NYT in Falluja

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http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney04182005.html

The New York Times in Fallujah

By MIKE WHITNEY

Seattle, Washington


"Things are almost back to normal here. We have teachers and
books. Things are getting better."

New York Times 3-26-05 "Vital Signs of a Ruined City Grow
stronger in Falluja"

"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the
violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having
first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in
the world today"my own government."

Rev. Martin Luther King

Cameras aren't allowed in Falluja; neither are journalists.
If they were then we would have first-hand proof of
America's greatest war crime in the last 30 years; the
Dresden-like bombardment of an entire city of 250,000.
Instead, we have to rely on eyewitness accounts that appear
on the internet or the spurious reports that sporadically
surface in the New York Times and Associated Press. For the
most part, the Times and AP have shown themselves to be
undependable; limiting their coverage to the details that
support the overall goals of the occupation. For example, in
the last few weeks both the NYTs and the AP ran stories on
the alleged progress being made in Falluja. The AP
outrageously referred to the battered city as "the safest
place in Iraq"; a cynical appraisal of what most independent
journalists have called nearly total destruction. One can
only wonder if the editors at the AP would approve of
similar security measures if they were taken in their own
neighborhoods.

The NYTs also ran a lengthy story, "Vital Signs of a Ruined
City Grow stronger in Falluja", which portrayed Falluja as a
city on the mend' after a healthy dose of imperial medicine:
"Classes have started again two months ago and the cheerful
shrieks of children can be heard in the hallways." This was
just one of the more contemptuous quotes lifted from the
NYT's story of "rebirth" from the epicenter of American
devastation. The quote was accompanied by a picture of a
Marine in full-combat gear bending over to tie the shoe of a
seven or eight year old Iraqi boy; a threatening image used
to convey the spirit of American generosity.

The truth about Falluja is far different than the bogus
reports in the AP and Times. The fact that even now, a full
6 months after the siege, camera crews and journalists are
banned from the city, tells us a great deal about the extent
of America's war crimes. Just two weeks ago, a photographer
from Al Aribiyya news was arrested while leaving Falluja and
his equipment and film were confiscated. To date, he is
still being held without explanation and there is no
indication when he will be released. This illustrates the
fear among the military brass that the truth about Falluja
will leech out and destroy whatever modest support still
exists for the occupation. Journalists should realize that
Falluja may turn out to be the administration's Achilles
heel; a My Lai-type atrocity that turns the public
decisively against Bush's war.

The fairytales in the Times and AP are typical wartime
propaganda; no different from the fabrications about Jessica
Lynch's heroics or the Dear Leader larking-about in Baghdad
with a plastic turkey in tow (Bush's "surprise" Thanksgiving
day visit) The articles suggest that the administration has
settled on a strategy for concealing the unpleasant facts
about the obliteration of the city. Along with an active
disinformation campaign featured in the nation's leading
newspapers, the administration has put together a PR
operation to shape public perceptions. This explains why the
State Dept's number two official, Robert Zoellick, popped up
in Falluja last week for a photo-op at a bread-making
factory and a water-pumping station. Zoellick's visit was
supposed to draw attention the progress being made in
Falluja's restoration. Instead, his plans were disrupted by
threats to his personal safety and he was hustled-off to a
fortified military compound in the center of town. There he
was beset by the cities tribal leaders' complaining about
the dismal pace of reconstruction.

Zoellick's appearance was intended to highlight the alleged
return of 90,000 Fallujans to the city and the reparations
that have been made to the city's water system. In fact,
there's no way to verify the administration's claims about
the numbers of returning residents, and its doubtful that
there have been any measurable improvements to the
water-treatment plants, sewage facilities, electrical grid
or hospital; all of which were intentionally bombed during
the siege.

Zoellick's "confidence-building" trip turned out to be just
another in a long list of bungled public relations gambits.
If anything, it only further proved that the US still has no
control over the security situation on the ground, and that
the majority of Iraqis were better off under Saddam.

The Bush administration claims that the military is slowly
providing compensation to the people whose homes were
destroyed during the Falluja offensive but, again, there's
no independent source that can verify those claims and it
seems inconsistent with the existing policy. Zoellick
summarized the Bush policy succinctly in his remarks to the
Fallujan leaders, "I know it won't be easy. There will be
many days of frustration, even threats. We can help, but YOU
have to make it happen."

Zoellick's comments are little more than a distillation of
the Bush ethos, "You're on your own;" the underlying theme
of "compassionate conservatism".

It's doubtful that anyone in Falluja is so naïve that they
believe the administration will actually help-out with the
reconstruction. Two years have passed since the initial
invasion and Baghdad is still limited to three or four hours
of electricity per day. The problems with water and sewage
systems are equally grave. Only one in five Iraqis has
access to clean water and there are still many places in
Baghdad where raw sewage can be seen on the city streets. As
a result there have been reports of outbreaks of cholera,
diarrhea and other more obscure water-borne illnesses.

Falluja is undoubtedly doomed to the same fate as
Afghanistan. The media will create the illusion of
improvement for the American public; celebrating the
meaningless trappings of democracy (sham elections, claims
of sovereignty, and the writing of a constitution) while the
nation remains fractured and under the brutal rule of the
regional war-lords. Afghanistan is a lawless, drug-colony
run by gangsters and narco-smugglers. By any standard of
measurement, our involvement there has been a complete
failure. The real Afghanistan bears no resemblance to the
flourishing democratic republic that graces the pages of
American newspapers.

Falluja and the rest of Iraq can expect the very same
treatment. There is no Plan B; the Bush strategy for
toppling regimes and replacing them with the Neoliberal
model is a cookie-cutter approach to governance; a
one-size-fits-all formula for global rule.

In Naomi Klein's article "The Rise of Disaster Capitalism",
Klein points out that there really is no intention on the
part of the US to rebuild Iraq or anywhere else for that
matter. When the State Dept gets involved, through its
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) "the
mandate is not to rebuild any old states, but to create
democratic and market-oriented' ones". That entails selling
off "state owned enterprises that created a nonviable
economy" and, thereby, "changing the very social fabric of a
nation."

There it is! Deregulation, privatization and control of
resources; the same model applied over and over again. The
real goal is a radical, fundamental change to the system;
"shock therapy", the all-purpose antidote prescribed by the
global banking and financial establishment. These changes
are facilitated through their political surrogates in the
Bush administration, and executed by their own private
security apparatus (aka; the US Military). After Iraq has
passed through this vicious transition from semi-socialist
government to deregulated capitalist colony, it will be
entered into the new world order of American protectorates;
stripped of its resources and subjected to the tyranny of
foreign rule. All government properties and services will be
controlled by multi-national corporations and all assets
will be held by the foreign lending institutions that own
the majority shares of the Iraqi National Bank.

The real story of Falluja will never appear in the pages of
the New York Times; the banned weapons, the bloated corpses,
the thousands of dead animals killed by illicit chemicals,
the wasteland of rubble and ruined lives. The magnitude of
the crime simply won't fit within the paper's glib account
of benign intervention. Rather, the Times is focused on
promoting a credible story of "rebirth amid the ruins"; of
lives patched together by a kindhearted father in Washington
and his heavily-armed disciples.

They're wasting their time. The cruelty of the siege and the
vastness of devastation will eventually be brought to light
and the Time's feeble apologetics will amount to nothing.

The Times remains the command center of the imperial
chronicle; the indispensable shaper of the colonial digest.
Its pages furnish the muddled logic for the invasion of
defenseless nations, the rationale for continued repression,
the requisite smokescreen for American war crimes, and the
dubious justification for the ongoing occupation. Their work
in Falluja is just one of many services they carry out as
the information-annex of the defense establishment. They
perform subtler assignments others as well. They continue to
be an invaluable cog in the machinery of state-terror;
executing their function with extraordinary skill.

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