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Iraq-Jordan
AAN Promises Important Iraq Story
2004-04-20
In an unusual move for the organization, the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN)
Never heard of ’em will release what it promises will be a bombshell article related to the Iraq conflict at 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday. It will be made available free of charge for publication on all AAN-member Web sites, as well as for print, and more than 60 members papers have expressed interest in using it, according to Executive Director Richard Karpel. The 3,000-word story, embargoed until Tuesday but obtained by E&P today, is based on a "closely held" memo purportedly written by a U.S. government official detailed to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). It was provided to writer Jason Vest by "a Western intelligence official." The memo offers a candid assessment of Iraq’s bleak future -- as a country trapped in corruption and dysfunction -- and portrays a CPA cut off from the Iraqi people after a "year’s worth of serious errors."

The article is titled, "Fables of Reconstruction," with a subhed, "A Coalition memo reveals that even true believers see the seeds of civil war in the occupation of Iraq." Karpel commented, "We have no question that the memo is authentic." Vest is an experienced investigative reporter who is currently senior correspondent for The American Prospect. He has worked on staff at U.S. News and & World Report and The Washington Post,
nope, no bias there
written for The Atlantic Monthly, and was named as an "Unsung Hero of Washington Journalism" by American Journalism Review in 2002.
Can’t wait to see it, I’m sure someone will post it here. Another hatchet job, anyone getting tired of these yet?.
Here it is, nothing really new:
Signs of the author's continuing support for the U.S. invasion and occupation are all over the memo, which was written to a superior in Baghdad and circulated among other CPA officials. He praises Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi, and laments a lack of unqualified US support for Chalabi, a long-time favorite of Washington hawks. (It bears noting that Chalabi was tried and convicted in absentia by the Jordanian government for bank embezzlement, in 1989, and has come under fire more recently for peddling dubious pre-war intelligence to the US.) The author also asserts that "what we have accomplished in Iraq is worth it." And his predictions sometimes hew to an improbably sunny view. Violence is likely, he says, for only "two or three days after arresting" radical cleric Muqtada al Sadr, an event that would "make other populist leaders think twice" about bucking the CPA. Written only weeks ago, these predictions seem quite unwarranted, since simply trying to arrest al Sadr has resulted in more than two weeks of bloody conflict--with no end in sight--and seems to have engendered more cooperation between anti-Coalition forces than before.

Yet the memo is gloomy in most other respects, portraying a country mired in dysfunction and corruption, overseen by a CPA that "handle(s) an issue like six-year-olds play soccer: Someone kicks the ball and one hundred people chase after it hoping to be noticed, without a care as to what happens on the field." But it is particularly pointed on the subject of cronyism and corruption within the Governing Council, the provisional Iraqi government subordinate to the CPA whose responsibilities include re-staffing Iraq's government departments. "In retrospect," the memo asserts, "both for political and organizational reasons, the decision to allow the Governing Council to pick 25 ministers did the greatest damage. Not only did we endorse nepotism, with men choosing their sons and brothers-in-law; but we also failed to use our prerogative to shape a system that would work . . . our failure to promote accountability has hurt us."
There's more in the same tone, nothing that hasn't been said before.
Posted by:JerseyMike

#5  I planted this story so run it then ignore it. I wasn't here. I just remembered that I am the wind. OUT.
Posted by: Col Flagg   2004-04-20 8:24:25 PM  

#4  I read the Village Voice story, and there wasn't much to it: bits and pieces taken from this memo, woven together into a story by a huge pile of interpretive garbage supplied by the story's author.

The memo itself? Nowhere to be seen. Which leads me to wonder just how much of a hack-job had to be done on it to supply the bits and pieces which decorate the author's tale of imminent disaster.

In an exercise like OIF, I would expect a LOT of internal memoranda being passed around, containing frank, no-holds-barred criticism of tactics, strategy, methods, objectives, and results. In an operation like this you want to be your own harshest--and best informed--critic; and our military, especially, is very big on self-criticism as a tool for continuous improvement.

Looks like some asshole thought it would be a neat idea to help out the political opposition by sharing some of this stuff. In my opinion, he ought to be shot.
Posted by: Dave D.   2004-04-20 5:45:29 PM  

#3  or Pron
Posted by: Frank G   2004-04-20 5:03:57 PM  

#2  The Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN)represents those free papers you see downtown in beatup honor boxes. They're uniformly hard left.
Posted by: RMcLeod   2004-04-20 4:56:12 PM  

#1  It's new and improved Tide Newsweeklies.

Didn't like our product? Try it again - maybe you'll like it this time. If not, no matter, we make millions on suckers just like you!
Posted by: B   2004-04-20 3:29:18 PM  

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