Review Candy Cooper, Reporting From Iraq, On the Ground in Fallujah, Scholastic, 2020

  

Reporting From Iraq, On The Ground in Fallujah is a young adult book about Ann Garrels and her time reporting on Iraq from 2003-2004. Despite being a very short read it actually covers some major points about journalism in Iraq during this period.

Review Edited by Mike Hoyt, John Palatella, and the staff of the Columbia Journalism Review, Reporting Iraq, An Oral History Of The War By The Journalists Who Covered It, Melville Publishing House, 2007

  

In 2006 the Columbia Journalism Review got three reporters to interview journalists who’d been in Iraq about their experiences. A total of 46 people were included which led to this book Columbia Journalism Review, Reporting Iraq, An Oral History Of The War By The Journalists Who Covered It. The book covers 2003-2006 and has short excerpts from the interviews.

Review Aaron Glantz, How America Lost Iraq, Penguin Books, 2005

 

Aaron Glantz was a reporter for the San Francisco Bay Area’s Pacifica Radio. He went to Iraq from 2003-05 to report on the conditions of everyday Iraqis. He came away with two main impressions. One was that the Left and Right in America didn’t care about Iraqis at all just their own political agendas. The second was that the U.S. lost Iraq just a year into the occupation because of their misrule.

Review Dahr Jamail, Beyond The Green Zone, Dispatches From An Unembedded Journalist In Occupied Iraq, Haymarket Books, 2007

 

Dahr Jamail was opposed to the U.S. overthrowing Saddam Hussein. That inspired him to go to Iraq several times from 2003 to the start of 2005 as a freelance journalist to report on how bad the American occupation of the country was. He said he wanted to put Iraqis in the forefront of his stories which he did. Ironically he mostly portrayed them as victims of the U.S. with no agency unless they were in the insurgency. His position on the war also led him to take all kinds of stories he was told at face value even though many were not true. His book suffers massively as a result.

Review Jackie Spinner, Tell Them I Didn’t Cry, A Young Journalists Story Of Joy, Loss, And Survival In Iraq, Scribner, 2006

 

 

Jackie Spinner was a reporter for the Washington Post in Iraq from 2004-05. Her book Tell Them I Didn’t Cry, A Young Journalists Story Of Joy, Loss And Survival In Iraq gets its name from the time the author was almost kidnapped. She wanted the staff to know that she never cried when men were trying to take her. Her writing is like a journal about her time working in Iraq along with letters from her twin sister about how her trip was affecting her family.

Review Ahmed Mansour, Inside Fallujah, The Unembedded Story, Olive Branch Press, 2009

 

Mansour, Ahmed, Inside Fallujah, The Unembedded Story, Olive Branch Press, 2009

 

Ahmed Mansour was a talk show host turned journalist for Al-Jazeera who reported on the two battles for Fallujah in 2004. He was an opponent of the war and thought attacking a city with civilians was a war crime. That led him to blame everything upon the Americans and repeat false stories that he heard from Iraqis. While he reported on the casualties and suffering of the people of Fallujah you cannot believe anything else he wrote.

Review Farnaz Fassihi, Waiting for an Ordinary Day, The Unraveling Of Life In Iraq, Public Affairs, 2008

 

Fassihi, Farnaz, Waiting for an Ordinary Day, The Unraveling Of Life In Iraq, Public Affairs, 2008

 

Farnas Fassihi was a journalist for the Wall Street Journal who reported from Iraq from before the 2003 invasion to the start of 2006. In her book Waiting for an Ordinary Day, The Unraveling Of Life In Iraq she attempts to tell the stories of regular Iraqis who were swept up in the changes and violence that enveloped their country and how the growing insecurity took a toll upon her. It is one of the few Western books from this time that put Iraqis in the forefront

Review Robert Weiner, Live from Baghdad, Gathering News At Ground Zero, Doubleday, 1992

 

Weiner, Robert, Live from Baghdad, Gathering News At Ground Zero, Doubleday, 1992

 

Robert Weiner was a CNN producer who was in Iraq during the start of the Gulf War. He provides an inside look at how the news is put together. It’s actually not as interesting as a reporters’ accounts and things don’t really get going until the bombs started dropping.

Review Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Alford, Kael, Anderson, Thorne, Leistner, Rita, Unembedded, Four Independent Photojournalists on the War in Iraq, Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2005

 

Abdul-Ahad, Ghaith, Alford, Kael, Anderson, Thorne, Leistner, Rita, Unembedded, Four Independent Photojournalists on the War in Iraq, Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2005

 

Unembedded, Four Independent Photojournalists on the War in Iraq is a beautiful picture book about the first couple years of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. It’s printed on a large format with pictures filling the pages so you can see every detail. It features everyday Iraqis rather than Coalition forces. Unfortunately the commentary has some major flaws.

Review Richard Engel, A Fist In The Hornet’s Nest, On The Ground In Baghdad Before, During & After The War, Hyperion, 2004

Engel, Richard, A Fist In The Hornet’s Nest, On The Ground In Baghdad Before, During & After The War, Hyperion, 2004

 

Richard Engel was an American journalist who decided to go to Iraq before the 2003 invasion and try to get a job with a U.S. media outlet. A Fist In The Hornet’s Nest, On The Ground In Baghdad Before, During & After The War is a collection of his experiences in the Iraqi capital during those tumultuous months. While it’s emphasis is obviously on what it was like being a journalist at that time it includes enough stories about everyday Iraqis to make it a well-rounded story.

Human Rights Watch And Metro Center For Journalists’ Rights Document Limits On Press Freedom In Iraq

(IMS)

Human Rights Watch recently released its annual global report. It’s section on Iraq had the usual criticisms of the government for not following due process to prosecuting Islamic State members for association alone not any specific crime and relying upon confessions obtained through torture and abuse. It also singled out Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kazemi who said he stood with the nation’s protests but did nothing to protect or compensate them since he’s been in office. One interesting tidbit was the limits the central and regional Kurdish governments place upon the press.

PBS NEWSHOUR VIDEO: Remembering The Faces Of The Iraq War

AL JAZEERA VIDEO: Listening Post Media Mea Culpas And The Iraq War

VOICE OF AMERICA VIDEO: The Iraq Invasion 10 Years Later

CNN VIDEO: The Media's Iraq Failure: 10 Years Later

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT VIDEO: John Prados, National Security Archive: Media Countdown To War In Iraq

RUSSIA TODAY VIDEO: Not 'The End" In Iraq

What Happened When Saddam’s Statue Came Down In Baghdad On April 9, 2003? The Creation Of An Iraq War Myth

On April 9, 2003, a statue of Saddam Hussein was pulled down in Baghdad’s Firdos Square. The U.S. press focused upon this event as a sign that the Iraq war was over, and that Iraqis were welcoming their liberation at the hands of the Americans. This was an act of myth making because the idea for taking down the statue came from two Marine units, only a sparse number of Iraqis were even there, and fighting was still raging in the city, which would eventually turn into the insurgency. The role of the Marines was largely unknown at the time, but the rest were ignored because the media wanted an iconic image to finish off the war.

The fall of Saddam's statue became the news of the day on April 9, 2003 (AP)

The toppling of the Saddam statue was hailed throughout the American media. Tom Brokaw of NBC said that the event was like, “All the statues of Lenin [that] came down across the Soviet Union.” The Washington Post had the headline, “Iraqis Celebrate in Baghdad,” the New York Times went with “Jubilant Iraqis Swarm the Streets of Capital,” and the Boston Globe wrote, “It was liberation day in Baghdad.” CNN’s Bill Hemmer said, “You think about seminal moments in a nation’s history … indelible moments like the fall of the Berlin Wall, and that’s what we’re seeing right now: Regular Iraqis with their opportunity and their chance to take their own axe to take down Saddam Hussein.” Fox’s Brit Hume noted, “This transcends anything I’ve ever seen. … This speaks volumes, and with power that no words can really match.” All thought the event was a historical moment that they were excited to see. To them, it seemed like Iraqis were celebrating their freedom, and the fall of Saddam both figuratively and literally, just as the Bush administration had predicted.

The 3rd Marine Battalion enters Firdos Square. It was their idea to take down Saddam's statue (AFP)

The media portrayed the fall of the statue as an act of the Iraqi people, but it was really the U.S. military that was behind it in a spontaneous act. On the morning of April 9, a psychological warfare team attached to the 3^rd Battalion, 4^th Marine Regiment in Baghdad, decided to head towards Firdos Square. When they arrived there, they found some Iraqis and reporters milling around. Right across from the square was the Palestine Hotel where many Western reporters were staying. The 3^rd Battalion had just arrived there, and then moved to the square as well. They saw a few Iraqis in front of the Saddam statue, which led one Marine to offer a sledgehammer to them to hit the edifice with. The battalion commander then decided to help the Iraqis take the statue down. First, the Iraqis began hitting the statue with the hammer, then the psychological warfare team broadcast their plan to pull it down in Arabic, while the Marines sealed off the square. The Iraqis tried toppling the statue on their own, but that failed. The Marines then drove an M88 tank recovery vehicle up to the statue. While attaching cables to it, a Marine hung an American flag over Saddam’s head. The psychological warfare team told him to take it off because they thought it would look bad for the assembled press. An old Iraqi flag was eventually found, and put on top of the statue instead. Then the M88 pulled it down. Some Marines then suggested that Iraqi children would look nice on the M88, and some were promptly found and photographed by the press. The whole process took around two hours, and there were long down periods where the Iraqis, Marines, and reporters were doing nothing, but milling around. Writer Peter Mass who was travelling with the 3^rd Battalion at the time, also believed that many of the scenes seen that day were Iraqis acting out for the cameras. For example, when the Iraqis began hitting the statue with the Marine sledgehammer, journalists swarmed them. When they stopped taking photos however, the Iraqis stopped and walked away. After the event, there was some speculation that the Marines staged the entire thing. First hand accounts by a member of the psychological warfare team included in a postwar lessons learned report, and an article by Peter Maas dismissed these ideas. The psychological warfare team and the 3^rd Battalion just happened to come across the statue, and decided to take it down spontaneously. There was no advanced planning going on that day, but the psychological warfare unit was aware of how the images would play out in the press, which led them to do things such as tell the Marine to take down the U.S. flag off of Saddam’s head and replace it with an Iraqi one. What actually happened was that the American press picked up on the story, and turned it into hyperbole.

The Marines gave the Iraqis a sledgehammer to hit the statue with (AP)

The Iraqis tried and failed to take down the statue themselves (AFP)

A Marine placed a U.S. flag on top of the statue's face (AP)

He was later told to take it down because it would look bad to the press, and was replaced by an Iraqi flag (AP)

A Marine M88 tank recovery vehicle finally pulled down the statue (AP)

  The first bit of distortion done by the media was to exaggerate how many Iraqis were in Firdos Square on April 9. The BBC approximated that there were only 200 people in attendance, a figure other sources seemed to roughly agree upon. Peter Mass estimated that 25-50% of those were reporters and Marines. He also noted that most of the Iraqis there were just standing around and watching, rather than being actively involved or celebrating. Reuters took a series of long-shot photos that day that showed that the square was almost empty, and sealed off by the Marines. Some TV reporters also noted the sparse crowd before the statue came down such as CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, and anchors at Fox News. However, as soon as the statue came down the media began talking about far more, such as Simon Robinson on CNN who claimed that 1,500 were in attendance even though the Marines had not let anyone else in since they arrived. The press also tended to use close-up shots of the people immediately surrounding the statue to give the impression that there was a large crowd there. The use of close-in shots is common in the media, but some were obviously taken in by what they were seeing, and wanted to say that there were large numbers of Iraqis there that day to emphasize how important it was. This was a view not shared by many of the journalists actually in the square or those making close observations of it.

This wide angle-photo of Firdos Square shows the sparse crowd on April 9 (Reuters)

Next, journalists began overstating the relevance of the event. Ann Garrels of National Public Radio for instance, reported that there were hardly any Iraqis in the square, and they weren’t really celebrating when the statue came down, but were just standing around observing. She was then told by her editors to emphasize Iraqis acting joyful, because that was what they were seeing on TV. Of course, that was a distorted image itself, because as noted above, the networks were only showing a cropped view of the day’s proceedings. Photographer Gary Knight who was embedded with the 3^rd Marine Battalion got a call from his editor demanding that he take pictures of the square because it was on TV. He told them there were few Iraqis in attendance, but they insisted anyway. One of the worse examples came from the San Francisco Chronicle. They took a story penned by Robert Collier, which originally said that there were only a couple dozen Iraqis there, who were not overwhelmed by the statue being toppled. The next day, he found out that his editors had re-written his piece, saying “A jubilant crowd roared its approval” when Saddam’s figure fell, and some shouted, “We are free! Thank you, President Bush!” Of course, none of that happened, and Collier was later quoted as saying that his editors wanted a victory scene so they created one out of their own imagination. They told him that he didn’t understand the importance of the scene, which was why they revised his story. Many of the reporters in Firdos did not think anything special of the day. It was those in other locations, like the TV anchors and the editors that wanted to make a big deal out of the statue’s fall, and proceeded to do so.

The toppling of Saddam's statue was often compared to the fall of the Berlin Wall by the media (Boston Globe)

This desire to find a glamorous image to juxtapose what the media thought was the end of the Iraq war, was a driving force according to a media analysis done by researchers at George Washington University. They argued that the fall of the Saddam statue became what they called a “victory Frame” for the press, which consisted of the use of historical metaphors, repeated use of the image, exaggeration of the event, and using it to claim that the war was over. The paper looked at CNN and Fox News coverage of Iraq, the two major 24-hour networks, from the week before the statue came down on April 9 to the week afterward. Both ran constant live coverage of Firdos Square on the 9^th. From 11 a.m. to 8 pm. Fox played the image of the statue coming down on average every 4.4 minutes, and CNN showed it every 7.5 minutes. The anchors also constantly compared it to the coming down of the Berlin Wall, and the victory of capitalism versus communism in the Cold War. This was done 1 ½ times every thirty minutes between noon and 8 p.m. on both networks. Finally, the two top newsmen for the CNN and Fox, Wolf Blitzer and Brit Hume respectively, immediately started talking about the end of the war, and the postwar situation after the statue came down. The researchers found that in matters of war and foreign policy, the press tended to follow the lead of the government. In this case, it was pushing the line that Iraqis would greet the U.S. troops as liberators. When they saw images of Firdos Square, it appeared that the White House was right, and they exploited it for everything they could to push that argument. The military didn’t have to stage the event, because the press loves these types of images, and wants to be patriotic and supportive of the administration during times of war. In this case, some even went beyond exaggerating it to straight forward fabrication to create an Iraq that they imagined, and were conditioned to expect by the government.

The media whole heartedly believed that the fall of the statue symbolized the fall of Saddam’s regime, and in the following week drastically cut back their reporting on Iraq; completely missing what was going on in the country at that time. Fox News dropped their coverage of Iraq 70%, CNN’s went down 26%, ABC’s 66%, NBC’s 58%, and CBS’ 39%. On Fox, stories about fighting declined 79% in that week, and stories about strategy and tactics used in the war were reduced by 81%. Likewise at CNN, combat reporting declined 81%, and strategy and tactics pieces were down 89%. Stories of on-going fighting with visuals dropped 76% at Fox and 73% at CNN. This had a dramatic impact upon public opinion back in the United States, where those who thought the war was over jumped from 28% on April 8 to 41% on April 15, and support for Bush’s handling of the invasion went from 69% on April 3 to 76% after the statue fell. Of course, the war was not over, but much of the media was missing that because it was so caught up on Firdos Square. Even that day, the new Iraq was emerging. Some of the Iraqis who were cheering in the square turned out to be doing so for Mohammad Sadiq al-Sadr, Moqtada’s father who was killed by Saddam. One Iraqi who walked up to Peter Maas and told him he felt free, was later surrounded by a mob of Iraqis who accused him of being a Baathist spy. A Marine had to stop the crowd from killing him. Starting on the 9^th, Baghdad began to be torn apart by looters, and in the following seven days 13 U.S. soldiers were killed, and thousands of Iraqis came out into the streets of Baghdad calling for the Americans to leave. Hardly any of that was noted at first, because the press and their editors were so enraptured by the tale they had spun about Saddam’s statue.

On April 18, 2003 thousands of Iraqis took to the streets of Baghdad demanding that the U.S. leave (AFP)

The American media is a powerful institution. They can spin tales, and create their own history. That’s what happened on April 9 in Baghdad. Two U.S. Marine units spontaneously decided to take down a statue of Saddam they found, but the press spun it as an act of jubilant Iraqis celebrating their freedom from an oppressive dictator. This was compared to the end of the Cold War, and declared the victorious image of the end of the conflict. The fact that there was still fighting going on in the capital that day, and the looting had already begun was barley mentioned, and would take at least two weeks to sink in back in America, as the press began to reduce their reporting on Iraq thinking that it was all over. The media thus fooled themselves and the public, and played into the hands of the Bush administration that claimed Iraqis would welcome their liberation by the U.S. It would take a long time for both groups to figure out what was really happening in Iraq, as the fall of the former regime was ushering in not only a period of anarchy, but almost immediate resistance to the U.S. occupation. The victors in the White House and media were too busy celebrating to notice that at the time.

SOURCES

Aday, Sean, Cluverius, John, Livingston, Steven, “As goes the statue, so goes the war: the emergence of the victory frame in television coverage of the Iraq war,” Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 9/1/05

BBC, “In pictures: Saddam toppled,” 4/9/03

Boston Globe, “Toppling Saddam,” War in Iraq Photo Gallery

CNN, “Saddam statue toppled in central Baghdad,” 4/9/03

Fontenot, Col. Gregory, Degen, LTC E.J., Tohn, LTC David, “On Point, The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom,” Center for Army Lessons Learned, 5/1/03

Gilbert, Matthew and Ryan, Suzzane, “Did iconic images from Baghdad reveal more about the media than Iraq?” Boston Globe, 4/10/03

Information Clearing House, “The photographs tell the story…,” 4/10/03

Maas, Peter, “The Toppling: How the Media Inflated the Fall of Saddam’s Statue in Firdos Square,” Pro Publica, 1/30/11

Rampton, Sheldon and Stauber, John, Weapons Of Mass Deception, New York: Penguin, 2003

Source Watch, “Toppling the statue of Saddam Hussein,” 2003

Zucchino, David, “Army Stage-Managed Fall of Hussein Statue,” Los Angeles Times, 7/3/04

PROPUBLICA VIDEO: The Toppling: How The Media Created The Iconic Fall Of Saddam's Statue

Much Ado About Nothing, How The Western Press Got The Story Of The U.S. Troop Withdrawal From Iraq Wrong Again

When it comes to reporting on whether the United States will ultimately withdraw its forces from Iraq on December 31, 2011, the western media is forming a bad habit of getting the story wrong. At the beginning of October, the press ran headlines that Iraq’s political parties had met, and agreed to allow U.S. trainers to stay into 2012. This overlooked the fact that this decision had already been made in August, and the real point of the conference was to work out the differences between the lists that remained from the March 2010 parliamentary elections. The Associated Press just made another bad report, when it claimed that the White House had given up on keeping combat troops in Iraq. Again, this ignored the previous discussions between the two sides that had agreed to only keep trainers within Iraq. This inconsistent coverage is giving the Western public a distorted view of what’s going on within the country.

U.S. soldiers withdrawing from Basra airport, Sep. 7, 2011 (Reuters)

 On October 15, the Associated Press claimed that the White House had given up on its hope to keep troops in Iraq past 2011. It said that the U.S. had been pushing for several thousand soldiers to stay past the withdrawal deadline, but that Baghdad’s refusal to offer them immunity had sunk those plans. The article then went on to say that talks about allowing trainers to stay was still on going. Overall, this was a non-story. The administration had already given up on the idea of keeping thousands of its forces in Iraq. Fox News noted that back in September. That was in response to the Iraqis, who had only agreed upon a small training force the month before. That led American officials to refute the Associated Press the next day. All the discussions between Washington and Baghdad are currently focused upon the immunity issue, with the latter providing some possible loopholes for the Americans to use to get around it. Those include keeping trainers under NATO, which already has a small assistance force in the country, or placing them under the Office of Security Cooperation that works under the State Department. The Iraqis are unwilling to provide legal protection to the U.S. troops because of past abuses like Abu Ghraib and the Blackwater incident when private security forces killed several civilians, but they are apparently looking for compromises that the U.S. can live with. All the Iraqi parties, with the exception of the Sadrists have said that Iraq’s security forces still need assistance with intelligence, air defense, border control, logistics, and the new advanced equipment they are purchasing such as jet fighters, tanks, and artillery. At the same time, they want whatever force that stays to be on their own terms, and not be dictated to them by the Americans.

The problem with all these reports is that they are giving confusing messages about what is going on in Iraq. The Associated Press story was included in a wide variety of media sources, and gave the impression that all U.S. forces would be out by the end of the year. This is unlikely to happen, as both Washington and Baghdad want trainers to stay. When the new year starts, and soldiers are still in Iraq, some in the States will ask what happened. Not only that, but the Iraqi perspective on the matter is rarely noted. Besides the Iraqis insistence on not giving the U.S. immunity, their needs are hardly reported. The fact that Iraq’s military is almost completely incapable of defending the country from foreign threats is the driving force behind their desire to keep some trainers past 2011. Current Iraqi plans, don’t have the security forces ready for that task until 2020, and even that might be too optimistic. In a region with yearly shelling and air strikes by Turkey and Iran, insurgents infiltrating from Syria, and Iran providing lethal support to Special Groups, a strong and competent military are a necessity to deter these countries from continuing their interference in a weak Iraq. Reporters need to do a better job exploring Baghdad’s perspective, and reporting on Iraq in general.

SOURCES

Associated Press, “Iraq Withdrawal: U.S. Abandoning Plans To Keep Troops In Country,” 10/15/11

Fox News, “Sources: Obama Administration to Drop Troop Levels in Iraq to 3,000,” 9/6/11

Markey, Patrick, “Analysis: Iraq U.S. troop deal drifts over immunity,” Reuters, 10/16/11

Reuters, “U.S.: No Decision Yet On Future Troop Presence In Iraq,” 10/16/11