Jim (Con't): I want to start with Betty. "Tina" was about Tina Turner and her decision to become a citizen of Switzerland. Betty, you wondered if this had to do with race.
Betty: Right. I was amazed at some of the press -- I'm talking about press, not comments on articles. There's sort of a who-does-she-think-she-is and all this stuff about her being Black and did she forget her roots and interviewing the mayor of her sort-of hometown -- Nutbush doesn't have a mayor. She's 73-years-old. And I heard all this tsk-tsking and where was this when Eduardo Saverin of Facebook changed his citizenship to avoid paying taxes? Let Tina be. Be happy for her. She's 73 and in love and good for her. But instead it's attack her. And, again, I'm referring to some of the press I saw Friday, not to the comments left on the 'reports.' Again, Saverin decides to change his citizenship because Facebook's going to go public and he's expecting a windfall that he doesn't want to pay taxes on. Tina's not expecting a windfall. She's not recording a new album, she's not planning to. She's 73, she's in love, leave the woman be.
Jim: Okay, thank you for that. I want to get two people on Iraq, on what's going on in terms of the media. C.I., you know we've got to go with you so let me also grab -- Isaiah. So C.I. and Isaiah, what's the failure of the western media currently on Iraq? C.I., go first?
C.I.: The big one would be Nouri's targeting of protesters. Targeting them with violence. Nouri is Nouri al-Maliki, the man Bully Boy Bush insisted be prime minister in 2006 and the man Barack Obama insisted get a second term -- despite Iraqiya beating State of Law in the 2010 elections. At the start of 2011, protesters in Iraq found themselves being targeted by the security forces, being beaten, being kidnapped. Protests have started up again, last month, sit-ins, blocking roads, etc. And Nouri's returned to having his thugs attack the protesters. And when Friday saw the deaths of several protesters -- the latest count I saw was seven dead and over sixty injured -- the death toll may have gone up. Friday morning our time, the death toll was five, by Friday night -- US time -- it had risen to six and yesterday it rose to seven. So 7 dead and over sixty injured --
Elaine: I'm jumping in to echo a point C.I. made Saturday the number killed and wounded was greater than in Kent State. The Kent State Massacre rightly shocked Americans. I think we should as shocked by the Falluja Massacre.
C.I.: Agreed. The assault took place in the city of Falluja. The Iraqi military aimed on the protesters and shot them. Some were taking part in a sit-in, three of the dead were shot in the head. This is disgusting.
Jim: We've honestly gone in futher than I'd planned. That's okay. Let's cover the protests in this roundtable then. I was hoping some small thing and then we'd do a feature on the protests but that's okay. Ruth, talk about why the protesters are protesting and then I'll come back to C.I.
Ruth: Okay, well the protesters took to the streets for a number of issues. The most recent crisis was when Nouri targeted another Sunni politician from the Iraqiya bloc. In December 2011, he targeted Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi of Iraqiya. al-Hashemi ended up leaving the country. In December of last year -- last month actually -- he targeted Minister of Finance Rafia al-Issawi, also a member of Iraqiya. But I do agree with an observation C.I.'s made, a real protest, one that has legs, is one that is rooted in something important, some offense that shocks you. Think of the Civil Rights Movement and the many real outrages that gave the Movement its moral backing. For Iraqis, it was the news that women in Iraqi prisons and detention centers were being tortured and raped.
Wally: Correct. To demonstrate how serious and powerful that news was to Iraqis, you only have to look at what's happened since the protest started on December 21st. What has been Nouri's response? To ignore the various demands but to make a for-show effort on one demand: Releasing prisoners. He's trying to kick the moral underpinning out from under the protests and de-legitimize the protesters.
Rebecca: And a host of organizations have condemnded the violence. Amnesty International, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, civil organizations in Iraq, you name it. I think we need to get back to C.I. on how this is being mis-reported or badly reported before we explore it further.
C.I.: Okay, well this was the third time this month that Iraqi forces have attacked the protesters. The reporting on this from non-Iraqi outlets was hideous and no one wanted to note the ongoing pattern.
Rebecca: Well they did want to note one 'pattern.' Earlier Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq angered protesters and either his guards fired on them and they threw rocks at the guards or they threw rocks and the guards fired. But they've used that and Friday's assault by the Iraqi military -- see C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for more on the Friday massacre -- to claim that the protesters are violent. Over four weeks of protests and they want to claim "violence" on the part of the protesters. The media forgets their place mainly because they are a bunch of sad social climbers.
Jim: Let's drop back to the 2011 protests. Cedric, can you give us some background there?
Cedric: Sure. They also had the moral underpining of prisoners -- especially the disappeared who vanished in the Iraqi 'justice' system. They begin in January of 2011. They grow and grow. In November 2011, the US negotiated Erbil Agreement gives Nouri a second term as prime minister. In January and February, Iraqis will be pointing out that they showed up at the polls and voted and voted for change but they ended up with the same president -- Jalal Talabani -- and the same prime minister. They'd wonder where the change was so that was another complaint. The lack of public services like dependable electricity and drinking water were other issues as was the huge unemployment and the corruption. The protests were gathering steam. Nouri derailed them. He asked for 100 days. Give him 100 days and he would fix these issues. Moqtada al-Sadr called on his followers to go home and give Nouri the 100 days. So the numbers were smaller. And after the 100 days? Nouri didn't do a damn thing. Now throughout all of this, Nouri had his thugs attacking people. They'd beat up protesters and beat up and kidnap protesters and journalists.
Jess: And in the current protests, Nouri uses the military to keep the reporters away from the protests. If they're not already in the city where a protest is taking place, they're going to miss the protest because he's used the military to keep protesters out. This is crazy and why Nouri's being allowed to use the military to begin with is questionable. It's also disturbing. What does a tin-horn dictator do? Right, use the military against the people. Each time Nouri uses the military to 'police' a protest, he's making it seem normal to use the military for civilian issues. The US government should be ashamed of itself and the State Department needs to fire that fraud Victoria Nuland. How did a neocon end up the face of the State Department to begin with?
Marcia: I agree with Jess about the normalizing -- also about Nuland, but I'll stick to the normalizing aspect. Nouri has completely distorted the purpose of the military. And he wouldn't be able to do that most likely if he hadn't done his power-grab which allowed him to seize control over all Iraqi forces. But people are seeing this over and over in Iraq. One of the things that this massacre has done, thankfully, is lead to some people calling out the use of the military. I also think we need to take Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani's fears that arming the 'Iraqi government' is really arming Nouri to attack the Iraqi people. I think that's a valid fear and we see that more and more so the US government needs to rethink some of the weapons they're supplying Nouri with.
Ava: Speaking of Barzani, it's amazing how many political leaders in the country are against Nouri at this time. Shi'ite Ahmed Chalabi supported the term limit as did Shi'ite Ammar al-Hakim. Iraqiya's Ayad Allawi supported it, Moqtada al-Sadr supported it. All of the political leaders did and that's because Nouri is doing power-grabs, he is refusing to listen to the people and he is refusing to keep his promises. Nouri was frightening in his first term as prime minister but, as Marcia and Jess are pointing out, he's gotten worse. The people don't want him, the political leaders don't want him. The White House better grasp that and not try to pimp him for a third term.
Trina: It really just amazes me that the US government props up Nouri and that it fails to justify all the billions of US tax dollars still flooding into Iraq. Senator John Kerry had his confirmation hearing to be the new Secretary of State Thursday and one especially good thing there is that Kerry was willing to threaten Iraq with the loss of US dollars. When Nouri was claiming that Iranian aircraft passing through Iraq into Syria couldn't be searched, Nouri suddenly found a way after Kerry stated publicly that the US funds could be cut. I hope Kerry takes that same firm stance with Nouri as Secretary of State. It's really embarrassing the way our government has fawned over Nouri for six years now.
Kat: Agreed. He's run secret prisons -- been caught running them repeatedly, an NGO is saying that he's about to be caught running another shortly -- and yet the US government continues to back him. His military fires on protesters and the US government continues to back him. At what point does Barack Obama find a spine or at least a modicum of integrity?
Jim: A modicum of integrity? I like that.
Stan: Saturday's funerals in Falluja were attended by "thousands" according to the press. That's because Nouri's latest assault on the protesters just fuels the protest movement. He is the best recruitment tool the movement has. Only Saturday did he finally realize he needed to pull the military out of Falluja and then only due to soldiers being kidnapped and killed. Nouri's an idiot. If I were an Iraqi I would be screaming for a no-confidence vote.
Ann: Early on, it was clear, at least to C.I., that the prisoner issue wasn't going away. And I think because it's such a betrayal of the 'new Iraq' and the promises that were supposed to be kept. Saddam Hussein tortured people. The 'new Iraq' was supposed to be free of that. Instead torture continues and it's even targeting the women of Iraq which offends Iraqi sensibilities on so many levels. Nouri offered a wide range of excuses in November and December on the prison issue. He failed to address it then and he's failed to address it now. And with 97 'terrorists' arrested last week in Basra alone, there's no chance that the prison issue vanishing any time soon.
Isaiah: What really gets me is how the law people want repealed, Article IV, ever got on the books to begin with. It says a lot about the US government in 2005 that they encouraged this law. If the Iraqi authorites want to arrest Charlie and can't find Charlie, they're allowed to arrest Charlie's mother or sister or daughter or wife or aunt or grandfather, go down the list. This is part of the reason the 'terrorist' population in Iraqi prisons are so great. And we should point out that the US was doing this in Iraq before the Iraqis made it a law in 2005 -- they were rounding up family members they knew were innocent in an attempt to force the suspect out. That's disgusting.
Dona: And the idea that this can't be addressed? Nouri formed a supposed committee to deal with this. It's a fraudulent committee and last week Moqtada al-Sadr pulled his people from the committee noting that Nouri refuses to listen to the protesters. There should be no need for discussion or debate. Being related to someone should not be reason enough to be arrested.
Ty: And Nouri's refusal to even grasp that goes a long, long way towards explaining why he's in the current situation. Common sense appears to have escaped Nouri. He really is responsible for the bulk of Iraq's problems today.
Jim: That sounds like a summation to me. So let's wrap up what Betty dubbed "The Iraq and Tina Turner Roundtable" on a napkin she passed to me. This is a rush transcript.