The "Progress Report" on Iraq aired on Sunday evening and Sunday night. There were improvements from the Friday presentation.
The commercial content broke down to one Big Oil commercial and 10% minority commercials.
That was an improvement over Friday.
I don't consider commercials with large pasture lands to be minority commercials although there are no people but cows. I also don't consider car commercials without noting the driver as a minority commercial or big money interests either. It is my experience to date there are no African-Americans, except Vernon Jordon on a few Boards, that actually have CEO positions on Fortune 500 companies or those of the Dow. So, all those commercials were considered caucasian interest commercials. You gotta show the skin so the message is clear.
You know the commercials you like, Sharon. Like the black lady standing in the 'clean environment' of a tiled bathroom stating she loves chocolate followed by the Bank of America housing bubble commercials turning shabby neighborhoods into refurnished flower box unites. I don't really consider those minority commercials either. I consider those to be a bigoted and a judgmental slap in the face. Hopelessness breeds helplessness and this nations impoverished knows the reality. Besides gentrification or big government projects usually displace the poor to some place else and somebody else's problem. Besides improving tax revenue on city property there is less police force needed when gentrificaiton occurs. So there is a lot of incentive to move people along. You're hoping those commercials will 'kick the Blacks of this nation' in the butt to realize they ain't going to be looked at or after anymore. That's highly bigoted stuff.
But, this isn't about the USA's problems at home, this is about Iraq and more specifically Baghdad. So, we persist.
The filming and some of the narrative was by two Iraqi journalists who had a mission to find the upside of Baghdad. They succeeded. Their contribution was vitally important. It clearly demonstrated all the ethnicities were blind to each other's differences and while there was resistance fighting in Iraq and in Baghdad the average citizens were all determined to make the best of life and into a life where they were respected as people. With scenes from cafes wher people of all walks of life gathered, I think the common thread by these two very capable Iraqi journalists was that the ethnicities of Iraq did not hate each other. They were all pulling together and the Shi'ite majority in the new central authority didn't seem to matter so much to anyone. I did not hear one Iraqi complain about their new government. I did hear a great deal of discomfort regarding the occupation and Bush's inability to deliver on his promises.
There were interesting stories, one involving a racehorse track. Previous to the invasion the facility already existed so this was a return to function if not normalcy by the proprietor of a facility called, The Equestrian Club. After the invasion the facility was looted, but, it's proprietor somehow put it back together, found the horses and now they still race everyday. There was once when resistance fighting broke out near the track and one of the jockeys stated a horse received a bullet in the chest. Evidently, there was no report of the horse dying. Just another lovely day in Baghdad.
The Executive Producer of this hour long presentation wants everyone to get mad as hell about the issues of gunfire and mount the cannons yourself to defeat the resistance movement. That is not my first reaction especially after some of the other content presented.
These 'life in the face of death' events which I'll refer to along the way here were also enhanced and truthfully so that Iraqis were enjoying communication freedom. There were more cell phones (? al Qaeda ?) which seemed to be more popular than any other phone, there are more landline phones, more computers to pick up those critical updates from bin Laden, more newspapers, magazines, radio stations and television broadcasts. All in all the Iraqis are receiving greater freedom of expression through open communication but then so are the resistance fighters. The al Qaeda issues along with the Iraqi Resistance fighter benefiting from these new freedoms are a side effect of an open society. We are always concerned about that in the USA, but, the odds of danger to citizens greatly increase in Baghdad. I said Baghdad not the entire of Iraq. Then again if this ability to communicate openly is the only pleasure the Iraqi people are experiencing then to stop that would cause up rise.
The electricity of Iraq that the Iraqi people always complain about hasn 't improved. Each household where there is a house gets about 9 hours a day of electricity rather than 12 hours. Which causes me to wonder if there is mostly rubble in places like Fallujah where is the electricity going?
The unemployment hadn't really improved but there was a slight increase from last year but that isn't how it was noted in the expose'. Halliburton is still in Iraq but none of that was brought up until CNN Presents wanted to discuss Fallujah. So, let's get down to the real nitty gritty. Shall we?
The opening segment was by Nic Robertson who ventured out into Iraq to find the Insurgents. The people the USA call insurgents call themselves resistance fighters. That is how I will refer to them here. They are very sane people who have contemplated this resistance and practiced for it since before the invasion.
They have names such as Abu Omar and Abu Mohammad. These names were alias. The actual Arabic understanding of the name of "Abu" is to indictate it is a false identity. Abu also means father. The General of these fighters showed pictures of himself as an officer in the Iraqi Army before the removal of Saddam from leadership in Iraq. According to the report by Nic, which is more accurate than anyone else I know at CNN besides perhaps Christiana Amanpour these men are in complete control of their situation. They can turn it on or off like a faucet. General Abu Omar was in charge of 20% of the resistance fighters but stated he influenced 80%. He stated they all have plans of stopping but they just aren't sure exactly when they will stop.
The good General stated he was aware of the presence of al Qaeda and the forces there that operated in Baghdad but they only came to support the Iraqi resistance and would stay to the end of the struggle. Got that? Al Qaeda is not interested in undermining the Islamic people of Iraq but only the Americans and their coalition, hence, Blair is again right in that the policies of Iraq are playing out in London through al Qaeda's support to the resistance efforts.
Now, so far we have a former Iraqi Army Commander who has influence over 80% of the Iraqi Resistance fighters and at least direct control of 20% of those same fighters along with the fact he knows al Qaeda will stop their attacks when the Iraqi resistance is finished with their battle. Somehow everything Bush is saying about his 'insurgents' better known in Iraq as resistance fighters just doesn't pan out.
Abu Mohammad who is a resistance leader stated the Americans are ideologues and are interested more in their politics than in the best interest of the Iraqi people. The guy is informed from somewhere. He obviously is drawing what he considers to be valid complaints about his experience in Iraq. We have some very savvy Iraqis here.
Noted in Nic's report is the fact Iraqi resistance fighters will join al Qaeda over their own resistance fighters if they are more interested in immediate results. In other words, al Qaeda brings a certain 'expertise/specialty' to the battle scene and it is seen as far more violent and effective.
Who then are these men who dare to stand up to the USA?
By every accounting throughout the program these men have lost people, family mostly to the invasion and the resistance fighting afterward. You have to remember that death to Muslims is far more overpowering than life. So, when someone in the family dies they are revered in a very different way than we in the USA are revered especially if they died in the battle for Islam. So, to continue to kill these people just doesn't make sense as that only increases their resolve AND their numbers.
The numbers of resistance fighters are significant. To date General Abu Omar estimates the resistance force to be about 400,000 men strong realizing there are 30,000 detained, 10,000 injured and another 10,000 dead. Now to realize there are 10,000 dead is to realize those figures are about resistance fighters alone and not civilians adding to the understanding the number of dead Iraqis is way off at about 15,000. Therefore, in the face of these numbers "The Lancet" is looking more like the authority in this area. The resistance movement carries out about 300 to 400 attacks per week. That is a far more significant number that is ever reported in the USA news media bringing again into question the Iraqi civilian dead. The attacks don't necessarily inflict injury or death either as was demonstrated by the race horse that received a bullet.
During the two plus years the USA has been in Iraq the prevailing culture has turned from 'Heart of Islamic Pilgrimage' to one of a resistance culture. With that realized the 'Hearts and Minds Campaign' of the occupying USA Coalition is not necessarily winning on their front either. This is the culture the Holy Men have to contend with as people continue to die all around the countryside. Even resistance fighters are somebody's son.
To conclude this aspect of this text, or as Bush sees it, a complaint; there was an astounding film footage of USA General Spider Marks. His claim to fame is the fact he has experience in watching this resistance movement grow. He states that as if that is an asset somehow and he the authority.
To reflect on what I have learned from Nic I would say 'Spider' has little reason to be proud. One of the statements by General Abu Omar was that the USA never took the time to understand the Sunnis. In other words, "Spider" didn’t' see understanding the enemy who makes up the battlefield as important. All "Spider" knows is his logistics and where next to send troops to kill resistance fighters. That is why the USA is losing their effort to a greater extent. They never stopped to understand their opposition. They only wanted to understand their own muscle bound ability to kill with the Powell's Doctrine of overwhelming force. "Spider" only wants to understand killing and the effectiveness of it. Well, with a resistance movement of 400,000 men, with plenty of ammunition backed by fighters from al Qaeda this could go on forever.
It's thought there is a movement within the Sunni community; there are those in the resistance that are signing on to the new government. Nic attending a meeting with Aikam Ashammad who was trying to bring the resistance fighters into his camp to stop the violence and become part of the government that wasn't happening.
I don't know how such a organization is going to get off the ground because the men that are fighting the coalition are not coming to a fully televised meeting. Consequently, there was not one representative in the room from any of the resistance organizations. So to place hope on this possibility is not realistic.
Another place where it is highly questionable to the 'real' identity of the Iraqi government is what the USA sees as the legitimate government of that country. At local council meetings there is minimally one USA soldier sitting at the council meeting. Why? How can the Iraqis carry out their business agenda if a non-resident is attending the meeting. It's a form of oppression. What I want to know is where are the real meetings taking place. The meetings of only the town councils without the presence of USA military? Because I guarantee you there are such meetings and much is accomplished outside the public forum whereby USA soldiers are in attendance.
People like Marine Colonel Thomas X. Hamas seem to think it will take at least nine years for this resistance to stop as that is the average. It 's reassuring to know Iraq is considered average. It may not be considering this is the heart of Islam and this man's army has never faced sustained resistance with al Qaeda.
Colonel Hamas also made reference to Vietnam.
It was outrageous.
He tried to justify the USA occupation in Iraq by stating if we stayed in Vietnam we would have been victorious due to the fact 1972 was their best year. Best year at WHAT? Killing? That is how the USA military garners success? Killing and oppression?
There is nothing wrong with Vietnam today that strong economic ties to the real world won't solve and although it remains an unpopular stand; Ho Chi Minh loved those people. He was educated by the French and while he despised the French occupation of Vietnam he first came to the USA optimistically to unite the North and South and relieve the French of their occupation. What Ho naively didn't realize was France and the USA were committed to each other through SEATO. Ho then became the enemy even though he was right. For a USA Colonel to come forward and state we should have stayed longer, killed more to ? attempt ? to prevail all to justify a further occupation in Iraq is the most ludicrous statement I have ever heard.
A decade. They are saying this will continue a decade. A decade of killing will result in less people of Iraqi decent in Iraq so much as others who run Halliburton.
The next stop is what this "Progress Report" deems as "The Fight for Iraq." Fallujah. This is where four private contractors, I believe it was Halliburton, were hung from the bridge and eventually burnt and dragged through the streets. Fallujah was defined in this expose' as the battle of all battles. It defined the conflict in this country. It was the Sunni stronghold and to take Fallujah from the Sunnis and keep it from the Sunnis would serve to demoralize the resistance. I don't think it was all that but it was fought to impact on Islam and not so much the Iraqi resistance. Leveling Fallujah made the resistance more determined and it was after that more al Qaeda was witnessed in Iraq with severity of attacks and intensity as well. Fallujah was the city where hope was to live to most Islamists. It was the hope of the resistance and when the USA demolished Fallujah it's goal was also to break the will of Islam. That didn't happen and hasn't happened today.
There was conflicting messages by Jane Arraf during this segment. Her first statement was that she was an 'imbed' with the military while Fallujah was attacked. She stated at one point there seemed to be more dead resistance fighters than live civilians indicating the reason to enter Fallujah was justified as there was mostly 'insurgents' there and not civilians. That statement is conflicted after a time when she discusses the home the military and she occupied while the fighting was going on as empty as was most of the streets of Iraq. During this time the majority of the civilian population before the invasion of Fallujah escaped as refugees. So the truth indeed is that there were more dead resistance fighters than civilians because the majority of civilians were gone.
They left Fallujah before the attack.
Now, it would seem they had returned and the house that was shelter to the military now had it's rightful occupants living there. It gets pretty ludicrous from there with USA soldiers stating their attacks were ordered by Allawi (The Iraqi Government) but the real upside was the millions of dollars that were going to come to them to rebuild. And indeed there was a film clip of an Iraqi man, at least we think it is, doing exactly that in Fallujah. He was moving the rubble that was once a home brick by brick to another brick pile to try and discover what might be left of what was once his home. Now, mind you, this is Fallujah the home of the Sunnis. The man moving the bricks was probably one of the surviving resistance fighters as he was wearing a scarf around his face. I realize most people in Iraq who don't want to be recognized and will do this even if it's to protect the innocent but that is the issue now isn't it. Like Vietnam we don't know who is the so called enemy or not, now do we?
The Midway point of the program there is a lot of nonsense about the Big Events that are power events like the elections and the upcoming constitution and how this is important to the Iraqi social psychology in establishing there democracy in the face of such violence. There were pictures of Bush and Rice and all their bragging about "Mission Accomplished" and somehow all they said just faded to black in the reality of the rest of the show.
There were scenes of a wedding and children in school and movie makers huddling in an apartment to enjoy to some extent 'a life.' Those events were people living inspite of it all because there isn't anything else to do. There was a statement by a young man who's father was an exceptional man in town stating, (paraphrasing) 'It was upto them to build Iraq to serve as a home where all could live peacefully together in Iraq.' That film clip left me realizing that young man was from a family that has not yet experienced a death to the war and would he say the same thing IF that were to occur.
Basically, I think the USA's priority of continuing this conflict is ludicrous and counter productive and at some point it will become obvious. It's just unfortunate so much of 'Bush's Metal' is measured by Iraq while it is failing so miserably.
We don't belong in Iraq and if the generals are counting on the USA people to back them for the next ten years to 'get the job done.' I don't think so.
We need a timetable for an exit of Iraq and soon.
