Curiouser and Curiouser!

Curiouser and Curiouser! on gulf-war-ii http://matt.blogs.it/ RSS feed for topic gulf-war-ii Copyright 2006 Matt Mower Squib/0.1 self@mattmower.com self@mattmower.com en-gb Gulf War II: This time it's for the economy Fri, 07 Feb 2003 11:38:59 +0000 <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <A href="http://ming.tv/flemming2.php/__show_article/_a000010-000538/">Dollars, Euros and Oil</A>. Excellent article by Ciln Nunan: "<A href="http://www.feasta.org/energy.htm" target=_blank>Oil, Currency and the War on Iraq</A>". It seems to have disappeared from the site, so I'll include it at the bottom as well. Fascinating explanation of some major economic mechanisms involving dollars and euros and oil. A very big reason that the United States is such an economically and militarily dominating country is apparently that U.S. dollar is the de facto world reserve currency. Lots of things are counted in dollars and some goods are only sold for dolars. That means that foreign governments and corporations and banks are keeping large dollar reserves. That essentially amounts to a huge loan the rest of the world is giving to the United States, which will subsidize the U.S. economy. In order to acquire those dollars, the rest of the world has to provide goods and services for those dollars. That allows the U.S. to have a huge import/export imbalance. Last November, 48% more imports than exports. It would be untennable for any other country to run such a deficit.Next major point is that one of the reasons everybody has to have dollars is that the OPEC oil producting countries only accept dollars for oil. Well, not all of them. The only one that does something different is Iraq, which only accepts Euros for their oil, since 2000. And Iran is considering it as well. And the thing is that it might just as well be Euros that everybody used as a reserve currency. It would apparently be a better choice in many ways, because the European economies are more balanced, and the OPEC countries would end up getting more value for their oil. So, now, what would happen if Euros became the only choice for buying oil? Most likely the U.S. economy would plunge, because it would no longer be subsidized in that manner. And EU would probably be quite happy being subsidized in its place. Anybody thinks all this might have something to do with the great urgency to take over Iraq? And why would Britain support it? <A href="http://ming.tv/flemming2.php/__show_article/_a000010-000538/">more ></A> [<A href="http://ming.tv/">Ming the Mechanic</A>]</BLOCKQUOTE> Well now... isn't this interesting.  I found it worth reading the whole article to get a clearer understanding of the economics (not a subject I have a strong grasp on). If the economic beans make five then this is by far the most credible rationale I've heard for America & Britain going to war with Iraq.  Presumably an American puppet state in Iraq would swiftly switch back to the mighty $$ for oil deals.  Also with a large US presence next door Iran might think twice about undermining the US economy. From my perspective I would like to see the UK join the Euro.  Presumably at that point we'd join France and Germany in opposing the war.  Doubtless we would claim more honourable "pacificsm" related reasons than just not caring about the US economy any more. However what this does show is that Bush has his eye squarely on the domestic economy.  He realises that, if Opec drops the dollar, the US is probably boned. Here is my summary of the article: <UL> <LI>The dollar is the de facto world reserve currency: the US currency accounts for approximately two thirds of all official exchange reserves.</LI> <LI>In addition, all IMF loans are denominated in dollars.</LI> <LI>But the more dollars there are circulating outside the US, or invested by foreign owners in American assets, the more the rest of the world has had to provide the US with goods and services in exchange for these dollars.</LI> <LI>The dollars cost the US next to nothing to produce, so the fact that the world uses the currency in this way means that the US is importing vast quantities of goods and services virtually for free.</LI> <LI>Since so many foreign-owned dollars are not spent on American goods and services, the US is able to run a huge trade deficit year after year without apparently any major economic consequences.</LI> <LI>One of the stated economic objectives, and perhaps the primary objective, when setting up the euro was to turn it into a reserve currency to challenge the dollar so that Europe too could get something for nothing.</LI> <LI>Not only would they lose a large part of their annual subsidy of effectively free goods and services, but countries switching to euro reserves from dollar reserves would bring down the value of the US currency.</LI> <LI>Imports would start to cost Americans a lot more and as increasing numbers of those holding dollars began to spend them, the US would have to start paying its debts by supplying in goods and services to foreign countries, thus reducing American living standards.</LI> <LI>There is though one major obstacle to this happening: oil.</LI> <LI>Oil is not just by far the most important commodity traded internationally, it is the lifeblood of all modern industrialised economies.</LI> <LI>If on the other hand OPEC were to decide to accept euros only for its oil (assuming for a moment it were allowed to make this decision), then American economic dominance would be over.</LI> <LI>Not only would Europe not need as many dollars anymore, but Japan which imports over 80% of its oil from the Middle East would think it wise to convert a large portion of its dollar assets to euro assets (Japan is the major subsidiser of the US because it holds so many dollar investments).</LI> <LI>The conversion from trade deficit to trade surplus would have to be achieved at a time when its property and stock market prices were collapsing and its domestic supplies of oil and gas were contracting.</LI> <LI>There is little doubt that this was a deliberate attempt by Saddam to strike back at the US, but in economic terms it has also turned out to have been a huge success: at the time of Iraq's conversion the euro was worth around 83 US cents but it is now worth over $1.05.</LI> <LI>As oil production is now in decline in most oil producing countries, the importance of the remaining large oil producers, particularly those of the Middle East, is going to grow and grow in years to come.</LI></UL>   http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001134.html Cooked intelligence Fri, 07 Feb 2003 12:03:40 +0000 <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <A href="http://ming.tv/flemming2.php/__show_article/_a000010-000535/">Plagiarized Intelligence</A>. On Monday the British government released a <A href="http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page7111.asp" target=_blank>document</A>: "Iraq - Its Infrastructure of Concealment Deception and Intimidation", which appeared to be an up-to-the-minute intelligence based analysis, timed to back up what Colin Powell told the U.N. the next day. And Powell made a point out of praising it. <A href="http://www.channel4.com/news/home/z/stories/20030206/dossier.html" target=_blank>Unfortunately</A>, or maybe humorously, it turns out to have been put together from older public articles that various people have written, and most of it has just been cut and pasted verbatim, including typos. Some of it is taken from a paper written by a California college student. Seems like the British government doesn't have the resources to make up convincing stories themselves, let alone actually doing the intelligence work. [<A href="http://ming.tv/">Ming the Mechanic</A>]</BLOCKQUOTE> I listened to a piece about this on the Channel 4 news last night. They showed the documents side-by-side and I was pretty convinced that the government had just lifted most of it from the student paper.  It should also be noted that the student paper was written just after the first gulf war so the information is hardly "up to the minute." During the program they also suggested that the reason this document had been cooked up by No.10 was that British Intelligence did not support the conclusions No. 10 was looking for and couldn't be coerced into producing such a document themselves. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001137.html Peaceniks guide to the Middle East Fri, 07 Feb 2003 12:18:05 +0000 <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <A href="http://www.megnut.com/archive.asp?which=2003_02_01_archive.inc#002554">A dove's guide</A>. Over the the (UK) Times <A href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-152-561996,00.html">A dove's guide: how to be an honest critic of the war</A> by Matthew Parris makes some very good points about possible war with Iraq. "[T]o our doves' hearts' content, we may make sport with the arguments of Bush and Blair. But when the mockery dies away do we not have to ask ourselves one awkward little remaining question? What if the undeclared major premise is true? What if the weaponry is there, just as Washington and London believed all along?" [via <A href="http://www.nickdenton.org">Nick</A>] [<A href="http://www.megnut.com/">megnut</A>]</BLOCKQUOTE> Paris finishes his peace with the words: <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> I  do not think that the war, if there is a war, will fail. I can easily envisage the publication soon of some chilling facts about Saddams armoury, a French and German scamper back into the fold, a tough UN second resolution, a short and successful war, a handover to a better government, a discreet change of tune in the biddable part of the Arab world, and egg all over the peaceniks faces. I am not afraid that this war will fail. I am afraid that it will succeed. I am afraid that it will prove to be the first in an indefinite series of American interventions. I am afraid that it is the beginning of a new empire: an empire that I am afraid Britain may have little choice but to join. </BLOCKQUOTE> and I agree on all points. US forces can always win this war, provided the US public can accept the casualties and the potential bloodbath that may result in street-to-street combat Grozny style.  In my darker moments I also believe that a successful occupation of Iraq could be the beginning of Pax Americana. Where I disagree with Paris is in his dismissal of oil as a motivator for the struggle in Iraq. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001138.html Iraq is not Nazi Germany Sun, 16 Feb 2003 08:25:27 +0000 <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <A href="http://www.megnut.com/archive.asp?which=2003_02_01_archive.inc#002599">Iraq is not Nazi Germany</A>. There's an article in the Guardian stating <A title="Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | The opponents of war on Iraq are not the appeasers" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,894422,00.html">the opponents of war on Iraq are not the appeasers</A> and points out the fallacy in comparing Iraq to Nazi Germany and this era to the 1930's. [<A href="http://www.megnut.com/">megnut</A>]</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001164.html Cotton? We don't want no stinkin cotton Mon, 17 Feb 2003 09:10:54 +0000 Just been reading a little about the history of another just war to bring freedom and democracy to an oppressed people. <A href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/wilson/wilson11.html">http://www.lewrockwell.com/wilson/wilson11.html</A> Which war is that?  Why, the American civil war... http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001167.html Doctorin the news Mon, 17 Feb 2003 09:20:03 +0000 <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <A href="http://ming.tv/flemming2.php/__show_article/_a000010-000575/">CNN doctors the news</A>. Dan Hon has done an excellent <A href="http://danhon.com/ec/mtarchives/000411.shtml" target=_blank>analysis</A> of CNN's doctoring of the transcript of Hans Blix' report to the U.N. Friday. <BLOCKQUOTE>After grabbing the text from the two transcripts, correcting for where the BBC inserted a whole bunch of whitespace, there it was. A count in Word says that there's 866 words in one version that aren't in the other. At all. And they're, variously, about Iraqi moves towards compliance and partial refutation of the evidence presented by Powell to the UNSC.</BLOCKQUOTE> Get that. CNN deliberately left out the things Blix said about Iraq complying with the UN resolution, and the parts where he refutes Colin Powell's evidence from the week before. Look for yourself. BBC's full version is <A href="http://danhon.com/temp/bbcblix.txt" target=_blank>here</A> and CNN's fake version is <A href="http://danhon.com/temp/cnnblix.txt" target=_blank>here</A>. [<A href="http://ming.tv/">Ming the Mechanic</A>]</BLOCKQUOTE> Well I'd like to say I'm shocked by CNN doing this, but I'm really not.  And I'd like to say I'd be shocked that they won't get called to account, but I won't be. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001170.html One rule for "them", one rule for "us" Tue, 25 Feb 2003 13:15:58 +0000 <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <A href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/world/africa/2796883.stm">Mugabe: US must disarm</A>. The United States should lead by example and destroy its weapons of mass destruction, says Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe. [<A href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/rss/091/newsonline/world/index.xml">BBC News | World | UK Edition</A>]</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001198.html Get your cheque books out Wed, 26 Feb 2003 15:19:25 +0000 <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> Amazing numbers. Independent estimate of the impending war with Iraq (from the <A href="http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1046214649824241183,00.html?">WSJ</A>) Conflict: $20-80 billion    Peacekeeping: $25-105 billion (five years)     Humanitarian assistance: $1-10 billion  (Note:  I think this figure is very, very low)    Cost of governance: (civil servants and police force) $5-12 bil.    Reconstruction including oil fields: $10-105 bil.    Aid to allies: $6-10 bil.    Debt claims and reparations: $62-361 bil.   <DIV class=plnEleven> This may top the $494 b in current US dollars we spent on Vietnam and the $336 b we spent on the Korean war.  The war in Afghanistan cost the US ~$37 b already and current plans call for spending of $7 b a year for ongoing operations.  In the Iraq scenarios, the high intensity warfare planned for will cost $500 m a day.   In contrast, the US spends ~$10 b a year on development and humanitarian aid. <DIV class=plnEleven>[<A href="http://jrobb.userland.com/">John Robb's Radio Weblog</A>]</DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE> If I do my sums right that could mean as much as $2,434.40 for every one of the 280,562,489 men, women, and, children alive in the United States of America (based upon the population figures from the <A href="http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/us.html">CIA world factbook 2002</A>). I hope you like the nice empire you're building, after all, you're paying for it! http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001217.html Arthur Kent: Journalist for our times Tue, 18 Mar 2003 10:54:08 +0000 <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <A href="http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/03/17/scud_stud/index.html">Scud Stud lobs a missile at Bush</A>. During the Gulf War, NBC reporter Arthur Kent was famed for his boyish good looks. Today, liberated from the network, he's free to say that Bush is out of control. [<A href="http://www.salon.com">Salon.com</A>]</BLOCKQUOTE> I don't remember Arthur Kent from the first Gulf War.  Perhaps because I quickly grew sick of being spoon fed the "ra ra" news coverage and turned it off.  However I wish I had caught his pieces. His is a very thoughtful point of view that we should be hearing more of.  The following is just a sample that resonated with me.  I'd encourage anyone to read the whole article. <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> I'm still trying to shake from my mind the disbelief that a modern American administration can be as clumsy, as brusque and as crude as this one. Think back to Sept. 12, 2001: Kids in Paris were wearing American flags out of solidarity with the American people. Countries were lining up, tripping over one another, to come and touch the hem of the cloak of power in Washington D.C. The Bush administration had allies and support and emotional empathy from people around the world. It's gone. Where has it gone? It hasn't disappeared by Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein pouring a potion over people. It's gone because the administration has so offended the sensibilities of peace-loving, democracy-loving people that they simply have to take to the streets, or demand of their leaders to tell the Bush administration to stop and to think. I don't want to see a "coalition of the willing." We need a coalition of the thinking. We need countries and leaders to get together and think. The campaign against terror is a battle of ideas. We have better ideas; we have better societies. You outthink terrorists and you outmaneuver them, economically, socially, politically, diplomatically, as well as militarily. We have got to get into the Muslim world and the Third World in a nonviolent fashion and outperform the al-Qaidas and Saddam Husseins of the world with the promise of a better tomorrow for those people, as well as our own. Otherwise, we lose. Americans should ask themselves: Whose agenda, besides the Bush administration's, is served by a rush to war? The answer is Osama bin Laden's and those of the people like him. They don't care about the Iraqi people, or Saddam Hussein, but they are confident a deployment of raw, American military power in the Middle East will create more anti-American sentiment, which will help them. If you're falling into your enemy's trap, what's the hurry? Why aren't there smarter solutions? As journalists, these are the questions that we should be prompting the public to ask. Instead, I see coverage about the inevitability of war and the deployment. </BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001286.html Voices from Baghdad Tue, 18 Mar 2003 12:46:52 +0000 <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <A href="http://ming.tv/flemming2.php/__show_article/_a000010-000669/">A voice from Iraq</A>. Seems reasonable today to hear what <A href="http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/" target=_blank>Salam</A>, the lone local blogger in Baghdad, has to <A href="http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/2003_03_01_dear_raed_archive.html#90779364" target=_blank>say</A>. He seems like a normal, intelligent guy, who says what he thinks, but he has been very courageous in sticking his neck out so publically. He supports a regime change, but he doesn't support war, and he thinks the human shields should go home. <BLOCKQUOTE>"No one inside Iraq is for war (note I said war not a change of regime), no human being in his right mind will ask you to give him the beating of his life, unless you are a member of fight club that is, and if you do hear Iraqi (in Iraq, not expat) saying 'come on bomb us' it is the exasperation and 10 years of sanctions and hardship talking. There is no person inside Iraq (and this is a bold, blinking and underlined inside) who will be jumping up and down asking for the bombs to drop. We are not suicidal you know, not all of us in any case.I think that the coming war is not justified (and it is very near now, we hear the war drums loud and clear if you dont then take those earplugs off!). The excuses for it have been stretched to their limits they will almost snap. A decision has been made sometime ago that 'regime change' in Baghdad is needed and excuses for the forceful change have to be made. I do think war could have been avoided, not by running back and forth the last two months, thats silly. But the whole issue of Iraq should have been dealt with differently since the first day after GW I.The entities that call themselves 'the international community' should have assumed their responsibilities a long time ago, should have thought about what the sanctions they have imposed really meant, should have looked at reports about weapons and human rights abuses a long time before having them thrown in their faces as excuses for war five minutes before midnight.What is bringing on this rant is the question that has been bugging for days now: how could 'support democracy in Iraq' become to mean 'bomb the hell out of Iraq'? why did it end up that democracy wont happen unless we go thru war? Nobody minded an un-democratic Iraq for a very long time, now people have decided to bomb us to democracy? Well, thank you! how thoughtful."</BLOCKQUOTE> [<A href="http://ming.tv/">Ming the Mechanic</A>]</BLOCKQUOTE> It'll be interesting to see if & what this guy is publishing over the next few weeks & months.  Assuming he lives. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001295.html Bush feels Serene? How nice for him Tue, 18 Mar 2003 14:59:00 +0000 <A href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/world/middle_east/2859233.stm">High stakes for President Bush</A>. BBC Washington correspondent Rob Watson considers what is at stake for President Bush's standing at home and abroad. [<A href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/world/default.stm">BBC News | World | UK Edition</A>] Okay I find the following (quoted from this article) chilling: <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> As war approaches, President Bush himself is said to be serene - a serenity aides say comes from his conviction that what he is doing is right, despite the worldwide chorus of doubt and disapproval. </BLOCKQUOTE> I may be wrong, but my understanding of the state of mind of previous US presidents (including Nixon) when contemplating war is that they were not serene.  They were battling to find another solution, to avoid war.  Serenity when contemplating war strikes me as the pose of the religious zealot or ideologue.  http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001301.html What he said Sun, 23 Mar 2003 10:56:34 +0000 <BLOCKQUOTE> Peter Shaplen, broadcast veteran, chimes in My partner in production efforts, <A href="mailto: peter@shaplen.com">Peter Shaplen</A>, who began his career as Walter Cronkite's desk assistant, chimes in. Alas, Peter is blogless, so I'm posting this for him: Once again we are confusing technology with editorial substance. The ability to see a military column with night-scope technology and moving in the dark is neither a news event in itself nor indicative of anything strategic. Asking a reporter to "tell us the latest" from there is gratuitous. First, from his perspective this milepost is not significantly different from the one 5 minutes earlier. Second, from his humvee and note it is NOT the command vehicle he is no better off than any other forlorn private in the convoy being carried along in the desert. We have entered a media war with reporters and cameras embedded with troops, subanchors in Qatar and Kuwait, and if they could, news organizations would likely rent their own AWACS to create skyboxes much the way they are accustomed to covering political conventions. But the sad reality is that they have little to say, little to offer in terms of news, and it seems from the first 4 days of coverage, they have little if any intention of gathering news. They are doing a play by play. They are content to tell us about mile posts and sand as if that is a substitute for reporting on the progress of the war or the condition of the men or the leadership of the generals. This has once again - become more about the media than the war. In Gulf War I, Arthur Kent was dubbed the Scud Stud in some sort of weird accolade as the bravest or sexiest reporter on the beat. We have yet to see who will emerge as the next Beauty in a Bush Jacket for Gulf War 2, though I am certain that, once again, there are countless talent agents hoping and coaching their clients to become the next Ashley Banfield. War reportage is not about the personalities of the reporters covering the war. Thus far, those reporters embedded with the troops have done an appallingly poor job of truly introducing us to the men they are covering. We have no sense of them, their view of the war, the perspective of the GI. We have no sense of how they view their commanders. We have little insight to how they feel about being there. And who could blame them? Speaking honestly in the military or expressing the counter-to-the-prevailing-wisdom opinion is not healthy for one's career. So in turn, the media turns to itself to discuss and debate how the campaign is going. The networks (and local stations) ploy of having a platoon stand and proudly, happily and loudly proclaim they are the "such and such of the whatever company, Good Morning America" or "Hi Mom, I love you and we'll be home soon" is a poor substitute for substance. Murrow did find substance tho aboard the night bombing mission over Europe. He introduced us to the boys. He let them speak. We could listen and hear that they were truly just like the young men of our town. We knew them. We related to them. We felt their fear and their sense of mission. Jack Laurence did it too with his work for CBS on Charlie Company. His book "The Cat From Hue: A Vietnam War Story" (2002, Public Affairs) should have been required reading for all of the reporters embedded in Gulf War 2. Its 848 pages are a chronicle of a tortured media experience covering a US led coalition. But it took time. It took time weeks for Laurence to become part of Charles Company. It took a commitment from a network to enable him to do it support it film it. And they gave him air time. Not enough perhaps, but he won it by sheer reporting excellence. That rarely exists today. While we are being treated to war 24/7, there is almost no time set aside for true reporting. The vast amount of air time has become consumed by live shots and interviews with experts and listening to one anchor after another remind us that he/she was recently in the theatre of operations and which time they saw or they were told or they heard As if! As if their access and tour wasn¹t as scripted or controlled as anything we might imagine. My point is that war, just like so many other stories the media claims to be expert at covering, does not unfold nicely, neatly or on a timetable. Yet many in the media who should know better seem to be looking for a perfect fit. Once upon a time, war correspondents and photographers would file their dispatches that would be printed hours (or days) later. Attacks and counter attacks were long completed before the first dispatches ever appeared for the homeland readers. There were political debates of course. And in time, the memoirs of the generals and the politicians would be published to fill in whatever gaps remained. In some cases they were shocking accounts. In others, they revealed true strategy and surprise. Today, we want the instant gratification of knowing where the troops are going, what they are expecting, what the outcome will be, and what will they see next. It is as if the progression of the Third Marine Battalion into Iraq was a Discovery channel travelogue. But "My Journeys With Bravo Company on the Road to Baghdad" is not what this war is about. One cannot fault Brokaw, Jennings, Rather or the others for at times tossing to the embedded reporter in desperation to hear anything new, but they should (and do) know better than to expect any truly astounding news. They can look sincere, concerned, puzzled and reflective until their crows feet grow deeper and become more embedded on their own faces, but the handoffs to the satellite-phone equipped field reporter is likely to garner very little that is "news." In fact, there is very little news period. And that should be no surprise. This is war coverage. It is deliberate and progressive. Following Coalition Commander in Chief General Tommy Franks news conference Saturday morning, NBC¹s Today show did a rather good recap between Katie Couric and Jim Miklaszewski featuring "Mik's" insight to what he heard that was significant and what he heard/read between the lines of Gen. Frank¹s statements. It was solid interpretation and offered value. But what also seemed apparent was that the real value of the Couric-Mik dialogue was to fill the time required to get Matt Laurer¹s signal and Kelly O'Donnell into an IFB harness to report from Qatar. No sooner did Couric handoff to Laurer than he tossed to O'Donnell to elaborate on her questions regarding Turkish incursion along the northern border. For any one who had been listening for more than 15 minutes, we had already heard her original question and Franks' answer. There had been no opportunity for follow up. There had been no other question asked on the subject. Once Frank had left the room on live TV, there had been no chance for additional questions with other senior officers as she was hustling to get ready for her live shot. In short, O'Donnell's question had been asked and answered in the news conference. Now she was being called upon to merely regurgitate on national, live TV. Why? Because they had a signal to Qatar and needed to put something--anything--on it. I am often critical of the way media local more than national covers a plane crash. For instance, how often have you watched as the NTSB has arrived at a crash site before a reporter earnestly asks for the cause of the accident. Any one who has watched more than 15 seconds of news knows that an accident investigation moves at glacial speed and can be as exciting as watching paint dry, nonetheless we watch from the sidelines as a reporter asks an unanswerable question. "So do you know the cause of the crash?" It is like watching a traffic accident in slow motion. The reporter licks their lips take a deep breath knowing that they have the air and asks with a booming voice, "So what do you think was the cause?" And within a nanosecond, the grimace from the NTSB lead investigator reveals not only his/her contempt for the media but dismisses the reporter with a terse, "We only just arrived." It will be months if not a year before the NTSB files its report. It will no doubt be considerably longer before that reporter learns how to be a journalist. What is served by asking a question that cannot be answered at that time? The same holds true at the Pentagon of JOC briefing. Reporters - standing there earnestly asking questions that they know are unanswerable I am left to wonder, for whom are they performing? Are they posturing for the general? The TV audience at home--or more specifically for their bosses at 30 Rockefeller Plaza or West 57th and 67th Streets? General Franks will not be tricked into divulging news. He has been too well media trained and is not going to reveal the secrets of the campaign on live TV. We can watch our news anchors breathlessly throw to the reporters in the field for the latest update we can watch them twist slowly, helplessly in the wind as they chat amicably back and forth between the field and NY anchor pods but we would be mistaken to think or expect that news is going to break out in these exchanges. There are specific kinds of news from a war. There are of course the pictures. Dating back to Matthew Brady, there are pictures. Apart from a location caption, often times the pictures require nothing more. The picture of the burning of London, St. Paul¹s Cathedral, or the faces of the huddled population in the Underground speaks volumes. For any one who doubt the power of this with troops in the field, I refer them to the work of Larry Burrows of Life Magazine. (The magazine resources must be available somewhere; surely his book "Compassionate Photographer" can be found). We continue to see a derivation of this in the live cameras from Baghdad. All that is really needed from those vantage points is the summary of "We're looking north...." or "the building on fire is the palace of...." We don't need much more because the picture itself is the story. We don't need to be told the building is on fire if in fact we can see the flames. Telling me that is to tell me the obvious. Tell me instead what time of day is it, was the building likely occupied, were there air raid signals in advance of the explosion, were people seen running from the scene, are there ambulances removing the injured, are fire crews able to get to the scene? We have heard none of that reporting. We have heard plenty of hit-runs-and errors kinds of summary, "Oh that was a big one," or "Tonight¹s explosions were louder than last nights." Forgive me if I dismiss this is as not substance but rather play-by-play and color commentary punctuated by bomb blasts. The next type of reporting is the on scene report. In Vietnam this was usually obtained by small crews (a reporter, cameraman and soundman) who truly risked their lives by traveling to a forward base, persuading the military PAO to put them on a chopper and ferry them to a hot spot. They shot their story, did a few interviews, asked some fairly decent questions both on and more off camera (for film was expensive and heavy), and then it became the responsibility of the reporter to put it all together. To add depth to add perspective to bring his or her knowledge and prior experience to bear and create a tapestry of the news. In Nicaragua and El Salvador, we managed to get there on our own usually arriving as uninvited guests. Now in Gulf War 2, the media is being carried along as official guests. But thus far, the censored and self-censored coverage has been reduced to a play by play of a road trip. The last kind of reporting and sadly it cascades out of the TV and radio is exactly what the press used to deride as the "Five o'clock follies" that was the daily staple of MACV (Military Assistance Command Vietnam the precursor of the JOC at the Coalition Command Post). There on a daily basis, senior officers would interpret the news and field reports for the Saigon based press corps. The only difference today is that the networks have hired their own interpreters and experts from the retired ranks of the military to cut out the middleman. They do their own "follies." For it is surely a folly to ask an arm chair general in suburban Virginia to interpret a campaign about which he has little, if any, first hand knowledge. We are also being treated to former journalists who have pitched themselves as experts to local media. In San Francisco, one former Vietnam reporter has been hired to sit on the set and explain in depth the military strategy. He is offering little more than what has been gleaned from the printed press from network pundits and from other, previously available sources. Yet sitting on the anchor set he and the host proclaim, as if they have just assessed this on their own, that the attack on Iraq "will be a coordinated one" or "will open with a blistering air campaign followed by ground columns from the south, west and north." As Homer Simpson eloquently says, "Well, doh." We are receiving an overwhelming amount of noise in this war. Noise from the battlefield, from the JOC, from the Pentagon, and from the anchor desk. Instead of sifting out the best to present that within the news window, the window itself has been expanded to "take it all in" and to present it back in often an unedited, unshaped fashion. The press has abrogated its responsibility to be editors rather preferring to become facilitators. Unable or unwilling to edit and shape the reporting, they are content to use technology to let it flow into our living room. Unwilling to risk upsetting the political apple cart by taking a stand or showing something it fears would be unpopular or worse, deemed unpatriotic, the network/mainstream media has decided it is safer, politically wiser, economically advantageous to be a "pipe" rather than an editorial resource. Yes, we¹ll get to "see it live" though it remains uncertain just what "it" is. If war is death and destruction and pain and blood and suffering and loss, then we surely haven¹t seen "it" yet. Instead, we have seen and heard noise and bombast. Live feeds, individual captions, blogs and so much more technology enable us to experience this battle, but often as not much more than a game show. I have yet to see anything that shows me the war has begun that people are paying the supreme price and that the technology has improved either the editorial understanding of the campaign or will prevent us from new wars to come.[<A href="http://www.ratcliffe.com/bizblog/">RatcliffeBlog: Business, Technology & Investing</A>]</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001310.html The real gulf war Fri, 28 Mar 2003 20:16:31 +0000 <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0107127/2003/03/28.html#a407">Can we win the hearts and Minds?</A>. I have just skimmed though Milton Viorst's Book "In the Shadow of the Prophet - The Struggle for the Soul of Islam". My questions about whether we can ever win the hearts and minds of the Arabs have deepened and I also question whether democracy can be inserted into a culture that has experienced the history and culture of Iraq. MV's basic view is that Islam defaults to orthodoxy which in modern times has become Fundamentalist. It is not survivable for a Muslim leader to espouse a secular state. So, Muslim states are locked in a stasis. Orthodoxy precludes innovation. It precludes Representative government. The result: <UL> <LI>Income in the Arab world has fallen more than 20% since 1980 <LI>GDP has increased at around 1% annually since 1980 while population has increased from 165 million to 245 million. In oil states, there has been a cushion but in the rest a fall in living standards. <LI>There are 5 million arabs in France many of whom are young male and unemployed - that is 10% of the French population. That would be the equivalent of 20 million in the US and 3 million in Canada - now maybe we can sense why France is nervous about a conflict that could become religious.</LI></UL> The way out, if there is one, can only be found inside the Arab world. As assassination is the fate of reformers, I can't see how this can occur. So the Arab world most of whom are male and young and angry have no choice but to vent their anger at us.. My second point is about our hopes for democracy. Surely Iraq, like Ukraine, is like a battered family with a long habit of abuse. Abusers come from the ranks of the abused. There is no trust in this type of society. Putnam has shown how this affects economics and society in his work on Italy. In the South, Mafia land, the culture is top down patriarchal and the economy is stagnant. In the North where there are many horizontal links and high trust, the economy booms. Sicily looks like a dream world compared to what the Iraqis have  been through for hundreds of years. Remember before Saddam there were the Hashemites supported by the British and before that hundreds of years of Turkish rule. Like Ukraine there is not even the myth of freedom to recall. If we are honest we can admit that there is no chance of having a Democratic state - it is not culturally possible until there have been generations of no abuse. My main point -  Let's drop the illusions  The war in Iraq may be only a campaign in a long and deadly struggle between Islam and the secular world. Currently there is no possibility of reconciliation. We are in reality locked in a lifetime of increasing conflict. Let's take off the blinkers and see our situation for what it is. I have no idea what to do but is not the first step of finding a solution to find out what is relay going on? [<A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0107127/">Robert Paterson's Radio Weblog</A>]</BLOCKQUOTE> Robert's posting these last few weeks have been both thoughtful and interesting.  But I have to disagree in at least one sense.  I don't see the war in Iraq as being the opening salvo in a struggle between Islam and the secular world.  Iraq is, largely, a secular society under Saddam Hussein.  If you read: <UL> <LI><A href="http://www.polyconomics.com/searchbase/02-18-98.html">Where did Saddam come from (Part I)</A></LI> <LI><A href="http://www.polyconomics.com/searchbase/02-19-98.html">Where did Saddam come from (Part II)</A></LI></UL> you can see more of the fabric that made up the events leading to the first gulf war.  In particular you will see how British and more recently US interests (and stupidity) have shaped events.  It makes a mockery of the whole US position and the new war. Heres some items that stand out: <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> Saddam Hussein directed the cascade of oil wealth into the improvement of the lives of ordinary Iraqi citizens. Our ambassador to Iraq in these years, Edward Peck, tells me there is no question that as much as ordinary people in Iran came to hate the Shah, the ordinary people of Iraq came to love Saddam. The wealth went into free education, K through university, modern hospitals, water and sewer facilities, and the greatest expansion of living standards in the history of modern Iraq. His biographers agree he was conscious of the need to share the benefits of the oil wealth as widely as possible in order to keep the support of the masses. In the period between this meeting and the Kuwait invasion, the record indicates that the Bush administration bent over backwards to indicate that it was thrilled to pieces with Saddam, especially as he was using his oil money to buy what we permitted him to buy to reduce our trade deficit. The next day Saddam Hussein summoned US Ambassador April Glaspie to his office in what was to be the last official contact between Baghdad and the United States before the invasion of Kuwait. Even at this late stage, with an obviously deteriorating situation in the Gulf, Glaspie still made efforts to placate Saddam Hussein. She emphasized that President Bush had rejected the idea of trade sanctions against Iraq, to which Saddam replied: There is nothing left for us to buy from America except wheat. Every time we want to buy something, they say it is forbidden. I am afraid that one day you will say, "you are going to make gunpowder out of wheat" "I admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. I know you need funds. We understand that, and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts like your border disagreement with Kuwait. [Authors italics]." In the years since, Ive concluded that Saddam had no intention of invading Saudi Arabia. I later learned, as did you, of the "green light" that April Glaspie gave Saddam in their July 24 meeting. I also learned that Ms. Glaspie was subsequently "surprised" when the Iraqi army did not stop at the oil fields, but went on to Kuwait City. Of course, if you consider that Kuwait is only 13% the size of your home state of North Carolina, and Iraq is 10,000 square miles larger than California, you will see that it did not take much for tanks to overshoot Kuwait City and appear to be menacing Saudi Arabia. In his invasion of Iran, remember that Saddam did stop when he got what he wanted, and was later criticized for not pushing as far as he could so that he would have a better bargaining position. Indeed, the consensus was built with money and arms. Turkey, Syria, even Iran joined the coalition with sudden fountains of credit produced by the World Bank. It does appear in my readings that there came a point where there had to be a war to justify all that had been done. In the last weeks before the bombing of Iraq began on January 16, it is clear with hindsight that there was no interest in talking to Baghdad because Iraq had to be taught a lesson. Several hundred thousand Iraqis died as a result of the bombing. The reason we lost only 148 men was that Iraq was attempting a retreat throughout the 100 hours of battle. If it had put up any resistance, they would have been completely slaughtered. As it was, Colin Powell called off the "turkey shoot" after it had accomplished partial slaughter.</BLOCKQUOTE> What we can see is a leader, cold-blooded and ruthless to be sure (but he's in good company), who gets a green-light from the US to invade Kuwait and recover what he sees as the costs of his war on Iran (for which he had the backing, if not the support, of the west).  When he overshoots and appears to be threatening Saudia Arabia the US overreacts and a pretty soon the situation spirals out of control to the point where there is no turning back --  Hussein has been demonized as the next Hitler, billioins of dollars of fake money have come from the World Bank and have to be spent somehow. So, why are we going back to war with Iraq? http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001335.html Can the tail wag the dog..? Sat, 12 Apr 2003 09:05:00 +0100 <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <A href="http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/000938.shtml">Was Saddam Statue Event Staged for Cameras?</A>. David Theroux of the Independent Institute sends a link to a page that may raise serious questions about an event... [<A href="http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/">Dan Gillmor's eJournal</A>]</BLOCKQUOTE> Can the tail wag the dog..? http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001381.html