PBS friends are mad. PBS friends with The NewsHour are especially angry. Ourselves? We blame the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. And Katie Couric herself. Is she really at fault? No, but we've got to be the last American TV critics left who haven't blamed Katie for something, so let's go for it.
Last week, in Iraq, there was an assault on Camp Ashraf. CBS Evening News covered it (link has text and video, below is a transcript):
Katie Couric: When the US began turning over security to the Iraqis, it stopped protecting some valuable allies, thousands of Iranian exiles. And their camp outside Baghdad is now under attack. For two days, Iraqi police have been beating the residents. No food or doctors have been allowed in. All with the approval of Iran's government. Here's chief foreign affairs correspondent Lara Logan.
Lara Logan: It started peacefully but quickly turned violent. Iraqi police using wooden sticks against these unarmed civilians. These people are Iranians living inside Iraq, members of an Iranian opposition group known as the MEK. It was the MEK that provided the US with intelligence on Iran's nuclear program.
Ali Safavi (National Council of Resistance of Iran): Were it not for the MEK, the world would not be in a position to find out about Iran's nuclear weapons program and the mullahs may have had the bomb.
Lara Logan: The MEK have lived in this camp, known as Camp Ashraf, for decades. The Iranian government wants them expelled and accuses them of being involved in the recent unrest in Iran. Since the US invasion, the camp's roughly 3,000 residents have been living under US protection. That ended in January when the Iraqis took control under the security agreement. Now the US appears to have washed their hands of the people of Ashraf.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (speaking at the State Dept): It is a matter now for the government of Iraq to resolve.
Lara Logan: Images captured by the inside Ashraf showed the dead and wounded. Residents told CBS News at least 11 people were killed, hundreds wounded and thirty arrested. The number's impossible to verify because the Iraqi government has sealed off the camp. The attack was seen as the latest sign American influence in Iraq is waning as Iranian influence rises. Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his government increasingly pro-Iranian.
Kenneth Katzman: The Iranians would have to cross the border to get at them directly because Camp Ashraf is clearly over the border. But they have an obviously willing ally in Prime Minister Malik, willing to do their bidding.
Lara Logan: The Iranian government praised the Iraqi government action against MEK saying they're cleaning the country of terrorists.
On Thursday, the Iraq snapshot noted that CBS and only CBS reported on the assault. Apparently, "them's fighting words."
A PBS friend with The NewsHour who has our phone numbers and our personal e-mail address didn't do as other PBS friends do and call us to complain (and complain and complain -- we think this is where they practice for the endurance needed for pledge drives). This friend instead decided to e-mail the public account of The Common Ills. Leading us to discuss it.
C.I.: ____ knows how to contact us. Why did ____ e-mail TCI?
Ava: __ must have wanted the issue addressed there. Do you think?
We batted it around for a few minutes and then the issue was taken to TCI where it was noted a 37 second headline is not reporting. Lara Logan filed a report for CBS. In a thirty minute, commercial network show. PBS, allegedly commercial free, couldn't devote a segment to the assault in a one-hour show. At twice the size of any commercial broadcast evening news, The NewsHour reduced the assault to a headline mixed in the middle of the headline segment and didn't even make it the lead Iraq headline.
The complaints were starting all over again. We both awoke to voice mail on our cells from PBS friends. Around seven-thirty in the morning (EST), we agreed we'd take a look at that day's show when it aired. "And maybe write something nice for a change," snapped one PBS friend.
Oh, honey, and we thought you knew us.
If all the hurt feelings are the reason Iraq was actually addressed outside of headlines Friday, we'll gladly be the sin-eater for our PBS friends and say it was all worth it.
Because the forgotten war actually was briefly remembered.
Due to a memo written by US Col Timothy Reese which The New York Times' Michael Gordon reported on Thursday afternoon and which made the front page of Friday's paper. In the memo, Reese, who is on the ground in Iraq, argues that all US troops need to leave Iraq in 2010:
The general lack of progress in essential services and good governance is now so broad that it ought to be clear that we no longer are moving the Iraqis "forward." Below is an outline of the information on which I base this assessment:
1. The ineffectiveness and corruption of GOI Ministries is the stuff of legend.
2. The anti-corruption drive is little more than a campaign tool for Maliki
3. The GOI is failing to take rational steps to improve its electrical infrastructure and to improve their oil exploration, production and exports.
4. There is no progress towards resolving the Kirkuk situation.
5. Sunni Reconciliation is at best at a standstill and probably going backwards.
6. Sons of Iraq (SOI) or Sahwa transition to ISF and GOI civil service is not happening, and SOI monthly paydays continue to fall further behind.
7. The Kurdish situation continues to fester.
8. Political violence and intimidation is rampant in the civilian community as well as military and legal institutions.
9. The Vice President received a rather cool reception this past weekend and was publicly told that the internal affairs of Iraq are none of the US's business.
The memo was raised briefly during a segment on Afghanistan when Margret Warner spoke with The Washington Post's Rajiv Chandrasekaran. It was the lead item in the show's popular Shields & Brooks segment (link has text, audio and video):
JIM LEHRER: And finally tonight, the analysis of Shields and Brooks, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, New York Times columnist David Brooks.
First, let's talk about Iraq and Afghanistan. On the issue of declaring victory in Iraq and pulling out, what do you think?
DAVID BROOKS: I would be suspicious of that. I mean, things in Iraq are going in our direction. There are frustrations, as there have been for the past five years or six years, about the performance of this or that Iraqi player.
Nonetheless, things tend to be going in the right direction. Why would we want to accelerate a process that seems to be working? It's clear we're getting out, but why would we want to accelerate and endanger that process when so far it seems to be working reasonably well?
JIM LEHRER: And as Rajiv said, Mark, this is not a widely held position within the top at the Pentagon, anyhow.
MARK SHIELDS: No, it's just people in the field, Jim. It's the people there every day. That's where the dissatisfaction and the yearning to get out, I think, is strongest.
JIM LEHRER: Do you have a view of it?
MARK SHIELDS: I do have a view of it. I do not see what the payoff is.
JIM LEHRER: You mean, to get out?
MARK SHIELDS: No, for staying longer...
JIM LEHRER: Oh, staying longer?
MARK SHIELDS: ... for just extending it indefinitely. I mean, I don't disagree that things are going well, but I do not see the value right now. I mean, the anecdotal evidence from on the ground is that the Iraqis are very much feeling frisky or full of themselves and, you know, are enjoying it, their newfound power and authority. And...
JIM LEHRER: So let them have it?
MARK SHIELDS: That's right.
As Shields notes sardonically, it's not the view at the top in the Pentagon, it's just the view of those actually on the ground in Iraq.
Mark Shields is not the great left hope. We feels that needs to be cleared up since we're mentioning him. David Brooks, for that matter, isn't the poster boy of the right-wing. Both Brooks and Shields are centrists. Each tilts slightly to one direction, but they're centrists.
And Shields' support of a pullout isn't based on a left position.
We think that's an important point and we think it's one that's been missed because there's really no peace movement in the country currently. The hapless self-appointed leaders whored it out to the Democratic Party to elect Barack Obama president and, in doing so, didn't just lose their independence, they also destroyed the peace movement.
If it were alive (there are efforts to rebuild it, we support those efforts), it would be more vibrant today because there are actually more people signing on to Out Of Iraq.
Mark Shields' reasons given are reasons many centrists and right-wing (and right-wing leaning) people are signing on to a real withdrawal and one much sooner than Barack's pretend withdrawal. They don't enjoy seeing the US military powerless or spat upon and both things are happening currently in Iraq. Those things thrill the Patrick Cockburns of the world who get some perverse thrill out of it -- as though the grunts on the ground were at the United Nations waiving vials of powder to insist Saddam had WMDs. But outside Crazy Town? Not so popular. In fact, downright offensive.
Two Saturdays ago, Ernesto Londono (Washington Post) reported on an incident a few days prior where US forces in Iraq were attacked and responded by pursuing their attackers only to have the Iraqi military stop them (allowing their attackers to escape) and tell them they had no right to pursue their attackers and then to detain the US forces. Based on what? Because that's not in the Status Of Forces Agreement. A fact that Nouri al-Maliki, thug and puppet of the occupation, would have to admit to Karen DeYoung. Nouri would insist that it was a misunderstanding because the Iraqi military involved "did not understand the agreement."
But there's been a lot of 'misunderstandings.' And while Crazy Town residents like Patrick Cockburn wet themselves in joy and excitement over the US military being shoved around and disrespected, rational people -- on all points of the political spectrum -- grasp that the service members are not making policy and are not responsible for the continuation of the Iraq War. Rational people are outraged to see a thug spit on the help he's been given because, point of fact, Nouri would have been toppled long ago without the presence of the US military. Without US boots on the ground, he'd have to return to hiding (he calls it 'exile') in Iran, Jordan or Syria. People like Nouri al-Maliki don't fight their own battles which is sad enough; even sadder and disgusting is the fact that they then attack the people who put their lives on the line.
And Nouri's done a lot of attacking which is why he's for-show performance at Arlington Cemetery last month didn't mean a damn thing and wasn't widely covered. No one cared, after his weeks and weeks of insults aimed at US troops, that Nouri laid a wreath.
Which is how you arrive at a Mark Shields -- no rabid liberal (we, to provide a point of reference, were described Thursday and Friday by PBS friends as "rabid liberals") -- calling for US troops to get out.
What worries people like Shields and what is worrying many in the military (including, yes, some at the Pentagon) is that this disrespect and hatred aimed at the US military in Iraq by government figures is going to translate into more violence aimed at the US military and the end point will be another Somolia.
What worries a lot of people is how ineffectual Barack Obama has been on Iraq.
Disappointing but not surprising, he immediately ditched his promises of withdrawal. He immediately went along with Bully Boy Bush's Status Of Forces Agreement -- an agreement that up to the election (as late as eighteen hours before) he was decrying. It was one-sided, he insisted, and tied the US to Iraq for too long. (He was, as usual, parroting the words of others such as Joe Biden, Russ Feingold and Hillary Clinton.) Gone was his 'ten month withdrawal' whereby he'd withdraw one brigade a month. (Yes, that would appear to be sixteen but, while campaigning in Texas in February 2008, he dropped his sixteen month plan to advance his ten month withdrawal plan.)
So instead of end to the illegal war, we got the continuation of it and the continuation of Bully Boy Bush's SOFA. That's not all we got. Bush had a point-person on Iraq. Barack had none. Didn't need one, didn't want one.
And for Ambassador to Iraq, he nominated the ineffectual Chris Hill who was most famous for snitching on his bosses and undermining them in negotiations. In other words, a real turncoat. Chris Hill, who cannot follow orders (as is proven by his personnel file), is the last person you want in a remote location where his actions go unsupervised. In addition, he had no grasp of the complexities of Iraq as evidenced by his loony answers in his confirmation hearing. Add to that the fact that he promised the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair John Kerry that, if confirmed, he would immediately go to Baghdad, he would fly out in less than 24 hours. He got confirmed and days later made it to Baghdad. The first of his many broken Iraq promises. Once in Baghdad, he stayed there for weeks and weeks. Before finally getting off his ass and visiting the Kurdistan region. He'd come off most like an idiot when answering questions about the dispute between the KRG and the central government in Baghdad over Kirkuk. Apparently his misunderstanding of the issue included his failure to grasp how insulting his long delay in visiting Kurdistan played out.
This went on for weeks and weeks. Then, in June, Barack okayed the release of two brothers whom the US military said were responsible for an attack on a US base in which five US soldiers were killed. At which point, Barack suddenly had a problem on his hands with military families. While the press was more than happy to help him out (as always) by looking the other way (ibid), it meant Barack had to back away from Iraq quickly because the parents and spouses of people who serve now had serious questions about Barack's leadership.
At that point he appointed the vice president, Joe Biden, to be the point person on Iraq. The go-to, the head cheese. And Biden, whether they agree with him or not, is relatable to by military families (his son Beau is currently serving in Iraq) and he has a solid relationship with many Iraqi Members of Parliament as well as with leaders in the KRG. He and Nouri don't get along and Barack's refusal to call out Nouri's public insult of Biden early in 2009 didn't help there.
But Biden's the point person and it's not just a thankless job, it's an impossible one.
If you diagrammed it on a flow chart (and the White House has), Biden is supposed to be the one clearing everything Iraq related. That's from the State Department, from Hill and the US Embassy in Iraq, all of it. But in reality, everyone's working independently.
At State, you've got staffers who should be following Iraq but aren't. You've got them reassigned elsewhere. You've got Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State, who has been told Iraq is not her jurisdiction (she was told that long before Biden was made the point-person) and should be more than okay with that due to the fact that Barack's the one disappointing on Iraq and she doesn't need to be the target of all the anger over that (when it finally emerges and it will).
In Iraq, you've got Chris Hill who works to undermine State and Biden because, well, check his personnel file, that's what he always does. Again, you don't put him in charge of anything -- especially in a remote area. He has repeatedly made statements that have later required "correction." As the Supremes once put it, "He makes promises he doesn't keep." And when he's doing that in Iraq and is supposed to be the US face there, it hurts everything. Some working with him at the embassy describe him as "remote" (not unlike the location) and some see him as "sad" but, for our money, the best observation was made by two working with him who described him as manic. Each Monday he comes in high on energy and it quickly peters out by the end of the day and he stumbles through the rest of the week. His highs are filled with unrealistic plans and goals. And the crash usually starts right after lunch. Making us wonder if maybe the US government should do pyschiatric screening for their most important jobs?
So into that dsyfunctional maze comes thug Nouri. He'd promised the US that he wouldn't force the residents of Camp Ashraf to go back to Iran and, the US thought, he promised that he wouldn't attack the camp.
Last week, in the midst of a visit by US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Nouri ordered the assault on Camp Ashraf. Gates has maintained he knew nothing of it (which is backed up by statements made to us by friends at State and at the US Embassy in Iraq). The top US Commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, apparently knew nothing of the assault before it took place either.
Now's a good place to note Amnesty International's statement on the assault:
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC STATEMENT
AI Index: MDE 14/021/2009
28 July 2009 Iraq: Camp Ashraf residents attacked
Amnesty International is seriously concerned at today's attacks by Iraqi forces on unarmed residents of Camp Ashraf which left several people injured and led to the arrest of at least eight others.
Hundreds of armed Iraqi security forces are said to have stormed the camp, north of Baghdad, at around 3pm local time. They used tear gas, water canons and batons against unarmed Iranian residents who tried to stop them from entering the camp. Video footage seen by Amnesty International clearly shows Iraqi forces beating people repeatedly on different parts of the body, including the head. Dozens of people are said to have been injured.
Two of them, Reza Chelcheraqi and Mohammad-Reza Shahsavandi, are believed to be in serious condition. At least eight people, including Hasan Besharati, Humayoun Deyhim, Gholam Reza Behrouzi, Hosein Fili, Mehdi Zareh and Naser Nour Ebadian, were arrested and their current whereabouts are unknown.In the last few months the Iraqi government has publicly stated that it wants to take over full control of Camp Ashraf, in Diyala governorate, north of Baghdad. On 27 July government spokesperson Ali al-Dabbagh told an Iraqi satellite television channel that the government "will take over the responsibility of internal security affairs of Camp Ashraf". The authorities are reportedly planning to establish a police outpost inside the camp. Amnesty International calls on the Iraqi government to investigate the apparent excessive use of force by Iraqi security forces. The government should reveal the whereabouts of the eight people detained and ensure that they are protected from torture or other ill-treatment, as well as from forcible return to Iran.
Background
Around 3,400 residents of Camp Ashraf are members or supporters of the People's Mojahedeen Organization of Iran (PMOI), an Iranian opposition organization whose members have been resident in Iraq for many years. Until recently the PMOI was listed as a "terrorist" organization by the European Union and other governments, but in most cases this designation has now been lifted on the grounds that the PMOI no longer advocates or engages in armed opposition to the government of Iran.The US forces provided protection for the camp and its residents, who were designated as "protected persons" following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but this situation was discontinued following the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the US and Iraqi governments, although the SOFA makes no reference to Camp Ashraf or its residents. Public Document
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For more information please call Amnesty International's press office in London, UK, on +44 20 7413 5566 or email: press@amnesty.org
International Secretariat, Amnesty International, 1 Easton St., London WC1X 0DW, UK www.amnesty.org
The assault continues and the response by the US was hugely inadequate. There was a one-day delay in even making a statement due, in part, to the fact that the US patrol in the area was unable to get close enough (prevented by Iraqi forces) to determine whether the 'everything is peaceful' reports Nouri's people were relaying to the US were true or not. The footage of the assault was already readily available. And possibly, if there truly was one go-to in the administration on Iraq, a response could have taken place quickly.
Instead, Hillary gave a response the next day which was a non-response. It was weak, it was pathetic. By this point, the US government knew Nouri had lied to them (both about things being 'peaceful' at Camp Ashraf and, earlier, about having no plans to use force against the residents). We're not really sure what Hillary could have said and we're sympathetic to the fact that this is not her problem because the issue of the MEK was one that was assigned long before Hillary was even asked if she wanted to be Secretary of State. It was assigned and it was supposed to be dealt with. No surprise, the one responsible for that was no where to be found last week.
Lara Logan reported extensively from Iraq for many years for CBS News and she grasped immediately that the assault was news and, in fact, was big news. CBS News and Katie didn't have to be sold on the idea, they agreed.
So why was it that PBS couldn't grasp it. Why was it that it was reduced to a headline and not a very enlightening thirty-seven seconds?
Friday's show was really something. It addressed Iraq, it addressed Afghanistan, the economy was analyzed by multiple guests (all from the center of the political spectrum, more or less) and Ray Suarez and panelists explored executive pay.
It was a serious program and something PBS could be proud of. Ourselves, we would have liked to see, especially in a one hour broadcast, some actual reporting. You know, where you don't invite on a guest to tell you about this or that but you go out into the field and actually report? But otherwise, it was a strong hour.
And PBS friends would, no doubt, love it if we gave The NewsHour a high grade. But the thing is, this was two days after they ignored Camp Ashraf to air a seven-minute-plus segment with Elvis Costello about his new CD available at Starbucks around the country (Kat reviews the album here). And that night also included the Federal Reserve's Ben Barnanke holding forth and pontificating as if he were Plato for over twenty-minutes. And Barnanke had been doing that daily on The NewsHour the whole week.
Friday was a much better program, moved more quickly, had more people offering points of view, addressed more serious topics and was something worth watching. But it struck us a lot like a student a day after his or her parents received a negative progress report, as though someone were in a quick hurry to prove a judgment wrong.
Prove us wrong.
We'd love to be wrong.
We'd love to tune into The NewsHour all next week and be able to offer nothing but praise and ask "Why aren't you watching?" of everyone we know. However, we're not expecting that. We'll check in again this fall when the retool should be completed. For now we'll follow our "Needs improvement" progress report from last week with a cautiously optimistic finding at present.
