Talk Nation Radio for February 15, 2006

“It’s about control of dwindling resources. It’s about getting control of the Caspian Sea oil basin and gas basin before upcoming superpowers like Russia and or China can do so.” Dahr Jamail

Journalist Dahr Jamail joins us this time. He has written for the Nation, Inter Press News and other publications and spent eight months in Iraq as a non-embedded reporter. Dahr Jamail was one of the first to report on torture going on in US run Iraqi prisons. He also wrote about the environmental disaster being created in Iraq by the war, depleted uranium, the role of the press, Halliburton corruption, and many other topics. His work is featured in the 2006 book, Censored, the Top 25 Most Censored Stories, by Project Censored at Sonoma State University, published by Seven Stories Press.

Dahr Jamail’s February 1st piece in Inter Press News provides analysis of Iraq as Shias head for an uncertain government. He also outlines the continued violence going on in Iraq that has been worsening to the point where he and others can no longer move about in the country to cover events there. Dahr Jamail has recently written about his visit to Doha Qatar, where he interviewed a senior editor at Al Jazeera. You can read his articles online at Dahr Jamail Iraq dot com.

On February 13th I asked him to talk about the very long list of violent attacks that took place over just one day in Iraq which he has featured on his web site.

Dahr Jamail: These are essentially numerous incidents of violence in Iraq just in a one day period of time. I decided to write about this because, at least over here in the U.S., I’m not sure what it’s looking like in Europe, for example, but in the U.S. Iraq is slowly slipping, more and more, with passing time, slowly slipping out of the headlines.

In my opinion this is a critical situation for Iraq and for this country the longer this occupation drags on. So I decided I would try to highlight for people, to give people a general idea, of what an average day looks like in Iraq. So I put up numerous security incidents which occurred just yesterday. (2006-02-13)

For example, the U.S. conducted another bombing run in the city of Ramadi where war planes dropped bombs which killed at least six people and wounded many others. Another incident, for example, in Baghdad, where it was reported that a detainee at Abu Ghraib was killed, according to the U.S. Military, as a result of complications from an assault by other detainees, which is of course suspect in regard to all of the other information that they have released out of Abu Ghraib. Other things like three police commandos being killed in Baghdad in drive by shootings and a suicide bomber killing other commandos and violence in Kirkuk, in Samarra, in Hawija, in Baquba, really just all over Iraq. And it’s not just in Baghdad. It’s not just in the so-called Sunni triangle. But it’s in the North, in Kirkuk, and also down in the South as far down as Basra.

Even today it’s been announced in Arab media that there have been at least twelve political assassinations carried out in just the last week in Basra alone. The violence continues unabated. The number of U.S. soldiers killed is now well over 2, 250 and it is just not letting up. This is the type of information that I think is important for people, especially in the United States, to continue to pay attention to.

Dori Smith: A lot of what we hear about are attacks on contractors. We’ve heard about Germans who have been kidnapped. We’ve heard about four Christian peacemaker team members and also of course journalist Jill Carroll. But talk a little bit too about the women of Iraq and the fact that they get kidnapped and how the acts of violence in Iraq in general are impacting Iraqis. (See: February 13, 2006 report on Jill Carroll, U.S. risking her life by Gareth Porter writing for Inter Press News Service.)

Dahr Jamail: It’s horrific how it’s impacting, especially women –As in any war, women and children end up paying the highest price because they are the least able to protect themselves in these horrendous situations. For example, most Iraqi women that I know now in Iraq are quite loath even to leave their homes. They try to limit the number of times they go outside each day and many describe it as if they are living in a sort of prison because they know to leave their homes, to go do anything at this point, is really taking their life in their own hands.

So the security situation is affecting everything. Just to give you an idea: School enrollment is far down because people are afraid to allow their children to go out on the streets just to go to school. This is of course affecting the employment where there are no jobs being created so unemployment is still well over 50% at this point: Then, of course, operating in Iraq as a journalist as you alluded to has become almost untenable.

It’s a situation where I have been unable to go back for almost a year now because my interpreter keeps telling me that there would be no point in you coming back because maybe we could sneak you out of your hotel once every week or so but it’s just not worth the risk. Any journalist that would want to go to Iraq I think has to weigh, not only what price are they willing to pay to get the story with their own life, but I think even more importantly, are they willing to endanger all of the Iraqis who would be working with them in any capacity. –Any Iraqi working over there, along with their families, would be in grave danger. (See: See “Between the institutionalization of Sharia Law, federalism and the possibility of an increasingly powerful Kurdistan, the Sunni population in Iraq only becomes more disenfranchised. –The idea of political stability seems more of a pipe dream in Iraq now than it did before the recent vote on the constitution,” By Dahr Jamail, The Ester Republic, November 19, 2005.)

Dori Smith: We usually hear about Baghdad or Fallujah sometimes reporters will go to one of the military bases or outposts there in Iraq and report, but we very seldom hear from some of the other cities and towns that, as we’ve talked about on the program before, have been getting bombed, as in Western Iraq. Or, you’ve talked about some of the conflict between the citizens and the U.S. Military in other towns where they were putting up military strongholds Talk about the fact of where the U.S. is and what that might indicate to you at this point.

Dahr Jamail: At this point the main U.S. center of operations in Iraq is in the so-called “Green Zone”. That’s where they are building a half billion dollar embassy which is being constructed by a Kuwaiti company that was awarded this contract. They have a large military base there and that’s where many of the officers are for the contracting companies working inside of Iraq. So there is a very large presence there in the Green Zone which is right in the middle of Baghdad, the capital city.

There are however at least four other, what they call “enduring bases”. We can easily assume that these are permanent military bases. There is one in Baghdad out near the airport. There is one in the South in Basra. There is one in the far west near the Jordanian border in a place called al-Rutbah and then there is one in Arbil which is in the Kurdish Northern region. Then there are possibly up to ten other permanent military bases there.

And when we talk about permanent military bases, which I believe is an extremely important topic because it really wipes out the rhetoric coming out of the Bush/Cheney Administration where they talk about withdrawal, they talk about wanting to leave Iraq as soon as the Iraqi security forces are able to stand up, the U.S. Military will “stand down”. -Well, if they are saying this how do they explain a minimum of four and a maximum of up to fourteen permanent U.S. Military bases in Iraq?

When we talk about permanent military bases we have to talk about, these are facilities that have brand new concrete barracks for soldiers. They have swimming pools, dance clubs, Pizza Huts, Subway sandwich outlets, AT&T phone home centers, Burger Kings, movie theaters: We mean permanent U.S. Military bases of the type which we see in Germany for example where now we have had military bases there for well over 50 years. This is what we have in Iraq now. So there is without a doubt an ongoing permanent U.S. Military presence to remain in Iraq. I’m sure that they want to lower the number of troops like they have in Afghanistan but without a doubt there will be an ongoing permanent military presence in anywhere from four to fourteen bases.

Dori Smith: Let’s talk about the media –You recently took a trip and wound up interviewing an editor from Al-Jazeera. Talk about the circumstances of where you were and what Al-Jazeera’s status is in the Middle East in terms of where it can and cannot work.

Dahr Jamail: Al-Jazeera is an Arab media channel, a satellite television network that was founded in 1996. They quickly grew a massive popularity and following. Now they have over 40 million Arab viewers and they are based out of Doha Qatar. And they basically have attained such a loyal following because unlike most state television and media outlets in the Arab world, which are of course highly regulated, state controlled, basically nothing but state propaganda, not too dissimilar from what we see here in the U.S. now in most of the corporate media outlets; Clearly untrustworthy news sources.

So Al Jazeera has basically blazed a trail of really doing fair, honest reporting, showing what happens in the different conflict regions around the Middle East. For example, in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, and other areas, where they literally will show what happens when bombs explode and hit civilians, they show the carnage, they show all sides of stories, not just the state side. They show resistance movements, and that’s why they have become the object of so much scorn of people in the Bush administration. People like Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

They have come under constant fire from any government that is critical of their policies, when those policies deserve being critiqued. For example, this is why they have been kicked out of Iraq by the U.S. backed Iraqi government. They have been kicked out of Iran recently because they have been critical of things the Iranian government was doing. They have been kicked out of Saudi Arabia and Algiers. So there are four countries now in the Middle East where they are strictly forbidden from operating inside.

Then there are others where they are granted only limited access where they can’t maintain a permanent bureau there. They are allowed to send in a reporter for maybe a couple of days to report on a particular event.

That said, they are under fire, but at the same time they are growing. They are soon to launch an international station in English. So they maintain their loyal following. They continue to do, in my opinion, a quite good job of reporting, especially covering what’s happening in the Middle East at such a critical time where really there isn’t another Arab outlet out there with a large number of followers that can do as good a job as Al-Jazeera of covering things.

Dori Smith: Now, the gentleman that you interviewed, the editor from Al-Jazeera. He pointed out a very interesting thing which is that when Al-Jazeera is kicked out of a country then the various powers that are holding sway, like the U.S. in Iraq, is deprived of a means to answer the accusations made against them or to explain their policies to the very people that they most impact. Talk about this gentleman and the kinds of things he said, did you find him fair and balanced?

Dahr Jamail: His name is Samir Khader. He is one of the chief editors for Al-Jazeera channel. He was made famous essentially, there is a very excellent documentary that came out called, “Control Room” which was made about Al-Jazeera specifically and how it has operated inside Iraq. He talks about the fact that they specifically gave their coordinates to the U.S. Military so as not to be bombed because they had already had their offices bombed in Kabul, Afghanistan, by the U.S. Military. So they did not want that to happen in Baghdad. Those coordinates were given to the Pentagon. Nevertheless the Al-Jazeera bureau in Baghdad was bombed during the U.S. invasion of the capital city of Iraq.

So he did talk about that, and Mr. Khader talked about personally interviewing people like Brigadier General Kimmit who was the U.S. Military spokesperson in Iraq over the first year of the occupation. He interviews these individuals, he gives them fair time. He says that the platform of Al-Jazeera is essentially point, counterpoint. That if they cover one story they will always do their best to give both sides equal air time.

They have even come under flak from many Arab countries for putting individuals in the Israeli government, and even sometimes Israeli soldiers, on air, asking them questions, giving them a chance to tell their side of the story. Which of course in the Arab world has inflamed many tempers, but Al-Jazeera finds that this is fair reporting-we have to cover all sides of the story even if it’s a side that we think is probably behaving in an unjust manner. And in this way they will give Mr. Bush air time when he has speeches; they will give members of the U.S. Military air time. So in my opinion, as far as showing all sides of stories and giving equal time to different points being made by all of the different sides of the story.

I think again they are doing quite good journalism. They are balanced and they are quite fair in giving people equal time. And that’s another important point that Mr. Khader made. He said that it really doesn’t make sense for a country like Iraq or Iran to kick Al- Jazeera out because then that essentially silences that government, it takes away a giant platform and the ability to access over 40 million Arab viewers with statements that they may want to make in the future. So at the end of the day he feels that it would certainly make more sense for any country to allow Al-Jazeera to stay there, that way they can keep an eye on them, along with having a platform available any time they wanted to get information out to the public.

Dori Smith: We are talking with journalist Dahr Jamail. He spent roughly three months in Iraq covering the war and U.S. occupation as a non-embedded reporter. –Dahr it seems to me that information, access to solid news and reporting, even political discussions, would be a way toward a diplomatic solution to some of the tensions in the region. Would you agree with that?

Dahr Jamail: I do, of course being a reporter I believe that any time people have information, not only is it their right if they are living in something that is supposedly a democracy –Iraq according to the Bush administration is a democracy. So if the foundation of a democracy is an informed citizenry, which of course it is, then it is not only people’s right but it’s their obligation to avail themselves of as much information as possible regarding what their government is doing. And without that happening on a regular basis, in any country, especially in the Middle East at this critical time, people aren’t going to know how to handle a new government or a new official that’s dictating policy that is going to directly affect their lives. So I think it behooves governments to be transparent and if they are operating in an honorable and just fashion then certainly they would have nothing to hide. Any administration, either here in the U.S. or in the Middle East, that is critical of a media outlet like Al-Jazeera, or any independent journalist, it makes me suspect of them immediately. If they are not lying, if they have nothing to hide, then it would behoove them to have as much media as possible to get their information out to as wide a number of people as they can.

Dori Smith: It would be an unenviable job really with all of the political processes going on in Iraq right now, where the U.S. is now cultivating a relationship with Sunni leaders in order to help them get a foot hold back into broader powers because of the direction that the new leadership will be moving in, potentially, now that we have a new prime minister for Iraq; we have Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr declaring, according to you now, that his Mehdi army and millions of followers would fight for Iran Just talk about the complexities that let’s say a really good media outlet would wind up covering right now.

Dahr Jamail: I think you’ve hit the nail on the head by underscoring how complex the situation is in Iraq. That’s another strong point of Al-Jazeera for example, and other good outlets. It’s very important to contextualize a story. We can’t just talk about, for example, the new Iraqi government, and say “It’s the Shiite and the Kurds running the government and the disgruntled Sunnis are trying to change things.”

That’s really not the case at all because if we talk about the new Iraqi government we have to talk about the fact that first of all there was an election that most people involved in this government, even the majority Shiites, and the Kurds, who have the second largest majority of seats in Parliament in the new government, are not exactly thrilled with the situation. They know that it’s a violation of international law to have elections under occupation. Nevertheless they are trying to make the most of the situation and they have decided, especially the Shiites, to band together to get as many seats in Parliament as they could.

This is where it gets immediately more complicated because if we talk about just the Shia for example, we have those who are followers of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani who is, of course, from Iran, he moved to Najaf in 1953. He still speaks Farsi to this day and the majority of the people in the Shia block are followers of his. His political representative, Abdul Aziz Hakim is of course calling most of the shots behind the scenes with this government. Jafaari is essentially an actor for Hakim.

Then we have to talk about the fact that the Shia are largely split between these individuals I was just speaking of and then Muqtada al-Sadr, who you mentioned. Sadr is a nationalist, and while he is in cahoots with Iran, in a recent visit to Tehran he did state openly to the media that if there is any attack launched on Iran he will come down on the side of Iran and he will fight for Iran whether it’s in Iran or even in Iraq. He does have millions of followers and he has a very large militia. This is the the cleric who has already had two uprisings against U.S. forces in Iraq and British forces as well.

So it is very complicated. Then we have to consider the fact that the Kurdish region in the North of Iraq, they are trying to go independent, but what implications does that have for Turkey, which is very much opposed to an independent Kurdistan. What implications does that have for Iranian Kurds. -It’s an extremely complex region. We have to go back through history. Look at the various rulers and previous occupations of Iraq, like the British occupation, to really put all of this in context, which is something that most media outlets in the U.S., most of the mainstream outlets, are quite loath to do.

They either don’t even attempt to do it or they contextualize it in such a limited fashion that it skews what’s actually happening on the ground there. And I think because of that most people in this country are grossly ignorant of how politically complex the situation is in the Middle East. An understanding of that needs to be reached before any talk of solutions or what might happen in the future can even begin.

Dori Smith: Now there have been some plans laid out and they’ve been sort of in the news, at least in the alternative press, and that’s the National Security Strategy and the Project for a New American Century. These are both getting new levels of discussion now that the U.S. has its sights on Iran again. Dahr talk about what you know about the circumstances of the U.S. policy towards Iran and what it means to you.

Dahr Jamail: If we are going to talk about Iran I think the important thing would be to acknowledge up front that even according to the CIA of the United States of America, Iran is anywhere between three and ten years away from having the capability of producing a nuclear weapon. That’s the baseline, we need to start there, they are not any kind of an immediate threat. Not even talking about the hypocrisy of why the U.S. and Israel are allowed to have nuclear weapons, but for whatever reason Iran is not allowed, it simply doesn’t make sense logically. Either everyone should be allowed or no one should be allowed. But that said, Iran is years away, three at the minimum, from obtaining the ability to generate a nuclear weapon. I think all of this saber rattling with Iran, in order to make a little bit more sense of it, we have to look at the conservative think tanks; The Project for the New American Century, these are individuals, many of which helped author the Wolfowitz doctrine, which is essentially the defense policy the U.S. has been following almost to the letter since Bush took office in 2000. This is a think tank that did call, very specifically, for an invasion of Iraq. This was written long before the events of September 11, 2001.

Then, therefore, of course, we did have the invasion of Iraq. Talk of that started literally the day after 9/11. This was put forth by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who was one of the authors of the Wolfowitz doctrine. Of course Cheney was an author of that as well, and now we have these individuals highly placed in the government. We have an ongoing U.S. occupation of Iraq and now they are saber rattling towards Iran. Of course, Iran, controlling the gas reserves, natural gas and oil, in the Middle East is specifically and explicitly noted in this document the Project for a New American Century. And I think that’s essentially what Iran is all about now. It’s not about nuclear weapons any more than the invasion of Iraq was about weapons of mass destruction.

It’s about control of dwindling resources, it’s about getting control of the Caspian Sea oil basin and gas basin before upcoming super powers like Russia and or China can do so because the bottom line is -for the U.S. empire to maintain world domination it has to control all of the strategic points of resources whether they be outlets or untapped reserves like Iraq. And that is essentially what they are doing in the Middle East. It doesn’t have anything to do with national security for the United States. It has everything to do with economic domination of the region and therefore of the planet in the coming century.

That’s why this document is called the “Project for the New American Century”. It lines out how the United States government, using the Military in a very aggressive fashion, will basically take whatever steps are necessary in order to control the resources for the planet. Whoever controls the oil and gas controls the economy, they control the militaries because a giant military such as the United States or that of China and Russia simply can’t function without a very large ongoing supply of oil.

So this essentially an oil and gas war and it will come to a head when the U.S. and or Israel begin dropping bombs on Iran. And I think, unfortunately, and I really hope that I’m wrong on this, but I’m afraid that I’m not. I think that it’s only a matter of time. It’s not if bombs start falling on Iran but when at this point. I think it’s going to be sooner rather than later.

Dori Smith: Well that is certainly indicated by what is being said in this article by John Pilger in The New Statesman February 9th 2006. Pilger is saying that Iran is ready to change over the currency used to deal oil, from dollars to Euros, and the scheduled time for that to happen is next month.

Dahr when you were in Iraq you talked about the difficulties the Iraqi people had when the dollar versus the Iraqi Dinar were being leveraged, and there was all sorts of corruption, just talk about this issue of the money markets of the world and how this use of currency could effect things in your mind.

Dahr Jamail: Well I’m not an economist so I won’t go too deeply into this but I will draw parallels, this was a parallel that was made in John Pilger’s piece as well. The fact that if we look back to even just before the U.S. invaded Iraq, and we look at why there was such a race to get in there as quickly as possible, it is because Saddam Hussein was already making moves to start trading his oil in Euros rather than the U.S. dollar.

If we look at what is happening in Iran now, as you mentioned, they are moving towards the oil bourse which is a more pro-Euro oil trading mechanism rather than U.S. dollars. If this occurs, and it is slated to occur by the end of March, which not so coincidentally has been a date set by the Israeli government as a cut off date that they feel that they have to begin aggressive military action towards Iran if they don’t quote, unquote, “disarm” and stop with their nuclear program prior to that date. So it’s an interesting coincidence that they would take the end of March for this, which seems like an arbitrary date until we contextualize it with the oil bourse.

The currency switch with Iran, they are the forth largest reserves now on the planet. This would be a catastrophic blow to the value of the U.S. dollar, and to the U.S. as an empire, as the sole world super power. It could not afford that. Our economy is already in shambles. We already have over eight trillion dollars of debt.

This economy relies on two billion dollars of foreign currency to be injected into it on a daily basis, just to maintain itself, so we have a burgeoning debt, we operate at a constant deficit, and to have a large segment of the oil being traded in any currency other than U.S. dollars would probably be an unrecoverable blow to the U.S. And I think that’s another thing that makes an attack on Iran imminent assuming Iran keeps moving forward with the oil bourse; if an attack happens therefore at the end of March it really wouldn’t be surprising.

Dori Smith: We’ve been speaking with journalist Dahr Jamail. For more information on his work visit: http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com For talk nation radio I’m Dori Smith. Talk Nation Radio is produced at WHUS Storrs, listen live, Wed. at 5 PM.
See part two of this interview which will air on WHUS Monday, February 20, 2006.

Saint Patrick’s Day four

Iran Backed Terror
http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/hard_news/000335.php
http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-jamail170206.htm