AP Analysis: War is Hard, We’re Depressed (Can We Leave Now?)
Hard-hitting analysis by the AP’s senior Saddam apologist, Charles J. Hanley:*Â
BAGHDAD — In Iraq, after four years and three months of war, the echoes have begun to echo themselves.
American troops are taking Baghdad’s streets back from insurgents. The prime minister has a plan for national reconciliation. To the south, in the “triangle of death,” two U.S. soldiers are missing, captives in enemy hands.
Those were the headlines a year ago. Today they’re being seen again, like some grim rewinding of a movie tragedy, of a story that never ends.
The AP echoes itself on Iraq, with some warmed-over anecdotes and information cast to present the U.. and Iraqi effort in as negative a light a possible, downplay any progress, and avoid any meaningful insight on where we are in Iraq today.
Like most of the AP war reporting, this analysis is as notable for what it doesn’t say as for what it does. Hanley cherrypicks the stock AP numbers on how much worse everything is, and follows the AP Shadow Stylebook religiously on which numbers to ignore. The turning of the Sunni tribes in Anbar, a movement spreading elsehwere and fiercely contested by al-Qaeda, gets only passing mention. No reference to how astonishing this is, unpredictable a year ago. The fact that they have fled Anbar and Baghdad is not a measure of success, where killings are down, but an occasion to highlight ”defiant” the ”Sunni fighters” are in Diyala and the Triangle of Death. Operations to destroy them now underway in Diyala also get only passing mention, with no mention of the fact that locals there have been cooperating with U.S. and Iraqi forces in the face of al-Qaeda’s Islamic reign of terror. And what’s been going on in the Triangle of Death since it got heavily worked over by 6,000 troops looking for three missing ones? There seemed to be a significant dividend to that tragedy-driven operation, but I haven’t seen an accounting.Â
By the time you reach the end of Hanley’s analysis, you’ll have received no useful information to understand the course of the war in Iraq. Only some rehashing of the usual statistics; some grim Middle East war zone imagery that should be a strong contender for that “dark and stormy night” literary contest; and the sense that reading AP’s coverage of it has put Hanley into a funk. He closes with an anonymous Iraqi’s plaintive cry:
“How long,” one asked, “will Iraqi blood be shed?”
The source is an Sunni-Shiite conference to promote unity. No mention of al-Sadr’s public adoption of this policy, a probably cynical but fascinating development, that a murderous militia leader whose political and military base is splintering chooses this line to rehabilitate his image. No mention of al-Maliki’s gesture in support of the Anbar tribes, Sunni insistence on being allowed into the security forces, Petraeus’ efforts on that front, the hard struggle to effect reconciliation for traumatized people who were purposefully pitted against each other not only by Saddam Hussein but by al-Qaeda, Iran and other of their own leaders. Just a conference noted as an example of futility. Following Hanley’s long laundry list of U.S. failures in this piece, I’m getting a sense the subtitle to that closing quote is, “When will Bush stop it?”Â
No mention of what happens if he does.
Past reviews of Hanley’s work:
*My September 2006 Boston Herald column on that singles out Hanley, among others at the AP:
Does AP stand for Al-Qaeda Propaganda?
By JULES CRITTENDEN
24 September 2006
The Associated Press, the reliable just-the-facts news agency you and I once knew, no longer exists. Amoral propagandists have taken over.
It is not only in the disturbing matter of Bilal Hussein, AP photograher and al-Qaeda associate, being held without charge in U.S. custody in Iraq that this is evident. But also in the departure from balanced, nonpartisan coverage that has always been the AP’s promise to us, its customers.
The AP was, in fact, a pioneer in balanced coverage. The concept was born with the AP in 1848 and tempered in the Civil War. The AP served newspapers of different stripes and had to keep politics out of it.
But for any news organization going into war, it’s hard not to have a side. In 1876, AP scribe Mark Kellogg was killed with Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn. “I go with Custer and will be at the death,” he reported. Guess which side he was on. In 1941, the AP had to shut its Berlin bureau when its reporters were arrested. In 1945, AP correspondent Joe Morton was executed by the SS. AP correspondents were imprisoned by communists in North Korea, Romania and Czechoslovakia. The AP’s Terry Anderson was held captive by Islamic extremists in Beirut for six years. It is a brave and illustrious history.
The AP has had one or two exemplary war correspondents in Iraq. But this strange war has changed so many things. In late 2004, as the U.S. military was moving to rid Fallujah of the terrorists who controlled it, the AP wanted some eyes inside the city. It hired Bilal Hussein. He gave the AP photos of insurgents setting up ambushes and firing at Americans. He gave them photos of terrorists posing with their freshly slaughtered victims. His pictures helped the AP win a Pulitzer Prize.
A blogger named Darleen at www.darleenclick.com said it very well in December of 2004:
“I have trouble with how cozy this AP photographer is with the terrorists. I realize he’s a Hussein from Fallujah, so his own personal feelings and associations may be on display here, but did The Associated Press . . . employ Nazis to get photos showing attacks on the Allies and the execution of Jews?”
I wish it stopped with the AP’s effort to give the enemy in Iraq a fair shake, as if terrorists were freedom fighters. Then I look at the AP copy I see nightly. The president of the United States gives a speech. The AP grants him a couple of fragmentary quotes before allowing his failed 2004 challenger and other opponents several full paragraphs to denounce him.
There is the bizarre work of Charles J. Hanley, an AP apologist for Saddam Hussein. He dismisses evidence of weapons programs and reports on the deep frustration Saddam felt when he could not convince the world of his good intentions, in those years when he was murdering his own people.
Last week, the AP gave us a lengthy series on the U.S. detention of terrorism suspects. The AP’s opinion was evident. Bilal Hussein was the poster boy. The salient fact that Hussein was captured with an al-Qaeda leader was buried. Al-Qaeda has killed and abducted dozens of journalists, Iraqi, American and European. Mainly Iraqi. I wonder: What’s so special about this particular Iraqi journalist that he could associate freely with al-Qaeda?
I look at Hussein’s photos. Terrorists trying to kill Americans. Terrorists posing with dead civilians. Bilal Hussein knows things about these men, who they are, how they operate. I’m thinking, Bilal Hussein looks like an accessory to murder. I’m thinking, I hope the U.S. intelligence agents who have him are getting good information out of him. And I’m wondering, who does The Associated Press want to win this war?
  Â
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 11:50 am on Wednesday, June 20, 2007
4 Responses to “AP Analysis: War is Hard, We’re Depressed (Can We Leave Now?)”
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June 20th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
And I’m wondering, who does The Associated Press want to win this war?
It would be easy to say “the other side”, and certainly their stringers have a vested interest. But I don’t think most of the professionals with AP care that much. They want whoever to win who will produce the most blood and misery, therefore making the best copy. To them, “if it bleeds, it ledes” is literal.
June 21st, 2007 at 9:54 am
Web Reconnaissance for 06/21/2007
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.
June 21st, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Oh, I think many of the reporters, photogs, and editors at the AP have a vested interest in seeing the West lose. I don’t think that they consider the consequences of what that would actually mean, because, for them, it is merely some kind of just desserts punishment for the evil they see in their own civilization. It doesn’t go beyond that for them. Consequences? Blank-out.
June 21st, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Oops, I lost the last sentence of that post to the ether.
Their’s is merely the latest version of the supposed “white man’s burden,” where we are not only responsible, but guilty guilty guilty.