Weekly Shredder 12:
Farnaz Fassihi's E-mail from Baghdad
by James Norton

Whatever you might say about the editorials found within the Wall Street Journal (personal favorites include "Is this an intentional parody?" and "HUUUUHH?"), it's a great paper for world news.

Global business publications like the Journal, the Financial Times and the Economist are under intense pressure to produce serious reporting; businesspeople need to make decisions based on facts, not ideologically tainted fairy tales.

Therefore, when one of the Journal's Baghdad-based reporters sends an e-mail to her friends offering her balls-out, unvarnished, deeply unsettling assessment of Iraq's current political and security situation, it's worth taking notice.

The e-mail by Farnaz Fassihi, posted recently on Romenesko, flies so directly in the face of recent White House announcements about Iraq's recovery that the two needed to be stacked up, side-by-side.

From: [Wall Street Journal reporter] Farnaz Fassihi
Subject: From Baghdad

Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest. ... I leave when I have a very good reason to and a scheduled interview. I avoid going to people's homes and never walk in the streets. I can't go grocery shopping any more, can't eat in restaurants, can't strike a conversation with strangers, can't look for stories, can't drive in anything but a full armored car, can't go to scenes of breaking news stories, can't be stuck in traffic, can't speak English outside, can't take a road trip, can't say I'm an American, can't linger at checkpoints, can't be curious about what people are saying, doing, feeling. And can't and can't. There has been one too many close calls, including a car bomb so near our house that it blew out all the windows. So now my most pressing concern every day is not to write a kick-ass story but to stay alive and make sure our Iraqi employees stay alive. In Baghdad I am a security personnel first, a reporter second.

For archives, audio, and background about the column, click here.

Grim stuff, but surely the personal experience of American reporters doesn't necessarily mean that things are bad for Iraqis, right?

Iraqis like to call this mess 'the situation.' When asked 'how are things?' they reply: 'the situation is very bad." What they mean by situation is this: the Iraqi government doesn't control most Iraqi cities, there are several car bombs going off each day around the country killing and injuring scores of innocent people, the country's roads are becoming impassable and littered by hundreds of landmines and explosive devices aimed to kill American soldiers, there are assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings. The situation, basically, means a raging barbaric guerilla war.

This is not something you'd gather from the White House's recent statements. Just this week, while acknowledging violence in Iraq, President Bush said the following in his radio address:

We're making steady progress in implementing our five-step plan toward the goal we all want: completing the mission so that Iraq is stable and self-governing, and American troops can come home with the honor they have earned.

Granted: A transition from a dictatorship to an unstable peace to a raging barbaric guerilla war is, indeed, steady progress. But it's steady progress toward hellish anarchy.

The tone of Fassihi's e-mail then goes from dark to darker. Not only is the violence in Iraq something fierce to live through, it's gotten bad enough that the government has decided it can no longer be openly discussed.

In four days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry of health — which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers — has now stopped disclosing them.

Bush recently talked about how he believes "...we'll have a free society in Iraq, and I know that a free society in Iraq makes America safer and the world better off." However, when a government stops talking about death tolls because they're too terrible, you're not moving toward a free society — you're moving away from it. When a government shuts down inflammatory newspapers instead of fighting lies with the truth, you've moving away from a free society.

Still — most Iraqis must still have some warmth and affection for the Americans who liberated them from Saddam Hussein? Particularly the Shiites, who were most oppressed under Saddam's largely Sunni regime? Let's check in with Fassihi:

A friend drove thru the Shiite slum of Sadr City yesterday. ... He said on the main roads of Sadr City, there were a dozen landmines per every ten yards. His car snaked and swirled to avoid driving over them. Behind the walls sits an angry Iraqi ready to detonate them as soon as an American convoy gets near. This is in Shiite land, the population that was supposed to love America for liberating Iraq.

But, if you talk to Bush, we shouldn't be overly worried. America's strongest weapon against the insurgents are their fellow Iraqis, who are joining the police and National Guard, and battling on behalf of freedom. Bush, in his radio address, boasted:

Nearly 100,000 fully trained and equipped Iraqi soldiers, police officers and other security personnel are working today, and the Iraqi government is on track to build a force of over 200,000 security personnel by the end of 2005.

But our woman on the ground sees a different picture:

America's last hope for a quick exit? The Iraqi police and National Guard units we are spending billions of dollars to train. The cops are being murdered by the dozens every day — over 700 to date — and the insurgents are infiltrating their ranks. The problem is so serious that the US military has allocated $6 million dollars to buy out 30,000 cops they just trained to get rid of them quietly.

The lack of security, unfortunately, jeopardizes all those other wonderful things that our genuinely resourceful and courageous US troops are struggling to do: rebuilding schools, restoring infrastructure, and helping Iraqis to live more comfortable, more normal, more genuinely free lives.

Bush talked excitedly about this in a recent appearance:

In the next several months, more than $9 billion will be spent on contracts that will help Iraqis rebuild schools, refurbish hospitals and health clinics, repair bridges, upgrade the electrical grid, and modernize the communication system.

But Fassihi spells out the pitfalls in stark terms:

As for reconstruction: firstly it's so unsafe for foreigners to operate that almost all projects have come to a halt. After two years, of the $18 billion Congress appropriated for Iraq reconstruction only about $1 billion or so has been spent and a chunk has now been reallocated for improving security, a sign of just how bad things are going here.

What Fassihi doesn't get into here is the fascinating backstory of how young, completely unqualified political appointees — some hired simply because their resumes were on file with the conservative Heritage Foundation, some hired because of outright nepotism — bungled the spending of reconstruction funds. To quote Peter W. Galbraith in the New York Review of Books:

The privatizing of Iraq's economy was handled at first by Thomas Foley, a top Bush fund-raiser, and then by Michael Fleisher, brother of President Bush's first press secretary. After explaining that he had got the job in Iraq through his brother Ari, he told the Chicago Tribune — without any apparent sense of irony — that the Americans were going to teach the Iraqis a new way of doing business. "The only paradigm they know is cronyism."

Perhaps the president's only remaining consolation is the approach of Iraqi elections, an event he mentions at every possible opportunity. Fassihi has talked to Iraqis about the coming elections. Unfortunately, Saddam is polling awfully well.

Iraqis say that thanks to America they got freedom in exchange for insecurity. Guess what? They say they'd take security over freedom any day, even if it means having a dictator ruler. I heard an educated Iraqi say today that if Saddam Hussein were allowed to run for elections he would get the majority of the vote. This is truly sad.

The Iraqi government is talking about having elections in three months while half of the country remains a 'no go zone' — out of the hands of the government and the Americans and out of reach of journalists. In the other half, the disenchanted population is too terrified to show up at polling stations. The Sunnis have already said they'd boycott elections, leaving the stage open for polarized government of Kurds and Shiites that will not be deemed as legitimate and will most certainly lead to civil war.

I asked a 28-year-old engineer if he and his family would participate in the Iraqi elections since it was the first time Iraqis could to some degree elect a leadership. His response summed it all: "Go and vote and risk being blown into pieces or followed by the insurgents and murdered for cooperating with the Americans? For what? To practice democracy? Are you joking?"

-Farnaz

Now that you've read the e-mail, and read the statements coming from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., ask yourself this:

"Whom do I trust more? A Baghdad-based foreign correspondent for one of the world's most respectable newspapers? Or a presidential administration whose political survival is dependent upon the Iraq War being perceived as a smart thing to do?"

Or, if you prefer, ask yourself the same question that Fassihi asked near the end of her letter:

"Who did this war exactly benefit? Was it worth it? Are we safer because Saddam is holed up and Al Qaeda is running around in Iraq?"

E-mail James Norton at jrnorton@flakmag.com.

— graphic by Derek Evernden (derek@ocellus.net)