Cockburn: Iraq is a bloody no man's land. ...

[grytpype]

http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=638525&host=3&dir=75

Iraq is a bloody no man's land. America has failed to win the war. But has it lost it?
Ten US troops were killed in action across Iraq last week. The fighting is now sustained and ferocious. Patrick Cockburn, winner of the Martha Gellhorn prize for journalism, reports from the frontline of America's war on terror
15 May 2005

Iraq is a bloody no man's land. America has failed to win the war. But has it lost it?


...

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, the leader of one of the Kurdish parties, confidently told a meeting in Brasilia last week that there is war in only three or four out of 18 Iraqi provinces. Back in Baghdad Mr Talabani, an experienced guerrilla leader, has deployed no fewer than 3,000 Kurdish soldiers or peshmerga around his residence in case of attack. One visitor was amused to hear the newly elected President interrupt his own relentlessly upbeat account of government achievements to snap orders to his aides on the correct positioning of troops and heavy weapons around his house.

...

The failure was in part political. Immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein polls showed that Iraqis were evenly divided on whether they had been liberated or occupied. Eighteen months later the great majority both of Sunni and Shia said they had been occupied, and they did not like it. Every time I visited a spot where an American soldier had been killed or a US vehicle destroyed there were crowds of young men and children screaming their delight. "I am a poor man but I am going home to cook a chicken to celebrate," said one man as he stood by the spot marked with the blood of an American soldier who had just been shot to death.

...

(much more, read the whole article)

[leftchick]

1. About those "journalists" in Iraq....

<snip>

Ironically, the extent of US failure to control Iraq is masked by the fact that it is too dangerous for the foreign media to venture out of central Baghdad. Some have retreated to the supposed safety of the Green Zone. Mr Bush can claim that no news is good news, though in fact the precise opposite is true.

Embedded journalism fosters false optimism. It means reporters are only present where American troops are active, though US forces seldom venture into much of Iraq. Embedded correspondents bravely covered the storming of Fallujah by US marines last November and rightly portrayed it as a US military success. But the outside world remained largely unaware, because no reporters were present with US forces, that at the same moment an insurgent offensive had captured most of Mosul, a city five times larger than Fallujah.

Thanks for posting this. Reality bites!

[bennywhale]

6. RE Falluja "rightly portrayed it as a military succes"

I'm not sure what the coverage was like in america but the coverage i saw in Britain was of a modern day Stalingrad. Thousands of hungry refugees banished from the city, thousands of innocents trapped inside the city with no food or water, hundreds of innocents killed and the city of Falluja "The city of mosques" reduced to rubble. Completely destroyed beyond repair. Most of the refugees haven't returned cos there's nothing to return to.

They might have well as nuked it. (which they probably considered)

[Yellow_Dog]

8. When you start a war based on lies,

it can only be sustained with more lies.

[glitch]

7. Good Lord - Fallujah "rightly portrayed as a US military success".

Amazing.

[expatriot]

2. Man, what a cool name... Cockburn nt

[DemBones DemBones]

3. Probably pronounced as if spelled Coeburn. British, you know.

His brother is half-owner/editor of CounterPunch.

[Boo Boo]

4. Ironic

"The US is turning out to be much less of a military and political superpower than the rest of the world had supposed."

The Neokooks set out to demonstrate the US's unopposable power, and instead disabused the world of what had been a very useful perception for us.

[JohnyCanuck]

5. It might turn out we owe Rummy our thanks

for sabotaging the PNAC agenda before it could be implemented. Too bad the demonstration of his arrogance and incomepetence had to come at such an awful price.

Almost exactly a century ago the Russian empire fought a war with Japan in the belief that a swift victory would strengthen the powers-that-be in St Petersburg. Instead the Tsar's armies met defeat. Russian generals, who said that their tactic of charging Japanese machine guns with sabre-wielding cavalry had failed only because their men had attacked with insufficient brio, held their jobs. In Iraq, American generals and their political masters of demonstrable incompetence are not fired. The US is turning out to be much less of a military and political superpower than the rest of the world had supposed.