Mar 08.qxd - Connection Magazine
Mar 08.qxd - Connection Magazine
Mar 08.qxd - Connection Magazine
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
FIVE YEARS LATER in<br />
Iraq, the people and their<br />
country are worse off<br />
than they ever were before the<br />
invasion on <strong>Mar</strong>ch 19, 2003.<br />
We present and thank the courageous,<br />
Independent Reporter<br />
Dahr Jamail (who has been in<br />
the Santa Cruz area several<br />
times to report to us all) for his<br />
efforts to be there and to continue<br />
to communicate with the<br />
Iraqi people and US soldiers<br />
about what is really going on. It<br />
is deplorable. It is shocking. It<br />
is awful.<br />
Please spread the word; tell the<br />
truth; get the real picture out<br />
there. Please!<br />
Thank you,<br />
Pattie & Thom<br />
Janine Talty, DO, MPH<br />
Osteopathic Manipulative<br />
Medicine, Orthopedic Medicine<br />
and Board Certified Family<br />
Medicine<br />
Clarence L. Nicodemus,<br />
PhD, DO<br />
Board Eligible<br />
Osteopathic Manipulative<br />
Medicine/Neuromusculoskeletal<br />
Medicine<br />
Reality Is Totally Different<br />
Iraqis on Success and Progress in Their Country<br />
by Dahr Jamail<br />
THIS MARCH 19 will be the fifth anniversary<br />
of the shock-and-awe air assault on Baghdad<br />
that signaled the opening of the invasion of<br />
Iraq, and when it comes to the American occupation<br />
of that country, no end is yet in sight. If Republican<br />
presidential candidate John McCain has anything to<br />
say about it, the occupation may never end. On<br />
January 7th, he assured reporters that he was more<br />
than fine with the idea of the U.S. military remaining<br />
in Iraq for 100 years. "We've been in Japan for 60<br />
years. We've been in South Korea 50 years or so? As<br />
long as Americans are not being injured or harmed<br />
or wounded or killed. That's fine with me."<br />
He said nothing, of course, about Iraqis<br />
"injured or harmed or wounded or killed." In fact,<br />
O<br />
steopathic Medicine<br />
Medical Specialties:<br />
Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine<br />
Neuromusculoskeletal Medicine<br />
Clinical Biomechanics<br />
Osteopathy in the Cranial Field (Physician level<br />
CranioSacral Therapy)<br />
Pain Management<br />
Prolotherapy<br />
Natural Hormone Balance<br />
Specialized clinical technologies:<br />
Quantum Feedback<br />
BEMER Pulsed<br />
Electromagnetic Field Therapy<br />
Patient illness specialties:<br />
Acute and Chronic Back & Neck Pain<br />
Musculoskeletal Diagnostic dilemmas<br />
Sports Medicine<br />
Natural Hormone Balance for Men and Women<br />
Fibromyalgia<br />
Chronic Fatigue<br />
Headaches and Migraines<br />
Diagnosis and Treatment of Lyme disease<br />
Co-located with<br />
Wellness and Rehabilitation<br />
Center Physical Therapy<br />
94 degree Pool Aquatic Physical Therapy<br />
Pilates Rehabilitation<br />
Massage Therapy<br />
Acupuncture<br />
Spiritual Counseling<br />
Watsonville<br />
50 Penny Lane<br />
Monterey<br />
1088 Cass Street<br />
831-722-5505, 831-728-0505 (FAX)<br />
Hours: M-F 9 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.<br />
WWW.wellness-rehab.com<br />
amid the flurries of words, accusations, and<br />
“debates” which have filled the airways and add up<br />
to the primary-season presidential campaign, there<br />
has been a near thunderous silence on Iraq lately-and<br />
especially on Iraqis.<br />
A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll indicated<br />
that 64% of Americans now feel the war in<br />
Iraq was not worth fighting. American opinion on<br />
the war and occupation, in fact, seems remarkably<br />
unaffected by the positive spin all those “success”<br />
stories in the mainstream media of these post-surge<br />
months. The media now tells us that Iraq is going to<br />
be taking a distinct backseat to domestic economic<br />
issues, that Americans are no longer as concerned<br />
about it.<br />
Once again, with rare exceptions, that media<br />
has had a hand in erasing the catastrophe of Iraq<br />
from the American landscape, if not the collective<br />
consciousness of the public. What, it occurred to<br />
me recently, do my friends and acquaintances<br />
back in Iraq (where I covered the occupation for<br />
eight months during the years 2003-2005) think<br />
not just about their lives and the fate of their<br />
country, but about our attitudes toward them?<br />
What do they think about the ”success” and the<br />
silence in America?<br />
On October 6, 2004, George W. Bush proclaimed:<br />
“Iraq is no diversion; it is the place<br />
where civilization is taking a decisive stand<br />
against chaos and terror-and we must not waver.”<br />
Iraqis, of course, continue to witness firsthand<br />
this "decisive stand against chaos and terror.”<br />
In our world, however, they are largely mute<br />
witnesses. Americans may argue among themselves<br />
about just how much “success” or<br />
“progress” there really is in post-surge Iraq, but it<br />
is almost invariably an argument in which Iraqis<br />
are but stick figures or dead bodies. Of late, I<br />
have been asking Iraqis I know by email what<br />
they make of the American version (or versions)<br />
of the unseemly reality that is their country, that<br />
they live and suffer with. What does it mean to<br />
become a “secondary issue” for your occupier?<br />
In response, Professor S. Abdul Majeed<br />
Hassan, an Iraqi university faculty member wrote<br />
me the following:<br />
“The year of 2007 was the bloodiest among<br />
the occupation years, and no matter how successful<br />
the situation looks to Mr. Bush, reality is totally<br />
different. What kind of normal life are he and the<br />
media referring to where four and a half million<br />
highly educated Iraqis are still dislocated or still<br />
being forcefully driven out of their homes for being<br />
anti-occupation? How can the people live a normal<br />
life in a cage of concrete walls [she is referring to<br />
concrete walls being erected by the Americans<br />
around entire Baghdad neighborhoods], guarded by<br />
their kidnappers, killers, and occupation forces?<br />
What kind of normal life can you live where many,<br />
many of your relatives and your beloved ones are<br />
either missing or in jail and you don't even know if<br />
they are still alive or, after being tortured, have<br />
been thrown unidentified in the dumpsters?<br />
“What kind of normal life can you live<br />
when you have to bid farewell to your family each<br />
time you go out to buy bread because you don't<br />
know if you are going to see them again? What is<br />
a normal life to Mr. Bush? If we're lucky, we get a<br />
few hours of electricity a day, barely enough<br />
drinking water, no health care, no jobs to feed our<br />
kids?<br />
“Little teenage girls are given away in marriage<br />
because their families can't protect them<br />
from militias and troops during raids. Women cannot<br />
move unescorted anymore. What kind of educations<br />
are our children getting at universities<br />
where 60% of the prominent faculty members<br />
Page 16 ▲ The <strong>Connection</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong> ▲ www.theConnect.com ▲ <strong>Mar</strong>ch — April 2, 2008<br />
Dahr Jamail is the<br />
author of “Beyond<br />
the Green Zone:<br />
Dispatches from<br />
an Unembedded<br />
Journalist in<br />
Occupied Iraq.”<br />
have<br />
been<br />
driven out of their jobs-killed or forced to leave the<br />
country by government militias? Is it normal that<br />
areas [on the outskirts of Baghdad] like Saidiya and<br />
Arab Jubour are bombed because the occupation<br />
forces are afraid to enter the areas for fear of the<br />
resistance? It is always easier to control ghost cities.<br />
It becomes very peaceful without the people.”<br />
On January 8th, President Bush held video teleconferences<br />
with General David Petraeus and<br />
Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, as well as with the<br />
U.S.-backed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki,<br />
and with members of U.S. Provincial Reconstruction<br />
Teams (PRTs) in Iraq. Afterwards, he told reporters at<br />
a press conference, “It was clear from my discussions<br />
that there's great hope in Iraq, that the Iraqis are<br />
beginning to see political progress that is matching<br />
the dramatic security gains for the past year.”<br />
Members of the PRTs, he claimed, had told him that<br />
“life is returning to normal in communities across<br />
Iraq, with children back in school and shops reopening<br />
and markets bustling with commerce.” Bush<br />
thanked members of those teams for “making 2007,<br />
particularly the end of 2007, become incredibly successful<br />
beyond anybody's expectations.”<br />
Mohammad Mahri'i, an Iraqi journalist, has a<br />
rather different take on the situation: “The problem<br />
with Bush is that his people believe him every time<br />
he lies to them,” he writes me. “His reconstruction<br />
teams are invisible and I wish they could show me<br />
one inch above the ground that they built.”<br />
Maki al-Nazzal, an Iraqi political analyst from<br />
Fallujah who has been forced to live abroad with his<br />
family, thanks to ongoing violence and the lack of<br />
jobs or significant reconstruction activity in his city,<br />
which was three-quarters destroyed in a U.S. assault<br />
in November 2004, offered me his thoughts on the<br />
Western mainstream coverage of Iraq.<br />
“The media should not follow the warlords' and<br />
politicians' propaganda. It is our duty to search for<br />
the truth and not repeat lies like parrots. The U.S.<br />
occupation is bad and no amount of media propaganda<br />
can camouflage the mess inside occupied Iraq.<br />
We are ashamed of the local and Western media [for]<br />
marketing the naked lies told by generals and politicians.<br />
Comparing two halves of 2007 is ridiculous.<br />
“Bush and his heroes, head of the Coalition<br />
Provisional Authority L. Paul Bremer, Secretary of<br />
Defense Donald Rumsfeld and now Petraeus always<br />
lied to their people and the world about Iraq. U.S.<br />
soldiers are getting killed on a daily basis and so are<br />
Iraqi army and police officers. Infrastructure is<br />
destroyed. In a country that used to feed much of the<br />
Arab world, starvation is now the norm. It is ironic<br />
that Iraq was not half as bad during the 12 years of<br />
sanctions. Our liberation has pushed us into a state<br />
of unprecedented corruption.”<br />
General David Petraeus, U.S. surge commander<br />
in Iraq, insists that “we and our Iraqi partners will<br />
continue to look beyond the security realm to help<br />
the Iraqis improve basic services, revitalize local<br />
markets, repair damaged infrastructure and create<br />
conditions that allow displaced families to return to<br />
their homes.”<br />
Iraqis know differently. Al-Nazzal is realistic:<br />
“Petraeus wants us to celebrate the return [to<br />
Baghdad] of 50,000 Iraqis who were starving in<br />
Syria, when five million remain in exile and internally<br />
displaced. What he conveniently forgets to<br />
mention is that those who returned found their houses<br />
either destroyed or occupied by others. He also<br />
wants to be praised for handing over the nation's<br />
security to militias he allowed to form rather than to<br />
academics and technocrats. Iraq has no medicines in<br />
its hospitals, no electricity, no potable water, no real<br />
Page 17<br />
▲