NationStates Jolt Archive


Wall Street Journal reporter describes situation in Iraq

Incertonia
01-10-2004, 04:41
From Poynter Online, a forum for professional journalists by professional journalists, we see this email from Farnaz Fassihi (http://poynter.org/forum/default.asp?id=misc&DGPCrSrt=&DGPCrPg=1) on the situation on the ground in Iraq. This is extremely long, so I'll cut it in parts, but please read the whole thing. This is from the point of view of a person who works for a conservative paper, a paper that unabashedly supports both Bush and this war.

From: [Wall Street Journal reporter] Farnaz Fassihi
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.

Little by little, day-by-day, being based in Iraq has defied all those reasons. 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. 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.

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? Was it when Moqtada 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? Despite President Bush's rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a 'potential' threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to 'imminent and active threat,' a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come.

Iraqis like to call this mess 'the situation.' When asked 'how are thing?' 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. 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.

Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day.

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. This is in Shiite land, the population that was supposed to love America for liberating Iraq.

snip

I went to see an Iraqi scholar 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.

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 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?"

This is what we have wrought in Iraq. This is what we've paid $200 billion for--probably more than all of us combined will ever earn in our lives--a damn mess.
Incertonia
01-10-2004, 05:20
one bump before it disappears from the front page.
Nueva America
01-10-2004, 05:30
The Wall Street Journal is obviously part of the liberal media ;) .


I can't say I'm surprised; while WSJ is radically conservative, it is made up of smart people who can and do recognize that sometimes their position is wrong. Hell, even Carson Tucker recognized that Bush has messed up and is not willing to vote for him (over Iraq).
Monkeypimp
01-10-2004, 05:40
First 'But they're free!!121!' post in an Iraq thread.
Gigatron
01-10-2004, 05:41
Yes.. I can imagine this is exactly the situation. But rose-colored glasses help ignoring all this I guess.
CanuckHeaven
01-10-2004, 05:41
one bump before it disappears from the front page.
Two quotes stand out the most:

If under Saddam it was a 'potential' threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to 'imminent and active threat,' a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come.

I tend to agree and that is exactly one of the reasons that I opposed this war from the beginning. By Bush assuming that Iraq (Saddam) was more important than Afghanistan (Bin Laden/Al Queda) in the war against "terrorism", has been a gigantic mistake.

"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."

Why would Bush assume that Iraqis wanted anything to do with US "western" style "freedom"? The "infidel" is now a hated occupier of "their" country, and they are willing to give up their lives for their ideal of "freedom".
Gigatron
01-10-2004, 05:44
Thats the clash of civilizations. Western style democracy vs muslim style religious rule ala Islam. I am a supporter of laissez faire. Husein may have been bad and killed many, but the world andpossibly Iraq was better off with Hussein keeping Iraq somewhat united and under control. Now it's a cocktail of terrorism that has the potential to infect all other countries in the middle east. Short from bombing the entire country again and killing half the population, nothing can make it into a working democracy.
Gigatron
01-10-2004, 06:12
There's more to it btw for the nay-sayers who doubt the authenticity of this email:

http://poynter.org/column.asp?id=45&aid=72140

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2004
"In Baghdad I'm a security personnel first, a reporter second"
Romenesko Misc.
The Wall Street Journal's Farnaz Fassihi is said to be the author of a widely distributed e-mail that begins: "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."
> UPDATE -- FASSIHI E-MAILS ROMENESKO: Hi, Yes, I am the author. The e-mail is authentic, my reaction is that I'm stunned at how this has rapidly become a global chain mail. I wrote it as a private e-mail to my friends as I often do about once a month, writing them about my impressions of Iraq, my personal opinons and my life here. and then it got forwarded around as you can see in a very unexpected way.
> WSJ managing editor Paul Steiger says: "Ms. Fassihi's private opinions have in no way distorted her coverage, which has been a model of intelligent and courageous reporting, and scrupulous accuracy and fairness." (New York Post)
Posted at 7:02:32 AM

http://www.nypost.com/business/19818.htm

September 30, 2004 -- Wall Street Journal Editor Paul Steiger has come to the defense of his beleaguered Baghdad correspondent, who blasted the war in Iraq as a "disaster" that has deteriorated "into a raging barbaric guerilla war" that will haunt the United States for decades.

"Despite President Bush's rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster," Wall Street Journal reporter Farnaz Fassihi wrote in a group e-mail to friends that inadvertently became widely posted on the Web.

Yesterday, the e-mail was mentioned prominently on the journalism blog by Jim Romenesko on the Poynter.org site.

Steiger said Fassihi's missive included "a few expressions of purely personal opinion about the situation there."

But the Wall Street Journal editor said the musings in no way distorted his reporter's ability to deliver fair coverage from Baghdad.

In her e-mail, Fassihi laments, "Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest."

Fears of abductions have sharply curtailed reporters ability to cover events or move about.

"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."

She also said the "Iraqi government doesn't control most Iraqi cities." She said there are car bombs, assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings. "The situation, basically, means a raging barbaric guerilla war."

Steiger said: "Ms. Fassihi's private opinions have in no way distorted her coverage, which has been a model of intelligent and courageous reporting, and scrupulous accuracy and fairness."
Incertonia
01-10-2004, 06:13
Thanks, Gigatron. I trust Romanesko, but it's nice to see backup from an external source.