[Dialogue] You Call This Progress?

Fri Mar 10 14:32:07 EST 2006

AlterNet

You Call This Progress?

By Molly Ivins, AlterNet
Posted on March 9, 2006, Printed on March 10, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/33329/

It was such a relief to me to learn we are making "very, very good progress"
in Iraq. As the third anniversary of our invasion approaches, I could not
have been more thrilled by the news reported by Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on a Sunday chat show. Vice President Dick
Cheney's take was equally reassuring: Things are "improving steadily" in
Iraq.

I was thrilled -- very, very good progress and steady improvement, isn't
that grand? Wake me if anything starts to go wrong. Like someone bombing the
al-Askari Mosque in Samarra and touching off a lot of sectarian violence.

I was also relieved to learn -- via Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, so
noted for his consistently accurate assessment of this war -- that the whole
picture is hunky-dory to tickety-boo. Since the bombing of the mosque, lots
of alarmists have reported that Iraq is devolving or might be collapsing
into civil war. They're sort of jumping over the civil war line and back
again -- yep, it's started; nope, it hasn't -- like a bunch of false starts
at the beginning of a football play.

I'm sure glad to get the straight skinny from Ol' Rumsfeld, who has been in
Iraq many times himself for the typical in-country experience. Like many
foreign correspondents, Rumsfeld roams the streets alone, talking to any
chance-met Iraqi in his fluent Arabic, so of course he knows best.

"From what I've seen thus far, much of the reporting in the U.S. and abroad
has exaggerated the situation," Rumsfeld said. "We do know, of course, that
al Qaeda has media committees. We do know they teach people exactly how to
try to manipulate the media. They do this regularly. We see the intelligence
that reports on their meetings. Now I can't take a string and tie it to a
news report and then trace it back to an al Qaeda media committee meeting. I
am not able to do that at all."

No horsepoop? Then can I ask a question: If you're able to monitor these
media committee meetings, how come you can't find Osama bin Ladin?

But, Brother Rumsfeld warns us, "We do know that their goal is to try to
break the will; that they consider the center of gravity of this -- not to
be in Iraq, because they know they can't win a battle out there; they
consider it to be in Washington, D.C., and in London and in the capitals of
the Western world."

I'm sorry, I know we are not allowed to use the V-word in relation to Iraq,
because so many brilliant neo-cons have assured us this war is nothing like
Vietnam (Vietnam, lotsa jungle; Iraq lotsa sand -- big differences). But you
must admit that press conferences with Donny Rum are wonderfully reminiscent
of the Five O'Clock Follies, those wacky but endearing daily press briefings
on Southeast Asia by military officers who made Baghdad Bob sound like a
pessimist.

Rumsfeld's performance was so reminiscent of all the times the military in
Vietnam blamed the media for reporting "bad news'" when there was nothing
else to report. A briefing officer once memorably asked the press, "Whose
side are you on?" The answer is what it's always been: We root for America,
but our job is to report as accurately as we can what the situation is.

You could rely on other sources. For example, the Pentagon is still
investigating itself to find out why it is paying American soldiers to make
up good news about the war, which it then passes on to a Republican public
relations firm, which in turn pays people in the Iraqi media to print the
stuff -- thus fooling the Iraqis or somebody. When last heard from, the
general in charge of investigating this federally funded Baghdad Bobism said
he hadn't found anything about it to be illegal yet, so it apparently
continues.

Meanwhile, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told the Los Angeles Times that Iraq
is "really vulnerable" to civil war if there is another attack like the
al-Askari bombing. By invading, said Khalilzad, the United States has
"opened the Pandora's box" of sectarian strife in Iraq.

Could I suggest something kind of grown-up? Despite Rumsfeld's
rationalizing, we are in a deep pile of poop here, and we're best likely to
come out of it OK by pulling together. So could we stop this cheap old
McCarthyite trick of pretending that correspondents who are in fact risking
their lives and doing their best to bring the rest of us accurate
information are somehow disloyal or connected to al Qaeda?

Wrong, yes, of course they could be wrong. But there is now a three-year
record of who has been right about what is happening in Iraq, Rumsfeld or
the media. And the score is: Press -- 1,095; Rumsfeld -- zero. 

Molly Ivins writes about politics, Texas and other bizarre happenings. 

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