Anybody watch Frontline? Iraq edition?

[fishbob]

On PBS Frontline Oct 9.

There were interviews with US military commanders, Iraqi ex-pats, US Intelligence folks. Footage of the ruins of many looted government buildings. Footage of a shootout between US Soldiers and ambushers. Footage of the aftermath of US Soldiers vs demonstrators. Narration decribing the footage and what the reporter had been told by the locals.

My take on the show:

I felt that there was some bias in some of the interviews. The military commanders gave pretty straightforward responses. The ex-pats - Iraqi National Congress (INC) guys - were a little guarded with some answers. It appeared that the INC really do not care how or why the US invaded Iraq, they are just happy that the US did it, now go home. There was a hint that some of the INC guys had tried to manipulate the US into invading. The interview subjects could have been highgraded.

The footage of the shootout was from a sidewalk some distance from the action. US Soldiers were in the middle of the road firing up at a building where they thought they had been fired on from. At least one of the Soldiers turned and fired toward the camera crew and killed an Iraqi standing next to the cameraman. The dead guy was loaded into a pickup and hauled away. A shopkeeper brought out a bucket of water to wash the blood off the sidewalk. Several minutes later, a group of our Soldiers came by and interviewed the bystanders, determined that the dead man had not had a weapon, then turned and walked away.

I don't think that this particular footage was edited too heavily, I don't see how it could have been. I don't know how common this type of thing is, (although Rumsfeld said today that the US is doing 1700 patrols a day (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031011/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/rumsfeld_3 )) but the US made no friends among the Iraqi citizens on that street. Which is probably just what the Saddam loyalists are hoping for.

I think the intent of the program was to show that the US is not handling the occupation well. This is where the bias showed.
If the intent of the program was also to show that it sucks to be there for us and the Iraqis, they succeeded.

What about you guys? Anybody else watch?

[subgenius]

Was hoping someone mentioned the only in depth treatment of the subject.
Lots of inside details from the horses' mouths. The debates between State and Defense, Chalabi's bald faced lie that he had a document to prove the Osama/Iraq connection. The utter miscalculations that the people would rise up with the presence of Chalabi. The utter incompetence of not even having radio broadcasts to tell the Iraqi's what to do and what to expect, and not stopping the looting, which many warned about. Rumsfeld's irresponsible statement that "That's what you get with democracy." Etc., etc.

Not to mention that the Snake of the Union speech was obviously a lie. And Powell's performance at the UN a charade. Provably.

Would love to see it again. Anyone who didn't see it is in the dark.

Are (free) transcripts available?

[peptoabysmal]

I think you can watch the entire program from here:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/view/

[crackmonkey]

And Andrew Sullivan's debunking the oft-repeated lie that the President asserted Iraq's 'imminent threat'.
http://www.andrewsullivan.com/

[subgenius]

Originally posted by peptoabysmal
I think you can watch the entire program from here:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/view/
Hey thanks, that's cool. Sorry for being so lazy to not look for it myself.
And for those who "debunk" the imminent threat message they can see/hear it straight from the horse's mouth. But I doubt they will.

[fishbob]

So - Out of all the people that comment on Iraq on these boards, subgenious and peptoabysmal are the only ones that watched the program? ?

Come on skeptics. This is the closest thing that I know of to a first hand account of the background and current situation in Iraq. Take a look, and let's discuss what you think about it.

[subgenius]

Nobody watches PBS.....it hurts your head.

Gee, that show (Frontline) is great.

[subgenius]

Plus its just a bunch o darn librals...

[subgenius]

By the way, nice fish bob.....looks awful tasty....

[evildave]

I don't receive PBS, (or NBC for that matter), but since I can get snowy images for other channels, that means I can't get any "network channels" on satellite.

Well, I watched the last two parts of it on the web site.

Nothing new in there.

Soliders shootin' people. People with no reason to love us for occupying their nation. Especially with that position where people who were once Ba'ath party members that ran utilities were chucked, and we put off their own self-government. Just great. It's nice to see we didn't learn from our own Civil war, not that anybody came into the U.S. to fight OUR civil war for us. Lincoln took big steps to pardon those who were on the losing sides. The south would have done a lot better if he hadn't been assassinated. Tough.

Maybe with that perspective on history: what if the UK came to the U.S. and "wiped out slavery" for us? Then occupied the whole country for a while to "secure the peace". Wouldn't that have been sweet? Saved us from having to do all that bloodshed and stuff for ourselves.

[crackmonkey]

And where can you find Bush saying that Saddam was an 'imminent threat'? As a matter of fact, the producer of this piece admited that though Frontline paraphrased the Bush administration using the phrase, it never actually came out of Bush's mouth.

[subgenius]

Originally posted by crackmonkey
And where can you find Bush saying that Saddam was an 'imminent threat'? As a matter of fact, the producer of this piece admited that though Frontline paraphrased the Bush administration using the phrase, it never actually came out of Bush's mouth.
Did you think they were an imminent threat?

[Cain]

Originally posted by crackmonkey
And where can you find Bush saying that Saddam was an 'imminent threat'? As a matter of fact, the producer of this piece admited that though Frontline paraphrased the Bush administration using the phrase, it never actually came out of Bush's mouth.

That's ******** revisionism. The administration also never explicitly stated that Saddam was responsible for 9/11, but they exploited the September terrorist attacks, mentioning 9/11 before and after an invasion of Iraq often enough that over 50% of the population came to believe in a connection. I recall Rumsfeld saying he had "bulletproof evidence"; a few months ago responding to a Washington Post poll that found 70% of the people believing an Iraq/9-11 link, Rumsfeld said he didn't buy the connection.

Here's how the President addressed the nation after sending troops in:

"Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly — yet, our purpose is sure. The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder. We will meet that threat now, with our Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard and Marines, so that we do not have to meet it later with armies of fire fighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities."

From the frontline show that I'm watching now: "Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

[crackmonkey]

No revisionism at all, ******** or otherwise.
"Gathering threat" would have been correct, and a far cry from 'imminent threat'. Much of the criticism leveled at Bush by war critics has been based on Iraq's threat not being an imminent one. Straw man.

[Ion]

Wrong:
Originally posted by crackmonkey

...
"Gathering threat" would have been correct, and a far cry from 'imminent threat'. Much of the criticism leveled at Bush by war critics has been based on Iraq's threat not being an imminent one. Straw man.
I kept The San Diego Union Tribune from March 2003, with Bush's quoted ultimatum "Iraq must disarm." in it, referring to 'imminent threat WMDs' in Iraq.

Shortly after this garbage by Bush, Bush attacked.

So Bush lied about 'imminent threat WMDs' in Iraq, in order to loot Iraq's oil.

[Cain]

Originally posted by crackmonkey
No revisionism at all, ******** or otherwise.
"Gathering threat" would have been correct, and a far cry from 'imminent threat'. Much of the criticism leveled at Bush by war critics has been based on Iraq's threat not being an imminent one. Straw man.

Oh, thanks. I always wondered what Bush meant by "grave danger" and our required "urgent" action. When the President and Condi talked about a smoking gun in the form of a mushroom clown, or the possibility that Saddam's just six months away from a nuke, they had no intention of implying that Iraq was an imminent threat. To suggest otherwise is to create a straw man.

"Some ask how urgent this danger is to America and the world. The danger is already significant, and it only grows worse with time"

"Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists."

(Quoted in _The Nation_, June 30, 2003)

[fishbob]

cm - your posts so far have consistently missed the point. You keep defending Bush from non-existent accusations of misrepresenting the threat from Iraq. This is not the point of this thread nor was it a major point of the Frontline program.

Off Topic:
Also the significant difference between an "imminent threat" and a "gathering threat" is what exactly? Directly or indirectly the current administration engaged in intentional fearmongering. Ooooh, scary - mushroom clouds, poison gas, bio-weapons. The exact phrasing of the "threat" speeches matters little, the intent pretty clearly was to generate fear of Saddam and acceptance of war in the American public.

Back on Topic:
So, without apoligizing for Bush again, what do you think about the content of the Frontline program? What did you find believable, what did you find that showed bias.

[Cain]

I subscribe to the pen-l mailing list, a place where hard-core leftists, mostly academics, express their opinions on various topics. It's too bad that a centrist-liberal view here or in the mainstream is construed as "socialist" or "radical."

What follows is a Marxist's take on the PBS program:

Last night PBS aired a Frontline documentary that marked the first
retreat from its lockstep support for US wars of aggression since 9/11.
You will also be able to view the entire show on the website
(http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/) starting on
October 11. Titled "Truth, War and Consequences", it was basically a
liberal "tragic mistake" interpretation such as the kind that cropped up
in the 1960s when things turned sour in Indochina. In fact the website
has a section titled "What Went Wrong".

By "wrong" PBS does not mean the same thing as in the sentence: "Insider
trading is wrong". By "wrong" they mean that something has backfired,
for example the decision to overrule Jay Garner's plan to hire former
Iraqi soldiers to repair roads and other infrastructure. Once these
soldiers found themselves unemployed, they naturally resorted to
violence. The PBS documentary never once asks the question of whether
the US had the *right* to invade and overthrow the government of Saddam
Hussein.

The most useful aspect of the documentary is that it allows Ahmad
Chalabi and Kanan Makiya, who are featured prominently, to hoist
themselves on their own petard. For example, when Frontline interviewer
Martin Smith, who is also credited as writer, asks Chalabi if there is
any connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, Chalabi says of course. He has
evidence of this and gave it to the USA. When Smith, who has the
demeanor in these interviews of a Catholic schoolboy confronting a
pedophile priest, asks if he can see it, Chalabi says he cannot. All in
all, it has the impact of a better "Sixty Minutes" episode.

There is a telling moment in this documentary that makes the Iraqi
resistance understandable. Shortly after a decision has been made by the
US to crack down on looting, we see an army patrol that has captured a
perpetrator who has a bunch of stolen wood on the top of his aging car.
While they dress him down about the evils of looting, a tank rolls over
his car reducing it to rubble. Afterwards, GI's "high-five" each other
as if the car were a prop on "Fear Factor". Later, Frontline learns that
the man is a taxi driver and that the car was his sole means of income.

Makiya is a real piece of work, as we put it in the USA. He appears
rather disillusioned with what has happened in his native country but
cannot make the connection between the US invasion and all that has gone
wrong. This Brandeis professor is effusive in his praise of George W.
Bush but blames just about everybody else in his administration for
lacking the president's commitment to democracy.

Makiya has often been described as an ex-Trotskyist. This morning I
examined an online version of his "Republic of Fear" to detect any whiff
of Marxism. This is what I found:

>>All of this development highlights a dilemma whose underpinnings in
our century arise within the communist tradition. The Russian experience
has deeply affected all thinking on the relationship of political
freedoms to development in backward countries irrespective of political
persuasion. The contradictions were most paradigmatically expressed in
the thought of Leon Trotsky. In his trenchant attack on Stalinism, The
Revolution Betrayed, Trotsky sought an explanation of the Stalinist
phenomenon taken from outside its own peculiar distinctness and history
of development. He wrote of the despotism of the new state as being an
outcome of "the iron necessity to give birth to and support a privileged
minority" in conditions of backwardness and how "the power of the
democratic Soviets proved cramping, even unendurable, when the task of
the day was to accommodate those privileged groups whose existence was
necessary for defense, for industry, for technique and science." The
sense is of a transcendent causality maybe beyond the capacities of
human intervention, through which today's freedoms have to be sacrificed
in the interests of progress. This did not come from an economist,
academician, or armchair revolutionary; it came from a leading intellect
and political actor of the Russian revolution who had himself been cast
aside by the "iron necessity" of the course it later took.

What was for Trotsky a wrenching universal and personal dilemma, which
he could only resolve by holding fervently onto the idea of world
revolution, was transformed in the nationalist withdrawal and
accelerating parochialism of all subsequent revolutions into an
immutable law of the historical process, one that had been proved by the
Stalinist experience. Invariably the ideology that captures this quality
of imperial economic necessity in the Third World is the carping on
about the "falsity" of bourgeois freedoms and the universal tendency to
dislocate the realm of "true" freedom from the political to the social
and economic domains. All later revolutions of this century (China,
Vietnam, Cuba, Algeria) and all post-World War II nationalisms
(Nasserism, Peronism, Ba'thism) have reaffirmed to one degree or another
the apparently stringent objectivity of the choice: development or
freedom?<<

So evidently Makiya did at least read Trotsky. Whether he understood him
is another question altogether. The freedom pole of the
development/freedom polarity referred to above needs to be elaborated
on. What does Makiya mean by freedom? It appears that this is the
freedom to organize political parties, to put out newspapers--in other
words the sort of freedom guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. It does not
address social and economic freedom, however. If a nation does not have
the freedom to develop its resources for the national good, then what
use does civil liberties have? If Egyptians lacked the power to
nationalize the Suez Canal or if Cuba could not expropriate the landed
gentry, then true freedom would have eluded them no matter the trappings
of formal democracy. But once private property is attacked, such
countries inevitably find themselves threatened by imperialist war and
blockade and are often required willy-nilly to impose somewhat draconian
political norms. If they don't, they risk going the route of Allende's
Chile or Sandinista Nicaragua.

These questions constitute the cutting edge of politics today. Since the
USA poses as a defender of "freedom" against all sorts of totalitarian
dungeons from Cuba to North Korea, it is crucial that the left comes to
term with this freedom/development contradiction. Elements of the left,
including the social democratic Dissent Magazine that publishes Makiya,
fail to understand that the USA has ulterior motives when it presses for
parliamentary democracy. It sees this governmental form as a necessary
first step in privatizing state property. This is what happened in
Yugoslavia and it is about to happen in Iraq--that is unless the heroic
Iraqi people stop the invaders in their tracks. Unless the left can see
things in class terms, it will inevitably serve as cheerleaders for US
imperialism as Makiya does, no matter his Trotskyist background.

[peptoabysmal]

Originally posted by subgenius

Hey thanks, that's cool. Sorry for being so lazy to not look for it myself.
And for those who "debunk" the imminent threat message they can see/hear it straight from the horse's mouth. But I doubt they will.

NP

I listened to the whole thing. It opened my eyes a bit to some of the problems that came up in this war. I felt some of the interviews were a bit like a prosecutor leading a witness, but nonetheless there was some valuable information in this piece.

[P.S.A.]

*sighs again*

Introduction to Modern Politics part 2; The use of the deniable Meme.

1.) Using Talking Points Memo (google that) or Pagers (in the UK Labour Party's case), send out the Meme, or idea, you wish your people to hammer home to the electorate.

With regards to WMD's, here are plenty of quotes from the Bush Admininstration declaring both size and threat level;

http://www.lunaville.org/WMD/billmon.aspx

Let WMD statements = X

2.) When challenged on any of these statements, especially ones which are objectively untrue, send out a new Meme, that you never said "Y". Like for instance, using the word "imminent".

Let Y = "Imminent"

If anyone points out that X implies Y, you simply assert that X <> Y. Likewise, if anyone points out that the issue is not Y, but the truth of X, you simply repeat that no one ever claimed Y.

3.) Quickly move on to talking about "Z" before the X/Y confusion can be resolved.

4.) Except occasionally dropping hints that "X" is still true to your hardcore of supporters. Like, for instance, on your own official election campaign Blog;

"Surely before the war, those circumstances posed a threat, perhaps even imminent, that if allowed to flower would have provided the incontrovertible proof we so crave -- too late.” "

http://www.georgewbush.com/blog/archives/2003_10.html#000023

But altogether now "perhaps imminent" does not imply "is imminent"... And we didn't say this directly anyway, someone else (who we just approvingly quoted) did.

5.) Sit back and relax as the non-existance of X get's swamped by semantics over Y, and the new issue of Z, whilst knowing that the true believers will remain sure of X too.

For the logical however, I repeat this cartoon;

http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2003/09/29/tomo/index1.html

(Just click through the salon premium link for a free 1 day pass)

[Cain]

Nice post, PSA.

Here's that Tom Tomorrow cartoon without having to click on a freeday pass from Salon (it's made available for free on workingassets.com a few days after publication):

http://workingforchange.speedera.net/www.workingforchange.com/webgraphics/wfc/TMW10-03-01.gif