What does it take to get Iraq in the news?
Last week, you really had to wonder.
You had an attack on a US military base. A successful attack. There have been plenty of mortar attacks on US bases in Iraq. There have been mortar attacks on the Green Zone as well. But usually the most that happens is someone's wounded.
The US military announced: "BAGHDAD -- Three Multi-National Division-South Soldiers were killed when Contingency Operating Base Basra was attacked by indirect fire at approximately 9:15 p.m. on July 16. The names of the deceased are being withheld pending notification of next of kin. The incident is under investigation." The announcement brought the number of US service members killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war to 4326.
It also brought very little press attention.
Okay, well helicopter crashes, those are news, right?
Friday a Blackwater (now "Xe") helicopter crashed in Iraq killing two contractors and injuring two more.
Not really news apparently.
Saturday the KRG holds provincial elections (and elects a president). Despite the weeks and weeks of coverage of the January 31st provincial elections (which covered only 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces), there really hasn't been coverage of the KRG elections. Nada Bakri (Washington Post) is covering it today and McClatchy plans to have Adam Ashton (just returning to Iraq) cover it. By this time in January, there was little else you could find coverage on from Iraq. Today? Not a story apparently.
What's really distressing about the increasing silences and grasping how 'go to where the silences are' Panhandle Media isn't filling the silences, isn't combating the silence. Democracy Now! rarely gives a segment to Iraq and that's true of all Pacifica radio programs. If you want Iraq coverage, your best bet is the second hour of NPR's The Diane Rehm Show on Fridays. Most Fridays, it's included in that international hour. And that's usually it in terms of any exploration on the radio. You might get 'headlines' from other programs, an Iraq item mixed in with other headlines, but you won't get an exploration. There's a lot to explore. Here's the discussion proper from Friday's broadcast ("proper" meaning we're not including when callers brought up Iraq):
Diane Rehm: Alright and let's turn now to Iraq and the latest on violence there, David? You had three American soldiers killed Thursday after insurgents fired mortar rounds into a US base in southern Iraq. You've also got problems with the Kurds. You've got lots of issues still going on even as the US is planning its pull-out.
David Ignatius: This was a week, Diane, that reminded us of the underlying fragility of Iraq. We've gotten in the habit of not paying much attention to it. Our troops are pulling back from the cities under the timetable we agreed to with the Iraqis. And-and, these last weeks we saw in these-these bombings and the political conflicts just how easily Iraq could spin back into a very chaotic situation. Take the bombings that happened on Wednesday. By my count, there were about eleven people killed, something like fifty or sixty wounded. But what was striking was that one of the bombs was in Ramadi -- in the Sunni heartland, the area we thought had been stabilized by our counter-insurgency work. Another bomb was in Sadr City. Another was right in the heart of Baghdad, in Sadhun Street. Those latter two were really going after Shi'ites, the first, in Ramadi, was going after Sunnis. More of these bombings are going to again make Iraqis frightened that they can't be secure without militias and then you're back in the sectarian killing game and you're going to start finding fifty bodies -- dead bodies -- every morning in the morgue.
Diane Rehm: At twenty-seven [after] the hour you're listening to The Diane Rehm Show. And what's going on with the Kurds, Youchi?
Youchi Dreazen: In many ways, this is the most dangerous aspect of Iraq right now. You've had recently [June 28th] a standoff between Kurdish fighters and Iraqi national army fighters. Last year there was an incident that did not get much attention here in which US drones that were monitoring a similar standoff saw columns of armed Iraqi army soldiers and columns of Kurdish peshmerga racing towards each other. By the account of everyone who was watching it, bruising for a fight, and they stood down only amidst much mediation by US embassy and military -- as was the case here where there was US mediation. And what you have is this very thorny issue about what will be the boundaries between Kurdistan, what will be the boundaries between Arab-Iraq? How will they divide oil? How will they divide Kirkuk? These issues have been kicked down the road again and again and again. And now they're at the end of the road. They have to at some point be resolved. I think what you've seen is, when the US invaded, there was a status quo that existed under Saddam that was toppled, there was a Sunni-led status quo. Then there was a new status quo that was not sustainable where you had fighting between Sunni and Shia Arabs and the Kurds were kind of left off to their own devices in the north. Now you have a new status quo where the Shia-Sunni tensions are much reduced -- the Arab tensions -- and now their focusing much more again on the Arab-Kurdish tensions that were there under Saddam decades ago.
Moises Naim: And the Kurdish prime minister yesterday said that the Kurdish autonomous region was closer to going to war with the central government than ever before, since 2003, since the US invasion. And that points, as Youchi said, to the tensions about the divisions -- federalism, they're trying to find out what is the divisions of authority, power between a centralized government and a regional government. And this is a region that is quite different in its governance, in its function, in its economy, in its politics, than the rest of the country.
Diane Rehm: And the United States population is certainly concerned as is the Iraqi that what if the violence continues to uptick, gets worse? Do troops reinvigorate, US troops? What do you do?
David Ignatius: Well for the administration, I think there's a recognition that, as we reduce our military presence there, it is inevitable that violence will increase. That's accepted. And it's just a price of our getting out. The Iraqis want us out, we want to get out. So some increase in violence, it's understood, will happen. And the question is: Will the Iraqi forces be strong enough to contain it within acceptable levels? And what's-what's-what's your choke point? If you're President Obama and you're seeing ten people die a day, well, what do you say? Suppose it gets up to fifty, what do you - what do you do then? And that's -- it's-it's grisly. But that's the kind of decision I fear that the-the Obama administration going to have to make about Iraq over the coming year.
Moises Naim: It's very hard to imagine that there's a political environment in the United States that will support a massive increase of troops -- of US troops -- in Iraq. The-the line their will be crossed if Iran becomes very influential country in Iraq. If Iranian influence there which it hasn't seemed to be the case but that will be then the-the political base for it.
You might agree with all the above, you might agree with some of it. If you agree with none of it, we ask you to grasp that when no alternatives are offered, the above coverage is all the American people are getting on radio.
Last week saw Jay Garner call out The New York Times. Last week saw two hearings on veterans' care. There wasn't time for that to be covered. It's past time you started looking at what is being covered and asking yourself how that coverage benefits or informs you.