posted on April 20, 2004 09:22:55 AM new
Published: April 19, 2004 2:10 PM EST
NEW YORK In an unusual move for the organization, the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN) 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, written for The Atlantic Monthly, and was named as an "Unsung Hero of Washington Journalism" by American Journalism Review in 2002.
posted on April 20, 2004 04:42:26 PM new
Good read. Thats the one thing that would turn the entire region into a nightmare if civil war broke out.
Unless they can control the border with Iran the cash, fighters and weapons will continue to flow and its going to be a bigger mess than now.
posted on April 20, 2004 05:20:09 PM new
Syria has a long desert border that can't be controlled either...Five marines were killed there last weekend. I read that the warmongers may use the border problem as an excuse to invade Syria.
posted on April 20, 2004 06:10:52 PM new
Thanks Reamond and Sky (who posted this on another thread).
It is an interesting read and much of it matches what has been reported here for several months. If you read reports from inside Iraq you can learn much more than what is fed to you on the nightly news. The part about the electricity is true to all reports I've seen and it's interesting to read about how the US prevented the contractors from Germany, France and Russia (who built most of the power stations)from helping out when the help is so desperately needed.
There is much to be learned from reading blogs and other reports from Iraq even though someone here recently jeered at us for reading some of them.
kiara - If you and helen would ever read anything besides somebody's blog or some other far left 'take' on what's really going on over there...you might be more informed of the actual FACTS.
My, my................ we all wonder about the "FACTS" so some of us look at many sources to become more informed.
Journalists that are in Iraq also report on the "real Iraq" on Canadian news shows and if one takes time to explore news sources from the UK, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, etc you may be surprised what the views on this war actually are and what life in Iraq is really like.
posted on April 20, 2004 06:41:35 PM new
"Someone" doesn't have a clue what we read. There is one good blog with daily updates about the war written by Juan Cole. Cole is a Middle Eastern scholar and has written a book on the topic... Sacred Space And Holy War: The Politics, Culture and History of Shi'ite Islam.
Cole is also translating books by great Americans and about America into Arabic...His goal is the formation of a large corpus of Americana in Middle Eastern languages, maintaining them in print and available inexpensively, and ensuring continued distribution and availability.
Some essays by Cole and op-ed articles can be found here.
