officials who make these claims  
have been unable to back them up with hard facts and figures.  There  
is an al-Qaida presence in Iraq.  However, the majority of what is  
known as “al-Qaida in Iraq” is composed of Iraqis, not foreigners.   
The whole phenomenon is a direct result of the American occupation of  
Iraq, and would dissipate the moment America left the country.   
Likewise, the accusation of direct Iranian involvement in anti- 
American violence is questionable.  Iranian political support of  
Iraqi Shiite groups who violently oppose the American occupation of  
Iraq is real, but then again we know this:  We invited the Supreme  
Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq to join us in toppling  
Saddam.  Based out of Iran, functioning as a de facto arm of the  
Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command, SCIRI did as we asked.  Why,  
then, are we shocked when SCIRI maintains ties with the very entity  
that created and nurtured it?  It is Iraqi Shiites who are killing  
Americans, not Iranians.  And they would kill us with or without the  
support of Iran.

Now we come to the third and perhaps most difficult question:  “Why?”  
In some odd way, Katie Couric’s jaunt to Iraq answers that question:   
Because Americans truly don’t care.  Oh, we care about vague softball  
issues, such as “conditions in the street,” “fear,” and of course,  
“how the American troops are really doing,” especially when they are  
fed to us in 30-second sound bites or three-minute “in-depth”  
stories.  Little feel good segments planted in between commercials,  
designed not to infringe on our intellectual curiosity for more than  
30 minutes so we don’t loose our focus watching the latest “reality”  
show or made-for-television drama.

The fact is, Couric’s made-for-television news is to what is really  
happening in Iraq as “CSI: Las Vegas” is to what is really happening  
on the streets of Sin City.  CBS knows that, which is why they are  
packaging Katie in this fashion.  The shame is that for most  
Americans watching, they think they’re getting the real deal.  They  
are not, but will continue to wallow in their ignorant indifference.   
Katie will struggle to tell us that our kids keep dying in Iraq to  
“improve the quality of life” and “reduce the level of fear” on the  
streets of Baghdad.  She solemnly informs us that “our boys and  
girls” are suffering, but they know it is in support of a just and  
noble cause.  Katie will continue to report the story in Iraq from  
the perspective of an American political dynamic, not Iraqi reality.

She won’t go visit one of the American mercenary units in Iraq, the  
private military contractors who challenge the American military for  
numerical supremacy.  She won’t burrow into the never-never land of  
legal ambiguity that allows these mercenaries to commit murder at  
will, to treat Iraq (and Iraqis) as second-class citizens in their  
own nation, and whose continued abuse of Iraq results in a deep and  
undying hatred for all things American.  Katie may catch a movie in a  
hardened underground theater on one of the Pentagon’s mega-bases, or  
go shopping in a PX inside the “Green Zone” to get a “feel” of life  
for our troops, but she won’t venture up north, into Kurdistan, where  
other secure outposts of foreign occupation sit, out of sight and  
mind.  If Couric would visit the Iraqi Oil Ministry, she might be  
shocked to witness the legal maneuvering and exploitation carried out  
by foreign oil companies (including, directly or indirectly, American  
oil companies).

Working with local Kurdish officials, small oil exploration and  
drilling camps are sprouting up all over northern Iraq, where they  
siphon off the wealth of the Iraqi people.  Shipped out of Iraq via  
Turkey and (surprisingly) Iran, using long-established smuggling  
routes, these illegal ventures are generating billions of dollars in  
income for oil companies, and because these ventures aren’t supposed  
to exist, this income goes unreported.  You can’t miss these sites.   
Any review of Google-Earth imagery would show these facilities  
springing up like mushrooms over the last few years.  The U.S.  
military knows about them, and yet does nothing.  Note to Richard  
Kaplan (Katie Couric’s producer):  If you want to investigate this  
story, I’ll provide you with the geographic coordinates.  Drive up  
and try to talk your way into the security perimeter.  Position Katie  
well for the camera shot and demand answers. Just look out for the  
Canadian, South African or American mercenaries who are charged by  
“Big Oil” to keep this dirty little secret “secret.”

Instead of going to Iraq to report on why Americans keep dying, Katie  
could just stay here, in America.  There are any number of  
corporations whose boardrooms she could visit.  Or she could smooth- 
talk her way into a number of country clubs, to interview the human  
face of the “military industrial complex” that President Eisenhower  
warned us about a half-century ago.  She might take a look at  
congressional campaign financing, where the profits from these  
corporations fund the campaigns of the politicians who continue to do  
nothing about Iraq.  Then, and just then, would Katie come close to  
answering the question of “Why?”

But she won’t.  Or should I say, she can’t.  CBS is owned by General  
Electric.  GE is working hard to get favorable trading status with  
any number of foreign trading partners.  The U.S. trade  
representative is working hard on GE’s behalf.  Hard-nosed  
“reporting” by the likes of Couric would not go over well in the  
bowels of the White House, where instructions to the U.S. trade  
representative are issued. “I’m Katie Couric,” her broadcast could  
begin.  “Tonight I am declaring independence from corporate control  
over how I report (i.e., read) the news.” Answering the “why” of Iraq  
requires confronting the layers of corruption and corporate  
domination of America on so many levels that even if Katie wanted to,  
she couldn’t—at least not from her perch as anchor of the CBS Evening  
News.

In a way, Iraq is a manifestation of all that ails America today.  A  
complete breakdown of fundamental societal checks and balances  
brought on by greed and hubris.  From General Petraeus who will give  
it, to the mindless corporate-owned minions who populate much of  
Congress who will receive it, to the entertainment-as-news media  
which will report on it, and to the American people who will consume  
it with no foundation upon which to evaluate it, the “Petraeus  
Report” will have little relevance to what is really going on in  
Iraq.  Once again, Americans will be searching for a solution to a  
problem they have yet to properly define.

Just ask Katie Couric.  Or better yet, watch her.